by Anne Malcom
“What?”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t play innocent, Gage. You know what.”
He was on his feet and across the room in a blur. “I never play innocent, Will. You know that better than anyone.”
He gripped my hips tightly, his mouth on mine and hungrily kissing me before I could answer.
I blinked a few times once he’d let me go. “You can’t silence me with a kiss,” I snapped, my voice free of the bite I’d intended.
He raised his brow. “Oh, baby, a kiss is the only thing I can silence you with. As soon as my cock is inside you, there’s no silencing you.”
His words were a punch to my stomach. But a good one.
“Gage,” I hissed. “Stop trying to distract me. There’s a man downstairs installing an alarm that I didn’t order or pay for.”
“You did pay for it.”
I jerked. “What do you mean?”
Gage pressed his body against mine so there was no air between us. “I mean I took the check you gave me and gave it to him to purchase the security shit, then install it.”
I gritted my teeth. “You’re impossible.”
The teasing left his eyes with a quickness that chilled my insides. “No, what’s impossible is me trying to live in a world where something happens to you and knowing I didn’t do every fucking thing in my power to prevent that. I’ve seen my brothers go through this shit, babe, and I’m bracing to go through it too. Because with the way we live, bitter and ugly, sweet and beautiful don’t come easy. Without a fight. Without a fucking battle. You’re my battle, and I’m gonna do everything I can to make sure you’re the only battle. So let me fucking install the alarm.”
I let him fucking install the alarm. Because each of his words hit me. Hard. They were saturated in fear. For me.
So I knew me writing a story about one of the biggest drug dealers in Hope and then publishing that story wouldn’t do much for his fear.
But it was something I had to do.
For David.
And I was sure Gage would understand that.
But he would want to do it for me. And he would do it with blood.
That was his vengeance.
The roaring bike acted as an omen.
I’d been so busy fearing his reaction that I didn’t notice the police cruiser pull up half on the sidewalk until the slam of the door drew my attention.
Troy was stalking toward me with a hard jaw and a purpose.
A purpose that was obviously clutching my arms and shaking me.
“Are you insane?” he hissed.
I didn’t answer immediately, shocked at such behavior from Troy.
It wasn’t the pressure but the grip itself. Troy wasn’t a man to touch a woman without permission. I was pretty sure police officers weren’t allowed to do that.
I guessed Troy had read my story too.
The roar of Gage’s motorcycle was louder now, and I didn’t think this was going to end well.
“Lauren,” Troy demanded, shaking me once more.
I tried to wrench from his arms but his grip tightened. “Troy, let me go.”
“Are you determined to end up like all those other women?” he demanded. “I told you I would take care of the dealer. Told you not to do something to put yourself in danger.”
The roar of the bike was now chattering my teeth. I wanted to glance toward it, but I forced myself to meet Troy’s eyes. “I’m not the one in danger right now,” I said, forcing my voice to calm as I saw a flash of black out of the corner of my eye and the roar of the motorcycle was snatched away. “You are if you don’t let me go.”
His expression tensed. “Are you threatening me, Lauren?”
I obviously didn’t get to answer, because someone ripped Troy backward and then punched him in the face.
More specifically, my boyfriend, the member of an outlaw motorcycle club, punched a police officer in the face in broad daylight.
“You’re in so much fucking trouble,” a feral voice growled.
Not directed at Troy.
But at me.
Gage was arrested.
That was after Troy had taken a long time to push himself off the sidewalk.
It felt like forever.
Because after Gage uttered his threat, he had just stared at me. Hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t touched me. Just stared, promise of punishment radiating from every pore.
I’d expected him to fight when Troy drew his gun, cuffed him, and placed him under arrest.
He hadn’t.
He hadn’t said a word, just continued to stare at me until Troy closed the back door of the cruiser after shoving Gage inside.
Troy’s nose had finally stopped bleeding at that point.
“This really the life you want, Lauren?” he asked softly, giving me a look before getting in the car and roaring off, leaving me standing on the bloodstained sidewalk.
Obviously I’d called Amy.
Who called Brock.
Who called me and told me, “Don’t worry. This isn’t the first cop Gage has punched, and it won’t be the last.”
I was worried.
Enough to drive to the station, even though Brock had urged me the club “had it sorted” and to “sit tight.”
No way I could sit, tight or otherwise, in my freaking apartment after my boyfriend had just been arrested.
So I went to the station.
“Oh shit,” Lucky said as he watched me storm in.
Obviously I had a certain look on my face. Hence the “Oh shit.”
I ignored him. In fact, I ignored the whole sea of leather congregated in the precinct.
Until a large body stepped in front of me, a ‘President’ patch on his cut.
I’d met Cade briefly at the party the week before.
He was intimidating. Not because he was hot—which he freaking was—but because of something else. The darkness that rippled out from around him. Not like Gage’s. No, nothing could be like his. Because his was chaotic, unrestrained.
Something about Cade was controlled, chaos somehow tamed.
Still menacing nonetheless.
But I was feeling pretty menacing myself, having worked up to it on the drive over.
Hence me jutting my chin up and meeting his steely gaze.
“Lauren,” he began, likely to try to relegate me to the place of the woman, which was fretting someplace where she couldn’t do something like get in the way.
I wasn’t one to be relegated.
“Okay, I know you’re the president of the club, and therefore your word is law.” I glanced around at the uneasy officers in the precinct. “Or the exact opposite of it. But I’m not here to listen to laws, on either side. I’m here for my man. And with all due respect, Cade, I’m not about to let you stop me from doing something because of your position at the top of the club. My position is at Gage’s side. And right now, my position is yelling at the cop who put my boyfriend behind bars.”
My voice rose to a yell at that point, my eyes catching the man in question and my anger getting the best of me.
Cade, who had approached me with an iron face, was now looking at me with something resembling shock, though the corner of his mouth was turned up in something resembling a grin.
I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
He stepped back, giving me a clear pathway to Troy, who was emerging from one of doors off the side of the large room.
“This is not going to end well,” Cade muttered at the same time Lucky declared, “This is going to be awesome.”
I was in front of Troy before I actually knew what happened.
“Let him out right now,” I hissed, not worrying about the audience.
Troy’s expression hardened. “Lauren, let’s talk in the office,” he said, gesturing to a door I knew to be an interrogation room, based on previous stories I’d written about renovating the precinct.
I anchored my feet to the floor. “No. I don’t int
end on being here for long, so we’re talking here. And you’re letting Gage go.”
“He assaulted an officer, Lauren,” he sighed. “You know, since you were a witness.”
I arched my brow. “Yes, I do know. Since I was a witness,” I sneered. “And I was a witness to a police officer grabbing me, touching me without my permission and not letting me go when I told him to take his hands off me.”
Troy’s eyes widened in shock.
“I know my boyfriend saw me being assaulted by a police officer, and he likely was witness to my pleading with that same police officer to take his hands off me. Therefore he did what he could to forcibly take those hands off me. So unless you want me to press charges, then write a story on an outlaw coming to the rescue, I suggest you drop the charges and let my man go.”
Anger flowed through my body like fire. I was no longer forcing myself to act like the quiet and meek woman who had been in that precinct only a handful of weeks before.
This woman had been here too.
Troy just hadn’t known it.
Pure silence followed my words.
Utter silence.
Obviously my yelling had meant that everyone in the open-plan bullpen had heard my words, my accusations. I had Troy in a bind, I knew. I watched the fury and resignation mix in his eyes.
There was an echoed slow clap from behind me.
“Bravo,” Lucky yelled. “Bra-fucking-vo.”
Gage was released.
I was swallowed by that same sea of leather I’d waded through, Lucky being the first one to yank me into his arms. Well, the only one, since he was the only one exuberant—and suicidal—enough to do such a thing to Gage’s old lady, but I did get smirks and nods of approval.
“Didn’t know you had it in you,” Brock muttered with a smile.
“I did,” the scary and attractive Bull said with a knowing mouth twitch.
But that was silenced with the slam of a door and a change in the air.
My eyes found Gage’s immediately.
No, those eyes weren’t entirely his.
They were filled with something else.
Something so menacing that every single man who’d been crowding around me collectively stepped back to clear a path. Some of the most dangerous men in the country stepped out of the way because of a look.
I didn’t.
Even though it terrified me.
He stalked toward me with the grace and purpose of a panther.
I expected him to snatch me into his arms, drag me from the precinct.
But he didn’t.
He stopped in front of me. And not inches away, snatching my personal space and taking it for himself as he normally did, but a good two feet away, like I had some kind of force field around me.
His entire form was iron.
His stare melted into me for thirty-eight seconds.
I counted.
Because that’s how long I lost my breath for.
His eyes released me and went to someone behind me. “You bring my bike?”
“Surely did” was Lucky’s cheerful response, but even it held a slight bit of apprehension.
Gage’s eyes snatched me back into his possession. “Lauren. Get your ass on the fucking bike. Now.”
“Brother, maybe you should—” Brock stepped forward, as if to come to my aid. As if he, one of the big and scary bikers, was afraid for me.
Gage’s eyes didn’t move. “Tell me one thing I should be doing to my woman, I’ll shoot you,” he promised, not seeming to mind that we were in the middle of a police station.
There was a heavy pause.
“Ass on the bike, Lauren.”
I turned to get my ass on the bike.
I shook the whole ride.
Actually shook.
From fear. And from arousal.
Because something in Gage had snapped.
It should’ve made me want to run.
But I wanted to see it. Feel it.
And then we were in my apartment. I wasn’t entirely sure how we got there; it was all a blur of Gage damn near ripping me off the bike and dragging me up the stairs. He let me go the second we reached the living room, and then he started pacing.
I stood in the middle of the room, still, waiting.
“You’re going to fucking regret this,” he growled, stalking toward me with such menace that I backed up, hitting the wall roughly, the wood hindering my retreat.
He caged me in, his entire presence a prison, towering over me as his palms rested on the wall behind me.
“Regret what?” I whispered.
He leaned forward, his hair like a waterfall around his beautifully savage face. “Making me fall in love with you,” he murmured.
My body froze like someone had poured ice water on me and my cells were too shocked to react for a split second. Then they did, and warmth spread to my toes as my heart beat in my throat.
“How did I make you?” I choked out.
His eyes searched mine. “You fucking looked at me, baby.”
I swallowed, my stomach a mess of elation and fear. “And why am I going to regret it?”
His hand moved from the wall to circle my neck. “Because, baby, I’m not gonna love you gentle, or sweet, or in a way that’s gonna make you happy. I’m too fucked up for that. I’m gonna love you the only way I know how, the only way this fucked-up soul lets me. It’s gonna be hard. Brutal. Maybe unpleasant. And I’m not gonna fucking let you go. So you might regret it because this isn’t what movies or books promise a girl like you. What a girl like you dreams of. What a girl like you deserves. No, it’s gonna be the stuff of nightmares.”
The words echoed around us for a long while, hitting me constantly with their weight. With their glorious weight and ugly truth.
He just stared at me, making good on his promise that he’d never let me go.
Which was good, because I didn’t want to entertain the idea of what my life would be like if he did.
No, I knew exactly what my life would be like if he did. Exactly the same as it had been before him. Structured. Logical. Sensible.
In other words, a slow fucking death.
“You’re angry at me for making you love me,” I whispered, my throat struggling against his grip.
“Of course I fuckin’ am,” he hissed. “I’m not meant to love you. You’re not meant to love me back, but you do, and every time I hear you say it, it hits me in the cock.” He paused, pressing the cock in question against my body, and my skin answered his call. He moved his hand so it no longer gripped my neck but caressed it. “It hits me fuckin’ everywhere,” he murmured.
“You’re angry that I gave you something to love when all you wanted was something to hate,” I surmised, unblinking and taking in all of his feral beauty.
“I don’t deserve somethin’ to love,” he growled, his body shaking.
I could sense his need to stalk away. To inflict violence on something, someone. I knew it in his eyes, saw his beast itching to come out.
I hooked a finger into one of his belt loops, yanking him in and making sure he wasn’t going to inflict pain on anyone but me.
He let out a harsh hiss as his hard length pressed against me once more.
“It’s not up to you to say what I deserve. Nor is it up to you to say what you deserve, because I know you don’t think you deserve anything but a lifetime of punishment. That’s not happening. I won’t let it.”
His jaw tightened as he battled with something behind his eyes, and then he backed away.
“You might change your mind after this,” he said.
I froze, knowing exactly what he meant. What he was going to do. He was going to show me the scars beneath his ruined skin.
“You know how you said it broke your mom thinking about how your brother never had a reason to go down the path he did? How she tortured herself, blamed herself for maybe doing one minute thing wrong?”
All I could do was nod, remembering the conversation we’d
had a handful of nights ago, Gage’s arms around me, darkness surrounding us.
“I had a mom like that too,” he said, his face so blank, so calm, it hurt to look at. Because I knew when Gage looked the calmest, that’s when he was hurting the most.
I’d wanted this for so long, but now, seeing the beginning of it, it terrified me. And I wasn’t sure I wanted it anymore. Because I was scared I wouldn’t be able to be strong for him. Terrified I’d break down in the face of his demons, and he’d realize I wasn’t strong enough for them.
“I don’t know if she was wonderin’ the same things, if she’s still wondering the same things, my mom,” he continued. “I’m sure she is, ’cause she’s a good person. The best.” He paused. “Didn’t know that when I was a kid. Didn’t appreciate that. That when I started to get wild, wilder than a teenager should, they punished me because they loved me. They were terrified that road I’d somehow found myself on would swallow me up. So they tried to stop that. They couldn’t.”
His fists were clenched at his sides.
“They kicked me out, hoping that would jerk me out of my bullshit. That I’d man up. But I didn’t man up, just used that as an excuse as only a cowardly boy could. Let the underworld yank me down. Ran with some bad people doing worse shit for a couple of years. Then I met her.”
I instantly hated her. I couldn’t explain why—she was one fricking word, a woman without a face, without a name. She could be completely and totally innocent. But I knew better. Because there was a lot poured into that one single word, and none of it had anything to do with innocence.
“She didn’t have the same problems as me in the beginning, but we had the same problems at the end.” His voice was still flat and cold. “I was under the impression that no one in my life gave a shit about me because they weren’t enabling my destructive behavior. She was born out of destructive behavior. From people who didn’t give a shit about her, only so much as the paycheck from the state she’d given them. She was more lost, more damaged than me, and fuck if I wanted to fix her. That was my first mistake. You can’t fix broken people.”
The sentence hit me in the heart, so much so that I flinched. Gage saw it, of course. Gage saw everything.
His jaw tightened, but he continued.
“So we started giving a shit about each other.” He gave me a look, one I was supposed to find something in, but I could barely blink through the pain. “It was the wrong kind of love. It wasn’t natural. Organic. Especially not since we both loved each other only slightly more than we loved the junk. Or slightly less. Which was worse?”