Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC 5)

“First,” he mumbled, kissing my neck, “you need to tell me why we’re out here freezing our balls off.”

I sucked in a breath as his hand pushed all the way in, cupping me. “Only one of us out here has balls,” I whispered. “You’re feeling the evidence of that right now.”

Lucky chuckle and it vibrated in my ear. “Sounds like you’re evading the question, firefly.”

I sighed as he caressed me. “Sometimes I just need to look at the sky,” I choked out. “See how big it all is. How small I am.”

Lucky’s hand stopped, his body stilling for a moment before he whirled me around, pulling our bodies flush together. “You’re not small, Becky,” he declared. “You take up my entire soul. You’re far from small.”

His words made my trampled heart flutter. “Small’s good,” I told him softly. “’Cause all of that up there”—I gazed up again—“that’s all big, beautiful, magnificent. Infinite for all we know. It makes me realize how small I am. How small my problems are. My pain.” I paused as his hands flexed. “Sometimes I need reminding. Sometimes I need to feel small.”

My words hung in the night air and tumbled up to those very stars.

“I wish I could take that away,” Lucky rasped finally, his voice tortured. “All that pain, all that shit that makes you need to feel small.”

I reached up and stroked his head. “No you don’t. Don’t wish for that. Pain is who I am. It’s who I’ve always been. Without it I wouldn’t know who I’d be,” I whispered.

Lucky leaned forward. “Mine,” he murmured against my mouth.

I smiled a sad smile, even though he couldn’t see it. “Don’t you see? Loving you is the most exquisite pain of all.”

His entire body stilled the moment the words left my mouth. That infinite silence stretched out once more, but it was charged with intensity that rivaled even the star’s magnificence.

“You love me,” he said, the softness of his voice seemed to boom through the open air.

Instead of running from the fear that came with that statement, letting it out into the world instead of holding it captive in my heart, I surrendered to it. To him. And the fear of loving him. “Yeah,” I whispered. “I love you.”

He yanked me close so our foreheads touched. “You love me,” he repeated.

I swallowed. “Do I need to hit you on the side of the head? You’re playing on a loop,” I joked.

His thumb brushed my lips, silencing me. “No. I think I’m done.” He paused. “Those words make everything we’ve been through a little softer at the edges. It’ll never be okay, what happened to you, but at least something’s okay. You and me, babe. The world may be fucked-up—shit, we may be more fucked-up than that twisted world—but that’s okay ’cause you love me. And I love you. Fuck the rest of it.”

I smiled through my tears. “Yeah. Fuck the rest of it.”

He claimed my mouth in the moonlight, brutally and exquisitely. And I didn’t feel so small anymore. In fact, the two of us felt larger than the entire universe.

He pulled back. “Now it’s time for me to fuck you,” he rasped.

And he did. And everything else melted away.

In fairy tales, when the couple exchange the ‘I love yous,’ it’s usually the signal for the world to become all bright and everything be okay.

We’ve established this isn’t a fairy tale.

So it was only right for the world to turn darker, almost completely black after the ‘I love yous’. One day after, to be exact.

We were lulled into a false sense of security, I guessed. Thinking that I’d put a bullet in Carlos’s head and they’d scared off all but one mysterious player in the game that had almost beat me.

Almost.

I’d gotten all smug thinking I’d won. Or at least wasn’t about to be beaten anytime soon.

Then it turned out that one mysterious player could indeed fuck it all up.

“You don’t have to keep trailing me, you know,” I informed Scott as we walked across the parking lot of the clubhouse. It was pretty deserted considering it was a Sunday and most of the big bad bikers were all whipped, having Sunday brunches or whatever.

“I do, and not just because Lucky tells me to and threatens my manhood if I don’t,” he replied. “And not just because I kind of enjoy the perks of hanging out at a strip club.” He grinned and I rolled my eyes. “But ’cause Devlin’s still out there. We might have eliminated all of his partners, and since you snipped our last loose end”—he grinned at me—“he’s most likely crawled back into his cave by now, but there’s still a risk. So I’m here.”

I shrugged. “Your funeral when you die of boredom now that I’m not a junkie or stripper. My life is dangerously monotonous now.”