Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC 5)

I glared up at Lucky. “What am I wearing, and how did I get here?”

“Well, you got here because I carried you in here. Lay off the candy, why don’t you? You’re fucking heavy,” he deadpanned. “You crashed on the way back and weren’t waking up. I knew you were alive ’cause I took your pulse. And did the mirror thing with the breathing. But I wasn’t too hot on bringing you out of that shit ’cause it was obvious you needed it. Didn’t think you’d want to sleep in the dress that you hated, so I put you in my tee. Promise I didn’t look. Much.” He didn’t even have the decency to look sheepish, grinning from ear to ear.

I threw the covers back so I could stand toe to toe with him. I had planned on giving him a piece of my mind, but I hit a hiccup when my vision went black and everything went kind of sideways.

A strong hand gripped my arm, stopping my descent.

“Fuck, Becky. You okay?” Lucky’s voice lost all hint of humor as he yanked me closer to his body so he could grasp my chin.

I blinked away the stars and tried to shrug out of his grip, which was kind of impossible considering his hands were like vises and I was still struggling to chase off vertigo. “I’m fine,” I lied.

His frowning face came into focus. “When was the last time you ate? You were in stasis last night so you missed my delicious dinner, and I didn’t see you indulge in a bite of any road snacks yesterday, apart from the chocolate you shoved in your face to stop yourself from licking my muscles.”

It took me a second to recover from his last sentence, but I managed. “I had coffee when I got here.”

He frowned. “Coffee doesn’t count as a food group.”

“In my world it does.”

“Jesus, firefly, you need to take care of yourself.” His voice was hard. “You’re not fuckin’ invincible, you know.”

I found enough balance to yank out of his grasp. “Trust me, I know.”

We stared at each other for a long moment and I was sure he was going to address the elephant in the room, but then his face changed. “Let’s go. You’ll be treated to what most people usually have to pledge their firstborn children for.” He paused dramatically. “My chocolate chip pancakes.”

“Chocolate chip pancakes?” I repeated. My gaze traveled his muscled and tattooed body once more. “Is this a Freaky Friday situation? Are you actually a forty-year-old housewife who crotchets and somewhere in suburbia a woman is wearing an apron and cursing and throwing knives at her husband?”

Lucky chuckled deeply, sending little shivers down my spine. “Nope, I’m just a very complex man. There’s more to me than meets the eye.” He winked, then turned his back, walking from the room. “Pancakes in twenty, so get that hot ass showered and dressed. You can keep the tee,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“I don’t want your smelly shirt,” I called after him.

I inhaled once more. I was totally keeping the tee.

“Now you’re just fucking with me. That’s not a word,” I said.

Lucky glanced up, grinning. “It is a word.”

I quirked my brow. “Use it in a sentence.”

He didn’t even blink. “I, the king of Scrabble, used the word ‘muzjiks’ to kick Becky, the poor little Scrabble peasant, out of the running for supreme ruler.”

We were playing Scrabble. Fucking Scrabble. And I was enjoying it. Despite the fact that Lucky was an absolute menace at the game and so far had used three words that I didn’t even know existed in the human language. He showed me via an online dictionary that they did indeed.

I gave him a look.

“Okay, muzjiks were called Russian peasants under the tzar,” he said with a straight face.

I gaped at him. “You hustled me. At Scrabble. You hustled me.”

He shrugged. “I’m in it to win it, baby. No place for morals in board games.”

I froze just a little at the term of endearment and the casual use of it. No doubt it was offhand, and he most likely called every girl he banged by that name. I’d had my fair share of guys use it, most likely when they forgot my name. But this was different, especially doing something so domestic, so intimate. Especially after the day we’d had.

It was a good day.

I hadn’t expected it.

Good days were few and far between in my life, even more scarce since I’d decided to self-medicate. Totally absent since I’d decided to stop self-medicating. But defying the odds, junk didn’t ruin the day for me. Sure, the craving lurked under my skin like a constant itch that only one thing could scratch, but I managed it. And without wanting to throw up or scream or murder someone.