Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (4 page)

I stared at him, not feeling an ounce of fear. Dylan was an asshole; I’d known that from the start. That’s what attracted me to him. He was a lowlife, which was perfect for me. Someone who was already filth so I didn’t taint them.

But he was an asshole that would not assert his assholey power over me. I quickly brought my knee up to connect with his crotch, reveling in the grunt of pain and crumpling of his body once I made contact.

I may have been small, and still slightly strung out, but I wasn’t weak. I took care of myself. That’s why I started towards my purse, the one that held my gun. I didn’t get there, seeing as my head was yanked back roughly and pain exploded in my skull.

“A woman does not put her fucking hands on me,” he bellowed in my ear.

I struggled against his hold, trying to move my feet so I could kick his shin, but I failed.

“A fucking man does not put his hands on me, or pimp me out, asshole,” I hissed.

I was pushed forward savagely, barely able to put my hands out to stop myself from colliding with our coffee table. Strung out or not, that shit would’ve hurt. Potentially killed. I may not have been happy with who I was, but that didn’t mean I was too keen on leaving this world.

I scurried back, eyes on Dylan. He stalked forward like a predator, a look I was familiar with. One I knew meant very ill for me. One that promised violence.

He kept his promise.

It was when his hands circled my neck after beating me that I realized his glare could also have promised murder.

A cold fear settled in my body, followed by a grim sort of resignation. Did I really imagine any other end with my life? It was a miracle I’d made it that far. As much as I wasn’t surprised, there was no way I wanted a lowlife to be the one who ended it.

I wanted to live.

But like always, fate didn’t like to give me a choice in what shitstorm descended on my life.

Then Lily burst in.
Lily,
of all people. And she saved me. Fought for me.

“Get off her,” she hissed, blood trickling down her forehead. This was after she shot the gun I had been scrambling for what felt like hours ago. Dylan must have hit her too, vague images of a struggle between them entering my mind.

I didn’t take much of it in, too groggy from all the hits to properly watch it unfold. My head felt heavy, black spots dancing across my vision as I sucked air back in that had been stolen from me.

Then Lily was in front of me, her eyes wet with tears. Tears and fear. Tears and demons. That was me.
Me.
I put those there.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, her hand still firmly clutching my gun.

I wasn’t. It wasn’t the physical pain; I could take that, had worse. It was that my friend, my gentle and delicate friend, was clutching a gun as tightly as her hand could. That her forehead was dripping with blood.

Because of me.

I managed to tear my gaze away from that blood because I had to. That’s when I saw that Dylan was on the ground and Asher and Lucky were standing by the door, guns pointed at him, their faces hard with fury. Lucky no longer looked like the easygoing man who’d been lighting up the dingy place where I took my clothes off for money. No, this man was dangerous. A killer. His hazel eyes fastened on me, dancing with something I couldn’t understand. It was concern, I think, although I couldn’t be sure because no man had ever looked at me like that before. I’d had a multitude of looks from the opposite sex, but not one mirrored his right then.

I pushed myself up, ignoring the pain that came with the movement. “I’m fine. Fucker hits like a girl,” I said, hiding behind the bravado that had done me well so far.

Her worried eyes were not convinced.

“That bitch a whore for the Sons now?” Dylan grunted, as if he weren’t standing in front of two very angry bikers who happened to be pointing guns at him.

His arrogance was breathtaking.

“You’ve got no power here. This one’s mine. You’re both as likely to shoot me as that little mouse over there.” He jerked his head at Lily.

The gunshot that echoed through our tiny living room made my entire body twitch. I registered Lily covering my body with hers. Little Lily shielding me. As if I was worth protecting.

Our heads both turned to where Dylan had crumpled to the floor.

I registered the blood seeping from him and then glanced at Lucky.

“My finger slipped.” He shrugged as he addressed the room. He was going for nonchalance, but there was no hiding the fury flickering underneath his gaze.

“You’ll pay for that, you don’t fuckin’ shoot me without—”

Dylan was cut off by a swift blow to the head.

I felt a grim sort of satisfaction at the fact Dylan was bleeding. I also felt the shame of not being able to do it myself. My blood boiled and I was overcome by an unbearable urge to crawl over and reclaim my gun in order to put a bullet in his skull. But I couldn’t move. Pain that had been distant before was now becoming more urgent. I was sobering and it sucked.

“You need a hospital, sweet thing?” Lucky murmured as he knelt down in front of me. His hand lightly, imperceptibly, trailed across my throbbing jaw. Asher had snatched Lily from my side, or Lucky had pushed her away, I wasn’t sure which.

I flinched back and pushed myself off the ground so my back rested against the wall. Lucky’s gentle touch was almost as bad as Dylan’s angry and ruthless punch. No, it was worse. I had experience with anger, knew what to do with it. This I didn’t. I didn’t deserve it.

The anger on his face, the fury, that was familiar. Was okay. What wasn’t okay was the tender concern mingled with that.

“No, I’m fine. A couple of bruises,” I declared, trying to let strength leak into my raspy voice.

He raised a brow and didn’t say a word. Instead he gathered me, as gently as anything, into his arms and took me to the sofa.

I was grateful for the fact he deposited me quickly on the sofa. I couldn’t have his hands on me. They were clean. Good. That just made me felt even dirtier.

I only got a short respite as he ran his hands over my body, taking stock of my injuries. His face was marble, his mouth set in a tight line. No amusement was dancing in those hazel eyes. I had taken it away.

I tried to jerk away from his touch. “I’m fine,” I declared.

His eyes met mine. They blazed. “You’re a lot of things. Fine in the sense of being a fuckin’ knockout. That milky skin being tainted with violence from some fucker is
not fine
,” he replied tightly.

I couldn’t think of that right now—what those words meant, that anger. I tore my gaze away from those hazel eyes and regarded my best friend. Asher was crouched in front of her, speaking gently with a worried face.

He would protect her. Protect her from me.

My blood boiled at the fact that I was responsible for this. For all of it.

Her gaze moved from Asher to the back of Lucky’s head. “Lucky, you just shot someone.” Her voice was dazed and almost dreamlike.

I gritted my teeth at the fact it could be because she was suffering from a concussion. Because of me.

“Sure did, squirt,” Lucky replied, not taking his eyes off me.

“Give me your gun,” I ordered, moving my eyes back to his. I held out a hand that I was ashamed to see was shaking. “I’ll kill that motherfucker myself for totally ruining my ability to wear a tank top for the next month, and for hurting my best friend,” I gritted out, trying to move. I wasn’t joking. Though I didn’t add he wasn’t the sole reason I couldn’t wear a tank top. The track marks on my arm did that all on their own.

“Killing someone requires effort. You need to rest. Let us unbattered men do the killing,” Lucky demanded.

Rest. Letting the men take care of their work in the shadows while the bruised women basked in the light.

Problem was I was already in the shadows. Born in them.

My gaze flickered around the room. At Asher crouched over a bleeding Lily. At Dylan bleeding all over my favorite rug. At Lucky. All teasing was gone from his eyes and I saw it then, what he really was. The dangerous man who lurked underneath.

Dangerous not in the literal sense of the word, but dangerous to me and my emotional health. Because lying battered and broken on a sofa, half high and with the man I used to screw bleeding on the carpet in front of me, I wanted him. I wanted to drown in those eyes. Swim in the danger and drown in the something else they offered.

I so needed to get myself sorted. Away from the junk and away from those fucking eyes that offered me a fantasy.

* * *

“
C
ome in
,” I said distractedly. The door which had just been knocked on opened and closed. “You’re gonna have to do my pedicures for the foreseeable future, babe. Bending and cracked ribs don’t go together, but I’m not having chipped nails in addition to being a tie-dyed human of bruises,” I said to Lily, who I assumed had come into my room. It didn’t matter that she’d only just left an hour ago after patching me up in my bedroom while the bikers ‘dealt’ with Dylan.

Whatever that meant.

There had been talk of bullets to the brain, which I wouldn’t have objected to, since he hurt Lily in the process of fucking me up, but she’d vetoed that option. Which was probably good, as I didn’t need to owe anyone. I owed Lily enough already; I didn’t want to owe her attractive boyfriend and his buddies for offing someone for me. I didn’t want to be the reason why they had a black mark on their souls. Though I guessed their souls weren’t exactly squeaky clean. Murder had come to them as natural as breathing.

I tried to convince myself the reason they were doing anything in the first place was because Dylan had hurt Lily, Asher’s ‘old lady.’ They took that shit serious. But that couldn’t explain away Lucky’s fury, his confusing tenderness with me, him trying to make me go to their biker clubhouse and hide from the world.

Let the muscled men in leather cuts protect me.

What a joke.

I didn’t need protecting from the outside world. Despite my bruises, I could take care of that. It was
me
that I was in danger from. Being close to Lucky was only one of the reasons I’d fought being sequestered in biker heaven. The second was to do with my little habit. Now that Lily wasn’t spending all of her time at the hospital with her dying mother and getting back to a life she deserved, it was getting hard to hide. If she wasn’t distracted by Asher, I guessed it might be impossible.

But bikers, with their shrewd eyes and badass skills, they’d notice. Especially one pair of hazel eyes that melted into me and seemed to see more than I showed the world.

“Doin’ a thing like painting nails might fuck with my street cred, but I’ll do it if I get to touch those delicious feet,” a raspy voice answered. One that was way too deep to be Lily’s. Plus her voice didn’t cause my body to prickle with expectation. I didn’t swing that way.

I jerked my head up from my nails and most likely fucked them up. “What are you doing here?” I snapped at Lucky. He was standing, his face light, though he held his jaw hard. His body seemed to take up all the space in my small room. “Plus, delicious feet? Ew. Do you have some kind of foot fetish? They’ve got 900 numbers for that,” I added.

His eyes flickered down my bare legs. I was wearing a long tee and no pants, lying on top of my comforter. I was lucky that it was meant for men and the sleeves fell just past my elbows. It’s the only kind of tee I wore, since it hid the red dots in the crook of my elbows when they weren’t covered in makeup like they were for work.

Despite the fact it was more clothes than I wore on stage and he’d seen it all, I felt exposed. Maybe it was because my face was bare of makeup, the only decoration being the spattering of bruises. There was no hiding it with a curtain of my midnight-black hair, as it was piled messily atop my head. And due to the fact I was a pale as a ghost, the bruising stood out so much it was comical. It wasn’t attractive, but I’d take it. Plus, when I was on stage, slathered in a mask—and, more often than not, high as a kite—I was somewhere else. I journeyed beyond a dimly lit room and leering gazes, kind of had to to survive.

But this was my little sanctuary. Sure, it was messy, with clothes strewn on the floor and makeup littering my dresser, but it was
mine
. The one place in the world the mask could come off. Well, not completely off; I still had to cling to a shred of it in order to face myself in the mirror. That had a little to do with the junk hidden in a lipstick canister and a lot to do with the little girl who still haunted me with her lost innocence.

“A fetish insinuates a habit,” Lucky said, eyes moving down to my toes. Then they moved back up to my face and hardened. “I don’t have any obsessions with other feet. Or other women.” He paused. “Well, not for long, anyway. It’s one in particular who fascinates me.” He let that hang between us before his eyes went to my bedside table, where various bottles were littered. “Now, what color are we thinking?” He picked up a forest green, squinting and putting it back down. “I think purple would be best. Plus, it goes with this.” He leaned forward to touch a tendril of my dip-dyed hair, which had escaped from my bun. My heart thundered at him touching my hair. My freakin’
hair
. I flinched back and his body stiffened.