by Anne Malcom
His mouth was a tight line. “Well, it looks bad, Lauren,” he said, answering my earlier statement. “The doctors clear you? Give you painkillers?”
I nodded once, ignoring the pain at the motion and deciding not to inform Troy of my stance on painkillers. He wouldn’t understand. Not many people would. It was easier just to pretend that I conformed to society’s habit toward swallowing a pill to forget pain instead of learning to live with it. Numbness was more dangerous than pain.
He held a hand out in front of him. “Want to come sit down and we’ll chat?” he offered, eyes as warm as his voice.
I nodded again, lifting my aching feet toward the cluster of desks set apart in the wide room.
“You need anything?” he asked when I sat down. “Tea, water?”
“No, thanks.”
He took a seat, sipping from a mug beside his computer.
“You didn’t offer me coffee,” I noted.
He grinned, showing gleaming white teeth. “You don’t drink coffee.”
My stomach dipped. “How do you know that?” I whispered.
His grin left him. “I’m a cop. It’s my job to know things. Especially when it’s things about the pretty features editor of the Amber Star.”
I stared at him. He thinks I’m pretty? Enough to somehow notice I didn’t drink caffeinated beverages, at least.
I knew I wasn’t ugly. My skin was pale but clear, due to being lucky with genes and not having acne in the family. Plus I didn’t eat much sugar to promote that. My bone structure was relatively symmetrical, my features slightly too small, making me look slight and innocent. That was magnified by the thick glasses I was required to wear, as I was a little unluckier with my genes in regard to eyesight—both of my parents wore glasses too. I liked to think mine were nice, not fashionable but not geeky spectacles either. I didn’t recognize my face without them—physically couldn’t unless I wore contacts, and they irritated my hazel eyes.
My caramel hair was long and healthy because I took all the right vitamins and researched the best, paraben-free products to suit my slightly wavy locks. Though I almost always wore it up anyway.
No, I wasn’t ugly, but I never thought of myself as overly pretty. More of a wallflower.
I shifted uncomfortably in my chair with Troy’s attention.
He cleared his face to a slightly more professional expression. “Want to tell me what happened? Then we’ll get to finding the car.”
“The car?”
Another grin. “Yeah, your car. The reason you’re here?”
I wanted to whack myself in the head. “Oh yes, my car. The reason I’m here,” I muttered.
Idiot.
I tried to cover up my awkwardness by quickly and succinctly telling him what happened. That I was lucky someone stopped and drove me to the hospital—leaving out the ‘who’ of the situation. And not just because the resident reformed outlaw motorcycle club and the police didn’t exactly enjoy a close relationship, despite the former chief of police being married to the biker princess, Rosie Fletcher, now Rosie Crawford.
No, it was more because I wanted to keep him to myself. Clutch that little sliver of beautiful chaos close to my chest.
I shouldn’t be omitting that piece of information from an officer of the law. Especially since the very man who had picked me up off the side of the road was part of a club that also ran a garage.
But he didn’t even know I’d crashed.
He hadn’t asked what I was doing stumbling and bleeding down a highway in the middle of the night. As if the details weren’t of consequence. As if it was something that happened every day.
Maybe in his world, it did.
“Jesus, Lauren, you’re lucky someone picked you up. And that they weren’t a serial killer,” Troy said, his body tight.
I choked out a slightly hysterical laugh. I wasn’t entirely sure the man who picked me up wasn’t a serial killer.
He narrowed his eyes, obviously picking something up with his cop sensors. Or maybe he was trying to decide if he needed to take me back to the hospital for some kind of psych evaluation. My actions hadn’t exactly been stellar examples of sanity.
So unlike me. I held on to my sanity with an iron grip. Because I knew what it felt like to lose it.
It was obviously the crash shaking me up. Not the man—who may or may not be a serial killer—affecting me in a way I didn’t rightly understand.
Troy looked like he was about to press for the identity of my savior when a uniformed officer approached the desk.
“We’ve got something,” he said.
Troy darted one look at me before he stood. “Excuse me for a second, Lauren.”
I watched him move slightly out of hearing distance to discuss something with the officer I didn’t recognize, inspecting him in his full glory.
He hadn’t changed much since high school—he even had the same hairstyle. His body was slightly more muscled, but not by much. Same square jaw. Nice, tanned skin. Large and pleasing hands.
Everything about him was pleasing.
Nice.
But I noticed it with a kind of detachment that hadn’t been present before that day.
Before last night.
Before I’d become aware of a hunger, a starvation inside of me that a pleasing and nice man could not sate.
Don’t think about it.
Troy helped me with that by striding back over to the desk, arms crossed, face tight.
“We found your car.”
I perked up, but he didn’t give me a chance to answer him, or ask questions.
“It was towed into the Sons compound about an hour ago,” he continued, voice hard and not at all the same as it had been before.
I gaped at him. “The Sons compound?”
He nodded once, obviously as unimpressed as I was, but likely for different reasons. “You want to expand on that?’
I stiffened at his pinched face and accusing tone. “Do I want to expand on that?” I hissed, surprising myself with the anger in my voice. “How would I expand on that?”
“How about by tellin’ me exactly who picked you up last night?” he clipped, the warmness in his voice quickly dissipating. “’Cause apart from you, there aren’t many good citizens driving down the highway in the middle of the night.”
That rubbed me the wrong way.
I pursed my lips. “Well, considering the man in question picked up a bleeding and injured woman who he didn’t know from Eve and took her to the hospital, I’d say he was a good citizen,” I snapped, not really believing the words entirely, but I was angry. Plus I was feeling strangely protective of the man I’d been so sure was a villain until seconds ago.
“You caught up with them?” Troy demanded, changing his angle and line of questioning. “The Sons?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. His granite expression and the question in general were ridiculous.
He did not appreciate me laughing if his scowl was anything to go by.
“You’re supposed to ‘know me,’ remember?” I said once I’d gotten a hold of myself. “Well, knowing me, you’ve got the answer to your question whether or not I’m ‘caught up’ with the resident motorcycle club.” I stood, my chair screeching slightly. And the world might’ve tilted too, but I managed to recover before I could do anything embarrassing like faint.
“But I will be getting ‘caught up’ with them, as you say. As in going over there and educating them on how towing a car that doesn’t belong to them is so not freaking cool,” I hissed.
Troy’s face had lost its marble by the time I finished speaking. He was grinning.
“This isn’t funny,” I snapped, hating that I couldn’t command sass.
“I disagree. Never seen you pissed before,” he replied, voice warm again. “It’s cute. And funny.”
I let the words deflect off me. I couldn’t handle being called cute right then. “It’s not meant to be funny,” I sighed, my anger leaking out of me like I’d been
a half-inflated balloon. “Now, are you going to kindly give me a ride over to the garage where my car is being held hostage?” The realization that I didn’t have a vehicle and the Sons compound was all the way across town made me swallow my pride instead of storming out of there like I’d planned. Plus, I didn’t do things like snap at police officers and storm off.
Troy’s grin disappeared. “You’re not going over there,” he said, voice firm. “I’ll handle it.”
I folded my arms, narrowing my eyes at him. “Oh, you’re mistaken. I’m going. This is my responsibility. And you’re not ‘handling it.’” I air-quoted his masculine words. “I’m quite capable of doing so. I was merely asking for a ride because my entire body feels like it was hit by a truck, not my Hyundai. But I’ll walk if you won’t give me a ride. And you’re not stopping me. Unless you try to lock me up, and you’ve already promised you wouldn’t do so.” I gave him a hard look. “You don’t seem to be a man who breaks promises, are you, Troy?”
He stared at me for a long moment, likely measuring his chances of being able to talk me out of it. He had probably thought me quiet and meek; that’s how most people saw me because I didn’t give them a chance to see anything else. I was quiet by choice, and definitely not meek.
Hence him sighing, snatching his keys off the table and muttering, “Let’s go.”
I followed him with a triumphant grin, trying to focus on the pain that came with walking instead of the butterflies crawling up my throat at the prospect of what I was about to do.
Gage
“Fifty bucks says there’s a body in the trunk,” Lucky said from where he’d leaned against the door of the garage after Gage unloaded the Hyundai and started assessing the damage.
He might not have done mechanic work on principle, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t good at it.
He was the best.
Gage made it a point to become the best at everything he did.
Mechanics.
Riding his bike.
Making bombs.
Killing people.
Becoming addicted to heroin.
Ruining his life.
He could’ve made a good living fixing cars. If he wanted to make a living. But he wasn’t living. His demons wouldn’t let him. They needed blood. Death. Pain.
“No, I think it’s some industrial-grade plutonium,” Brock said from across the car, assessing the trunk with a little apprehension. The fucker was never apprehensive, almost as ruthless as Gage when it came to killing. But even his brothers knew Gage didn’t have control over himself completely. So even the most fearless of his brothers treated him like expired dynamite.
Which wasn’t too far from the truth. Except expired dynamite was safer to handle.
“I’ll raise that to a hundred,” Brock said to Lucky, folding his arms and grinning.
“Done,” Lucky replied. “I think it’s to do with his woman,” he guessed correctly.
There was a loaded pause. Gage focused on the car.
“Woman?” Brock repeated, shocked. “No way. There’s more chance of the plutonium.”
“Nope,” Lucky replied. “It’s to do with a woman. I’m almost sure of it. Or there’s also a good chance of dead bodies in the trunk because, well, it’s Gage.”
Gage ignored them both.
He didn’t trust himself to engage in the conversation.
Especially since his version of engaging would’ve been slamming his fist through Lucky’s face to shut the fucker up. He didn’t want to do that. He liked him. Respected him. And his wife.
His wife would also likely get up in Gage’s shit for knocking her husband out. Bex may have been broken in a way she might never be whole again, but it was the most broken of people who were the strongest. To be feared the most. Especially in regards to another human who made their broken life that much more bearable.
Bex wouldn’t stand for anything threatening that. Even if it was Gage.
He knew she was strong enough to make it through anything. Once you’d been through Hell and walked, crawled, or were carried out, there wasn’t much more the Devil could throw at you to bring you to your knees again.
Apart from threatening the one thing that went through Hell with you. The one person who braved that Hell. The person who was damned too, for their own reasons or merely for their connection to you.
Hence Gage not speaking. Not addressing Lucky. Because if he did, he’d have to address why the fuck the car was in the compound at all. Why the fuck a woman—who even bloodied was still pure as the driven snow—had gotten under his skin so quickly. And by the look on her face when he’d pulled from the curb of the hospital, she was already damned. Because she’d felt it too. Whatever it was that had her scent imprinted on him, her warmth seeping into his icy bones.
He just hoped she was as sensible as her fucking statistics and lame-as-fuck car told him she was. Because that would mean she’d stay far away from him and the only person he’d be damning was himself.
And fuckers who deserved it.
A car entered the compound but Gage ignored that too. Probably some yuppie customer wanting to be treated like royalty. He trusted any of his brothers to rectify that quickly.
“What the fuck are the pigs doing here?” Lucky hissed. “Gage, hide the bodies. I’ll take care of this.”
At that, Gage looked up. Not because he was particularly worried about the cops; they’d never made anything stick, not for lack of trying. Even when Crawford was trying to take them down—fucker had been determined—they never found shit.
Now that they were basically legit, there was nothing to find. Because whatever laws they did break, they knew how to get away with breaking.
Gage wasn’t legit, but he wasn’t worried about the cops.
He knew they’d never trace him to any crime. Another thing he excelled at—covering his tracks. Not hiding his skeletons but destroying them.
The physical ones, at least.
No, he didn’t look up because he was worried about the cops.
He looked up because of the soft voice filtering through the air after the car had stopped and the doors had opened and closed. The voice that yanked the air from his lungs and hardened his cock immediately.
His eyes met hers.
Then he realized she wasn’t as sensible as her statistics and her car.
She might not know it yet, but there was no going back from this.
Not when he saw her in the daylight, not with the fire in her eyes when they found him.
She was damned too.
He’d make sure of it.
Because she was his.
And he should’ve cared that it meant she’d have to live in Hell instead of with a man who would try and give her Heaven, but he didn’t fuckin’ care.
Because the damned weren’t concerned with redemption.
Lauren
The short ride from the station to the Sons of Templar compound on the outside of town was tense, to say the least. Troy obviously wasn’t happy about bringing me somewhere he thought I couldn’t handle.
It was becoming increasingly evident that he thought I was the quiet, bookish, timid girl from high school with glasses who had a delicate sensibility that would bruise easily, especially when faced with the big scary bikers.
It was hard to fight considering I actually was bruised and battered and about to face those big scary bikers.
But Troy had no idea what I could handle.
My sensibilities might’ve been delicate once, before the world showed me what it did to delicate and naive souls.
It stomped on them.
Shredded them.
And you had two choices after that happened.
You stayed naïve and delicate and barely existed in the world.
Or you dealt.
It might not have looked like it, but I dealt.
Because I was still standing.
Because I was still living. Yeah, it was a careful and structured life, but it was
one I controlled.
As much as anyone could control their lives, anyway.
And no way was I letting the guy from high school turned police officer try to take that control. No matter how cute he was. No matter the fact that I used to have a crush on him. Or that he kind of might’ve been flirting with me.
Because I was learning that I didn’t do cute.
Or crushes.
Or I’d begun to learn that last night.
It hit me then, physically, once we’d pulled into the compound and I’d jumped out of the car before Troy could try and stop me.
I saw my car first.
My fists clenched.
Then I saw him.
And my knees wobbled.
His crystal eyes met mine.
My body went aflame.
Just by meeting his fricking gaze.
In daylight, at a distance, it was jarring. Beautiful but ugly at the same time. Because he had to go through something ugly to become that harshly beautiful, so menacing that it floated across the parking lot and speared into my soul.
I ignored it because I had to. Because if I didn’t I wouldn’t stay standing. I would’ve been stomped on again. And that only happened once, or you could only get back up once. I had a feeling the people this man stomped on didn’t get up.
I decided to hold on to the anger I’d been nurturing on the ride over, since I’d heard my car was there. I planned to do the stomping.
And I did.
Right across the parking lot, the thump of police issue boots behind me. I ignored it, just like I ignored my body’s protests at my stomping. After a car crash, I guessed I was meant to be delicate with myself. My body. But as I got closer to the garage and the stare that was yanking me in, I became certain that delicate would never be a reality for me again.
“You!” I hissed, pointing at the man who had wiped his hand on a dirty rag and moved to clear the car completely.
My step stuttered only slightly when I saw him in his entirety. And he was an entirety. A presence that radiated even more than the two men watching me with rapt attention who I’d barely even blinked at.
And that was saying something, since the men in this club were a heck of a lot to blink at. Living in Amber all my life meant I’d seen them around, seen the effect the had on everyone around them. The very air around them. So making two attractive, tattooed, and menacing men obsolete was a feat.