Then I looked up from his bleeding torso to where his head was illuminated by the overhead lights. My body jerked as if someone had just shocked me, making me shudder down to my very bones. I’d expected this man to be unconscious. He’d been lying motionless in the middle of an abandoned parking lot, bleeding. He was one of the Sons of Templar. They were hardcore badasses. I’d figured if he was conscious, he would’ve already sewn himself up with a toothpick and some dental floss.
He was not unconscious. He was laying there, piercing eyes open, staring at me. Staring into me, it seemed. I sucked in a breath that froze the insides of my lungs. The chill helped. Something inside of me calmed, stilled.
“You’re going to be okay,” I told him in little more than a whisper. “I’m going to take care of you.”
Something moved in his eyes, something that made my skin twitch. Something that shouldn’t have been in the eyes of someone bleeding so much. And I definitely shouldn’t have been having any kind of reaction to the man except for shock and fear.
I swallowed.
Get it together, Freya. You don’t want this guy dying because you were too busy salivating over his intense gaze and his sculpted cheekbones.
It dawned on me then that my hand was still lying flat on his chest. Not pressing against the bleeding wound like I was pretty sure it was supposed to be. Holding my breath, I moved my hand to where the bleeding seemed to be coming from. My stomach lurched slightly as warm liquid coated my hand. I didn’t know why I’d expected it to be cold. This was the stuff that had—just moments ago—been running through this man’s veins, keeping him alive.
Keep it together.
Keeping my eyes glued to his, I used my free hand to reach blindly into my purse, looking for my phone.
“I’m going to call—”
“No cops,” he grunted, his hand darting quickly to circle around my wrist.
I blinked. Not only in reaction to the steel behind his words but also at the pressure around my wrist. He was holding it tight, to the point of pain. To the point where, if he held much longer and much tighter, I’d bruise.
His eyes glittered with something beyond pain. Something dangerous, but they were beautiful. One green and one blue. I’d never seen someone with eyes like that before. Then again, I’d never seen someone bleeding from a knife or gunshot wound before, which was what I mentally told myself to focus on.
“If not the police then we need an ambulance,” I argued, his hand still around my wrist. My other hand was pressing into his bleeding wound.
The man’s jaw was hard, taut with pain, a thin sheen of sweat covering his face. “Ambulance means hospital. Hospital means cops. No ambulance.”
Fuck.
He was still gripping my wrist, and I knew that he wasn’t going to let me go until I agreed. I also knew that the leather he wore meant that disobeying his commands would mean trouble for me. A heck of a lot more trouble than I was already in.
I nodded once. “Okay, no ambulance,” I conceded.
His grip relaxed on my wrist, but he did not let it go entirely.
My mind should not have been focusing on the fact my skin prickled beneath his grip. And not in an entirely unpleasant way.
“No ambulance. I can’t leave you bleeding here, though, so I’ll take you home,” I decided.
And just like that, I had invited the worst kind of trouble into my life. Into my home.
HADES
It was all my fucking fault.
I hadn’t seen her as a threat. Fuck, my entire job, my entire life was about identifying threats and eliminating them. And I was very fucking good at my job. There was no place for morality, mercy, or feelings of any kind. I’d learned that the only way you could, the fucking hard way.
For years, I only cared about my brothers. Even caring about them proved dangerous considering how common an early grave was in our lifestyle. Death was a part of being a member of the Sons of Templar MC. Which was just how I liked it. Loved it. Ending a life meant nothing to me. It made me feel alive. Just barely.
That’s what I was right now. Barely fucking alive. Because somehow, I’d found a shred of my humanity. Because of her. The memories of her. Of what we had been. Whatever the fuck.
Sure, I knew who she was now. She was the female version of me. Which might’ve worked in our minds but not so much in reality. We’d initially been friends, tried fucking each other, and now we were something close to enemies. I’d heard it all, about a scorned woman and how they should be feared, but I wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. And everyone was afraid of me.