Deadline to Damnation (Sons of Templar MC 7)

His body stayed taut and his mouth stayed closed while I thought on all of that. If Marcus hadn’t already been dead, would Liam have killed him?

Did I want him to want to kill for me?

I moved before I got the answer to that.

Or more accurately, Liam moved us.

He was halfway across the bedroom before I actually found it in me to speak, protest. My limbs tried to move, but he’d seemingly anticipated my struggle, through his badass manly powers, no doubt.

“What are you doing? Put me down,” I demanded as he walked us into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

He didn’t answer, merely stepped us both into the stall, fully clothed.

The hot water was a shock to my cold skin.

I didn’t have time to acclimate, Liam’s lips were on mine, the water cascading over us.

My first instinct was to fight.

And I did.

He fought too.

So my second instinct was to surrender.

My body melted against his, all the ice settled over my soul shattering with his mouth moving against mine.

“I’m gonna give you new memories of a shower,” he growled against my lips as he ripped his tee off me.

Ripped. It. Off.

With his bare hands.

“I’m gonna make sure you never think of anything horrible next time you step in here,” he continued as he yanked down my leggings and ripped off my soaking panties.

I should have fought.

I really fricking should’ve.

Even if the only reason was because the first time we made love after fourteen years of thinking he was dead should not have been brutal and violent, in the shower after telling the story of how and ex-boyfriend almost raped me.

But this wasn’t about what should’ve been.

That was clear.

And this wasn’t making love.

This was fucking, pure and simple.

It wasn’t Liam and Caroline.

It was Jagger and…whoever the fuck I was now.

He entered me, without priming, ceremony, or pretty words.

I screamed as his cock filled me.

That was until he claimed my mouth, thrusting as he held me against the shower wall, our bodies slipping together with sweat and hot water.

Everything was washed off with that mixture.

The past.

The present.

The future.

The only thing that mattered was the pain around my neck and in my soul. And the pleasure at the base of my spine as he coaxed me into a brutal orgasm.

Not a single word was spoken.

Not even as I toppled off the cliff and came harder than I ever had before. Came harder than I ever had the ability to.

With anyone.

Including Liam.

And the sex with Liam had been good.

Jagger may not have been good at keeping promises, at treating me gentle, at apologizing, explaining, or not shooting people in the head, but he was good at fucking.

His entire body tightened, and he let out a feral growl from the back of his throat as the pads of his fingers pressed into my hips and he emptied himself inside of me. The pain of it, physical and emotional sent me hurtling to a release even more intense than the last.

My limbs became something other than my own.

My soul became something other than my own.

As if it was anything but Liam’s in the first place.

But now it wasn’t just Liam’s.

It was Jagger’s too.

Chapter Fourteen

It was the song that did it.

I didn’t know who put it on in the middle of a fricking biker party, but it didn’t matter how it got here, it just mattered that it was here. And so was I. Sick of banishing myself to my room every night and staring at the walls, occasionally staring at words on a page, pretending to read.

I wrote a lot too.

Of what I saw. What I was learning from the inside and the outside.

I was learning that the war was no closer to an end, that men were still going out for five days and coming back covered in blood.

That there were many times Hansen closed himself in ‘church.’

I also thought I figured out their gun transportation system. No way they were using bikes, or any vehicle registered to the Sons of Templar. Though they owned the local police, by the looks of their records, federal agencies dropped in with warrants on an annual basis.

But the Sons of Templar got their groceries delivered.

Not something surprising considering the sheer amount of mouths to feed and the fact that they had better things to do like kill and torture enemies.

This grocery delivery truck also collected food for the homeless.

In boxes.

Weekly.

I had been in the kitchen many times and had not seen any extra food lying around.

I’d seen plenty of guns, though.

But it wasn’t about the guns or the story right now. It was the song.

The song tasted like sickly sweet pink wine, smelled like a cheap and fruity perfume, felt like a youth that was encased in naïve happiness and unfractured dreams.

I lay back on the lumpy mattress, ignored the sheets that smelled of foreign detergent and closed my eyes. I let myself sink past it all and into the song.