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

by Anne Malcom

  But was I surprised? I’d known Gage was dangerous from the start. And not just because of his bike, his cut, the club he belonged to, but because of his eyes. I’d seen it. The death in them.

  I should’ve recoiled at the mere fact that I was being touched by a murderer. That my crisp white pajamas, my crisp white life, were being stained with a murdered man’s blood.

  So why wasn’t I?

  “Who was he?” I asked, my voice small but not shaking as it should’ve been. I should’ve been terrified that he was so large he could snap me in two. That he was covered in blood. That it wasn’t the first time he’d killed someone, if the still and resigned tone to his voice was anything to go by. And it wouldn’t be the last.

  His eyes changed, swirled, his body taut, humming. Something flickered over his iron features—surprise, perhaps. Maybe he didn’t expect me to be asking questions like that. Not screaming. Not fighting.

  I was surprised too.

  “Does it matter?” he replied finally. It was a challenge, his gaze. His question. It was the crossroads where I was going to be forced to make a choice that would either change—maybe destroy—my life beyond repair, or would yank me back into my safe and boring existence with only the lingering aftertaste of chaos on my tongue.

  I thought on it.

  Yeah, it did. It really fricking mattered. This was a person’s life. I was going to take an educated guess and say the person wasn’t good. They likely swam in the underbelly of society, committed sins against that same society. Because I was taking the same educated guess in thinking that Gage didn’t kill innocent people—if there were any of those left anymore. That he wasn’t some kind of true monster who killed without conscience.

  Or maybe that was just a prayer.

  A prayer that no god would ever answer. Because I was looking at a man who had abandoned faith, and faith had abandoned him. Prayers weren’t heard here. No way were they answered.

  Or maybe this was the dark answer to something I didn’t even know I’d been asking for. Something I’d been too afraid to crave. Someone I was too afraid to crave.

  But no matter what, murder was murder. And it mattered. Because I wasn’t a person who lived in the underbelly of society and regularly stained my clothes with blood. I wasn’t used to violence. And I wasn’t suited for it. This life would chew me up and spit me out. This life would destroy me.

  This man would destroy me.

  So I needed to say yes, that it did matter, and walk down that fork in the road that promised safety and order.

  “No,” I whispered. “No, it doesn’t matter.”

  That time there wasn’t just a flicker of surprise. Gage’s entire body flinched at my words.

  But I didn’t let him speak. Didn’t let myself think. I went up on my tiptoes and pressed my mouth to his so I wouldn’t have to hear any more ugly truth. So there was nothing else stacking up as to why I should be running from things that were going to destroy me, not kissing them.

  But I wasn’t kissing them.

  Because the second my lips pressed to Gage’s, my actions stopped.

  He froze for about a millisecond, one I was able to recognize because our kiss gave way to another cliché—time stopping. Everything seemed to move in slow motion between the moment my lips touched his and the small pause before he started to well and truly destroy me.

  My heart was a roar in my ears, every part of my skin tingling with electricity, fear, excitement. Desire pooled in my stomach.

  And then I couldn’t recognize any of my feelings as a low growl in the back of Gage’s throat drowned the thundering of my heart.

  His mouth opened to me, and any control I had over the kiss disappeared as he clutched my hip with one hand and tore into my hair with the other, yanking our bodies together as he attacked my mouth with brutal ferocity.

  The kiss was madness. There was only one way to describe it.

  A fall into insanity.

  Pain erupted at my lips as his teeth crashed into them, warm metallic blood filling my mouth. Another growl as it filled his, the hardness at my stomach telling me he liked it, having my blood in his mouth.

  The wetness soaking my panties told me I liked it too.

  The kiss was nothing I’d ever experienced before. Nothing I didn’t think anyone had experienced, because no way could anyone survive it. It was wrong. Depraved to be kissing someone moments after they’d confessed murder. While they were covered in blood.

  But there was nothing on earth I could’ve been doing—breathing had never been as important to me as having Gage’s mouth moving against mine. This was breathing, truly breathing. He wasn’t giving me the kiss of life. It was the kiss of death, and all I could think of was more.

  And the second I thought that, it was taken away from me, just as brutally as it was given.

  I let out a little cry of protest as Gage’s hands came up to either side of his face. The cords in his neck were tight, etched with evidence of the effort it was taking him to be still in the moment after the chaos of our kiss. His eyes silenced me, the beautiful cruel desire in them stopping my heartbeat. Or at the very least controlling it.

  “This is it, Lauren,” he clipped, his voice little more than a low growl. “The last moment I’m gonna give you to step away from this. The last moment I’m gonna be able to let you step away from this. Me. Us.”

  He didn’t say anything else, his jaw clenched to the point of shattering.

  But he didn’t need to say anything else, because his words were clear. He was giving me one last chance to escape. To gather the ruins of the life he’d blown into, pick up the pieces that were still big enough to be glued back together so one day he would be but a ghost of a time when I could’ve taken a different path.

  It was tempting. Safe.

  And not at all an option.

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m not going anywhere,” I murmured, my voice throaty and raw.

  “So be it,” he rasped.

  And then his lips were on top of mine, more brutal than before, because there was no end now.

  This was the end.

  Gage

  She tasted like peppermint.

  Fucking peppermint.

  He still had the rancid taste of death on his tongue, but the second his mouth invaded hers, it was gone. Replaced with that clean and fresh fucking taste.

  Replaced with her.

  She was clean.

  Or she had been until the moment she’d opened that door.

  Fuck, until the moment she’d gotten on the back of his bike that night an eternity ago.

  A good man would not have knocked on a clean and innocent woman’s door at midnight. He sure as shit wouldn’t be doing it covered in the blood of a man he’d killed. And no way in fuck would a sane man admit he’d killed someone when he held the most innocent and cleanest of women in his arms. Because that was a surefire way to make sure that innocent and clean woman would run.

  But Gage was not a good man. Or a sane one.

  So he’d come after finally ending the fuck he’d found raping a girl chained to a bed, while another one bled out on the floor beside him, after calling in someone who would disappear the girl who’d survived—though it was a shitty word for what she had done.

  Survive.

  She was not a survivor. Because shit like that killed a lot of important things inside a person. Shit like that pretty much killed everything that person would need to exist in normal society.

  Whatever the fuck normal was.

  Whatever it was, she’d never exist within the parameters of normal again. A trauma that dark guaranteed the death of the soul.

  So she was not a survivor.

  A zombie was closer to what she was at that moment and would be every moment after that. Gage wasn’t one to save damsels, and even if he was, there was no saving that one. So he did all he could do, putting her in a car with a man he trusted to give her whatever life she had left, would ever have.

&nb
sp; After that, he rode hard.

  It was a dangerous and reckless thing to do, speed through the state wearing a well-known MC patch on his back and a pint of blood on his front. Blood that wasn’t his. If he’d been pulled over, he would’ve been fucked.

  But he was already fucked. And staying stationary with his demons clawing at his skin, with the images of those girls ripping at the flesh inside his mind—fuck, that was suicide. Because if he’d stayed even a moment to shower, change clothes, get sleep that had been absent for days now, he wouldn’t have washed shit. Wouldn’t have gotten clean. Nor slept. He would’ve found a needle, plunged it into his favorite vein.

  There was only one destination that promised something other than that.

  One woman.

  And he knew what riding there would mean for her. What he was doing to her life. And he didn’t fucking care. Because he wasn’t good. Or sane.

  It had taken everything he had to give her that last way out. Especially after seeing her answer the door in those stupid white pajamas that were somehow the sexiest thing he’d ever seen a woman wear. Her face was still flushed with sleep, eyes wide and bright beneath her glasses, hair wild over her shoulders.

  And then he tasted her fucking mouth. She had fucking kissed him. Pressed her hot and soft little body against his. Her clean body. She’d stained it with the blood of his sins without hesitation.

  And she’d fucking kissed him.

  Gage didn’t think there was a moment better than the second the junk hit his system, took everything away. Having her full and sensual lips press against his was fucking close. Taking her mouth hard and brutal and have her fucking love it? Yeah, it eclipsed that shit.

  He hadn’t even sunk his dick in her yet and she was more addictive than junk.

  The junk had ruined him, and he’d beat it. As much as someone could beat it, anyway. The scars on his arms were a reminder that there was no such thing as beating it. He’d just found something to replace it with. Someone. And he knew for a fact that he was going to ruin her.

  But he didn’t fucking care. Because he didn’t save damsels. He ruined them.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered, eyes on his, throaty voice touching his cock.

  Gage’s mind pushed away thoughts of what he was going to do to her in the end. It was easier than it should’ve been, because it was consumed with what he was going to do to her right fucking then.

  “So be it,” he murmured, his last apology to the gods for damning himself further.

  Not that the gods even listened to him anymore.

  The only one who heard him was the Devil, and he was doing more work in his name. That’s what damned men did, after all.

  He didn’t hesitate in taking her mouth again, for good that time. She let out a sound that damn near made him cream his pants as he lifted her, fucking desperate to get her body plastered to his. She complied immediately, wrapping her legs around him, pressing her cunt into the hardness covered by his jeans, mimicking his desperation, challenging it.

  She let out another cry in his mouth as he moved, creating friction between them while taking the stairs two at a time. He had never felt so wild, so fucking anxious to be inside a woman before. Like he would come out of his skin if he didn’t sink into her cunt in the next five seconds.

  And for him to be aware of how close he was to the edge, it meant something. Because he lived his life on the edge.

  Her hands tore through his hair with ferocity, yanking at the strands with a violence he felt in his cock. He got off on violence, after all. There was a reason he only took certain bitches—the ones with hardness in their eyes and souls—to his bed.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, his cock and whatever remained of his sanity couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t take the three steps that would put her on the sofa, sure as shit not the six it would take to get to her bed. No, nothing had seemed so urgent in his life as the need to get inside her.

  So he went to his knees, Lauren still attached to him like a fucking sex kitten, attacking him with the same amount of ferocity that he was giving to her. He never would’ve expected that shit from her. Fuck, it was why he hadn’t taken her earlier. He’d been so fucking certain that she wasn’t going to be able to handle his particular kind of fuckery. And he’d known he would break her.

  Now he was beginning to think she could handle being broken. Then again, this wasn’t even the surface of his fuckery. He wasn’t stupid enough, even insane with his need for her, to show her that shit right then.

  Her back hit the floor and she barely noticed; he had to forcibly remove her legs from his hips, the pads of his fingers pressing into the soft skin through the fabric of her pajamas. In a motion that pained him, literally fuckin’ pained him, he detached his lips from hers, flattening his hand against her chest and pushing her flat on her back.

  Her hair splayed around her like a fucking halo, her lips swollen, bright red, begging to be wrapped around his cock.

  And they would be.

  Later.

  But there was no time for that shit now.

  “Gage,” she whispered, her words only slightly more than an exhale.

  His eyes darted to hers, which seemed to be glowing, her lashes hooding the pure fucking sex in her gaze. Underneath those glasses.

  Fuck.

  Yeah, she was gonna handle being broken.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he growled, unable to hear that voice and look at that face without exploding in his pants.

  He’d never done that shit before.

  Lauren was already creating a lot of nevers for him, but that sure as shit wasn’t going to be one of them. Lotta people would’ve considered the shit he did to women as disrespectful, depraved. And it fuckin’ was. But the bitches always got off before he did. He considered it disrespectful and depraved to rob a woman of an orgasm and whatever remained of her innocence when he fucked her.

  His cock twitched as Lauren blinked rapidly, her mouth snapping shut, complying with his order. The hand at her chest rose and fell rapidly with her frenzied breaths, her body writhing underneath him, her fucking nipples pressing through even that thick and ridiculous fabric encasing them.

  His palm moved before he realized it, buttons flying around them as he ripped the fabric apart, exposing her perfect tits. He let out a hiss between his teeth at the sight of them. Pink, hard nipples, begging to be put between his teeth. Full tits that would fit inside his hand perfectly. That needed his fucking marks pressed into them.

  And she would be marked on the outside.

  But right then getting inside was all that mattered.

  And not just inside her pussy.

  “Stay the fuck down,” he commanded as she watched him with that hooded gaze.

  Again she did what he said.

  Again he felt it in his fuckin’ cock.

  He gripped the waistband of her pants and yanked, ripping the fabric right down the middle and exposing her bare cunt to him.

  No panties.

  A square of hair neatly covering her clit.

  His cock pulsed again. He wasn’t fussy with pussy, but he preferred hair. Fucking loved it, in fact. Not a lot, but exactly what Lauren had. A porn star strip. His quiet little librarian had a fucking porn star strip.

  His fingers delved into it. There was no choice in that.

  Her back arched up and she let out a low cry when he made contact, when he covered himself with her.

  Soaking.

  She was fucking soaking.

  He lost it then. Well and truly. He yanked at his belt as he moved to cover her body with his, clutching her neck painfully to bring her eyes to meet his. She gasped when he freed himself from his pants to press his cock against her entrance.

  It was pure pain to stay there, to feel her heat beckoning him, to be at the gates of Heaven and fuckin’ pause.

  But he did.

  Because he was a man who was resigned to the fact that he was in Hell. That Heav
en would always be lost to him. He’d never wanted it anyway. Saints only showed him what kind of a sinner he was. The worst kind. He didn’t want that shit. Didn’t need anyone or anything reminding him of how blackened and charred his soul really was.

  Not until right then.

  He’d never craved Heaven more.

  So he let that moment sink into his bones. Lauren’s soft and wild gaze against his skin. Her hot and naked body writhing against his hard and scarred flesh. The blood from his sins smearing against her pale skin.

  And then he surged inside.

  She cried out the second he did so, her scream echoing off the walls of the apartment. Off the walls of his skull.

  He wasn’t worried about her not being ready. She was fucking ready. Fuck, he’d bet that she’d been ready since the moment she’d pressed her lips against his.

  But she was tight. And he was big. So he took everything he had to pause once he was clenched in her tight heat. Once he was in fucking Heaven.

  “Babe,” he gritted out, his voice feral.

  Her eyes, which had been squeezed shut, opened. He didn’t see the pain he expected. No, he saw insanity, the wild need pulsating through his blood.

  “Move,” she pleaded, her voice raw.

  And he obliged, setting forth to pillage Heaven for his own depraved desires.

  Lauren

  Was it possible to overdose on a person?

  On orgasms?

  Because I was pretty sure it was, and I was pretty sure that’s what had happened when Gage started fucking me on the floor of my apartment.

  And I wasn’t a girl who ‘fucked.’ Or even used the word to describe the act.

  But what we had done for who knew how long, down on the floor, had been fucking. Rough. Hard. Brutal.

  And utterly freaking amazing.

  Beyond amazing.

  I didn’t have words.

  And I was going to be one of those cliché girls again, but it was life-changing. Something that shook me to my very foundation, yanked parts of me awake that had been banished to sleep lest they do something reckless. Dangerous.