Battles of the Broken (Sons of Templar MC 6)

No, his steps were slow. Measured. Almost painful with the lack of speed in which they brought him toward me. He didn’t let my eyes go the entire time it took to cross my living room and stop in front of me.

He didn’t snatch me into his arms. Didn’t rip at my clothes like I ached to do to him. He didn’t touch me at all, and I almost screamed in the frustration of it.

My body jerked forward as I prepared to pounce on him, to assert myself in a way I never had before.

“Don’t fuckin’ move,” he growled.

My entire body obeyed.

My core pulsated with his command.

His eyes darkened as I snapped back to stillness, the cords of his neck carved from steel, his reaction to my obedience stark and immediate.

I wasn’t a submissive.

I wasn’t submitting to Gage.

I was surrendering to him.

And he liked it.

He loved that.

But something mingled with the sex in his gaze. Something that had been underneath the cold and cruel man who had been present tonight.

The man who wasn’t entirely Gage.

The man who was both something more and less than the Gage on the surface. The Gage I itched to know.

“You don’t drink. Alcohol. Coffee. Fuckin’ soda.”

It was a statement. And at the same time, there was a question in it, even if there was no inflection at the end.

I was beginning to understand that was how Gage worked. He didn’t ask questions. He watched. Came up with his own answers, and then, if he wanted to know more, he’d all but force more out of you.

It was becoming apparent that he didn’t need to force anything out of me.

Not even my heart.

It had been his for longer than I cared to admit.

Longer than was sensible—two freaking weeks, if you wanted to get specific.

But I didn’t know about his.

Because I may have known that one thing about Gage and his questions that weren’t questions, but that didn’t mean I knew everything.

Or anything.

I still didn’t know what those brutal scars on his arms were from. But just like Gage didn’t ask questions, he didn’t answer them either. He didn’t even invite them.

But even though he was unwilling to give me something, anything, or everything, there he was forcing everything out of me.

And there I was letting him.

“How do you know that?” I asked, trying to delay my answer. But I couldn’t delay forever, and Gage wouldn’t wait forever.

His gaze was unyielding. “Notice shit about people,” he said, voice still hard and empty. “Handy, knowin’ how they tick. Especially if I’m plannin’ on destroying them. Considering you’re not people, and I’m makin’ it my life’s mission that no one—including me—destroys you, I notice more shit.”

Holy. Crap.

The words screamed in my mind as the silence after them screamed around us.

What the freaking heck did I say to that?

“No, I don’t drink soda, coffee, or alcohol,” I responded to his question, cowering out of doing anything else.

Like jump him.

I was also trying to leave it at that, draw out his curiosity, make him show something more than his eyes betrayed.

Make him ask me a fricking question.

So maybe I knew something about him.

Like he thought I was something to him.

Something enough to change the formula he had with every single other person in the world.

But he didn’t.

He just watched me, eyes drawing out my soul like venom from wound.

“I keep away from anything mind-altering,” I said, proverbially blinking first.

He raised his brow. “Soda is mind-altering?”

I shrugged, picking at a loose thread on my pants while my mind began to pick at the loose threads of my soul.

No, while Gage picked and yanked at those threads with little more than an eyebrow raise and an intoxicating stare.

I could’ve told him I didn’t like soda. Or that drinking my calories didn’t line up with my diet. Or that there were studies showing how sugary and caffeinated drinks accelerated tooth decay. The increased risk of diabetes. Or any of the number of excuses I’d memorized and rattled off to whoever decided to comment on the fact that I didn’t drink coffee or soda.

Like it was the same as being a murderer.

Or worse.

Murderers were much more common in our country than people who didn’t drink stimulants, something to keep them awake, alert, get them through the day. Or get them through their life.

I had so much practice at my many excuses, I almost fooled myself.

Almost.

I might’ve been able to fool Gage, if I’d wanted to.

But I didn’t want to. “My twin brother, David, died of a drug overdose when we were twenty-one years old,” I said, my voice flat. Empty.

I was surprised.

Because it was the first time I’d said it out loud. Ever. I’d excelled at avoiding all conversations about family and siblings when I had to exchange pleasantries with people. And since both David and I had somewhat kept under the radar at high school, then gone off to college out of state, not keeping in touch with the few friends we had—we had each other and that was enough—it wasn’t really ‘big’ news in Amber.