And it was coming from his woman.
His little woman who wore skirts that never brushed higher than her knee. Who talked about the dangers of fuckin’ subway grates. Who still bitched at him about wearing a skull cap.
He knew she was special. Fuckin’ priceless.
But he’d still been a fool.
Because she had done something he’d been unable to do—live with the pain. Grit her teeth against it and not succumb to the temptation of nothingness.
He was frozen as she spoke.
Cataloguing every inch of her pain, sorrow, and then feeling it tenfold. Adding it to his own. Because that shit was his now. Every inch of her pain.
And he was also cataloguing every inch of her.
Because the second she fuckin’ spoke, he knew it had to be done. The thing he’d been stewing on all day since leaving her. The thing that had him physically unable to look at her during dinner. He had to get the fuck away from her before his poison polluted her life.
His fucking addiction.
The one that had killed her brother. He had survived, with no one to mourn him, no one to care—his parents were better off without him in their life, because it would kill them to see the monster he’d turned into—and her brother, the other fucking half of her, had let the needle drain away his life in the pursuit of a high.
Gage had overdosed in the midst of the worst time in his life.
Been legally dead for two minutes.
But he’d survived.
And for what?
So he could send more fuckers to the grave? Cause more pain?
He’d held himself back from taking her. From snatching away those bleeding words with his mouth. With his cock.
He itched to fuck the demons out of her.
But he was frozen.
So she kept speaking them, and they kept eating at her soul, right in front of him. And there was nothing he could do about it.
Talk to an addict. Any recovering addict. They’d tell you that at any moment of any given day, they were thinking about a fix. Their skin was itching, crawling with the need for something to get under it, something to take it away.
The ones who said they had days—fucking moments—when they weren’t thinking about junk were fucking liars.
Because every fucking second of Gage’s existence had been resisting the urge to shoot up. Never had he enjoyed a fucking moment of not wanting it. Not when he was killing a man, fucking a woman, or blowing shit up.
Not a second.
But the moment his woman began talking about finding her overdosed and dead twin brother, her voice so saturated with pain that it was a wonder the air she breathed wasn’t drenched in crimson, he found himself not wanting a fix.
Never in his life since he’d started junk had he been disgusted at the thought of shooting up.
Sure, he’d been disgusted at himself for wanting to. Disgusted at the fucking world for being so depraved that drugs had to even exist.
But never at the junk.
That was the only shit that didn’t make him want to hurl.
The high.
But right then it did.
Because it was the reason the magnificent creature in front of him was shredded, torn, scarred beyond belief. Beyond what Gage could realize. Fuck, she had scars just like his, despite her milky smooth skin.
And then she stopped speaking.
And thank fuck for that, because Gage didn’t know how much longer he could’ve handled that cold and detached voice.
He’d handled torture. Both giving and receiving. He’d seen the aftereffects of what happened to human bodies after being blown up. He’d been the motherfucker to blow them up. Heard the ones who weren’t lucky enough to die immediately. The sound of a human being burning to death while missing some vital limbs was an exquisite kind of horror. One no one in the world should ever hear if they expect to keep vital parts of their souls. The sounds Gage had heard. More than once.
So he could handle shit.
What he could not handle was another fucking second of his woman’s voice like that.
This was his time to get up. Leave her.
He knew it would hurt her, and he fuckin’ hated that shit. But hurting her now was better than destroying her later.
But then he spoke, the words out of his mouth in the same breath as he’d been preparing to walk out of her life forever.
Lauren
“I’m not going to be able to give you what you need,” Gage said, his voice flat but not empty.
It was after silence had descended, apart from my heavy breathing. Because spewing all that out felt like running a freaking marathon.
Gage had been unreadable during the entire thing. And I think that was the key to him. When he didn’t look like he was feeling anything at all, he was feeling everything. So I found the strength not to let the words level me, and I answered them. Challenged them.
“And what, pray tell, do you think you know I need?” I asked.
His gaze was hard, unyielding, bordering on cruel. The gaze of a man going to his execution. And he was gripping me, holding my arms tightly like he was going to take me with him.
“A normal fucking life, Lauren. A normal anything.” He was yanking the words out, throwing them at me in some kind of desperation. His eyes melted my bones. “I’m broken. And not in those ways that everyone is a little bit broken. My past, it shattered me, then forced to me construct a fucking Frankenstein outta the pieces. I’m a monster, babe. There’s no denying that. I’m not stable. Not gonna be able to provide a life that’s certain. Life that’s good. And you might be broken, but not in a way that deserves a fuckin’ life like mine.” He gripped me harder, even though the words were trying to make him let go. Make me let go.
I placed my hand atop his. “You may have pain and darkness in your heart, but you’ve got sunlight in your bones,” I whispered. “And even if you didn’t, I wouldn’t let you walk away.”
His face hardened. “You don’t know the things I’ve done, Lauren,” he said harshly.
I didn’t waver. I had a newfound strength now, after spilling something that I thought would kill me and remaining breathing afterward. “I don’t need to know the things you’ve done to know the man you are.”
His brows narrowed, as if he was expecting me to ask questions, to force things out of him. “Baby, I’m too fucked up for you. For this fucking world.”
I smiled, sad and melancholy, as my fingers trailed his jaw. “We’re all a little fucked up, Gage. That’s the big secret. Some people hide it better than others. But this world is fucked up, and it’s a side effect of survival to get scars from that.” My eyes touched his arms. My fingers followed suit.
He flinched, his entire body tensing. I knew that it was difficult, bordering on impossible for him to handle me touching them, even with the lightest of fingertips. But I didn’t stop.
“We all have scars, Gage,” I murmured. “You just have no choice but to wear them. I have the luxury of hiding mine.” I stepped forward, leaning up so my lips almost brushed his. “I don’t want to hide mine with you.” My fingers snaked underneath the fabric of his tee, running along the smooth and hard muscles of his stomach.
My other hand left his and did the same thing, only it went downward, to the hard length inside his boxers.
Gage let out a harsh hiss.
“I want you to see all my scars, Gage,” I whispered.
He grunted as I circled him with my hand, squeezing just tight enough to cause him pain, pain I knew he liked. Pain I knew he needed.
He responded by tightening his grip on my hip as the hand at my face fell. He knew I needed pain too. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was just figuring that out.
I stepped back, struggling to let him go. He was the port in my storm, but he also was the storm. I didn’t want to let him go, but I did it. Because I was doing all sorts of things I didn’t think I could do tonight.
Gage let out another hiss of ai
r as I left him, though that time it was more a growl in protest, in warning, than a sound of pleasure.
I was sure he was going to surge forward, to snatch me into his arms and fuck me into oblivion, but once he saw what I was doing, he froze.
My cardigan fell to the ground.
“I know the world can’t see my scars, Gage, and it can see yours,” I whispered, clutching the bottom of my shirt. “But I know you can see mine now.” I whipped my top upward, hoping it didn’t get caught in my hair or something equally embarrassing. The air brushing my face as the fabric fell to the floor told me it didn’t. My eyes caught Gage’s hungry stare immediately. He was eating up every single part of my exposed skin.
But he wasn’t just seeing it, he was seeing it. Those places beneath that I was letting him see, that I was hoping he would understand after I’d painted the words of my soul in the air.
I made short work of my booties because there was simply no sexy way of divesting myself of them. But Gage’s eyes weren’t on my boots. No, they had migrated from my eyes to my chest, circling over my plain white cotton bra with an intensity that would’ve been surprising even if I’d been wearing sheer lace.
He found me sexy. Me. Not what I wore to cover my body but what was underneath. What was really underneath. My nipples hardened into stiff peaks, aching to be let out from the fabric encasing them. My eyes on Gage, I reached around to unclasp my bra, the fabric falling to the ground.
Gage’s body pulsated in front of me, his jaw iron with the strength keeping him in place. I hadn’t verbally commanded him to be still, but he knew I needed him to be. And even though it looked to be physically painful, he obeyed my silent command.
It took great effort to slowly peel my pants down my body and step out of them once they pooled at my feet.
Instinct had me wanting to stop there. To move forward, give in to my visceral need to have Gage’s lips against mine, his hands all over me. I literally shook with the need for it. But I fought. Because this wasn’t just about succumbing to my need, succumbing to Gage. I needed to succumb to my demons, to let them in.
So I didn’t move. Instead I hooked my thumbs around the edges of my panties and moved them down, a lot quicker than I did my pants. Then I straightened, naked, in every sense of the word. My skin burned with fear, and with something else too. Something with Gage’s gaze that made me feel safe and wild at the same time.
My nipples throbbed painfully as the hardened nubs were exposed to the air, my core pulsating as Gage’s eyes went to that forbidden spot between my legs. That time, he did growl. So loud it shook my bones, warmed me to the very core.
“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Lauren,” he choked out. He still didn’t move. Still let the distance yawn between us in order to make us closer than I’d been with any other human in my life.
He let me live in that moment. The one where I’d told him one of the most harrowing and painful things that had ever happened to me, the thing that defined and broke me in a way I’d never be whole again, and he stayed standing in front of me, worshipping me with his eyes. With everything that was broken within him too.
I had not had many truly beautiful moments in my life. Not for the years I’d been living without David. I made sure to eliminate risks, the possibility of pain—but doing that meant I took away the possibility of true happiness, of beauty.
Because happiness and beauty were never possible unless one accepted that risks, pain, and ugliness had to be part of your life too. Had to mix perfectly with all the good things, so the beauty could outweigh the pain.
And then came Gage.
With pain.
Ugliness.
And true beauty.
That’s what this moment was. After I had just laid my broken, severed, and utterly ruined soul in front of him—one of the most horrible things I’d had to do because it was the first time I was seeing it for myself—and my reward was him.
The moment was so delicate, so beautiful, I was scared to breathe, to blink, because I was terrified I’d alter it, pollute it, and it would crumble away into obscurity.
But delicate things were made to be broken. And I wanted this one broken. Because that would mean Gage was about to break me.
And he did, surging across the space between us.
I expected him to take my mouth, to run his hands all over me. I needed his mouth on mine so I could breathe. Needed his hands on every part of me—inside of me—so my heart could beat.
One of his hands clasped my bare hip. The other clutched my neck, yanking our heads together so our mouths almost touched.
Almost.
“I’m not gonna be a hero, babe,” he growled. “Because heroes, their playbook is narrow. Limited. They’re predictable. Play by the rules.” His mouth brushed against mine as he rasped the words. Then his hand left my hip, traveling downward, over my sensitive clit and then going inside. Right inside.
I cried out a little, my knees weakening at the beautifully brutal intrusion.
Gage’s eyes flared. “And you know as well as I do that this is a world where the rules don’t mean shit, and the heroes are the only ones who don’t know that. That means they lose. No matter what shit you read about in the books, the villain always wins.” His fingers moved in a violent rhythm, coaxing me to climax, yanking me to the edge. “’Cause their playbook is endless. ’Cause they have no rules. Heroes lose everything. Villains get it, and they get it bloody. And I’ll be a villain one hundred times over because I’m damn sure not losing everything, not again.” The grip on my face was painful, his fingers inside of me pure nirvana. “And just so you know, baby, you’re everything.”
And just when my heart was about to explode, when I was about to explode, his fingers left me and I sagged, almost crying with the loss of him. With the loss of what promised to be one of the most intense climaxes of my life.
I wasn’t disappointed for long.
Because, eyes still on me, Gage lowered and knelt at my feet. His large hand circled my proportionally tiny ankle and lifted so my knee hooked over his shoulder.
I let out a harsh breath at the angle, at how open, how exposed I was to his eyes.
But then I didn’t think of that, because his mouth was there, right there. And I didn’t say anything.
I screamed.
I fell over the edge.
He caught me.
Ten
I was late to work the next day.
Really freaking late.
The reason was obvious, if Abagail’s sly grin was anything to go by as I passed reception. She had been warmer to me after her initial shock at me, of all people, being with Gage. Not that she was cruel about it in the beginning; she just didn’t have that in her. She didn’t have the tact to keep the hurt of her surprise from smarting though.
I’d forgiven it, because she had no malice, only youth.
“Morning, Lauren,” she said, sipping her coffee.
I smiled wide. “Good morning.”
“Late start?” she prompted, eyes wide and knowing.
“Oh no, very early start,” I said with a wink and a tone that I didn’t recognize.
The way her eyes popped out of her head, Abagail didn’t recognize it either.
And the start to my morning was early. The sun was only just kissing the horizon when Gage’s heated half woke me. Then the hardness pressing into my hip really woke me. And I decided to do something I had done but not enjoyed up until then—wake Gage up with my mouth around him.
Turned out I hadn’t enjoyed it because I hadn’t been doing it with Gage.
It was nothing short of life-changing.
The utter and complete control I wielded over the strongest man to enter my bed, my life. One of the strongest men in the most ruthless motorcycle club in the United States was at my mercy.
Yeah, I liked it so much that I finished myself with my hand while I finished Gage with my mouth. It was safe to say he’d liked watching me do that. A
nd that it had driven him insane.
Hence me being three hours late in walking out the door, Gage’s hand on my ass.
And however long we’d been outside, leaning on his motorcycle, making out like teenagers. But teenagers didn’t kiss like Gage.
The Devil didn’t kiss like Gage, and I bet that guy was the king of seduction and eternal damnation. Gage had him beat on both.
So no, I didn’t care that I was late.
Didn’t care that Abagail knew why.
And the whole office, based on the sly looks. No one was pissed. Not even Niles, who merely raised his coffee—probably his fifth of the day—at me in a salute and then resumed reaming an intern for some “colossal fucking fuckup.” It was only Jen who regarded me with something that looked like contempt. Like fury. It was so deep and uncomfortable that it crawled at my skin. But then she jerked a little and that look melted away, warmth spreading in her eyes as her mouth turned up into a sly grin.
The change was so drastic, so quick, I must’ve simply imagined the pure hatred on her beautiful face. Maybe it was my mind twisting things, because it had too many good—freaking amazing—moments happen at once that there couldn’t possibly be more. Like me making new friends.
And that’s what Jen was. A friend.
She stood from her cubicle, picking up a cup. “Got you this,” she said, nodding down to the cup in question. “But I’m thinking it’s going to be cold now, since I got it for you precisely when you arrive at work. A time, I’m told, you haven’t deviated from in almost six years,” she continued, voice teasing.
I took the cup off her, smelling the liquid that was resoundingly peppermint and realizing that it was indeed cold. I grinned, walking over to our small kitchenette, and poured the liquid down the drain. “I’m sorry you wasted a tea on me,” I said, throwing the cup in the trash. I turned back to Jen, who had a slightly puzzled look on her face, eyes still on the trash. I hope I hadn’t offended her.
I could’ve just microwaved the tea.
Shoot.
“How about I buy you a coffee to make up for it?” I asked, hoping to remedy the situation.