Battles of the Broken (The Sons of Templar MC Book 6)

  I love you.

  I almost said it right there and then, because he remembered I needed two pairs of glasses.

  “Not in the habit of killin’ beautiful things, babe,” he murmured, eyes dark. He cupped my face after he’d put my glasses on. “You know I don’t operate on the usual,” he said, responding to my initial statement. He stepped back, letting my face go but snatching my hand and walking us toward the building.

  Gravel crunched underneath my shoes as butterflies swarmed in my stomach. I was never settled with Gage. Never complacent. Because he was always doing something to shake me up. He did that just by freaking looking at me.

  And now he was dragging me toward an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere for a ‘date.’ What was inside could range from a picnic lunch to a pile of dead bodies. That was Gage.

  “Nervous?” he asked, eyes twinkling as he stopped us in front of rotting wooden doors.

  I jutted my chin up. “No,” I lied.

  He full-on grinned, yanking me forward for a rough kiss.

  My butterflies went wild for an entirely different reason once he let me go.

  He seemed to sense the need flooding between my legs, his eyes darkening. “Later,” he promised.

  Then he opened the door.

  It took a few seconds for me to adjust to the grainy light inside, the smell of dirt and metal mingling with the fresh air from outside.

  There was a thump and rattling of chains as Gage shut the door behind us, grabbed my hand and walked me to the middle of the room.

  I had expected it to be messy. To have random motorcycle parts lying around the place. Torture devices.

  Dead bodies strung up from the rafters.

  But it was clean.

  Meticulously so. The concrete floor was slightly dusty, but not as much as it should’ve been, which meant it was regularly swept.

  There was a desk running along the length of the building to our left. Most of the surface was clear, and I couldn’t see exactly what lay atop—tools of some kind—but they were all neatly bunched together. There was also a sofa, small coffee table, an old TV, and a white mini fridge.

  But that wasn’t the focus of what was in the room.

  No, it was the table that Gage stopped us in front of. More accurately, what was on top of that table. Gage yanked a string attached to the ceiling when an electrical buzz sounded for a moment, a bright almost blinding light illuminating every detail.

  I gaped.

  It wasn’t hard to put the proverbial pieces together and realize what was in front of me.

  “Okay, for our first date, you want to build a bomb?” I asked, looking to the mess of wires in front of me and then back up at Gage. “And that’s not actually a question, since it’s pretty freaking clear we’re making a bomb right now. It’s just a clarification of reality.”

  He grinned, cupping my face. “We make our own reality.” He nodded to the table. “Sometimes I destroy mine.” He laid a gentle kiss on my lips. “You said you could tell a lot about people about how they manage airports,” he repeated my ridiculous words, made all the more ridiculous by the fact that we were standing in front of a half-built bomb.

  I merely nodded.

  “Well, I’m not people. You know that by now. But you want to know more, so I’m giving you more.” His eyes shadowed with something. Something dark. “As more as I can right now. So you can tell a lot about me by how I build a bomb. You up for it?” It was a challenge and also something else. He was showing me his life, not hiding the more dangerous parts of it. Because everything was the ugly truth with Gage.

  That’s what made it so beautiful.

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  His eyes flickered and he laid another kiss on my mouth that was not at all gentle. “That’s my girl. And just so you know, I’m teachin’ you. Because my woman is gonna know how to blow shit up, just in case she feels the urge.”

  Eleven

  Three Days Later

  I opened the door with a smile because, well, I was smiling a lot these days. Even though life with Gage wasn’t exactly conventional—we’d built a bomb together for our freaking first date, for crying out loud. A ‘conventional’ person wouldn’t consider our thus far rocky and pain-filled relationship—if that’s what it was—a reason to smile.

  But I was quickly learning that I was far from conventional too. And Gage and conventional didn’t even live in the same zip code. Or the same country.

  He certainly wasn’t smiling when I opened the door not long after I’d gotten home from work. Not even his version of a smile—an attractive mouth twitch. No, it was the exact and utter opposite of that, in fact. He was glowering, his fury pushing past me and polluting the very atmosphere of my apartment.

  And then he slammed the door behind me, threw me over his shoulder and stomp up the stairs. I let out a surprised squeak that wasn’t at all cute.

  “Gage!” I cried, not struggling even though the motion wasn’t sexually motivated. I should’ve been very, very scared by that look on his face.

  I was.

  But that same fear excited me in equal parts. Because Gage had awakened that in me. That reaction to things that scared me. That craving for them. Since he scared me most of all.

  Once at the top of the stairs, he plopped me down unceremoniously and rather roughly, telling me that his carrying of me was because it was the most efficient way of getting me up the stairs and not because he wanted to throw me on the bed and ravage me.

  Part of me—a lot of me—was disappointed. But there was also a lot of me left to be freaking terrified, since I really hadn’t gauged the full range of his anger in the fleeting glimpse I got of him at the door.

  He. Was. Mad.

  “You went to the fucking cop?” He spat the last word at me with such force that it hit me physically, like a bullet.

  My brow furrowed, understanding his anger but not realizing the source of it. “Come again?”

  Me not immediately knowing the source of his manly and oh-so-visceral anger was obviously not the right reaction because his stare darkened and his fists clenched harder at his sides, the veins of his arms sculpting themselves even more sharply from the scarred flesh.

  He stepped forward, body brushing mine in a threat, not a caress. “Oh, I’ll make you come. Again. And again. And a-fucking-gain. Until you’re tortured with the amount of attention I’m showing that pretty cunt of yours. Until you think you can’t take any more.” He grasped my chin roughly. “And then you’ll take more.” His eyes were black. Cruel. “And that’s gonna be your fuckin’ punishment for this shit.”

  The air thickened between us until I could breathe nothing but pure sex in the air. Then he stepped back and I exhaled in relief. Or in disappointment.

  He folded his arms across his chest, the muscles underneath his scars moving the puckered skin. “But for now, you’re going to explain why the fuck you went to the man who not only stands for everything we don’t but who also wants a piece of my fucking woman.” His voice held no more of that erotic threat. No, this was pure fury, the tenor beginning to rise to an almost shout. Something Gage rarely did. Which meant he was really mad.

  I struggled to capture my thoughts under the torture of his glare. Then I realized why he was mad. Because I had gone to Troy. About the photos I’d taken on the night Gage had dragged me from Niles’s car and onto his bike. I expected him to ask more about it. He didn’t. Though I guessed he’d come to the right conclusion after I told him about David. Maybe he thought he didn’t need to say any more about it, since he’d already expressed his disapproval and thought that would work to stop me from doing anything further.

  I was almost finished with the story I’d begun writing because of the reaction I got from Troy a week ago, which was not a lot about my pictures and a heck of a lot more about my relationship with Gage.

  I pursed my lips. “I’m not here to talk about my personal life, Troy,” I said, my voice sharp, like it’d
been the second he’d started to tell me how dangerous the men of the Sons of Templar were, and how Gage was most of all. “And I’m reasonably sure that it’s of little import when measured up to these.” I nodded to the images on my screen. The images I’d put in front of Troy after initial strained pleasantries—I hadn’t spoken to him since that awkward car ride back from the Sons of Templar compound when I’d brushed off all questions pertaining to Gage—were done.

  He wasn’t looking at the pictures. He was focused on me, all softness gone from his face, his expression hard and grim. “I beg to differ, Lauren,” he clipped. “One of the sweetest and most innocent women I know getting tangled up with one of the most dangerous men in the Sons of Templar MC is a hell of a lot more important than a fucking lowlife selling to other lowlifes.”

  I flinched. Not because of the harsh tone, nor the sheer disgust with which he spoke about Gage, nor the truth of his words about Gage.

  “Lowlife selling to other lowlifes.”

  His face changed the second I flinched, softening with the realization of what he’d said, and the implications.

  “Shit. No, Lauren, that’s not what I meant.” He leaned forward, as if to grasp one of the hands I had lying on the desk.

  I sat back, taking my hand away from his reach, snatching my phone as I did so. “No, it’s fine. I understand,” I told him curtly.

  I stood. Troy did too.

  “You consider this less of a crime because it’s happening to people who only have themselves to blame. Who live outside the proper society you protect from drug-addicted lowlifes. I get it.” My voice was flat because I was trying not to scream.

  Troy rounded the desk and got in my way as I turned to leave, battling at the sharp prickling of tears behind my eyes.

  “No, Lauren,” he protested. “I do not consider it that way. I treat these dealers with the same harshness as I would murderers. Because they are. I can’t technically do anything because Hope isn’t my jurisdiction, and a photograph that doesn’t explicitly show drugs being exchanged isn’t grounds for an arrest. But,” he continued as I tried to speak, “I do know a couple of guys in Hope who can set up surveillance, try and get this guy.” He stepped forward and grasped my elbow. “But there’s something in my jurisdiction that’s worrying me more than that. You’re my jurisdiction, Lauren. And I don’t want to see you hurt if I can stop it.”

  I yanked my elbow out of his grip. “You can’t stop me from being hurt,” I said coldly, his words doing little to lessen the sting of the previous statement. “And I wouldn’t want you doing anything even if you could.”

  Then I turned on my heel and walked out.

  I didn’t tell Gage because, well, I wasn’t an idiot. I might not quite understand the why of our connection, or his violent protectiveness, but I knew it was there. And if his reaction toward Troy before we had even become a thing was anything to go by, I knew it was in Troy’s best interest to keep the communication under wraps. That, and nothing had come of it apart from a fresh tear in a wound that would never quite be healed.

  He wasn’t going to do anything about the dealer who sold my brother his last hit. But I was.

  “Women are the best at conquering demons, slaying their own dragons and all that. But the right man with the wrong demons can show you that.”

  Gage was looking to be a dragon I needed to slay myself, if the savagely angry and beautiful man in front of me was anything to go by.

  Hence me deciding that this—or any point in the near future—would not be a good time to tell him about the story due to go to print in a week.

  “How do you know about that?” I asked. I obviously didn’t tell him. I was pretty sure Gage and Troy didn’t have weekly knitting circles, so I knew Troy didn’t tell him, and no one else knew.

  “How do I know?” he repeated, voice slow and dangerous. It was a warning. Probably for me to ask another question, or plead forgiveness from the almighty being in front of me.

  But no way was I asking for forgiveness. Gage might’ve scared me, but he wasn’t going to scare me into submission. Not when sex wasn’t involved.

  My stomach did an involuntary flip with the promise of punishment Gage had tattooed onto my bones moments before.

  I didn’t let it distract me… much. I jutted my chin up in defiance, waiting for the answer to my question in silence.

  “I know because I know shit,” he seethed. “Because this is my fucking town, and when things have to do with the local boys in blue, I know a lot.” He placed his hand on my hip and yanked me to him. “And when it comes to you, I know fucking everything. Consider me the all-seeing fucking eye of Sauron.”

  I blinked. His tone was deadly. “You like Lord of the Rings?”

  Silence followed my words. Dangerous silence.

  Gage’s face wiped of all expression for a moment. And then it changed. “Of course I fucking like Lord of the Rings!” he bellowed, right in my face. “It’s a work of fucking cinematic genius, and one of the best pieces of fantasy ever written. But that has nothing to fucking do with this.” He was still yelling, which was the only reason I didn’t smile at the contrast between the words themselves and the tone in which he uttered them.

  And he wasn’t done.

  He leaned forward, his hand still biting into my hip while the other grasped my chin. “You still haven’t answered my question as to why you went to the cop when I explicitly told you not to.”

  With great effort, I yanked myself out of his grasp. The effort was not due to Gage holding me against my will, but because even when he was in the grips of fury, yelling at me and saying things I so didn’t agree with, I still didn’t want to be outside of the cocoon of his arms.

  But I had to. My point was not as easily made if he was clutching me as he was, holding all the power. I at least needed the illusion that I had a grasp on some of it.

  He glared at the distance I’d created between us but didn’t try to cross it, though his jaw twitched in obvious frustration.

  I ignored how sexy I found that twitch. “For a man who’s structured his entire way of life outside the bounds of society-created rules, you seem very fricking determined to create them.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Not asking you to follow society’s rules, babe,” he clipped. “Fuck, do what you want with them. Lie, steal, cheat, murder. I’m right by your side with you breakin’ society’s rules. But you’re gonna live by mine.”

  I folded my arms, no longer finding the jaw twitch sexy because I was getting seriously pissed off. “I’m gonna live by yours?” I repeated.

  He nodded once, as if it were a completely reasonable statement and not out-of-this-universe insane.

  “You’re insane!” I yelled.

  “You’re right, Will, I am,” he said, his voice a low rasp to juxtapose my near screech. “I’m insane, and therefore I will do fucking anything to keep you safe. Anything. I’m insane and my feelings for you are of that vein. It’s only a matter of fuckin’ time before you realize that.”

  The words were a premonition. A dark one.

  “You don’t think I’m strong enough for this, for us,” I accused.

  His stare was unyielding. Cold. Unfeeling. Cruel. “No, I know you’re not strong enough. Don’t take it personally. Most people can’t handle this life. It’s a compliment that you can’t. Means you’re not broken beyond repair. Means your soul isn’t so fucked up that even the Devil wouldn’t take it.” He said it with the vacant humor I’d noted he’d clutched to in times of turmoil. Basically all the times we were together, since turmoil had become the norm for me. Turmoil was his constant. Chaos his companion. Pain his captain that steered his life.

  I pursed my lips as I digested all his words. As they created little papercuts in my skin and his stare pressed salt into those wounds.

  He wanted to hurt me with this indifference, drive me away.

  He was succeeding.

  “Right,” I said, my voice husky.

  Then I turn
ed around and walked calmly to my closet. He stayed where he was; I knew that mostly because I didn’t hear the low thud of his motorcycle boots on my polished wooden floors.

  He was standing in the exact same position when I exited my closet, holding two things in my hands. Two things I’d bought in the middle of the night after a terrifying and erotic dream, my hands clicking ‘add to cart’ and typing my credit card info before I’d even fully woken up.

  When the UPS guy had dropped them off two days later, my cheeks had flamed with shame, somehow certain he knew the contents of the box and was silently judging me for it. Not so silently judging myself, I’d buried it in my closet, telling myself I’d never use it but hoping that one day I would.

  Not me. Someone else. The man who existed not in my dreams but in my nightmares. Not the hero on the white horse I’d read about all through childhood, had fantasies about in adolescence and said a sad goodbye to on my twenty-first birthday when I realized he didn’t exist.

  No, this was the man I didn’t even let myself think about because he was borne from a dark and deeply unsettling part of me.

  His eyes flared when he got a look at what was in my shaking hands. Every part of him turned wired.

  I held out the objects, barely able to keep them in my grasp.

  “Show me,” I whispered.

  His eyes glued into mine. “Show you what?” he demanded, voice hoarse.

  “Show me what you’re so certain I can’t handle.”

  His eyes snapped down to the handcuffs, then back up to me. His body was shaking, taut, almost transforming with his need. With that dark need that had been lingering beneath the surface every time he touched me. What he had been holding back, even as he fucked me more brutally than any man had before.

  Because that brutality was beautiful, perfect, wild, but I knew there was more. Something that wasn’t perfect. Wasn’t beautiful. Something he was locking down because he didn’t think I would survive it.

  I wasn’t sure if I would either, but I was sure I wouldn’t be living, really living, if I let him walk out the door, out of my life.