Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (16 page)

* * *

I
was soaring
. Fucking flying.

High.

Not in the way I was used not. No syringe was needed for this high.

Only him, my new addiction.

“You’re not gonna come yet,” he growled, the veins in his neck pulsing as he pounded into me.

My body was screaming for release, but at the same time it wanted to topple over the edge, it itched to prolong the feeling of hovering just before something magnificent. To grasp onto that ledge and last facet of control before it was all lost and the abyss swallowed me.

So I teetered.

My hands were bound by my own fucking bra. Yes, he’d torn it off and used it to restrain my wrists. They were burning from being held above my head for a prolonged amount of time, but the pain was exquisite. It made everything, the pleasure and the way my body reacted to that pain, so much more intense.

Beautiful and ugly at the same time.

He pressed our foreheads together, bringing me in for a brutal kiss, his lips smashing against mine as he swallowed my screams.

“As much as I hate it,” he growled against my mouth, not stopping his thrusts, “you exposing your beauty to all those fucks.” His eyes met mine. “And I fuckin’
hate
it… but I love it.” He surged into me harder and deeper than I thought possible, and I saw stars as he bit into my neck. “I love that those fuckers are goin’ home with only the image of your sweet ass in their minds, burned into their fuckin’ retinas, and I’m the one who gets to hold it.” He squeezed my ass roughly to make his point. “I’m the only one who gets in here.” He paused his motion, filling me up and stopping me from finally tumbling down.

My breathing came in pants as he refused me the release he’d built up since my eyes met his half an hour before. Since I’d strutted on stage and danced for him. Taken everything off for him.

There was something darkly erotic about stripping for the man you were screwing while a roomful of people watched. I’d been damp with desire by the end of my set.

Fucked-up, I knew, but I didn’t care.

Because Gabriel was equally fucked-up. The moment I left the stage he was there, dragging me to a barely concealed corner of the dressing room, behind a flimsy door. And with the chattering of the girls and the thump of the bass in our ears, he began ripping my clothes off, what little clothes there were, and surged into me.

He had been frantic, furious, animalistic. Brutal.

And I fucking
loved it
.

Without warning he pulled out of me. The emptiness and loss of him and my own release was painful.

I didn’t have time to protest as he roughly turned me, pressing my cheek into the wall, spreading my legs and plunging into me once more.

I panicked.

I couldn’t be taken like that.

Pressed facedown, being assaulted by some unknown attacker.

It hurtled me back to that night. That horrific night when my innocence was stolen while I was pressed facedown on the bed.

I’d learned to reclaim my sexuality since then, mostly by fucking a plethora of different guys I chose, taken back through sheer promiscuity.

Some therapist would love to unpack that can of worms, I was sure. But it was how I coped. Survived.

And by making sure no one took me like Gabriel was taking me now. Having me fully immobile, helpless.

I panicked because, despite the way dirt sank into my naked body with the memories that hurtled into my mind’s eye, so did arousal. It mingled in a way that had me feeling more turned on than ever before, and filthier too.

“Come,” he growled into my neck, his breath hot on my ear.

And I did. It was glorious and horrible and mind-shattering all at once.

He grunted his own release into my neck and I barely noticed it.

I barely noticed anything until I came down. Then all I saw was disgust in myself.

And I needed him out. I needed it to be gone. The grime that covered every inch of my fucking body. My insides.

“Fuck, baby,” he muttered into my neck, breathing heavily.

“Untie me,” I croaked, pleaded.

He registered the panic in my voice immediately, stiffening before he did exactly as I requested.

He massaged my wrists, turning me around. He came out of me as he did so and the evidence of my depravity leaked out of me.

“Becky?” he asked, his voice dripping with concern, face painted with regret. “Fuck, did I hurt you?”

I regarded him coldly. “Get your hands off me,” I snapped.

I had to hide behind her. The bitch. She was the one protecting the little girl inside, who was sobbing in the soiled sheets.

He did so immediately and I pushed past him, gathering the remains of my clothes. Precious little, but enough to cover me up.

I heard the rustling of his belt but set to my task.

“Becky, talk to me. You’re freakin’ me the fuck out.” His voice was thick.

I luckily had the coat I’d started my routine with; otherwise, I would’ve been fucked.
Thank God for trench coats.
I tightened the tie and made for the door.

He stopped me. “Becky, don’t fuckin’ run.”

I started to shake, my hold on sanity tenuous. I needed out. “Let me go,” I pleaded, my voice shaking.

Again he sensed it, the desperation that came with that plea.

I didn’t look his way again. I found the door, my escape, and I ran. Ran to try and get clean.

* * *

“
D
ude
, I’m totally with you on not talking to the rat bastard, even though I have no idea what he did,” Rosie said, her eyes on me. “I don’t need to know. I saw what state you were in when you got home.” She shivered, as did I.

State was a good word for it. I was almost fucking catatonic. It was the surprise that got me. I hadn’t expected it to hit me so hard. I thought I’d made peace with that particular demon years before, found a way to fight it. Not defeat it, that’d never happen, but keep it in its corner. Turned out I hadn’t. It had been biding its time, waiting, lurking, until the opportune moment came to tear at the shreds of innocence I had left.

It was safe to say there was nothing now.

Rosie had blanched, actually fucking paled, the moment she saw me. I was pretty sure I would have too. Naked except for a fucking trench coat, muttering about how I needed to be clean and shaking so hard I’d bitten my tongue and actually drawn blood.

“Shit,” she’d exclaimed. “Bex, what did you take?” Her voice was calm, purposeful.

I let out a frenzied and hysterical giggle at that. I supposed I must’ve looked like I was on the edge of overdose. And in a way, I was. I’d overdosed on him. On us. On the depravity he didn’t even know he’d unearthed, the depravity we’d shared.

“Bex,” she repeated. “Do I need to call an ambulance?” She had her phone in her hand though she was biting her lip, knowing my hatred for hospitals.

I shook my head quickly. “I haven’t taken anything. I promise.”

Something in my voice must have been convincing. “What do you need?”

“Clean,” I choked out. “I need clean.”

To her credit, she didn’t look at me like I was crazy, which most likely would have sent me over the edge. “Okay, we’ll get you in the shower.”

She led me into the bathroom, turning on the water for me. “You need me to stay?” she asked, her voice even.

I shook my head. “I’m good.”

She didn’t look convinced.

Yeah, I so wasn’t good.

“I’m not going for the razorblades, I promise. I just need to be clean,” I said, my voice stronger. I was coming out of that terrible abyss with the calm Rosie was emitting, and the steam filling the room.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right outside. Making tea and Pop-Tarts.”

She gave my hand a final squeeze and left the room.

Left me to get clean.

When I emerged, as clean as a shower would ever get me, she handed me a steaming mug. I took it.

“Drink,” she ordered.

“Is there tequila in this?” I asked hopefully.

She gave me a look. “I did think about it, but I didn’t know how tequila would taste with Earl Grey. And I also don’t know the rules for giving a recovering drug addict hard liquor, so I went with no, sorry.”

I smiled at her. “Probably a good call.”

I sipped the tea, sitting on the sofa.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked, sipping her own mug which wasn’t steaming like mine. I had a sneaking suspicion she didn’t have Earl Grey in hers.

I didn’t. Like would rather get a bikini wax with duct tape kind of didn’t. But I found it all pouring out anyway.

When I’d recited the whole gory and thankfully short story, she sat in front of me, a tear streaking through her makeup. “Fuck, Bex,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. It was my coping mechanism. “It’s life. I dealt.” I paused. “Or thought I did. Then that happened with Lucky and I kind of… freaked out.”

Rosie nodded. “Understandably.”

I gaped at her. “You don’t think I’m a total fucking head case?”

She gaped back at me. “Babe. You’re standing. Breathing. Living. You know how to do winged eyeliner better than anyone I know and have a kick-ass sense of humor, all despite that fucking nightmare. You’re a miracle.” She leaned forward to squeeze my hand. “Freak-outs, they’re normal. I have one every second day when my hair doesn’t cooperate. People lose their shit. Fucking necessary. It’s only when you try and swallow all that down, keep it bottled up, that it turns to crazy.”

I blinked at her. “I’ve never thought of it that way before.”

She smiled. “Probably because you’ve never thought too hard on it before. We never do about our ugliest shit. We run from it. Try not to look too closely. But it catches up, forces our gaze.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed.

“You know he’s not going to leave you alone,” she said gently.

She’d barely managed to keep him from storming in not an hour before. I’d heard his shouts.

But she did.

“No, I don’t think he will.”

The thought terrified me. Of seeing him. Trying to explain what it was that had me running like I’d been afraid.

Me? Afraid.

Because I loved him.

Fuck.

There are two things completely free from logic in this world. Fear and love. Two things I promised myself I wouldn’t surrender to because lack of logic in my world meant lack of life.

So I didn’t love. And because I didn’t love, I had nothing to fear. I’d already discovered nightmares were real before I’d reached high school, experienced the horrors that happened in the dark. Yet there I was, bursting with love. And fear. I’d given into both and couldn’t do anything about it. More importantly, I didn’t
want
to do anything about it.

And that had me wanting to escape. Myself, him, everything.

But life had other ideas.

More precisely, death.

“
S
he had been innocent once
, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of the Devil’s lair.”

-Laini Taylor

H
e caught
up with me the next day. At the grocery store, of all places. I was being a total coward and ignoring every single call—all twenty-seven of them—after letting Rosie deal with the bellowing alpha the night before.

But I was still recovering.

It was like aftereffects of a migraine. The actual episode was over but the fragility of my head still remained. My sanity. The pain was a shadow that was hard to forget. So I was hiding from him until I found a way to build up my walls again, to forget that pain.

Without drugs.

How fun that would be.

That choice was taken away when I was deciding between skim and two percent.

Both milk bottles were ripped from my hands and set back down roughly. Then Gabriel had me by the wrist and was dragging me bodily from the store.

I struggled against him. “Let me go,” I hissed.

He didn’t look my way. “Not happenin’.”

I struggled again and people looked, but no one came to my aid. Probably because this was a small town and everyone knew Gabriel and the leather on his back.

I just didn’t know that the cut of leather gave him carte blanche to manhandle women in the fucking grocery store.

Obviously it did.

“Don’t worry. Only a woman getting dragged out of a grocery store by a fucking biker. Nothing to make you actually do something about,” I shouted at no one in particular.

One woman wearing a low-cut pink dress that looked like it belonged on a Vegas stage, not in a grocery store, actually grinned at me.

Grinned.

Not even the security guard did a thing, just nodded pleasantly at Gabriel as if we were strolling past hand in hand and I wasn’t getting dragged while struggling like a banshee.

“This fucking town has some serious fucking issues,” I said as we reached the parking lot. “Serious fucking issues,” I shouted back to the store.

We made it to Gabriel’s Harley before he turned.

“Get on,” he ordered.

“Not fucking likely,” I snapped back.

He stepped forward, toe to toe with me, his face granite. “Becky, get on.” Everything about that action was meant to intimidate—his voice, his height, his face devoid of the light humor that was his default. That, as I’d learned in the cabin, was his mask to hide his true face. The damaged, dangerous, broken man before me.

I didn’t back down. “I’m not scared of you,” I hissed. “And you may be able to drag me bodily out of places on account of the fact you have too few manners and too many muscles, but you can’t command me to do anything. So unless you want to hog-tie me to that bike, I’m not going anywhere.” I crossed my arms.

He held my stare like he was considering it, actually
considering
tying me to a motorcycle and driving off.

“Fine,” he relented, and I tried to hide my triumphant smile.

“Okay, now that we’ve established you’re a fuckin’ nutcase and this town has zero issues with kidnapping as long as the kidnapper is wearing a Sons of Templar cut, I’m going to go. Preferably over state lines.” I made to leave but he caught my wrist.

“I said fine to not putting your sweet ass in danger by forcin’ you on a bike, but I ain’t lettin’ you leave,” he growled. “Not until you’ve talked to me. And if it has to be in a fuckin’ parking lot, so be it.”

I struggled against his hold but he didn’t let go. It wasn’t painful, but it was firm. “You’re seriously doing this?”

Not a spec of his trademark humor danced behind his eyes.

“You’re seriously doing this,” I muttered.

“I’ve got no fuckin’ choice,” he growled. “You won’t answer my calls, you got Rosie as a fuckin’ sentry, and that bitch is scarier than Gage when she wants to be. This was a last resort. Not one I’m particularly comfortable with, but it’s necessary ’cause I’ve been goin’ fuckin’ insane with worry, and anger, over what happened last night. What I did.” As if the reminder was enough, he let me go, stepping back. He ran his hand over his bald head and I noticed the way his eyes were slightly bloodshot, indicating lack of sleep.

“Talk to me, Becky. What the fuck happened?” he asked, his voice softer. “How bad did I hurt you?”

I was taken aback. “You think you hurt me?”

His face was blank. “Babe, you recoiled from my touch seconds after my cock slid outta you. I was takin’ you rough, but fuck, I thought you could take it. I never would’ve fuckin’ done it if I knew you couldn’t.” His voice was laced with regret, and shame. Despite myself, I stepped forward, itching to comfort him.

“It wasn’t you,” I murmured. “Or what we were doing,” I added. “I can take it. With you, it’s better than I’ve ever had. The best, in the worst way,” I admitted quietly, aware of how exposed we were in the fucking parking lot. But I knew it was now or never. If I had time, a bike ride to think about what I was about to tell him, I’d pussy out.

His head tilted and he stepped forward too, his body brushing against mine. “Then what, Becky? The way you looked at me scared the fuckin’ shit outta me,” he admitted.

I sucked in a breath. “I wasn’t looking at you,” I said quietly. “I wasn’t even
seeing
you.” I gazed up to his hazel eyes, needing them to anchor me to the moment. “I was seeing
him
.”

His entire body froze as if he sensed what was coming. “Who?” he gritted out.

I wanted to look away from him, escape the intimacy of his gaze. But if I looked away the darkness of the memory would swallow me up, and without the cushion of narcotics, I’d get lost in the abyss. So I kept his gaze. “The man who raped me when I was twelve years old.” The words flew out with the breeze, which carried them on the air and polluted every molecule they came into contact with. It was visible, tangible, the effect they had on Gabriel. Every inch of his body turned to stone and his eyes deepened with emotion, with intensity.

Then I wasn’t seeing his eyes. Or even him. I wasn’t even me. I was a stranger. A little girl still clutching the last soft edges of her childhood that hadn’t been filed off.

I couldn’t sleep because I was hungry. It wasn’t unusual, going to bed with no dinner. Mostly because there wasn’t enough food to go around in these stupid prisons they called foster homes. The fat ‘parents’ stuffed their faces and gave the kids the scraps.

It should’ve been illegal, or something. But I guessed the fancy people making the laws didn’t care about orphan hood rats getting all Oliver Twist up in there. I was going to make sure they did, when I was older and out of this craptastic place. When I wasn’t bundled under itchy sheets and trying to ignore the rumble in my stomach. I was totally going to get one of those fancy suits and fancy hairdos and go on the TV and tell kids like me they weren’t forgotten. I’d help them.

Not just the one little girl clutching a dirty rabbit, like the one I’d given my dinner to earlier that night.

All of them. I’d help them all. I was smart, read a lot. I could totally do it.

I was contemplating trying out my lock-picking kit and going for the padlock on the refrigerator since the whole house was asleep. Then I could hoard some stuff for me and bunny girl. You didn’t learn names here. Names meant attachments, friendships. You couldn’t do that. Nothing here was for the long time. Everyone was only visitors in each other’s lives. Nothing was for good.

But I liked bunny girl, despite my rules.

So I guessed it was her who was creeping into my Harry Potter-esque cupboard of a room. I rolled over, about to let her into my bed as I had for the last four nights she’d been there.

She couldn’t sleep alone. Think it might’ve had something to do with the fact she’d been alone in her apartment after her mom offed herself.

Brutal.

But the kid was cute and small; someone would adopt her. But for now, she had me. And I’d take care of her.

But it wasn’t her small form that stood over my bed. This one was much bigger, the shadow taking up the whole room.

I scuttled back, already scrambling for the knife I kept hidden in my boot.

Another kid gave it to me when I was ten. Leather jacket was his name. He was older, cooler. He smoked a lot. I didn’t like that, but I liked him. He’d given me the knife the day he left.

“You hide this,” he ordered.

I gaped at the glittering steel he held out to me. I took it, trying not to do something stupid like cut myself. That would be embarrassing.

His smoke-tainted hand went to my chin, tilting it up to meet his eyes. “Kid, you listening?”

I nodded rapidly.

“You hide that.” He nodded to the knife. “When the time comes, you use it. The time will come. You’re a cute kid, a life in the system ahead of you. There’s all kinds of men—monsters, not men. They like cute, green-eyed little kids who don’t have anyone in the world.” He gave me a hard stare that kind of scared me. “You use that on them. And don’t you dare be scared of them. Ain’t no use for fear in our life.” He let go of my chin, stepped back, and was gone.

I hadn’t realized what he’d meant, but I kept the knife.

Now I knew. But it was useless in my boot because a sharp pain erupted in my head and I was slammed down roughly on my cardboard bed.

“Not so fast, Rebecca,” Walter whispered.

His breath stank of the food he’d gulped down, rotting in his big fat stomach.

I struggled, but he was big and strong and his body was on top of mine, swallowing it.

“You don’t say a thing,” he rasped in my ear, his hands moving down my body, touching me in wrong places. Bad places. Places that were dirtied by his hands.

I wanted to cry. To scream.

“You be quiet, be a good girl, and I’ll give you extra dinner. You just have to give me something.”

He turned me over so my face squashed into the pillow. I couldn’t breathe, and his weight at my back meant I couldn’t move. Panic settled over me like spines from a cactus.

Then he didn’t wait for me to give him anything. He took it all. Everything I didn’t even know could be taken, stolen.

I’d wanted to scream. But I didn’t. I stayed silent and horrifically awake through it all. It seared into my brain, my soul.

I rubbed my arms. The air was warm, but the past surrounded me with the chill of the memory. Of the nightmare. “It only happened once,” I whispered. “Once was all he got before I ran.” I blinked away the memories of living on the street for two days. Two days of homelessness was better than two seconds in that house. I would have spent two decades there if possible. I sucked in a breath. “They caught me, the people trying to help.” I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, to help. But luckily they didn’t take me back there. I got into another home where I stayed until I was old enough to escape. Or try to.” I stared at him. “Once was enough. More than enough to make sure the chains of that night would ensure escape was impossible.”

I waited for the poison to set in, for him to rear back and create distance between himself and those ugly words.

It didn’t come, the distance. Instead he yanked me to him, circling me in his embrace so tight it was as if he were trying to meld me into his body. His scent engulfed me, clean laundry mixed with tobacco and leather. It chased away the bitterness of
his
breath that came with the memory. His arms, instead of making me feel caged in, set me free from
his
grip.

He pressed his lips to my head. “Shit, Becky,” he murmured.

Too soon, he let me go. Not fully, but enough so he could meet my eyes. “Really hate that we’re havin’ this conversation in the fuckin’ parking lot of a grocery store, but I guess that’s kind of my fault,” he said, his voice even. I didn’t miss the way he held his body, the fire burning behind his eyes.

Despite all that, I let out a small choke of laughter at his words. It was cleansing, a release of some sort. “Yeah, but is there an ideal place for you to hear that?”

His grip tightened. “No. Except in a place where time travel exists so I could go back and rip that fucker’s dick off,” he clipped.

I shivered at the iciness of his rage, despite the fact his arms were warm around me.

He met my stare. “He got a name? You remember it?”

I laughed again. “I remember his fucking Social Security number.” I rattled it off, my voice robotic. I’d done it for as long as I could remember. When the darkness got be too great, I concentrated on the memory, promising myself I would never forget because one day I’d use the information to get revenge.

Then he did something I didn’t expect at my words. He grinned. But not like I was used to seeing, with light and humor, making me squirm at the
GQ
-ness of it all. No, this one was dark, velvet evil that promised murder. And still, because I was fucked-up, it made me squirm. “Excellent,” he hissed.

Without letting me go, he reached in his pocket and grabbed his phone, pressing a couple of buttons before putting it to his ear.

“Who are you calling?” I frowned.

He put his finger to his lips.

My eyes widened. “Did you just shush me?” I asked dangerously.

He ignored me. “Wire. Hey, bro. I need a location on a Walter Asper,” he greeted, rattling off the Social Security number I’d memorized.

There was a pause as he waited, and it hit me.

“Gabriel,” I whispered.

He kissed my head. “A second, baby,” he murmured, his eyes far away.

He stiffened as I heard the muffled voice of someone else. “Good. Text the location through to me.” There was a pause. “No, I don’t need backup.”

Then he hung up the phone.

I stared at him. “Is there a reason why you just got the location of the man who fucked up my childhood?”

Gabriel kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Oh yes, there’s a fucking reason.”

Releasing me from his arms, he leaned over, opened a bag on his bike, and retrieved a leather vest. He held it out to me.