Battles of the Broken (Sons of Templar MC 6)

I looked from him to the bike. “I don’t have a helmet.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he muttered, running his hand through his hair, eyes darting over the top of my head to the alley behind me. “You on the back of my bike, without a helmet, is the safest place in the fuckin’ world for you right now. Trust me.”

There he was. The guy promising to protect me from the plane going down.

So I did exactly that.

I trusted him.

And I got on the bike.

Gage nearly dragged me off the bike the second it stopped outside of my apartment.

It was only then that I realized my apartment was locked and my keys were in my purse, which was sitting on the passenger seat of Niles’s car. Which was sitting outside a dodgy bar in a dodgier area. Or, if I was lucky, Lucky himself would’ve shown up before someone could’ve snatched the car.

I wasn’t sure if I was lucky right then or not.

I really hoped I didn’t have to explain to Niles why I’d gotten his car stolen. But he’d probably make it into a story. Everything in life was a story. Even the bad. Especially the bad. Bad news was good for newspapers.

“I don’t have my keys,” I murmured as we reached my front door.

It was only then that I saw he was carrying my purse. I didn’t even get the chance to be surprised, or find it funny to see my pale pink purse clutched in his large tattooed hands, because he was rifling through it almost violently.

He was a brave man to venture into a woman’s purse without her permission. Then again, I wasn’t exactly screaming in protest either. I was too busy trying to quiet my thundering heart.

Gage made quick work of doing one of the hardest things on earth—finding the exact object you needed in the depths of your purse. The door was unlocked and he was dragging me upstairs before I could catch up.

That’s all I was doing, playing catch-up. I should’ve been trying to figure all this out on the ride, should’ve gathered my wits, my logic and started to make the important decisions I was known so well for.

But I hadn’t.

I’d merely clutched onto Gage for dear life, pressed against his body, and let my mind think of something it had never thought of before.

Nothing.

Hence the reason I was still scrambling when the door slammed behind us and I was in the middle of my living room, Gage pacing in front of me, his boots echoing through my apartment like harbingers of doom.

Then he stopped, turned on me, faced me fully.

“Thought I’d have time to lock it down on the ride here,” he clipped. “Thought having your warm and hot little body pressed against mine would remind me that it was no longer sittin’ in a car takin’ photos of one of the biggest drug dealers in Hope, playing with her fucking innocent and precious life.” His voice was low. Quiet. Dangerous. And his gaze a blade.

I didn’t look away. Didn’t move. Didn’t speak. I just stood there, dumb and still, like some idiot.

“Thought I would be able to lock it down, standing in your house, surrounded by your shit. Surrounded by you,” he continued, that voice still dangerous and low.

And then he wasn’t across the room. In two strides, he was in front of me, clutching my shoulders painfully. “But I fucking can’t!” he roared.

I jumped at the violence in his hands, in his voice, but more out of surprise than fear. Despite all of his unrestrained violence, I had some weird and unexplainable certainty that he wasn’t going to hurt me.

“Do you have any idea how much danger you put yourself in tonight?” he demanded, shaking me slightly as he spoke.

“I wasn’t putting myself in danger,” I protested.

He gaped at me then, his face contorted in rage. “You’re fuckin’ kidding me, right? You know what you look like?” He leaned in. “What you smell like?”

My breathing shallow, I didn’t respond because I didn’t think there was an appropriate response.

Gage held me hostage with his grip, with his gaze, both bordering on pain. “Because I do,” he said. “And I’m exactly like all those men. And looking at you, smelling you…all I want to know is what you taste like.”

His mouth was almost brushing against mine.

Almost.

“And ain’t nobody figuring out what you taste like,” he continued, his breath hot against my face. “No one is putting their dirty fuckin’ paws on you.” One of his hands moved to grip my neck. “Except me.”

Everything about his grip, his voice, his very stare was a threat. One I wanted him to carry out.

“You’re mine, baby,” he rasped. “And you’re not playin’ fuckin’ games with your safety, with what’s mine. You’re not doin’ shit like that ever again.”