Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (17 page)

I stared at it. “That doesn’t go with my outfit,” I said finally.

He looked me up and down.

I was finally able to wear tank tops and was making the most of it. Though it was little more than a scrap of fabric, I compensated for the fact it showed a lot of belly and considerable cleavage with high-waisted jeans and my signature boots.

“Yeah, as much as I don’t want to cover that up, we’re goin’ on a road trip and you need protection.”

I didn’t miss the double meaning behind his last word, but I didn’t focus on my feminism being fucked with.

“Road trip,” I repeated.

He nodded.

“Where are we going?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

His eyes were dark. Midnight. “Can’t time travel, but we can do what should’ve been done eleven years ago,” he said, his voice velvet.

I stared at the leather. I knew what was going to happen if I took it. Where the final destination would be. It would be another mark on my soul, and I would be blackening his.

I took the jacket without hesitation.

“
L
ife is
rough so you gotta be tough.”

-Johnny Cash

“
P
lease
,” the coward choked out, tears and snot streaming down his face.

I didn’t blink at his plea, merely leaned forward, placing the bloodstained knife at his flabby neck. “Funny, I remember uttering that same word eleven years ago. When you had me pinned to the bed. When you stole something that wasn’t yours to take, you sick fuck,” I hissed.

I ran the blade along his collarbone, feeling immense satisfaction at his shriek of pain. “How many girls?” I asked when he stopped screaming.

His bloodshot eyes darted from me to Gabriel, who was leaning against the wall, casually swinging his gun between his thumb and forefinger. I knew he was waiting. Waiting for me to finish exacting my revenge so he could finish the job. Do the dirtiest of the dirty work.

He’d been clear about that before we came.

“You deserve to make this guy hurt,” he’d said after he’d tied him up in some abandoned warehouse in Reno. Reno. The guy had been living one state over. “That’s your right. But you’re letting me end him.”

I stared at him. “How is that your right?” I asked, weirdly calm over the fact we’d just kidnapped a man and were now discussing his torture and murder.

Maybe it was because of the little girl I’d seen playing in the front garden of the same house that held my lost innocence. Though she wasn’t playing. She was sitting on a swing set, staring into space, her eyes empty, devoid of anything. A look far too tortured and adult for a little girl. A look I recognized.

She couldn’t have been more than twelve.

I guessed that’s why I was calm. And angry over Gabriel declaring he be the one to get to send this monster to the underworld.

“Why? Because you’re the big strong man you get to do the killing? A woman can’t? We get equal pay and the right to vote. We should be allowed to pull the triggers too.”

His eyes were hard and the corner of his mouth twitched. There was no smile, though. There hadn’t been since the moment I told him. His face had been eerily blank.

I had no fucking clue how he organized an SUV to transport the guy and a place to store and presumably kill him. The perks of belonging to a national outlaw motorcycle gang, I thought.

“This isn’t about fuckin’ women’s rights,” he replied. “I got nothin’ against a woman killing someone who deserves it. I got somethin’ against
you
doin’ it, but not for the reasons you think,” he said, holding his hand up to stop the protests he knew would come with that statement. “It’s ’cause I want a shot at this guy for what he did to you. More than anything, it’ll bring me immense fuckin’ joy to send him to the reaper. It’s somethin’ I’ve done. Many times. Saw the life filter outta someone’s eyes, been the one to take that life.” He regarded me, cupping my face. “I already got those marks on my soul and I’ll pay for them, whenever my time comes. But you, you’ve already got enough shit scarring yours, shit you had no control over. I’m not gonna let you have that on you, not gonna let him put another mark on your beautiful, scarred soul. He can’t have that.”

His words struck me dumb, which I think he took as agreement. He kissed me soundly and handed me a blade. “Don’t cut yourself,” he warned, grinning wickedly. “Go nuts.” He stepped back, revealing the overweight, naked, and balding man tied to the chair in front of us.

I did. Go nuts, that was. I hadn’t even known I’d have the stomach for it. Revenge. I’d dreamed about it, plenty of times, making him pay for what he did to me, what he took from me. I’d fantasized, but I never had the courage to do it.

But I’d found it. Gabriel gave it to me.

And I found that I could do it. Get my revenge in every way I’d imagined.

“How many?” I repeated, my voice rough.

“I-I don’t know what you’re t-talking about,” he stuttered.

I eyed him, the monster in the dark all these years. He wasn’t scary now that I’d stripped away everything and exposed him for the coward he was. The overweight, beady-eyed waste of space who cried the second he lost the upper hand. The second someone fought back.

“How many little girls have you fucking raped while you got paid to take care of them?” I seethed. “How many lives have you ruined?”

He started shaking as he sobbed. “I’m so-sorry,” he cried. “I’m sorry. I can’t control myself. Please don’t kill me. I’ll stop. I promise I’ll stop—”

His pleas were cut off when a garbled wet sound erupted from his throat. I stepped back, not wanting blood on my tank top.

“No, you won’t,” I said to his twitching, dying body.

Gabriel clutched my hips, bringing my body back to his front. He gently pried the knife from my hands, tucking it into his belt.

“Jesus, Becky,” he murmured into my neck. “I thought we’d fuckin’ established I’d be the one to do that.”

I stared at the body, my mind numb. “No, you saying something does not establish it as law,” I informed him. “Despite your thoughts to the contrary, my soul is already damned. And even if it weren’t, giving this guy the death he deserved should be counted as a good deed, not a sin.”

I thought back to the little girl on the swing set. Then the little girl I was eleven years ago. I didn’t save them, but at least I avenged them.

The numbness started to recede and the reality of what just happened set in.

I’d killed someone.

The blood in my veins sped through my body hotter than before, my heart thumping and pushing it through at record speed.

Gabriel whirled me around so his hand circled my neck. “You’re not damned,” he growled, his eyes wild.

“I am,” I argued, my voice hoarse. “Or at least I will be, after I do this.”

“What?”

I didn’t tell him what. I showed him. I yanked his head closer to mine and crashed our mouths together. I knew Frenching your kind-of boyfriend after killing a man wasn’t exactly a sane move, but I had to. The blood and adrenaline flowing through me needed an outlet.

I expected him to pull back, but my body burned when he yanked me closer, his fingers diving into my hair and tugging at the strands.

“Fuck,” he growled, pulling my head back so my eyes met his wild ones. “If this is fuckin’ damnation then I hope to never find redemption.” And then his mouth was back on mine, slamming me back into an icy concrete wall. The impact scratched my arms but I barely noticed. Cold wasn’t something I even registered.

Because I was hot. Burning.

Gabriel’s touch was setting me aflame.

His hands moved roughly to yank my tank top off. I held my arms above my head obediently, knowing where this was going. Loving where this was going.

But he surprised me. The tank top fluttered to the floor and he clutched my neck.

“No, baby,” he rasped. “Not tying you up, leavin’ you helpless to me. You’re not that. You’re never fuckin’ that. I need to feel those warrior hands on me. Those fighting nails on my fuckin’ back as I fuck you so hard you forget everything but us. But me.”

My breathing quickened. I’d been fucked up in my sexual preferences for as long as I could remember so that’s why I’d responded to how Gabriel did it. Did me. More than responded. I’d just never thought he’d turn me on beyond anything by demanding this.

Normality.

Apart from the dead body in the corner.

But this was as close as we’d get.

And I loved it.

He claimed my mouth again before kissing down my neck, paying attention to my nipples. Then he moved down with deliberate slowness. Gentleness.

His hands that knew fury, brutality, and murder gently undid my jeans, like such an act was a blessing, an honor. Then his mouth fastened between my legs, working me to the edge of the earth.

To the edge of life.

Then he brought me back.

In more ways than one.

* * *

S
omething changed after that
. Something integral, pivotal, between us. You couldn’t kill someone together and go back to hearts and flowers.

Not that we ever were that.

You’d expect doing such a thing would create distance, a yawning chasm of guilt and sin. It was the opposite.

We hadn’t spoken after, apart from Gabriel informing me someone would ‘take care’ of the body as I dressed myself. I stood on shaky legs. Not from the act that had blood staining the concrete floor, but from the act that Gabriel had performed on me against that same floor.

I trusted him to have it taken care of and take care of me, so I didn’t end up facing the rest of my life behind bars.

He’d never let that happen.

I was sure of that.

We rode back in the dark, the air biting against my skin, prickling it with its chill. I embraced the cold. And the warmth of Gabriel’s back, and the hand that covered mine for most of the ride.

We went back to his place. It wasn’t a question.

Then we made love.

I fucking hated myself for that description, but that’s what it was. There were no handcuffs, no commands, no fury. Just us. Slow. Devastatingly so.

And afterwards we’d talked. Like
really
talked. About everything. And nothing.

I gave him everything I could, more than anyone had ever gotten. More than I thought I had to give.

It happened after chocolate chip pancakes with Gabriel not wearing a stitch of clothing and me wearing nothing but his tee.

“Your mom,” I said quietly, staring at the pancakes. The ones she taught him how to make. I glanced up to regard him over his kitchen counter. His eyes shuttered immediately. “Is she still…?”

“Alive?” he finished for me, his voice brisk.

I nodded.

His face was blank as he leaned forward and rested his elbows against the countertop. “Yeah. She’s alive. Still in the same house. Doing the same job. Holdin’ on to those same demons.” He shrugged. “I don’t like it. In fact, I hate that she still ignores the man I am because of the boy I was.” He didn’t betray an ounce of emotion, which was weird—heartbreaking, in fact. Because he couldn’t contain it when he witnessed my shit. When he met my demons. But his face was emotionless in the face of his. Even when he’d told me about his sisters, he hadn’t feared the memory, flinched at it. In the face of it all, he was dauntless.

“I don’t like it, but I understand it,” he continued. “My mom had two men in her life who let her down. My dad and me. Stole her daughters from her.”

I pushed off my stool, shoving the pancakes away from me. “You weren’t a man,” I hissed. “You were a fucking kid. A kid trying to survive and trying way too fucking hard to be a man in a world that doesn’t seem to recognize age as a reason to give someone a break.” I paced the room, anger pulsing through me. Fury. “It wasn’t your fault that your sisters died,” I said fiercely. “None of that is on your shoulders. It’s on the people who pulled the trigger on Camila and Sofia, and as much as I hate to say it, on Alexis.” I ignored the stiffening of his jaw. “She was a baby, a kid. But she was old enough to know better. We’re always old enough to know better when life touches us with bitter reality. There’s usually a limited amount of choices to take. The one your mom did, finding a person to blame, the wrong person. Your sister, looking for escape and finding destruction. Or you, looking for destruction and finding redemption.” I paused. “Because that’s what you are. You may have done some bad things, but that doesn’t cancel out the good. Good means something different when you’re brought up in a different world than conventional America. Good is relative. And you’re good. And bad. But you’re still redeemed.” I unintentionally quoted Johnny Cash, but it was apt so I rolled with it, tears threatening the corners of my eyes. “Your mom can’t see that, but I can. So fuck her.”

Because my emotions were exposed to the nerve and I had about as much control over them as a plastic bag in a snowstorm, a wayward tear leaked down my face. I wiped it away angrily.

“You’re crying,” Gabriel observed, rounding the counter.

“I’m not,” I snapped, scrubbing at my face, not giving a shit about my eyeliner.

He stepped forward and clasped my hips lightly. “It’s okay to cry. It’s human. Hell, I bawled like a baby when One Direction broke up.”

I scowled at him. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I would never. It was a tragedy. What was Zane thinking, going out on his own? Solo careers never work. Just look at the Spice Girls.”

“You’re talking about the Spice Girls right now?” I asked in disbelief.

His gaze turned serious and he frowned. “I guess I am. See, I’m still that fuckin’ kid at heart, so I say stupid shit like that. It’s my only character flaw,” he admitted. “When did you get so old and wise, firefly?”

I gave him a long look, tossing up between giving him some smart-assed answer or giving him more.

He got more.

But not before I stepped from his grasp.

I sighed. “I feel like I was born old. Like the universe decided to rob me of my innocence the moment my parents abandoned me. My chance of being young was taken away before I could even be young. At the same time, I feel like I’ve never really grown up because I had to make every decision since I can remember about how to keep myself alive.” I picked up a photo frame on the mantle, more for distraction than anything else. I didn’t get distraction. Two little girls with dark hair and hazel eyes were hugging a bigger girl wearing too much makeup, her beauty still shining through even though she was scowling at the camera.