“Because, babe, I knew you didn’t want to talk about it. You weren’t ready for that. As someone who knows what it’s like to hide from the past, and yourself, I know it’s a choice you make on your own about when to confront that pain. I just hoped I’d be around to help you through it if you chose to trust me with that.”
I blinked away tears that were unfamiliar to me.
“But I’m always here. Even if I’m technically in LA on damn near house arrest. You’d think a woman has never been pregnant before,” she grumbled, as if sensing that I wasn’t ready to say anything more about David.
“Well, how does a distraction sound?” I asked, taking considerable effort to brighten my voice.
“Dude, you already blew my fucking mind with the news that you’re going to be the one who breaks in the wild horse that is Gage. Oh, and the crazy one. Not that I’m judging. He’s hot as shit. The crazy ones always are. And I know that because Keltan is not entirely sane. I mean, he plays rugby. And he’s married to me. He’s got to be a little unhinged.”
Looking out at the ocean, I smiled, and it was genuine. It was hard to believe David’s name had been spoken in such close proximity to that smile.
“I think he’s pretty darn smart, and I think you’re pretty darn awesome, even if you’re a little crazy,” I said. “And I’m going to need some of that crazy for some journalistic advice.”
I filled her in on what I wanted to do, and when I was finished there was more crackling silence on the other side of the phone.
“You’ve done it,” she breathed after a long silence. “You’ve done the impossible, struck me silent for the second time in a handful of minutes. There must be some kind of trophy for that.” She sucked in a breath. “And I’m not going to point out the obvious and talk about the dangers involved in trying to take down drug dealers, because that’s just cliché and dull. And it’s you, so of course you’ll be careful. I’ll just give you some pointers.”
And she did.
Detailed pointers.
She also tried to convince me to get a gun. I had made all the appropriate noncommittal noises, but no way in hell was I getting a gun. I’d more likely shoot myself by accident before I shot anyone else.
Not that I had the stomach for shooting anyone.
The only shooting I was doing with my phone, safely in my car, prepared to start it and roar off into the night if anyone caught me.
Or I thought I’d been prepared.
Right up until my door was wrenched open, strong and firm hands gripping my upper arms.
I didn’t even have the self-preservation to scream while I was dragged out of the car. Not that anyone would save me if I did. Not in that area. Not that I would want any of the characters who hung out there to save me.
My back was pressed against the car, another body hard and hot against mine as a large hand settled on top of my collarbone.
My heart was splintering my ribs, and I could barely suck in a painful breath until a familiar scent entered my system with my frantic inhale.
Woodsy. A lingering but old smell of smoke.
“What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?” a voice growled, the fury in it rough against the night air.
I blinked at the beautifully savage face above me, his iron features painted in rage. His eyes were burning into me with more anger than I’d ever seen contained in them. It was dangerous.
He was dangerous.
I should’ve been more scared. I shouldn’t have relaxed and tightened in his grasp at the same time, shouldn’t have been slightly excited at the cruelty in his mere presence.
But I was.
“Gage,” I breathed.
He pressed against me harder, his hand at my collarbone tightening to the point of pain. “I repeat, what in the fuck are you doing here?”
I blinked again, my mind trying to work against all the reactions that were scrambling for control.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped, anger I didn’t quite know I possessed rearing up to strike back at Gage.
He froze, as if he was as unprepared for the violent bite in my voice as I was. Then he recovered, leaning forward so his mouth almost brushed against mine. “I’m here on club business,” he murmured. “I fit in here. This place, in the dirty and depraved shadows, that’s where I belong. That’s where I operate. I make sense here. I blend into the darkness. You do not. You’re a fucking beacon in this place. And the vermin around here can fuckin’ smell your sweetness amongst the bitter.”
His boots kicked my tennis shoes apart and I gasped as he stepped between my legs, his body almost pressing into the core of me, the part that was soft and craving his hardness.
“I’m not sure whether you need to consider yourself lucky it was me who snapped you up and not one of these other lowlifes.” His lips brushed against my neck, and my entire body erupted into fire and ice at the same time. “I don’t know if you’re gonna thank me or damn me when I’m finally done with you.” His mouth was gone and his eyes were tattooing his glare onto my soul. “If I ever decide to be done with you.”
I wanted to escape his gaze. The brutal truth behind it. The way it snatched me, not gentle or tender, but rough and almost painful. But perfect in the pain.
“So I’m gonna repeat my question, baby, and maybe if you answer me now, I might go easy on you.” His hand trailed up the side of my face. “Or maybe I won’t, depending on what you want. What are you doing out here?”
I wanted to speak. To move. But I didn’t want to run away. Didn’t want to talk. I wanted to tell him to do his worst. To snatch his face and press it against mine. For him to take me, against the car, against the demons running around the street, running behind our eyes.
But I couldn’t seem to speak, or move my limbs. It was all I could do just to inhale and exhale.
He let out a frustrated growl at my silence, and I was terrified at what was going to come next. But I was darkly excited for it too. I craved him to fulfill his depraved promise. Because despite all of our intense, erotic, and earth-shattering moments together, we hadn’t even kissed.
But instead of crossing the short distance between our mouths, he yanked backward, the cold air a slap to my face.
I didn’t realize he had a phone against his ear until he all but growled into it.
“Lucky,” he clipped. “Need you to come out to hope in a cage. Bring whatever prospect is around.” His eyes never left mine, his hand still pressing me into the car. “Lauren’s boss’s car is outside The Dive. Keys are gonna be on top of the front tire. You haul ass, ’cause it’s only a matter of time before some asshole gets curious about a car like that on a street like this. And if I have to kill someone who thinks he can steal a car my woman’s driving, I’ll be dis-fucking-pleased.”
He hung up and was dragging me across the street before I could properly understand what he was doing. The chrome of his bike glinted against the flickering streetlights that were few and far between. It wouldn’t do well to have illumination when dealing drugs. Darkness was needed for dark deeds.
We came to a jarring stop beside the bike, my brain buzzing with everything and nothing at the same time.
“Get on the fucking bike, Lauren,” Gage snapped.
I looked from him to the bike. “I don’t have a helmet.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, running his hand through his hair, eyes darting over the top of my head to the alley behind me. “You on the back of my bike, without a helmet, is the safest place in the fuckin’ world for you right now. Trust me.”
There he was. The guy promising to protect me from the plane going down.
So I did exactly that.
I trusted him.
And I got on the bike.
Gage nearly dragged me off the bike the second it stopped outside of my apartment.
It was only then that I realized my apartment was locked and my keys were in my purse, which was sitting on the passenger seat of Niles’s car. Which
was sitting outside a dodgy bar in a dodgier area. Or, if I was lucky, Lucky himself would’ve shown up before someone could’ve snatched the car.
I wasn’t sure if I was lucky right then or not.
I really hoped I didn’t have to explain to Niles why I’d gotten his car stolen. But he’d probably make it into a story. Everything in life was a story. Even the bad. Especially the bad. Bad news was good for newspapers.
“I don’t have my keys,” I murmured as we reached my front door.
It was only then that I saw he was carrying my purse. I didn’t even get the chance to be surprised, or find it funny to see my pale pink purse clutched in his large tattooed hands, because he was rifling through it almost violently.
He was a brave man to venture into a woman’s purse without her permission. Then again, I wasn’t exactly screaming in protest either. I was too busy trying to quiet my thundering heart.
Gage made quick work of doing one of the hardest things on earth—finding the exact object you needed in the depths of your purse. The door was unlocked and he was dragging me upstairs before I could catch up.
That’s all I was doing, playing catch-up. I should’ve been trying to figure all this out on the ride, should’ve gathered my wits, my logic and started to make the important decisions I was known so well for.
But I hadn’t.
I’d merely clutched onto Gage for dear life, pressed against his body, and let my mind think of something it had never thought of before.
Nothing.
Hence the reason I was still scrambling when the door slammed behind us and I was in the middle of my living room, Gage pacing in front of me, his boots echoing through my apartment like harbingers of doom.
Then he stopped, turned on me, faced me fully.
“Thought I’d have time to lock it down on the ride here,” he clipped. “Thought having your warm and hot little body pressed against mine would remind me that it was no longer sittin’ in a car takin’ photos of one of the biggest drug dealers in Hope, playing with her fucking innocent and precious life.” His voice was low. Quiet. Dangerous. And his gaze a blade.
I didn’t look away. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. I just stood there, dumb and still, like some idiot.
“Thought I would be able to lock it down, standing in your house, surrounded by your shit. Surrounded by you,” he continued, that voice still dangerous and low.
And then he wasn’t across the room. In two strides, he was in front of me, clutching my shoulders painfully. “But I fucking can’t!” he roared.
I jumped at the violence in his hands, in his voice, but more out of surprise than fear. Despite all of his unrestrained violence, I had some weird and unexplainable certainty that he wasn’t going to hurt me.
“Do you have any idea how much danger you put yourself in tonight?” he demanded, shaking me slightly as he spoke.
“I wasn’t putting myself in danger,” I protested.
He gaped at me then, his face contorted in rage. “You’re fuckin’ kidding me, right? You know what you look like?” He leaned in. “What you smell like?”
My breathing shallow, I didn’t respond because I didn’t think there was an appropriate response.
Gage held me hostage with his grip, with his gaze, both bordering on pain. “Because I do,” he said. “And I’m exactly like all those men. And looking at you, smelling you…all I want to know is what you taste like.”
His mouth was almost brushing against mine.
Almost.
“And ain’t nobody figuring out what you taste like,” he continued, his breath hot against my face. “No one is putting their dirty fuckin’ paws on you.” One of his hands moved to grip my neck. “Except me.”
Everything about his grip, his voice, his very stare was a threat. One I wanted him to carry out.
“You’re mine, baby,” he rasped. “And you’re not playin’ fuckin’ games with your safety, with what’s mine. You’re not doin’ shit like that ever again.”
His voice was iron. A band against me. A fricking brand.
I was his.
That thought filled me with terror. And also something else.
Longing.
I wanted to belong to him. I wanted to feel like I fit in his arms, in his life. Let his violent gaze, violent grip, violent life envelop me.
But he was trying to take something from me. That control I clutched to my chest. The control I needed to keep myself together. He was trying to stop me from holding onto my strength because he thought I was weak.
It took all of my strength to yank myself out of his grip, and I missed the violent warmth of it the second he let me go. And he did let me go. Though his arms were vises, he wasn’t going to hold me against my will.
“You know, this isn’t how the world works!” I yelled, pacing the room like he had been moments before. We seemed to be trading fury, since his face emptied the second I raised my voice. “You do not just declare someone is yours and decide that you have a freaking right to tell that someone—me—what she can and can’t do.” I stopped pacing, turning to him and narrowing my eyes. “You can’t just order me to be yours,” I hissed.
I expected him to yell back. His eyes certainly told me he wanted to.
But he didn’t.
Didn’t even move.
Just regarded me with a cold gaze that would’ve frozen me to the spot if not for the pulsating heat inside me. It was empty, that look. Devoid of anything human. Any emotion. The gaze of a monster.
“Oh, I’ve got a fair idea how the world works, baby,” he said finally, his voice as cold and empty and terrifying as his gaze. “Know it’s ugly. Painful. Bloody. And there’s no fuckin’ way to control it.”
He stepped forward.
I stepped back.
“For someone who knows shit, you don’t seem to know that,” he murmured, stalking toward me. “That this is not something I declared. Or something I fucking wanted.” He reached me and I found no energy left in me to retreat. “I didn’t order you to be mine. You just are.”
There were a lot of things I could’ve said then. I could’ve continued to fight for the control I’d thought was so important to my survival moments before. That I thought I needed.
I could’ve told him to leave, take his dangerous menace away from my safe apartment.
It was the smart thing to do.
The logical thing.
I had a feeling it might be my last chance to get out of this, that I would be strong enough to do so. And Gage would let me. I had a strange feeling he wanted me to get out of this. That he wasn’t strong enough to walk out the door he’d dragged me through.
That I might have to be the strong one if I wanted the control I’d thought was his.
“Kiss me,” I demanded, voice hoarse and foreign.
It was like one of those sex goddesses from the movies came and took control of my vocal cords, because there was no way I had the ability to sound like a sex goddess. Then again, maybe there had been no man to awaken that ability.
“No.”
The word was a slap in the face, a whip against that sultry voice that I had been so astonished by—and secretly proud of.
That single word did a lot of things.
Made me want to empty my dinner, right there at the top of his likely steel-toed motorcycle boots.
Cry.
Curl into a ball and die.
No, run far away, then curl into a ball in die.
I did none of those things. The only one I was happy about was the vomiting one. That would’ve added to an already insurmountable level of mortification.
The sex goddess disappeared, likely to never return again.
My awkward, stuttering, so-not-a-sex-goddess self took her place.
“Oh, um, that’s okay,” I muttered, eyes darting down to my palms, which were wringing each other out like a Russian housewife. “You—I mean I know I’m not what you’re used to, not….” I trailed off, my voice rough and scratchy,
full of unshed tears and unrealized insecurities. “What I’m trying to say is I understand. I was just…” What? Hoping this connection was actually real and not just inside my head?
Hoping something of import, someone of import might come into my beige life and splash it full of… something?
I tried to step back, desperate to engage in the running portion of the evening so the curl-up-and-die portion might come quicker.
An iron grip on my arm stopped me.
“Shut up,” Gage growled.
My jaw snapped shut on his command, though my eyes stayed down and I kept wringing my palms.
A callused hand snatched my jaw, wrenching it upward so my eyes had no choice but to meet the unyielding pools of citrine in front of me.
“Whatever you were tryin’ to say there, whatever you’re tryin’ to think, it’s bullshit,” he clipped.
“You don’t even know—” I tried to interrupt, but his eyes stopped me.
“I know, Will. I know because it seeps from your every fuckin’ pore. Your absolute blindness to what you are.” The grip on my arm tightened. “What I’m fuckin’ holding onto, somehow holding but not breaking.” His eyes swam with something so dark it hurt to look at. “Not yet, at least,” he muttered, his voice iron yet soft, like it had been under the forge for too long; it was melting, being molded by the heat—by pain.
“I don’t want to kiss you. Well, I do. Fucking more than anything in this world. Then I want to eat your pussy for hours. Sink my cock into that pussy and fuckin’ make you scream, make my fucking home inside that cunt.”
My insides dropped to the floor with his words. My legs throbbed and my pussy clenched tight, as if expecting a release to come from the words describing the act itself. I didn’t doubt that if Gage kept talking, kept looking at me like that, he’d make me come by just talking dirty. That was the thing about him. He was just so… visceral.
His eyes swam with the same desire that paralyzed me. Every inch of his body was held tight, the veins on his neck raised like he was battling with something.