He barely slowed his bike when she squinted at the headlight—not even trying to wave him down—illuminating the blood from her forehead.
It was trouble, saving damsels.
Because that’s what got his brothers married and fucked.
And that’s what Gage could never have.
So that’s why he drove past the bleeding woman walking alone on a highway in the middle of the night. Because whatever had happened to her wouldn’t be as bad as whatever would follow if Gage inserted himself into the situation.
But then that face, lit up for a shadow of second, entered his mind. Haunted it though her ghost was mere moments old.
And on that thought, on that fucking face, he wrenched the handlebars on his bike and roared back in the direction he had come.
To save the fucking damsel.
Or, more accurately, to damn her.
Lauren
“You should be wearing a helmet.”
That’s what I said the second the roar of the motorcycle was snatched away into the eerie quiet of the night and the man—who wasn’t eerie, just plain menacing—hopped off his bike and stared at me.
Didn’t rush toward me, catch me in his arms as I stumbled from the pain and slight delirium—plus hefty amount of fear—I was struggling with. Didn’t speak. Ask if I was okay. Ask what happened to have me bleeding and stumbling down a deserted road in the middle of the night.
No, he just dismounted, kicked the stand down, leaned against the bike, crossed his arms, and stared.
Stared.
Somehow his stare was more intense than the inky blackness of the night itself. It was darker. And I suspected—no, I knew it was a heck of a lot more dangerous.
Because even through the dim light, I could see his leather vest. His leather cut. And I knew what the patch would say if there was enough light to see it.
The Sons of Templar MC.
Amber’s resident motorcycle club.
The previously outlaw gang, who had now cleaned up their act and were only skirting the law, not breaking it. Technically. Though throughout the last handful of years, there had been kidnappings, drive-by shootings, bombs and oh, weddings. Apparently that’s how they did things.
I didn’t have anything to do with them, of course. But one didn’t need to have anything to do with them to know everything about them.
They ran the town.
You weren’t a resident of Amber if you didn’t know who they were. And I also wasn’t blind. Almost every single member of that godforsaken club was hotter than Hades himself.
And the one in front of me seemed to be darker and much more dangerous than the dark prince.
I sensed it in the air. In my bones.
Which was ridiculous, because I didn’t believe in that stuff. It wasn’t logical, and I worked with logic. Because only people who hadn’t had the cruel awakening from a little thing called reality believed in fantasies such as a ‘sense’ of someone’s evil.
But there I was believing it.
Because when you were presented with a man like the one in front of me, there was nothing to believe, to hold onto anymore. He ripped everything away and stomped over it with his motorcycle boot. Yanked away the very air in my lungs and stared into me with an intensity I didn’t think existed outside of horror movies and Stephen King novels.
Yet the first thing I said to him was “You should be wearing a helmet.”
I must’ve been concussed.
Because me, the logical and previously dependable me, wouldn’t’ve said this to a man who was staring at me while I was injured, alone and vulnerable in the middle of the night with no one else around. No man on a white horse to come and save the day. Because I wasn’t under any illusions that this was him. This was most definitely the man I’d need saving from.
The villain.
Yet I didn’t run.
Didn’t move, actually.
“It’s not safe riding a motorcycle on the open roads, at speeds in excess of fifty miles per hour, without a helmet.” My mouth continued without any input from my logic- and fear-ridden brain. “Let’s just forget that, in general, motorcycles are less stable and visible than cars. It is estimated by the federal government that per mile traveled, the number of deaths on motorcycles was 29 times the number in cars,” I continued to babble, waiting for him to speak and stop me. Or shoot me.
Or kiss me.
Wait. Where the heck did that come from?
It was the middle of the night. I was injured and bleeding—almost certainly concussed—and I was thinking about the menacing and dark stranger, who was a member of a motorcycle club, kissing me?
Me.
No. No matter how hot I knew he would be in daylight—and I knew he would be because what the thin shadows masked was already something so beautiful it had to be sinful—he wasn’t my type.
No way.
And more importantly, I wasn’t his.