by Anne Malcom
Another thing I didn’t think I’d wear.
Didn’t think a man as sinfully hot as Gage would be gazing at it with pure and filthy hunger.
And he was.
Of course, that was when my grandmother pulled up.
I was glad, because I loved my grandmother and her company. And because it meant I could exhale with the moment broken.
But I wasn’t broken.
Not in the way Gage’s gaze promised.
And I wanted to be.
I wanted him to break me in.
But he didn’t.
Instead he listened to my grandmother’s crazy story about “that time at Studio 54” as we walked into the restaurant, pointedly ignoring me, apart from the fact that his strong hand was wrapped around mine for the entire journey to the table. Then it rested on my thigh as soon as we sat down.
For the entire dinner.
He ate with one hand just so he could keep the other on my leg. Normally the lapse in table manners would’ve gotten to me, because my father had stressed the importance of such things. And because it was what my ‘safe’ men had. The set of skills utilized by those living within the confines of a logical society.
But something as menial as proper table manners at a nice restaurant didn’t mean much at all when he’d murdered a man the night before.
Obviously they didn’t mean anything to me either, because I’d known he’d murdered a man and I was letting him have dinner with my grandmother. Letting him keep his hand tightly gripping my thigh.
Loving the thought that I’d have fresh bruises in that spot.
He wasn’t exactly the most articulate of company—definitely not to me—but he had engaged my grandmother in his version of polite conversation, which of course meant he used the word ‘fuck’ as a comma.
That did not bother my grandmother.
In fact, it amused her greatly.
Gage himself seemed to both amuse and impress her.
As did the club, when she asked about the leather at his back and what it represented.
I expected him to give her the sanitized version. This was my grandmother, after all. And we were both ‘civilians’ and not sanctioned to know too much information about the club. I knew because Niles had tried for years to get Lucy to do a piece on the Sons of Templar. She never had. They were family.
Her loyalty was ironclad, and despite her position ‘on the inside,’ which could’ve taken her right to the top, she didn’t use it. It said a lot about her. But I also thought it said a lot about the club that everyone thought was a gang full of murderers and lowlifes.
The past, present, and the future were all leading reasons why I thought Gage would give my grandmother the publicity statement that they were just a club of motorcycle enthusiasts and mechanics.
But Gage didn’t give way to reason.
And he wasn’t about publicity statements.
He was about the truth.
No matter how ugly.
“Club started as a place for disenfranchised Army vets to find a home. A family. Somewhere that made sense when they realized the freedom they’d fought for, their friends had died for, didn’t exist,” he said, just after our meals had been delivered. He’d put down his utensils down in order to give Grandma his full attention. “So they made their own freedom. Away from the bullshit life that had no place for the damaged.” His hand at my thigh tightened as he paused, as the words out of his mouth described not just the men from the past but the man sitting right next to me.
The damaged man.
The dangerous man.
The one I was falling for.
Or maybe I’d already fallen. Hit the ground, shattered at the bottom, and now I was just waiting for him to pick me back up.
“Freedom isn’t cheap,” he continued, eyes still on my grandmother, but every bit of his energy was focused on me. I knew because my entire body was focused on him, despite the fact that I was making a serious effort to focus on toying with the straw in my drink.
Because his hand was no longer clenching my thigh at that point but creeping up my leg. Every single inch it moved closer to the throbbing core that was crying out for him was a moment my breathing shallowed. That the blush crept up my neck.
Gage’s face was marble.
And he continued to talk, as if he wasn’t almost at the apex of my thighs. As if every inch of my skin wasn’t on fire.
“And the price you pay for freedom isn’t something that can be earned through honest channels,” he finished.
“Of course,” she said, nodding and taking a sip of her wine. “The best things in life aren’t free. They’re usually very expensive and very illegal.” She smirked.
The corner of Gage’s mouth turned up and his hand reached the top of my thighs, mere inches away from my core. It was covered with fabric, but Gage’s hand seemed to sear that away, his bare palm scorching into my skin.
I gripped my water glass and counted myself lucky that my grandmother was focused on Gage; otherwise, she would’ve spotted my discomfort and connected the dots immediately.
But he had that effect. He was the puppeteer of every room he walked into, commanding the eyes of all. You wanted to stare at him all day long but also avert your gaze because you knew there was something about him that repelled humanity. That welcomed pain and danger.
That was what drew me to him in the first place. But I was learning there was so much more to him than his pain. Than his scars.
Something changed in my grandmother’s expression, something that distracted me enough from Gage’s teasing fingers, inching toward the apex of my thighs. Her words even stole away the blush, the need that was coming from his brutal touch.
“So you sell drugs?” she asked, her voice bland. Casual. As if she were asking if they sold car parts.
But there was nothing casual about my grandmother’s question. Nor about her thoughts to the answer. Because she was okay with a lot of things. She was okay with outlaws, with illegal activity, with people who operated outside the normal parameters. She preferred those people, in fact.
But not those who peddled the substances that stole my brother away from us.
Gage’s hand froze at my thigh, and the pads of his fingers pinched painfully into the soft skin underneath my pants. I didn’t notice the pain. No, I was too busy focusing on the white-hot agony that came with her question. With the fear of what the answer would be.
I noticed the change in Gage’s demeanor immediately. He had been hard, cold, and menacing so far. But not completely. His edges were purposefully dulled, obviously as dull as they could be for the situation. But now they were razor-sharp. Now he was ice, wearing that cruel mask he yanked on to keep the world from seeing his monster.
The silence following Grandma’s question was long. Yawning. My heart was pounding in my ears. Gage’s jaw was clenched tight enough to shatter his teeth.
“No,” he ground out with enough force that it hit me physically. He sucked in a rough inhale and the fingers at my thighs relaxed. Slightly. “Club doesn’t fuck with drugs. Not now. Never.”
Grandma smiled, as if the moment wasn’t strained, as if the air weren’t laced with razors. “Oh, well that’s nice, then,” she said mildly.
Her response and light and airy tone did a lot to ease the tension. Gage’s mouth didn’t twitch up, but his jaw relaxed.
She leaned forward, eyes bright and curious. “So, if not drugs…?” she prompted, not addressing Gage’s intense and dangerous reaction to her previous question.
She did that, my grandmother. Had a sixth sense for pain and exposed nerves and deftly avoided such subjects where most people would prod, hungry for someone else’s pain. Which was why I’d guessed she’d failed to ask a single question about Gage’s past. Or his family.
Because she knew they were land mines.
I hadn’t even realized how big until her sense exposed them. Until I realized I knew nothing about Gage, the man. The man underneath the
cut. Underneath the scars. The reasons for his scars, not just the ones on his arms but the ones etched behind his eyes.
I ached to know his pain, to feel it myself just so I could know him more. Get closer to him. I knew that if he ever told me, I’d hurt for as long as I was in his presence. His pain would be added to what I carried around. It would be agony.
And I craved to share it.
For now, I had to do what everyone was doing—dodge the emotional land mines. Until the right moment. Or the wrong one. Then everything would explode. I just hoped enough of me—and more importantly, Gage—would remain when it was all over.
“Guns,” he said, his rough voice cutting through all other thoughts in my mind, yanking me to the present.
“We ran guns,” he continued, thumb rubbing my inner thigh, almost brushing the area where my drenched panties lay beneath my pants.
Almost.
Then he moved downward. Rubbing.
Bruising the skin, no doubt.
But still not looking at me. Not speaking to me.
“Used to?” my grandmother asked, her voice still easy, curious, not a hint of disapproval. Though it took a lot to earn my grandmother’s censure. Or a little, depending on how you looked at it, considering her tone had been saturated with it when she’d been talking to my last boyfriend about his job in investment banking.
Gage nodded once. “Characteristic of the life. Blood. Pain. Death. It’s the price of freedom. Every single brother wearing a patch knows that. Willin’ to pay that price in order to live the life we want. To live the life you want, you gotta be willing to die the death you don’t want.” His words were no-nonsense, flat, as if he were speaking about stock options.
A vision of Gage bloody and lifeless assaulted my mind, and I tasted bile from the mere thought. It was so real that I had to shove my hand atop his on my thigh just to remind myself that he was warm and alive.
His entire body tightened with my touch, his jaw hardening, his breath pausing. But he still didn’t look at me. After a beat, his hand lifted slightly so I could snake mine into it.
“Patched members are willin’ to die for the club,” he continued. “But we’re not willin’ to lose something more precious than our lives.” He paused, his hand tightening around mine to the point that my very bones protested. “That’s our heart. The innocents.” His hand relaxed on mine slightly, but I didn’t find relief in the receding pain. Because I wanted to feel more of it, because Gage needed more of it. I wanted him to give it to me. To hurt me in ways that made him hurt less. Or at least feel less lonely in his pain.
“One of my brothers lost his woman in a club war over territory nearly seven years back,” he said, voice hoarse.
I knew that. Everyone in Amber knew that. It was a blow that wounded the entire town. The beautiful, innocent woman named Laurie who was brutally kidnapped, tortured, and finally killed. It was barely healed, that scar.
The club had been a fixture in town since before I could remember. And they had been loud. There had been violence. Some deaths. Blood. But nothing that really stained the town in a way like Laurie’s death.
Because this was violence that even the men with chaos in their blood couldn’t handle. It had given way to an ugly and dark time for the town. Not long after which Gwen, Cade’s wife, had entered the picture and things began to change.
There was still violence. A lot of it. Most of it centered around the new women entering the club, trying to fit around the wound made by Laurie’s death. There was still pain, but there was also more light and happiness. Even an outsider like me could see that.
“My president, Cade, almost lost his own woman to this shit,” Gage continued. “Price for that kind of freedom became too high, so we stopped runnin’ guns, started runnin’ legit. The club, at least.”
My grandmother’s eyebrow arched. It wasn’t hard to read between the lines. “The club?” she repeated, her question clear.
Gage nodded once. “Price of my freedom is still high enough for me to need to pay it in ways the club doesn’t.”
He didn’t say anything else on the subject.
And my grandmother didn’t probe.
Because of the exposed nerve.
The huge freaking land mine we’d stumbled onto that would level everything and everyone around it.
The night lightened after that.
As much as it could.
And with my grandmother around, it was a lot. Though not enough to make me feel at ease around Gage. Not enough to shove away the bone-deep fear that his silence and coldness toward me was a harbinger of doom.
So my smile was bright and totally fake when my grandmother released me from her embrace in my doorway at the end of the night, once we’d gotten back from the restaurant and she’d informed us that she was off on the next adventure.
“Please be careful, and call me often,” I asked, my voice low.
She grinned, squeezing my arms. “That’s supposed to be my line.”
I smirked. “Well, I’m not the one who gets wild hair and goes running with the bulls at seventy-nine years old.”
She winked again, releasing me. “Hmmm, I think you’re running with something a lot more dangerous than the bulls,” she murmured, eyes on Gage, who was returning from putting her suitcases in her trunk, her car was idling in the ‘no parking’ spot.
“Love you, Lo.” She leaned in for one more kiss, rubbing her lipstick off my cheek with her thumb before stepping back and looking at Gage, who was standing in front of us, arms crossed.
“You take care of my granddaughter,” she demanded. “And I don’t mean keep her safe. I mean show her a little danger. She’ll show you a little safety.”
And on that, she blew Gage a kiss and sauntered to her car with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible from a woman her age, and in five-inch heels.
But she was kind of like Gage in that respect, making anything and everything possible.
Her car roared into the night at a troubling speed, both of us watching the headlights disappear. The stillness of the night took over, silence heavy and painful between us. My heart splintered my ribs as Gage’s eyes ran over me. I continued to stare at the empty road, too cowardly to meet them. Because I was too terrified to face a goodbye that I knew was inevitable.
But my choices were taken away from me when the dim glow of the moon was blacked out by something much darker than the night.
Gage.
Fingers bit into my hip as the other hand gripped my chin painfully.
I expected him to speak immediately. People who demanded attention in such a brutal and physical way usually did it because they had something urgent to say.
But Gage was not people.
So he didn’t speak. He just stared at me.
Gone was the cold blankness that had been present all night. The cruelty.
There was violence in his gaze, because there was violence in his soul. It roused the part of me he had awakened that night on the side of the road. That he had fed with every touch, every kiss, every brutal grip, every intense gaze, every uttered word.
The part of me that would starve without him.
The part of me that I was terrified of.
Silence yawned on. Silence that was louder than anything I’d ever heard in my life.
“Lauren, get in the fucking apartment. Now,” he ground out, letting me go and stepping back, his body so tight it was shaking.
My body cried out in protest from the loss of his touch. From the loss of his violence. And then my body responded to his order, my brain registering his barely restrained chaos.
So I got in the apartment, taking the stairs nearly two at a time, overcome with fear. With erotic excitement. I expected the slam of my front door to follow me, the thud of motorcycle boots against my stairs to vibrate my bones with the echo of his approach.
But there was only silence. Apart from my rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing, of course.
I made it to
the middle of my living room, unsure of what exactly to do with myself without Gage’s order. I wasn’t a submissive. I didn’t want to follow a man’s order. Bend to a man’s will.
But this wasn’t a man.
This was Gage.
And I wasn’t going to bend to his will.
It was going to break me.
Fear clutched my throat at the thought of him not slamming my apartment door. Not entering my apartment along with his fury and violence. Of not controlling my body with his barked and brutal commands.
Maybe that’s why he wanted me in there, so he could roar off into the night and leave without me doing something mortifying like cling to his motorcycle boot and beg him to stay.
I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t.
Because he had been in my life for mere moments, in the grand scheme of things. But there was a lifetime in those moments. A dark and painful one, but one I wanted to live in. Die in.
When had I welcomed such dark thoughts? Or maybe they’d always been there and I hadn’t let them actualize out of fear.
My entire body jerked with the slamming of the door. I blinked as the sound of boots on the stairs crashed into my stomach, stoked the burning fire in my core.
My knees shook.
Gage reached the top of the stairs and his gaze found me. It fricking devoured me. He had pushed his sleeves up, exposing the rippled and scarred flesh of his forearms. His hands were fisted at his sides, veins pulsating within his rippled flesh.
His hair was no longer in the bun that melted my panties the second I saw it. No, it was wild around his face, smooth and messy at the same time, as if he’d been running his hands through it.
My palms itched to clutch it, to fist it while he pounded into me.
His gaze was pure sex.
And pure pain.
His eyes had been doing the same inventory of me as I’d been doing with him, the fire in my body evidence of his stare.
Then he moved.
Not fast and violent like his stare might suggest.
No, his steps were slow. Measured. Almost painful with the lack of speed in which they brought him toward me. He didn’t let my eyes go the entire time it took to cross my living room and stop in front of me.
