Battles of the Broken (The Sons of Templar MC Book 6) Read online

  Like let a biker covered in blood fuck me on the floor of my loft.

  Yeah, that could be considered dangerous.

  “Baby?” Gage murmured, bracing himself on his elbows, hovering over me, still inside me. The vibration of his voice traveled downward, like all the way down, and I jerked in pain and pleasure.

  We had only just resumed this position of him on top of me. There had been many in the course of—four, or was it five?—orgasms. We’d been a blur of writhing bodies, my skin rubbing against the harsh fabric of his clothes, consumed with each other, consumed in our pleasure.

  Another thing I didn’t think happened in real life—multiple orgasms. I was sure they were something just dreamed up by someone to make women feel unsatisfied with the single orgasm a man may or may not give them. But I was wrong. My fried brain and ovaries were well aware of how real they were.

  “Mmhmm?” I hummed, lazily blinking.

  “You feel like gettin’ off the floor?” His voice was thick, full of sex, like the very scent of the air around us.

  “Does that mean you’re going to have to get out of me?” I asked dreamily, not even realizing what I was saying until I said it. I didn’t say things like that. I didn’t say anything during sex. Though all the sex I’d had had been in a bed and in missionary position with men who were polite and gentle.

  Gage was not polite.

  Or gentle.

  He had been brutal. From the way he’d spoken to me to the way he’d handled my body. Like he wasn’t scared of breaking me. Like he’d wanted to break me.

  And I’d loved it.

  And I’d loved it loudly.

  Gage froze and my eyes snapped open, fully alert, to see his face painted in an expression I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t the hard and dangerous intensity that had been there when he’d fucked me. That was still there, but it was mixed with something else.

  I didn’t have time to inspect it, because he moved and my legs instinctively went around my hips as he stood, the motion sending more shoots of pleasure along my sensitive nerve endings. Gage felt my reaction, if his hiss of breath was anything to go by. “No, baby, I’m not pullin’ my cock outta you when you ask for me to stay inside in that throaty little voice of yours,” he murmured, brushing his lips against mine as he strode across the short distance to my bedroom.

  My apartment was originally all open plan, but I had a wall erected to section off a modest area to work as my bedroom, large enough for my wrought iron bed, distressed white dresser and a small walk-in closet. I didn’t want the small number of visitors I had having to hang out in my bedroom. Plus, my bedroom was my space. Mine alone. No one had entered it, not even the few men who had taken me to bed. They’d taken me to theirs, not this one. It was an unconscious decision on my part, but I realized it was because I didn’t want a man’s presence in there unless I expected that presence to be permanent.

  And I didn’t even think twice about the fact that Gage was entering my room and what that meant about the permanence of his presence. Especially since he was entering it while still inside me. And I was naked, the remains of my tattered pajamas in shreds on the floor.

  All his clothes, down to his boots, were still on, and he was still wearing his bloodstained white henley and leather cut.

  It should’ve made me feel vulnerable, being naked while he was clothed, and covered in blood. But it didn’t. It excited me.

  He didn’t lay us down on the bed, just stopped, standing in the middle of the room, one hand on my ass, the other at my neck. His cock was still hard inside me. I had known he would have stamina. The pure sex radiating off him the moment I’d seen him told me that.

  I’d never felt so filled. So complete, despite the fact that he’d broken me into pieces.

  “Gotta clean this blood off, Will,” he murmured, eyes never moving from mine.

  I glanced down to see the faint red streaks across my chest. Blood.

  I had someone else’s blood on me. It should’ve sickened me more than it did.

  It didn’t sicken me at all.

  I glanced up, captured in his spell, my body crying out for me to damn myself further, for more of him. There was a hunger inside me I didn’t even realize I had, and it seemed it wasn’t sated, even though my limbs were jelly and I wasn’t sure if I’d survive another orgasm.

  “Later,” I murmured, not recognizing my own voice, functioning purely on my need for him.

  Surviving was overrated.

  “Baby.”

  I had survived.

  Barely.

  Gage hadn’t just taken me to the edge, he’d sent us both plummeting over it. My screams had bounced off the walls. His grunted and cruel demands snaked into the very air of the room. Not only was my bedroom saturated with his presence, it was tattooed with it. It had seeped into the foundation.

  The evidence of the night would never leave. No matter what happened when the sun came up.

  I didn’t want the sun to come up.

  I didn’t want anything, my limbs screaming at me for the rigorous movements of the past few hours. My insides and outsides were aching from Gage’s touch.

  “Lauren.”

  Hair was brushed from where it stuck to my face with the thin sheen of sweat that covered my entire body.

  It soaked through Gage’s henley, the one that was somehow still clinging to his body, attached to those muscles that were made from hot iron.

  I blinked at him as he came into brutal focus, his face carved so it was stark against the backdrop of the room. His eyes were glued to mine, his face blank, full of sharp angles. My own face stung slightly with the evidence of his beard brushing against the skin. The same sensation existed between my thighs, evidence of where his mouth had been, where he had devoured me with abandon.

  I shuddered at the mere thought of it.

  Men had done that before, because it was expected as polite behavior in the bedroom. And because they’d wanted me to reciprocate. I’d let men do it because it was what I was supposed to do. I hadn’t enjoyed it. Ever. I’d felt uncomfortable, self-conscious, and was usually counting down the moments until it was over.

  I had certainly never orgasmed with a man’s mouth on me.

  But I’d never had Gage’s mouth on me.

  And it was not uncomfortable.

  It was explosive.

  Glorious.

  He’d eaten me like a starving man. Devoured me, swallowed my pleasure and my soul at the same time.

  It wasn’t polite. Or expected.

  It was everything.

  Gage’s form tightened with my movement as he slowly pulled out of me.

  I seemed to melt into the mattress without him to keep me solid, his hand at my neck the only thing holding me together.

  The evidence of just how raw and naked our fucking had been slowly leaked out of me, and my entire form stiffened with realization.

  I’d had sex without a condom. More than once.

  Never, not once in my careful and safe life had I done that.

  Never.

  I was on the pill, had been since I was thirteen to regulate my periods, so I wasn’t overly worried about pregnancy, though there was still a chance. I made a note to plot my cycle to make sure there wasn’t even a possibility for me to be pregnant.

  With Gage’s baby.

  I pushed away the strange warmth that came with that thought.

  Because that was insane.

  And I had more pressing matters at hand. Because Gage was not like me. He wasn’t careful or safe. And I doubted his sex life resembled mine in any way whatsoever. The bruises that I guessed would be covering my body would be evidence of that.

  Not that I was worried about the bruises.

  I liked them.

  The dark part of me loved them. Craved more of them.

  “We didn’t use a condom,” I breathed.

  The expression on Gage’s face froze, as did the hand at my hair. He shuttered everything inside him, as i
f he’d only just realized it. It was a look that told me that he never in his dangerous and chaotic life had forgotten to practice safe sex.

  Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

  “Don’t expect you to believe me,” he rasped after a long and uncomfortable silence. “Fuck, I wouldn’t believe me. Very few instances where this word applies to me, Lauren. Only two, in fact. But I’m clean, baby.”

  His eyes flickered with something. Something deep. Something I wanted to swim in, but would likely drown in. I wanted to dive in just the same.

  “Don’t expect you to take me at my word,” he continued, voice brusk. “In fact, I’m gonna insist that you don’t. Give you my papers tomorrow. Proof.” His hand tightened at my neck. “Don’t know if you’ll believe that I’m clean, but believe me when I say that I’d never risk shit with you. Not with you. Never would I ever fucking risk tarnishing you any more than necessary. I won’t keep you safe in most ways, but in making sure I preserve you in the utterly beautiful and healthy state you are now, believe me, I’ll fucking lose a limb to make that happen.”

  The declaration was so fierce it felt like he’d written it in blood.

  Maybe he had. There was blood smeared between the two of us, after all.

  He held himself so tight, so hard that it hurt me just to look at it. So I reached up, covering his hand with mine.

  “I believe you,” I whispered. “I trust you.”

  He flinched. Actually flinched at my reply.

  A long and uncomfortable silence followed those words. Words that were tattooed between us. That meant something pivotal.

  And then he moved, taking me into his arms, my head pounding at the brutal movement.

  “We need to get you clean,” he grunted, walking us out the door and across the living room toward my bathroom. He glanced down at me, his face still shuttered, as if it was a void for all emotion. “As clean as I can make you after that, at least.”

  The words were yanked out of him. Ugly. Full of self-hatred, like he was disgusted at what he’d done to me.

  But my brain was still swirling. Still soft at the edges from everything that had happened. I couldn’t process it all properly. I’d have to store it away for later inspection. Have to figure out a way to show Gage that I wasn’t as clean as he thought I was.

  But there wasn’t enough room for more pain right then.

  He set me on my unsteady feet, holding my hips for a long moment as if he sensed my need for him to anchor me. He kept eye contact the entire time. It was a strange thing, the way he did that. A lot of people—all of my lovers included—couldn’t handle the intimacy of holding on to eye contact. A lot of Eastern cultures believed that a soul could be sucked out from the eyes.

  Of course, in our Western society, we considered ourselves too dictated by science and logic to believe such things. But I’d always thought it was a throwaway from that ‘illogical’ belief when those in our contemporary society always seemed to shy away from constant eye contact, always breaking it when it went past the socially defined norms.

  And I was right.

  Because Gage was sucking out my soul with his eyes.

  And I was letting him.

  All I wanted was his in return. But I reasoned that it was going to be a lot harder than that, because he was more damaged than I was. That became apparent after he turned on my shower and his cut hit the floor. Then he peeled off his henley.

  Then I saw it.

  Saw him.

  Not all of him.

  Not even a majority.

  Just the tip of his proverbial iceberg.

  I may have been out of it, everything about me soft and falling apart at the edges, but the sight of his naked skin once he’d taken off his cut and shirt punctured my mind. It tore through it, brutally yanking me back to stark reality.

  His arms were huge. Muscled. Carved from marble, it seemed. But not smooth and flawless like any kind of polished stone. No, it wasn’t the absolute beauty of his form that jerked me into lucidity. It was the ugly, brutal evidence of what life had done to him, etched into his skin.

  I’d always assumed his arms would be enveloped in the same tattoos that covered his hands, right up to almost his fingertips. I hadn’t had much of a chance to inspect the designs on his skin, considering every moment with him up until that point didn’t give way for calm inspection. Every moment between us was injected with brutal chaos.

  But now the storm had hit, tore through everything inside me, though there was no evidence of it on the outside. The inside was that same chaos that lurked behind Gage’s eyes.

  That chaos I now knew went so deep that he wore it on his skin. There were tattoos, but most of them were obscured, slightly warped.

  Because of what else decorated his skin.

  Scars ribboned up both his forearms, starting just above his wrist and snaking almost to his shoulders.

  I’d never seen anything like it in my entire life. A road map of pain. Of brutality. Because the puckered and raised skin communicated an almost unthinkable amount of pain to have that evidence carved into your skin. My stomach roiled at the utter agony Gage must’ve experienced to achieve that kind of scarring. On both of his arms. Some patches were fainter than others, and there were small areas of naked, untouched skin, but it was hard to look at. Almost impossible, but I had to. Because it helped me understand that dark emptiness in his eyes. Why I’d found his face, his entire presence something more than the beautiful masculinity people would see if his scars were covered.

  I saw the pain in it because I recognized it.

  Because I wore it on my skin too. It was just invisible.

  He was watching me with that cold and cruel gaze that made him look like a psychopath. That made my intrinsic survival instinct flare up, telling me I was in danger, real and visceral danger.

  He was waiting. When he’d peeled off his shirt, he’d known what he’d be exposing. And now he was challenging me, daring me to do something. I didn’t know what. Likely he expected me to say something. To ask him something. Surely that’s what people had done previously, wanted to point out the most uncomfortable part of his life, make it define him.

  My feet were lead as I pushed them across the tile separating us, through the slowly thickening steam filling the room. Still his eyes were cold, deadly, his entire body wired.

  My fingertips trailed down from the top of his shoulder, slowly, purposefully. He flinched as I did so, as if I was slicing through the flesh, opening the wounds. Every part of him was iron, his entire body shaking with my touch. I knew he was uncomfortable, wanted me to stop. Which was why I kept going.

  I continued, my finger light, my eyes never leaving his. Pain reverberated up my hand, up my arm and all the way to my heart as my fingertip trailed the length of his trauma.

  Then I reached the smooth skin of his hand and I tightened my grip, lacing his fingers with mine, bringing our intertwined hands together to lay a kiss on the top of his. His eyes lost all that cold menace, melting against the heat of his gaze, the naked intensity of it.

  He was still waiting, I knew that. I could see it. He was expecting something. Because when you were disfigured or broken in a way that was obvious to the world, the world asked questions. Did everything it could to make sure there was no way to hide. To forget.

  The world was cruel.

  It made Gage cruel.

  But it wasn’t going to make me cruel.

  So I slowly and purposefully opened the door to my shower, stepping into it and bringing Gage with me. His body was anchored to the spot for a moment, not prepared for me to move, to yank him to the shower to wash off what cruelty I could.

  But then he moved.

  And he moved.

  The shower door was closed, water cascading off our naked bodies, coloring pink at the drain as the blood washed off us.

  Gage’s hands were at my neck, yanking me to him in the small space so our soaking bodies were plastered together. His mouth was a
ttached to mine in the next moment, the kiss different than the ones we’d shared before. It wasn’t soft or tender. I knew Gage couldn’t give me soft or tender, had guessed it when I saw that coldness, that darkness behind his eyes. I was certain now seeing the scars on top of his skin.

  But I had my own scars too.

  And though they couldn’t be seen, I realized they made it so I didn’t want soft or tender.

  So I sank into the kiss.

  But it was more than just a kiss.

  It was Gage showing me that I’d tilted his world too. That I’d shaken it to the core.

  It was a harbinger of the destruction we’d bring one another.

  Eight

  A knocking woke me up.

  Or more accurately, a banging, since the sound traveled all the way from the door, into my bedroom and punctured what had been, until that moment, a pretty deep slumber.

  The knocking teased me out of sleep, and then the incredible heat covering every inch of my body fully woke me. It took me a couple of moments to realize the source of that heat. To remember who was holding me. Why every square inch of my body ached underneath the grip of the scarred arms atop mine.

  Gage.

  He was in my bed. He was cuddling me. My chin was using his muscled pec as a pillow, my leg cocked up and slung across his body. I was draped over him, my naked body pressing into his skin. In his sleep, he didn’t seem to be complaining, holding me so tight against his chest it was hard to breathe. How it was the knocking and not the struggle to inhale that woke me up, I had no idea. Or maybe I did. My body was willing to forgo oxygen in order to have Gage.

  That, of course, was insane.

  But it was also right.

  Because had there not been a knocking at the door, I wouldn’t have even entertained the idea of moving. Who needed their full lung capacity anyway?

  I’d always considered Gage to be hard. Everything about him was. His eyes. The angles of his face. Whatever darkness and evil lay behind his eyes. His muscles, sculpted from pure stone, the scar tissue rippling across those muscles, melding into them with a permanence that showed his demons would always live on his skin.