He was silent a long time, just looking at me, fucking me with his stare. Then he leaned forward, inhaling roughly, sharply, sniffing me. My panties were drenched. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
“It will start with that kiss you just asked for. The thing I’ll give you, because I want to give you everything in this fucking world that you want, and it just so turns out that it lines up with my selfish desires,” he murmured, his mouth almost brushing mine but not crossing that important and very tiny distance between our lips.
His eyes didn’t let me go. “But it can’t be yet. Because the second I lay my lips to yours, it’s done. For both of us. I know it. You’re not gonna be the innocent, beautiful, and fucking oblivious girl anymore. Because I’ll worship every fucking inch of you to make sure you’re not blind to yourself. But then I’ll also fuck you so dirty that you won’t even look innocent to the Devil himself.”
Sweat beaded at my temples with the force of his words. He was penetrating me with those filthy and carnal sentences, my pussy wrapping around them like a physical thing. I’d never had such a reaction to anything in my life. I didn’t think anyone had this kind of reaction to anything ever.
Gage watched me. He was my puppet master, yanking at strings I didn’t know I had as he continued to speak. “I’m gonna tarnish you, dirty you, break you. I know it. Which means the longer I go without kissin’ you, the longer I get to enjoy my little bird before I crush her in my hands. Make her broken like me.” His hands tightened around me as if testing how much I could take.
His stare was unyielding. “And this isn’t me sayin’ I ain’t gonna do it. Because I’m broken, baby. I’m bad. And not the good kind of bad that sees true beauty and lets it go before he can ruin it. No, I’m the kind of bad that will take that beauty, appreciate it, and then snatch it for himself. Turn it into something that means it’ll never be the same again. Because you know you’ll never be the same again. I sure as fuck won’t.” He paused, his hands still at my chin, his eyes still searing my soul.
My heart seemed to crack against my rib cage with the force of its beats.
“So no, I’m not gonna kiss you just yet,” he rasped, eyes on my mouth. “I’m gonna let my little bird fly, enjoy the freedom she didn’t know she had for a little while longer.” He leaned in so his lips were almost—almost—touching mine once more. “But only a little fuckin’ while. Because I’m a man of strength. I’ve made it a fucking prerequisite of my survival to resist the temptation of things I know will destroy me. But I ain’t gonna be able to resist you for long, despite the fact that you’ll destroy me. And I’ll destroy you right back.”
With those words spearing me right through the heart, he gave me one last moment, then turned on his heel and gave me nothing but the view of the death he wore on his back.
Seven
One Week Later
One week.
I hadn’t heard from Gage in an entire week.
And I wasn’t one of those girls who spiraled when a guy didn’t call. Mostly because with me, after a point, the guy didn’t call. My life was simple, structured, unexciting. But it wasn’t that—it was because I didn’t fawn at the feet of these men. I didn’t yank my self-worth from inside me and hand it to them to do with what they wanted. I didn’t change my whole life in order to make them comfortable, in order to ‘keep them.’ And with the guys I’d dated, that meant I lost them. And it never bothered me. In each of my very brief relationships, I’d made sure to distance myself, to not give them all of me.
And the men I’d been with didn’t want all of me. They wanted the me I portrayed on the surface. The nice, plain woman who would make a good wife, a mother, and who would never speak up for herself. Who didn’t have her own opinion.
I would never be that woman.
But to the naked eye, I looked a heck of a lot like her.
It was my own design, of course. To keep myself safe from pain.
And what those men couldn’t even see in broad daylight, Gage saw completely and utterly in the darkness that night on the highway.
And I was no longer safe.
So before, I might not have been one of those women who spiraled when the guy didn’t call, but I sure as heck was now. And my circumstances were kind of extenuating, considering what happened the last time I saw Gage.
Considering all the things he said.
I still felt his grip on me, even a week later. I still had the faint marks of how tightly he’d pressed the pads of his fingers into my soft skin.
And I was upset about that. Not about the marks being there in the first place, but that they were disappearing.
Because if the marks were disappearing, then he’d only become a ghost of a rupture in my smooth and utterly simple life. Something that might’ve cracked it slightly but then left me with the knowledge of how hollow I was.
Logically, it was a good thing, because everything about Gage was wrong for me. He was a biker who lived hard and wild. So hard that violence seeped out of his very pores. I wore cardigans and my life was all about order. Safety.
A man who lived for danger and excitement didn’t end up with the woman who actively structured her life so meticulously that every second was designed to repel excitement. Danger.
So I should’ve been relieved, should’ve been settling back into the calm that came after a storm.
Though it didn’t feel like the storm was over.
I didn’t want it to be over.
But I had some distractions. One being Amy, who took it upon herself to show up at eight in the morning with two coffees for herself and a peppermint tea for me. She and her son, usually quiet in his stroller, would walk me to work every morning.
First I’d been a ball of nerves, thinking she was going to grill me about Gage and I’d have to say my greatest fears out loud—that he’d realized how wrong I was for him, how I was little more than a cardboard cutout of a human and I’d never see him again.
But she didn’t so much as utter his name. Though she uttered pretty much everything else under the sun. By the end of the week, I could’ve written a book—heck, I could’ve written five and a half books—on the Sons of Templar, the men and their respective women.
It sure sounded like fantasy. Too crazy to be real. But I’d been in Amber when it went down. On the fringes, where I thought I’d always be.
Never did I imagine I’d be right in the middle.
Or maybe still on the fringes, with just a taste of what it was like to be part of a family like that. To be touched and looked at the way Gage touched and looked at me.
“Lauren?” a voice jerked me out of my melancholy.
I looked up from my computer, having stared at the screen for the better part of an hour. I’d managed to get the bare minimum done that day, and the whole week. Which was my version of spiraling. I was never happy with the bare minimum. I made sure I excelled at everything I did, put all of myself into it so there were no parts of my brain that could go wandering.
And yet it seemed that almost my whole brain had been wandering that week.
“Jen,” I said, focusing on the woman leaning on my desk, smiling warmly at me.
Though I had no reason to think such a thing, the smile unnerved me. It was open, friendly, at home on her tanned and pretty faced, but there was something… off about it. About her entire presence.
Her presence that had been seemingly everywhere in the office for the entire week. I’d arrived at work on Monday after no sleep and my first walking session with Amy and I was not on my game.
Which was of course when Niles informed me of Jen joining the team as a new lifestyle columnist, and just a general reporter. Which in itself was strange, considering the current state of the paper and the journalism industry in general. We were laying people off, not hiring them.
But Jen was charming. Charismatic. And of course, beautiful, which I was sure helped with her hiring process. It was a catty thought, but it had merit. Niles was old-school
in all the ways that were good, believing in journalistic integrity, like the muckrakers back in the day who were willing to sacrifice everything for the truth. Who believed journalism was the fifth estate, holding the powers that were to account. He worked independently and would never be bought. He rewarded talent.
But he was old-school in a handful of the bad ways too. When journalism used to be an ‘old boys club’ and patriarchy was as common as a typewriter in that old-school newsroom. He wasn’t exactly sexist, and he always treated me like an equal, but he was a sucker for a pretty face. Which was why a large percentage of our female staff and interns were young and pretty. Talented too, but not hard on the eye.
And Jen was pretty. Tall, thin, with almond-shaped eyes and caramel skin that suggested an Eastern heritage. Long, shiny black hair that was always tumbling in wild curls around her face. She wore enough makeup to let you know she was a dab hand at it, but not enough to say she wasn’t comfortable with her natural features. Her full lips were always smeared cherry red, and she always wore a garment of the same shade on her body.
Apparently it was her ‘signature.’
That day it was a bloodred pencil skirt with a silky white shirt tucked in.
I wasn’t jealous, not liking her because of her body, or style, or confidence—things I didn’t have. But there was something about her efforts to talk to me, to be friendly with me that seemed disingenuous.
“Are you okay?” she asked, peering down at me with real concern.
Or maybe I was just so wrapped up in my own disaster that I’d been rude and guarded around her all week, and she was just a nice person who was new in town and trying to make friends.
I was never the woman who treated another person—especially a woman—badly because of my own personal turmoil. You never knew what battle someone was raging inside. I knew that all too well, and I made sure I would never be the reason that battle was harder to fight.
I forced a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, trying to get my voice to sound convincing. “It’s just been… a weird week,” I finished lamely.
Understatement of the century.
In addition to Gage’s absence, my car miraculously appeared in front of my apartment one morning—right where you weren’t allowed to park, of course, so it stood to reason that someone from the club had put it there. It looked good as new. Better.
Someone had rattled on about added features when I called the garage. Then they’d become pretty tight-lipped about how much those ‘added features’ were. And after not-so-gentle probing, it turned out he wasn’t tight-lipped because of how expensive it was. No, because of how cheap.
As in free.
I did not do charity.
Especially from a man who’d rocked my world and then walked out of it, stomping on the ruins he’d made. That man did not get to fix the one thing that could be fixed and do it for free.
I was paying. I was adamant to the man on the phone, bordering on hysterical. The man in question clearly did not do well with borderline hysterical questions, because he muttered about customers and then hung up. And didn’t answer when I called back.
Or return my calls.
I planned on doing extensive research that weekend, finding an appropriate sum and mailing them a check.
I jerked my mind back to Jen, who I was meant to be holding a conversation with.
She tossed her hair, her eyes twinkling. “Yeah, it’s something, this place. Kind of hard to settle in somewhere where people are so nice. I don’t trust it after where I’m from.”
“Where is it you were from again?” I asked, trying to rack my brain and hopefully make sure she hadn’t told me already.
She waved her manicured hand. “Somewhere a lot less nice than this. But it was home, and I had friends there.” She paused. “I miss it, you know? Even though this is my fresh start, even though this is going to be good for me, give me exactly what I need.”
I forced down my feeling of unease that something else laid behind her words. “What do you need from Amber?”
She showed white teeth, her eyes warm. “Oh, closure, I guess.”
I blinked. It was a strange thing to say after talking about a fresh start, but then again, wasn’t that exactly what a fresh start was? Closure?
I had no idea what the woman was battling, why that twinkle in her eye was tinged with something else. But I knew a fair bit about hiding pain behind a smile, and she was doing that too.
I smiled at her, real that time. “I hope you find it here.”
She stood, pressed her skirt down and smiled again. “Oh, I think I’ve already found it.” She hitched her bag on her shoulder. “Want to go for a drink to help me celebrate my first week?”
I was about to refuse, the response robotic, since I’d answered all questions like that with a variation of the name answer. No.
But maybe I needed a fresh start too.
“Sure,” I said, standing and getting my own purse.
She linked her arm in mine, walking us to the doors.
I attempted to shake off my unease, and push Gage from my mind.
By the end of the night, only one of those things was successful.
The banging at my door woke me up. The sound sent me jerking upright, my spine straight and heart thundering in my chest. I felt like I’d just closed my eyes, and a quick glance at my phone told me I had; it was just after midnight, and I’d gotten home at almost eleven.
Unheard of for me, but I’d shaken off my uneasiness toward Jen to discover she was funny, warm, and easy to talk to. Plus she hadn’t pried when I’d stuck to soda, only nodded once when I informed her I didn’t drink. That was enough for me to lower my boundaries and let myself have a good time. Engage. Maybe not as much as I did with Amy, but something similar.
And though I hated to succumb to clichés, the time did fly. And I almost didn’t think about Gage every second.
Almost.
I’d obviously banished him from my mind enough to get myself to sleep, if my brutal wake-up call was anything to go by. I was halfway down the stairs on instinct, not realizing that someone pounding on my door after midnight did not want to come around for tea. And no one came around to my place for tea, even at a decent hour.
My hand paused on the knob, and the wood rattled underneath my grip as a fist slammed against it. I jumped back, fear working to shake the last of sleep from my addled mind.
My grip tightened as I considered the option of running back up the stairs and hoping whoever was on the other side of that door would go away. It’s what I should’ve done. I definitely should’ve snatched my phone from beside my bed and been prepared to dial 911.
Because whoever thought it was appropriate to bang on people’s doors in the middle of the night was not going to contribute to my logical and calm life.
No, they’d smash right through it.
I didn’t run up the stairs. Because I was quickly turning into one of the girls from all those books and movies, making stupid and perhaps dangerous decisions for men. Because I hoped the person damn near splintering the wood of my door was Gage.
So I opened it.
And I got my hope.
My calm world laid down in pieces at my feet. And it would stay there. I knew that somehow. Gage was no longer going to be a ghost in my memories, a crack in my life. He was there in the flesh and blood, and the view of him was splintering me to my very core.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, gaping at the man in front of me in shock.
The man who was not just flesh and blood—he was covered in blood.
The man I’d been hoping for.
Along with the monster I knew lived inside him.
He didn’t hesitate, didn’t speak, didn’t give any explanation for why he was there, why he was covered in blood that didn’t seem to be his own. Because there was no way he’d have been standing in front of me if the blood covering his shirt, his face, his jeans was all his.
It was sick of me to
find relief in that thought. To be glad that someone, somewhere wasn’t standing, likely not breathing, but I was glad.
Gage gripped my arm, crossing the threshold and pressing me to the wall in my entranceway, slamming the door behind us.
The landing before the stairs leading up to my apartment was tight at the best of times. This was far from the best of times. Gage’s expanse barely fit in the small area. But it did. And it fit so his entire muscled body was pressing against me. Blood that was sticky and fresh stained my white flannelette pajamas.
Shit, I’d answered the door in flannelette pajamas. I was pretty sure they had little stars and moons stitched into them. So not sexy. Why couldn’t I be the woman who slept in sexy negligees for no one but herself? Why couldn’t I be the woman who owned a single sexy piece of nightwear?
And why was I the woman worrying about such a thing when the man she’d been damn near obsessing over for the past week was pressing against her covered in someone else’s blood?
Yeah, that needed to be the most important thing in the situation, not my body’s reaction to his being against mine.
“You’re covered in blood, Gage,” I whispered when he didn’t speak, merely held me to the wall, breathing heavily and devouring me with ice-blue eyes.
Those eyes glanced down between us, seeming almost surprised to see the crimson smear on the swell of my chest. But then they darkened, focusing on the fact that though my flannelette wasn’t exactly sheer, I wasn’t wearing a bra, and my body had a visceral response to Gage’s pressed against mine, despite the circumstances.
His dark gaze shot back up to mine, and I felt it in my core.
“I am covered in blood,” he agreed, voice rough. Brutal. “Always will be.”
I blinked slowly as the tenor of his voice settled over my skin, electrifying every inch of it. “Whose blood are you covered in right now?” I asked, my own voice shaking.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t move a muscle. “A dead man’s.”
I flinched at the simple and emotionless response. I also read between the lines. He was wearing another man’s blood. A dead man’s. And it was not a dead man he’d tried to help, tried to save before he died. No, this was a man he’d killed.