Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (12 page)

I glared at him. “You’re not doing that,” I snapped.

“What’s that, beautiful?”

“That alpha, ‘I take care of everything because I have balls’ thing. I can pay my own way. I’ll never be a ‘kept’ woman. Or a prostitute,” I added.

That made Lucky stop and turn to give me his full attention. “I paid for that shit because it’s my fault that you need it. I ‘kidnapped’ you, which means I should foot the bill. I don’t pay for sex, and you sure as shit don’t ever need to fuckin’ charge for it. I’ll never let that shit happen.” His voice turned serious at the end. “And even if I did ever pay for the pleasure of your company, you’d be worth a fuck of a lot more than cheap lace underwear, which I totally fuckin’ approve of by the way. No matter how cheap, your ass will make that shit look ace.” He winked at me. “We good? Or you gonna nurse another snit in the car. I’m good with either option because you’re cute as fuck when you’re angry.”

I fought with the combination of a smile and tears threatening my fragile emotional state. Instead I managed an eye roll and stomped towards the car.

“I’m taking that as us bein’ good since you didn’t swear at me or call me a misogynistic prick,” he shouted after me.

And with my back safely to him, I smiled.

“
D
amaged people are dangerous
. They know how to make hell feel like home.”

-
Unknown

“
W
ow
, someone got out of the wrong side of bed this morning,” a gravelly voice observed. That was after he had shaken me from my blissful slumber and I’d used every curse word in my extensive vocabulary when he hadn’t let me roll back over.

I hadn’t had any success in killing someone with the power of a glare before, but I tried my darnedest right then. “It’s six a.m.,” I gritted out after my glare only intensified his grin. “There’s only one side of the bed to get out of at this time.” I glanced up and down at him. He was wearing cutoff sweatpants and a white wifebeater that was drenched with sweat and clung to every inch of his muscles. Even my barely awake body responded to that. I reasoned someone in a coma would appreciate that.

“You’re a morning person,” I observed in disgust, swallowing the half-comatose Bex reaction to launch her sleep-addled body at those washboard abs. I resisted.

“You say that like it’s akin to being a suicide bomber,” he replied.

I glared at him. “There are a lot of people I don’t trust in this world.” I held up one finger, starting my list. “People who finish their shampoo and conditioner at the same time.” I held up two fingers. “Couples with joint social media accounts.” I held three fingers up. “Anyone who puts clothing on dogs.” I tried to ignore his amused smirk and how hot he was while doing it. I managed, mostly because I remembered what time it was and that smiling hot fucker was the reason why I was awake. “Morning people round out the list of people never, under any circumstances, to be trusted. It’s unnatural,” I informed him seriously.

I didn’t expect it, but his grin disappeared and he stepped forward, clasping my forearms lightly. His eyes searched mine. “You can trust me, Becky,” he murmured. “Even if everything else doesn’t make sense, shit turns upside down. That’s one thing that’s gonna stay constant,” he promised.

Okay, it was way too early morning for that shit. The ‘hearts and flowers, eternal promise’ type shit that caught me unexpected and almost broke a rib with the force in which it made my crumpled heart beat.

Then I finally registered where I was, in a bed, and a very comfortable one. Lucky was standing over me and I was sitting up. The room around me was bathed in gentle morning light that was blazing through the open blinds. I frowned at the offending brightness, though it was hard to frown at the unobstructed view of the ocean. The room was a lot more hippy and a lot less rock than the other rooms. There was a multitude of antique mirrors artfully splayed on one wall like a fucking Pinterest project and a Moroccan-looking rug on the wooden floor. I didn’t have time to fully take catalogue of the room because I moved slightly and realized what I was wearing—or not wearing. I was no longer wearing the dress I had on the day before. I pulled out the fabric at my chest to get a better look at it. It was not one of the crappy garments I’d purchased either, and it had a telltale smell.

I glared up at Lucky. “What am I wearing, and how did I get here?”

“Well, you got here because I carried you in here. Lay off the candy, why don’t you? You’re fucking heavy,” he deadpanned. “You crashed on the way back and weren’t waking up. I knew you were alive ’cause I took your pulse. And did the mirror thing with the breathing. But I wasn’t too hot on bringing you out of that shit ’cause it was obvious you needed it. Didn’t think you’d want to sleep in the dress that you hated, so I put you in my tee. Promise I didn’t look. Much.” He didn’t even have the decency to look sheepish, grinning from ear to ear.

I threw the covers back so I could stand toe to toe with him. I had planned on giving him a piece of my mind, but I hit a hiccup when my vision went black and everything went kind of sideways.

A strong hand gripped my arm, stopping my descent.

“Fuck, Becky. You okay?” Lucky’s voice lost all hint of humor as he yanked me closer to his body so he could grasp my chin.

I blinked away the stars and tried to shrug out of his grip, which was kind of impossible considering his hands were like vises and I was still struggling to chase off vertigo. “I’m fine,” I lied.

His frowning face came into focus. “When was the last time you ate? You were in stasis last night so you missed my delicious dinner, and I didn’t see you indulge in a bite of any road snacks yesterday, apart from the chocolate you shoved in your face to stop yourself from licking my muscles.”

It took me a second to recover from his last sentence, but I managed. “I had coffee when I got here.”

He frowned. “Coffee doesn’t count as a food group.”

“In my world it does.”

“Jesus, firefly, you need to take care of yourself.” His voice was hard. “You’re not fuckin’ invincible, you know.”

I found enough balance to yank out of his grasp. “Trust me, I know.”

We stared at each other for a long moment and I was sure he was going to address the elephant in the room, but then his face changed. “Let’s go. You’ll be treated to what most people usually have to pledge their firstborn children for.” He paused dramatically. “My chocolate chip pancakes.”

“Chocolate chip pancakes?” I repeated. My gaze traveled his muscled and tattooed body once more. “Is this a
Freaky Friday
situation? Are you actually a forty-year-old housewife who crotchets and somewhere in suburbia a woman is wearing an apron and cursing and throwing knives at her husband?”

Lucky chuckled deeply, sending little shivers down my spine. “Nope, I’m just a very complex man. There’s more to me than meets the eye.” He winked, then turned his back, walking from the room. “Pancakes in twenty, so get that hot ass showered and dressed. You can keep the tee,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“I don’t want your smelly shirt,” I called after him.

I inhaled once more. I was totally keeping the tee.

* * *

“
N
ow you’re just fucking
with me. That’s not a word,” I said.

Lucky glanced up, grinning. “It is a word.”

I quirked my brow. “Use it in a sentence.”

He didn’t even blink. “I, the king of Scrabble, used the word ‘muzjiks’ to kick Becky, the poor little Scrabble peasant, out of the running for supreme ruler.”

We were playing Scrabble. Fucking
Scrabble
. And I was enjoying it. Despite the fact that Lucky was an absolute menace at the game and so far had used three words that I didn’t even know existed in the human language. He showed me via an online dictionary that they did indeed.

I gave him a look.

“Okay, muzjiks were called Russian peasants under the tzar,” he said with a straight face.

I gaped at him. “You hustled me. At Scrabble. You hustled me.”

He shrugged. “I’m in it to win it, baby. No place for morals in board games.”

I froze just a little at the term of endearment and the casual use of it. No doubt it was offhand, and he most likely called every girl he banged by that name. I’d had my fair share of guys use it, most likely when they forgot my name. But this was different, especially doing something so domestic, so intimate. Especially after the day we’d had.

It was a good day.

I hadn’t expected it.

Good days were few and far between in my life, even more scarce since I’d decided to self-medicate. Totally absent since I’d decided to stop self-medicating. But defying the odds, junk didn’t ruin the day for me. Sure, the craving lurked under my skin like a constant itch that only one thing could scratch, but I managed it. And without wanting to throw up or scream or murder someone.

Lucky wasn’t screwing around. His pancakes were the shit. So much so, I had two servings. My first bite reminded me how hungry I was, how ravenous. It’d been a long time since I’d had any kind of appetite for anything but heroin, but there it was. For chocolate chip pancakes made for me by a friggin’ biker.

“Who taught you how to cook like this?” I asked through a full mouth. A lady I was not.

He had been watching me, leaning against the counter with a small grin on his face. The grin dampened slightly. “My mom,” he said flatly.

I barely noticed it. “Thank her for me.”

Then I went back to my breakfast, not thinking twice on his reaction.

After breakfast he declared he was going surfing.

“I’ve got an extra board. Want to join me?” he asked after I’d recovered from seeing him shirtless.

No, I didn’t recover exactly, just found a way to act like I did. Hours later, I was still recovering from his fricking eight-pack, his caramel skin mingled with tattoos and art.

I’d managed to snap my head up and not lick the V cut out of marble and hugely visible in his low-slung board shirts. “Are you joking?”

He grinned. “Always.”

I shook my head, mostly to get images of me pressed against that naked torso out of my mind.

“There are sun loungers, and a shit ton of books in the living room. Saw you had an overflowing bookshelf at your old apartment. You read?”

I nodded. Before I started screwing up my brain and ability to concentrate, I’d loved to read. Reading was a healthier form of escapism than drugs. If only I’d stuck to that.

“Awesome. Well, read or fantasize over my godlike body. I won’t be long.” He leaned in and kissed the top of my head. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fantasizing over yours too.” On that note he left the kitchen and walked outside, leaving me blinking like an idiot in his wake.

I’d done as he said, fantasizing about his body and reading. Spent the entire day doing both, in fact. I didn’t have a swimsuit to lie out in, but considering I was pale and got scorched in the sun, that was probably a good thing. I slathered on the SPF and hid from the rays under the umbrella while I immersed myself in a book from the decent collection Lucky had. I didn’t imagine he read Virginia Wolfe, which had me curious about who lived here. It was obvious a female had, as the woman’s touches were hard to miss. The fairy lights strung above the vintage patchwork sofa. The scented candles on the coffee table, which was also littered with motorcycle magazines. Because I was too wrapped up in myself, I hadn’t asked about this place.

I didn’t get the chance to ask Lucky, since he left me alone with my book the entire day, which surprised me. I was sure he’d be like a Jack Russell puppy, constantly biting at my ankles, demanding attention. He wasn’t. He only approached me to deposit snacks—which he did on a regular basis, muttering about how I needed fattening up—and lunch. He seemed to sense I needed the ocean and escape, and a little slice of peace, even if it was tinged with the chaos inside my head.

He’d yanked the book from me when the sun started to kiss the horizon.

“All right, I don’t want your eyes going square,” he’d declared.

I squinted at him. “That’s from the TV.”

He shrugged. “Same thing. Dinner time.”

“I just had lunch.”

“Four hours ago,” he corrected. “Now up or I will force feed you. I can’t promise you’ll enjoy it, but I will.”

So I did as I was told, without sarcasm or protesting or anything. I surprised even myself. The conversation was light and easy the entire dinner, the elephant in the room still sitting there. Then it was Scrabble time. Which led me to now.

“Are we ever going to talk about it?” I asked in exasperation, looking up from the board.

“The fact that you would starve if you ever had to make a living playing word games and I am the king of such games?” Lucky teased, his eyes bright.

I eyed him levelly. “No, the fact that I’m recovering from a heroin addiction, almost killed myself with an overdose, and then you spirited me away here the moment you found out, despite the fact we’re….” I trailed off, looking for the words to describe what we were. I swallowed; I knew what we weren’t, at least. “Nothing. Despite the fact we’re nothing.”

All teasing glint left his face and his jaw went hard. “We’re far from nothing, Becky. You know that.”

I didn’t lower my gaze, even though his stare was getting downright scary. I forgot, what with his easy attitude and stupid jokes, that underneath was the face of something much more sinister.

“No, I don’t know that. You stalk me at the club, speak in monosyllabic grunts when I get in trouble, act like there’s some kind of brand on me I haven’t noticed.”

He gritted his teeth, looking like he was going to spout into those monosyllabic grunts, which I didn’t have time for.

I held up my hand. “That’s not what we’re talking about now, but trust me, we will talk about it.” I took a breath. “We’re talking about the elephant in the room. The fact you’ve been treating this like it’s some kind of vacation. That I’m not… an addict,” I finished.

“I know that,” he gritted out after a long silence, his voice tight. “Despite the fact I wish it weren’t the fuckin’ truth, I know that shit, Becky.”

“So why did you bring me here when you found that out?” I asked. “You have a life, one I presume is much more exciting than this.” I held my hand out to the board. “Playing Scrabble with a drug addict.”