Battles of the Broken (Sons of Templar MC 6)

His eyes flared and the knife paused for a moment more. Then it tore through my panties and I was standing there naked, exposed, and bleeding in front of Gage. He lifted the knife and licked the small amount of my blood off the steel, not breaking eye contact with me the entire time.

I watched, rapt, hypnotized and terrified by the man—the monster—in front of me.

The knife moved down to the sheath as he grabbed one of items from my hands.

“You trust me, Will?” he asked, stretching the blindfold over my head.

“Yes,” I said instantly.

His eyes flickered with menace. “You shouldn’t.”

And then everything went black.

My first instinct was to panic. My vision had been taken from me, and I stood naked in front of the most dangerous man I’d ever met. Instead of fighting that panic, I gave in to it, let it sink into my bones.

“We’re all monsters,” Gage murmured, lips against my ear. His entire body pressed against my naked skin, the rough leather of his cut grating against me.

The handcuffs left my grip.

My heartbeat intensified.

My breathing shallowed.

My pussy clenched with utter desire. Utter pleasure. Already, I could feel my orgasm building within me, threatening to level me.

“There is a small number of people who will look in the mirror and recognize they are one,” Gage continued—not Christian, no, this was still Gage—the rattle of the handcuffs an omen of what he was going to do with them. “The rest of the world won’t believe what they see, so they make up a mask for the world, for themselves, and make excuses.” His hand ghosted between my breasts, his palm atop my heart for a moment before moving to take my nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He tweaked it. Hard.

“Pain is the only way we know we’re alive,” he murmured, letting my nipple go. “It’s the only constant in this world. It’s the only way to make sure we’re living.” A hand circled my neck. “And Lauren, you’re about to find out how alive you are.”

The hand tightened once more, every one of my senses intensified with the theft of my sight. There was no darkness. No abyss. Only Gage. He was the abyss. His hand at my neck, the pain of the grip was the only thing keeping me grounded.

He yanked at me so his mouth landed on mine, brutally laying waste to my soul with his violent kiss. I matched it with violence of my own, until blood from both of us flooded into our mouths.

I lifted my hands to tear through his hair, the skin of his back, to hold on tighter.

The loss of his mouth was immediate, and I stumbled forward slightly as he stepped back and there was no longer anything keeping me grounded.

“No,” Gage’s growl came from somewhere in the darkness. “There’s no fucking touching me.”

He paused, and I floated in the nothingness of the silence. Pressure circled my wrist as he dragged me across the room. Disorientation had already set in; I was in my home of ten years, but somehow I had no idea where he was leading me.

I guessed he was taking me to the bedroom, though it felt like the opposite way based on the hard floor under my feet and not the plush carpet of my bedroom.

We stopped and the grip left my wrist.

“Lie down.”

I immediately complied with the harsh command, though slowly, because I didn’t have anything to hold onto and Gage didn’t offer me anything. Chivalry may or may not have been dead, but it hadn’t even been born with this version of Gage.

The wood floor was cold against my flaming skin, a shock against my sensitive nerve endings.

The thump of his boots against the floor were earth-shattering rumbles in my sightless world. Beads of sweat rolled down my temples as my heart beat with excitement and fear.

Pain exploded at the back of my head as Gage bunched my hair into his fist and yanked me back so his teeth brushed my exposed neck, then moved up to my earlobe.

“You should be a fucking sin,” he hissed.

I relished the pain, the violence. It hurt, but I loved it. The wetness between my legs was proof of that.

“You are a sin,” he said from above me, releasing my hair. “But I’m the worst sinner of them all.” The handcuffs rattled, and I twitched as I felt the sound in my core.

“On. Your. Back,” he bit out.

Shaking, I complied.

I was lying naked, blindfolded, on my floor.

It was wrong.

It should’ve been demeaning.

But it wasn’t.

“Hands above your head.”

I did as asked.

Gage clasped my wrists together in one of his hands, the cold steel handcuffs clicking around my wrist and then something metal.

I tried to move.

I couldn’t.

He had cuffed me to the bottom of the banister that ran along the top of my stairs, serving as a barrier from someone falling down them. Now they were serving as an instrument of my torture.