by Anne Malcom
Gage glanced at his president. Tasted the words. The truth in them.
Then he got up off the stool.
To win Lauren over for another day.
Lauren
“I’m so happy we’ve got a fresh face!” Gwen screamed, grinning at me above the rim of her glass.
It was a grin that hadn’t left her face since I’d entered Laura Maye’s bar with Lucy. A bar I’d never set foot in in my whole life. Despite that, the infamous Laura Maye rounded the bar with vigor and yanked me into her perfume-laden embrace.
I was surprised that I didn’t sink into the masses of chocolate-brown hair teased around her head. I was also surprised that I relaxed into the embrace, something I didn’t do with many people. Especially not strangers. But she didn’t exactly feel like a stranger. The way she looked at me to babble on about a new courtship and about how excited she was to finally have me in the circle, as if it had been somewhat of a foregone conclusion.
Each of the women waiting at the best table in the house—the big booth with a stunning view of the ocean setting—gave me versions of that same welcome.
Some were more exuberant—Gwen and Mia—while others were more subdued—Bex and Lily—but all were warm. There were no uneasy glances, no cooling toward the new woman in the group, something I’d been terrified of.
Not a single one of the women blinked when I’d refused the cocktail Gwen had all but shoved in my face. Something crossed Bex’s pretty but hard face with my refusal. Something like understanding. Or maybe respect? But of course, she hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise, not with Amy, Mia, and Gwen in attendance.
Amy looked over at her beautiful friend. “What do you mean fresh?” she demanded. “My face is plenty fresh. It’s fresh as fuck,” she snapped, palming her cheek. “I spend thousands on face serums in order to make sure Botox isn’t in the picture… yet.” She narrowed her eyes at an amused Gwen. “And don’t you fucking dare utter a word to Cade about that. He and Brock natter like old women, and Brock has some strong feelings about me maintaining my youth.”
“He has strong feelings about you injecting poison in the face he loves so much,” Mia corrected, sipping from her own glass. “I’m much older than you children and I’m yet to need that stuff. Age gracefully, like moi.” She waved over her flawless face. It wasn’t lineless—small creases edged her almond-shaped eyes, but they were evidence of happiness. Of a perpetually smiling life. It only added to her beauty.
Amy scowled at her. “Oh shut the fuck up. You’re not aging gracefully. You’ve got a famous daughter who’s most likely a member of the Illuminati now, and she’s given you all the secrets about living forever and becoming a reptile and whatnot.”
A gaggle of laughter erupted around the table. I was surprised to find myself laughing too. Really laughing. With my whole self. I hadn’t done that, not properly, in almost a decade.
I realized Gage hadn’t just given me the gift of sharing pain with me. He’d given me these women too.
I also realized I loved him.
Had for a long while.
“Hey, honey, can I buy you a drink?” the low drawl sounded from behind me. Like right behind me, up in my space, an unfamiliar and uncomfortable warmth spreading from the closeness of a stranger.
I was at the bar getting another round. The women had protested heavily, since I wasn’t drinking, but I’d insisted and then Amy had shouted above everyone else, “If she wants to buy us drinks, let the bitch. It’s free cocktails—who says no to that?”
And the matter had been settled.
It wasn’t hard, considering most of the women, save Lily and Bex, were well on their way to being blotto. I sensed that they rarely all got together at the same time, considering they all had small children and really, really attractive husbands to keep them busy.
The man’s breath was off my neck and his presence out of my space before I even had a moment to breathe, or more likely to panic and figure out what the fricking heck to do.
I whirled to see Gage yanking the man by the lapels of his jacket, eyes wild.
Brock, Amy’s attractive husband, folded his muscled arms and grinned behind Gage.
I was wide-eyed and blinking rapidly as he shoved the sandy-haired man against the bar. I didn’t know what I expected from Gage—a lot of profanities, of course, a warning, some shouting. Because he was Gage and protective, and he was bound to do one or all of those things.
But I got none of that. Well, the sandy-haired man got none of that. Instead, Gage pressed the man’s palm flat on the bar and, in one fluid motion, embedded a knife into the top of it, spearing him to the wooden surface.
His screams echoed through my ringing head.
“You come near her again, you won’t be walking home with a hole in your hand. You won’t fucking have one,” Gage said, voice hard yet somehow businesslike, calm.
And then, in another smooth movement, he yanked his knife from the bar, wiped the blood on his jeans and turned to me, snatching me by the arm and dragging me toward the bathrooms.
I let him drag me, because when Gage wanted someone to be somewhere—especially when the someone was me, who was five-foot-nothing and weighed the same as one of his thighs—they were somewhere Gage wanted them to be.
The screams followed us through the now eerily silent bar. I craned my head over my shoulder to see Brock, still grinning, but now doing it with his wife in his arms. She was grinning too.
Mia lifted her drink to me in a ‘cheers’ motion.
Gwen gave me a thumbs-up.
The rest of the women were doing variations of the same thing, none of them looking at all alarmed that my boyfriend had just stabbed someone in the middle of our girls’ night.
And then I lost sight of them as Gage locked us in a bathroom and slammed me into a wall.
“You just stabbed someone in the hand, in public,” I breathed, my voice much lower and calmer than I’d expected it to be.
He didn’t say anything, merely continued to stare at me.
“He could press charges,” I continued, not knowing why I didn’t focus on the stabbing part of the equation and instead worried about Gage getting in trouble.
“He won’t. He knows what’s good for him,” Gage growled, pelvis pressing into mine. “And if he does, I don’t give a fuck. He was touching what was mine. Needed a lesson.”
I swallowed roughly around the desire that snatched hold of me with Gage’s body against mine, his eyes devouring me, his breath hot and minty on my face. It no longer smelled of smoke considering he’d quit, for me.
I tried to hold onto my constant logic, but it was hard with the adrenaline and desire pulsating through my system. Even if I never drank a drop of alcohol in my life, I’d always be fully drunk on this man in front of me.
“You couldn’t have given him, I don’t know, a verbal warning?” I asked when I finally had a somewhat tenuous control over my logical brain.
“Don’t do warnings,” he grunted. “And I’m not going to give any fucker a second chance to touch my woman.”
“But no one even knows I’m yours!” I exclaimed, though it was kind of a lie, because all the women watching the exchange knew I was Gage’s—and more importantly, Laura Maye knew, which meant the whole town likely did by now.
His callused hand brushed my cheek in a tenderness I didn’t think was possible from a man who’d just stabbed someone. “Well, they know now.”
I swallowed again, trying to remind my knees that they had to hold me up. “You could’ve communicated that without stabbing someone,” I rasped, a snip in my voice.
“Could’ve,” he agreed blandly, eyes flaring at the bite in my tone. “But I’m not fuckin’ going to. You’re mine. Someone touches what’s mine, I don’t fuck around. I take blood.”
As if he sensed that I was about to go into a tirade about how I was my own woman and didn’t need bikers stabbing men for me, his mouth covered mine, stealing the words from me.
> Stealing the breath from me.
Not that it was mine to give anyway.
I understood that after he broke the kiss and my entire soul protested his mouth leaving mine.
“We can have the fight about how you’re a strong independent woman later,” he murmured, twinkle in his eye as his fingertips moved up my skirt.
“How did you know that’s what I was going to say?” I asked, voice dreamy as he trailed the outside of my thigh, his fingertips at the top of my panties.
“Been around the block, babe. Seen the courtship process from the sidelines. I know how this goes. It’s going to be a battle. One I’m happy to fight.” He yanked his hands downward, my panties going with them, and I’d stepped out of them before I rightly knew what was going on. Gage brought them to his nose and inhaled deeply.
Yes, inhaled.
My stomach burned with shock, and desire.
His eyes didn’t leave mine. “But I’m gonna fuck you first.”
And he did.
Against the wall in the bathroom in a bar.
Crazy. Wild. Brutal. Freaking public.
And I loved every second of it.
Two Days Later
“Late again,” Jen said, smirking. Though again, her smirk was slightly empty.
I winked at her, holding up a coffee for her and a tea for me.
“Yes, but it was because I was getting us drinks.” I paused, thinking about how Gage and I had been about to open the door to leave my apartment and he’d slammed me against the wall.
“Can’t do it,” he rasped, mouth against my neck, bunching my skirt with one hand, yanking at his belt with another.
“Do what?” My words were broken by the stabbing need in my soul.
He pushed my panties to the side, delving into my drenched core.
I let out a moan.
His eyes met mine. “Can’t let you walk out the door lookin’ like that without fucking the life out of you.” He plunged into me again and hissed out a low growl. “And then fuck you back to life.”
And he had done just that.
Hence me being late.
Jen lifted a coffee tray.
I laughed. “Ah, great minds.” I handed her one from mine. “I’m sure mine’s a little hotter since you likely got yours a while ago.”
She took the cup, sipping. “Yeah, I’m thinking you’re not going to be predictable anymore?”
I sipped my tea, thinking of the delicious tenderness between my thighs. “No, I think not,” I murmured.
“Look, Lauren, I don’t know you very well,” Jen said, interrupting my sex flashback, “though I hope that’s going to change because I like you. And I’m saying this because I like you, and please stop me if I’m crossing the line,” she said, putting the coffee down. “But this new guy… he sounds great.”
“Great is an understatement.”
Her eyes flickered. “Obviously, since by the looks of it, he’s changing everything about you in such a short amount of time.”
I stiffened at her words.
She smiled as if it would reduce their sting. “I’m not saying this to be cruel. I’m saying it because I’ve got experience with this kind of thing.” Her eyes went faraway. “I know what it’s like to have someone unlike anything but a tornado come into your life and blow it apart. And at the time, it seems like a good thing. The best. Destruction of who you were before doesn’t matter because of who you are with them.” She paused, eyes zeroing in on me. “But tornados leave as quickly as they come, and the destruction they leave in their wake isn’t as exciting as it seemed in the middle of the storm. That’s all I’m saying. Make sure you know him well enough that you know what he’s taking from you. So you know he’s not taking everything and going to run off when the storm’s over.”
She sipped her coffee, glancing at her computer as if her words hadn’t just hit me and touched all the fears I’d been ignoring.
“Shit, I have a deadline and I just realized I didn’t fact-check this,” she said, glancing back up to me. “I’m sorry, babe. We’ll talk about this later, okay?”
I nodded and wandered to my desk, relishing the tenderness that came with sitting down, trying to hold onto that pain instead of the pain that had just come with Jen’s words.
But I didn’t.
I held onto them both.
All day.
I let Jen’s words eat at me for the rest of the week.
The week that was little more than a blur of work—I was trying to do all my normal duties and finish the story that wasn’t anywhere near normal—and Gage.
Well, work was a blur.
Gage was hot—sometimes cold—stark, beautiful reality.
He had been busy with the club and didn’t come to my apartment until late most nights.
But then he made me come.
Continuously.
He broke me with his body. With his presence.
But he was holding back. I could tell. His darkness was lurking, waiting to strike. It terrified me, but I wanted it to strike.
I just had to wait.
But then I needed something else.
Something that all but burst out of me on Sunday morning.
The Sunday morning that did not consist of yoga. Or tea with acquaintances. Or pedicures.
It consisted of Gage.
It was almost noon and I’d only just managed to get dressed in frayed denim cutoffs and a flowy halter, Gage wearing jeans, unbuttoned at the top, no underwear.
I was trying to make lunch.
But he was standing there, like that, in the kitchen. Shirtless. His muscles, his scars, his art.
In my kitchen.
Tearing through my routine. My life.
“Make sure you know him well enough that you know what he’s taking from you. So you know he’s not taking everything and going to run off when the storm’s over.”
The words bounced around in my head as they had all week. I’d been unable to banish them, even with Gage filling me up.
So I had to get them out.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I whispered, taking the bacon off the stove and staring at Gage. “This, us… what we have, after…”
“After what?” he demanded, his body iron, his face blank. I hated that I had torn that slightly easy look from his face.
I struggled to find words, usually having them stored and planned. But all plans went out the window with us. “After nothing. We haven’t been on a date, or met each other’s parents or… I don’t know, traveled together. You can tell a lot about a couple by the way they manage airports.”
My words sounded totally freaking lame to my own ears, but it was true. My parents didn’t know about him—nor did I plan on telling them anytime soon—and he never talked about his. Or anything about himself, for that matter.
He stared at me. And stared. “After nothing?” he repeated.
And then he wasn’t across the kitchen. Neither was I. I was in his arms, his body pressed against mine. “This isn’t nothing,” he growled, clutching my face. He pressed his lips to mine, and I opened to him without hesitation, letting him take whatever he wanted. Anything.
My breath was strangled in my throat by the time he separated from me.
Then again, he never really separated from me.
Not really.
“That isn’t nothing,” he rasped. “And we don’t make sense. Because we live in a fuckin’ world that doesn’t make sense. And I know you need it. Logic, sense. Because that’s what you’ve built around you. I’m here to knock it all down. Destroy that. Because we’re never gonna be logical. You know that. But it doesn’t matter. You know that too. Because you fuckin’ feel this too.” He gripped my hips. “And there’s not gonna be dates, or flowers or anniversaries. You know that too, because that’s not how I work. That’s not how we work. But you’re gonna be the fuckin’ air I breathe. My sun and my moon and my everything in between. So I don’t give a fuck about airplanes and sense. I give a f
uck about you. And that’s all that matters. ’Cause you give a fuck about me too.”
I blinked as he brushed away Jen’s words. Obliterated them.
Because she was right. She didn’t know me well.
No one really did.
Because I hadn’t let them.
Until Gage.
And he wasn’t telling me much about himself—yet—but he was teaching me everything I didn’t know about myself.
“Yeah, Gage,” I whispered. “I give a fuck about you.”
His hands flexed around my arms.
“You want a date?” he asked, voice even and calm like it was when he had something wild on his mind—in other words, all the freaking time.
I nodded slowly, even though I knew I was agreeing to some kind of deal with the Devil. No, a date with the Devil.
He grinned, and I knew I was damned.
Because there was danger in that grin.
He grabbed my hand and yanked me toward his bike.
“If my woman wants a date, a date is what she’ll get. Gage style.”
“Dates usually take place at movie theaters. Restaurants,” I said after the roar of the bike had surrendered to the quiet surrounding us.
What I was looking at was not a restaurant. Or a movie theater. It was an abandoned warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Gage had ridden twenty minutes out of town, stopped at a locked gate, unlocked said gate, and then rode another ten minutes down a bumpy dirt road that he’d navigated without hurling me off the back of the bike.
And we were here.
“Is this where you’re taking me to kill me?” I asked when he didn’t answer.
Of course I was joking. Kind of.
Gage’s hands went to the clasps underneath my chin since I’d dismounted while still wearing my helmet. He brushed the sides of my face, taking off the prescription sunglasses I was wearing and deftly swapping them out for my regular glasses he’d had stuffed somewhere.
The gesture was small. Tiny. But it hit me square in the chest, the absolute smallness of it. He’d known I needed my glasses to see, remembered to bring ones for inside—when I hadn’t even thought about it, which was unheard of—and slipped them on my face.