He yanked me to his chest. “In an ideal world, a woman like you would never be put in danger. She would have a man who wasn’t at all like me to protect her from it. But it’s not an ideal world, so you’re gonna be in danger. I’ll try to protect you from it—I’ll die tryin’—but you need some danger to survive. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not like the other men in this club in a number of ways. My thoughts on what our women should and shouldn’t be allowed to do is one of those ways. Demons don’t discriminate between gender. So women should be able to fight their battles. They bleed the same as men, so it stands to reason that they can cut just as well too.”
I blinked. “So you’re a feminist?” I joked.
He chuckled. “I’m a realist, babe. Don’t believe in wrapping my woman in cotton wool for the world. Mostly because as soon as I close the doors, I’m gonna rip off that wool and put her in a fuck of a lot more danger than the world could.” His eyes glowed and my stomach tightened.
“So, the article?” I probed after getting my fluttering stomach under control.
“Proud as fuck of that, Will,” he murmured against my mouth. “My baby excels at everything you put your mind to. Not exactly a fan of you going behind my back to research the story, but I get it. This was your dragon to slay. Fuck if I want to spear every single one of them. I know better. You gotta fight your own battles. With words, that’s okay. Gets any more real than that, I’ll be fucking tanning your hide, you put that beautiful body in danger without me by your side. Because I’ll let you battle, babe. I’m not built to crush you like that. My only condition is that I’m standin’ beside you when you do.”
And that was that.
Until I realized I hadn’t asked him why he wasn’t worried about retaliation—on the small chance that a drug dealer did read a small-town paper.
I found out soon enough.
Some couples did Sunday brunch.
Gage and I did Sunday bomb making.
No joke.
It wasn’t every week, obviously. Gage would be on some kind of watch list if he was making and using bombs every week. I was surprised he wasn’t already.
But we went out to his little abandoned warehouse almost every week, bomb or no bomb, because there was a kind of serenity in the absolute solitude of it all. And there was a sickening satisfaction at being able to scream in the wide-open country air as Gage fucked me on his motorcycle. Or chained up in the warehouse—yes, chained up—or any of the other places we were discovering.
So I always felt a sick kind of excitement riding out there, the bike vibrating beneath me, my arms around Gage. He almost always rested his hand atop mine, which of late was resting lower than his midsection.
Much lower.
He had seemed off that morning, and it only intensified when we dismounted. He took my helmet from me and laid it on the seat of the bike, then snatched my face in his hands.
“You know how I said I want to be able to stand beside you while you fight your battles?” he asked. “Because I know you’ve got the strength to fight them your way?”
I nodded the small amount I could.
He gestured to the warehouse with his chin. “What’s in there is me asking you to stand beside me while I battle. For the both of us.”
“Okay,” I said immediately.
He jerked slightly, as if surprised. “You don’t even know what’s in there.”
“I don’t need to,” I told him honestly, fear curling in my stomach like a snake. Fear that would’ve stopped me before but now only fueled me. “I know what’s here.” I tapped my finger above his chest. “That’s all that matters.”
“Fuck, I love you,” he growled, then brought his mouth brutally down on mine, unyielding in his ferocity.
It was hard to breathe afterward, let alone walk unaided, so I let him drag me into the warehouse. It was only when I saw what—actually who was inside that I regained all of my faculties very quickly. And I tried to snatch my hand from Gage’s.
He obviously didn’t let me do it, his hand tightening around mine to the point that I thought it’d bruise if I continued my struggle.
So I stopped.
Took a deep breath.
Stared at the man in front of me.
The man tied to a chair in front of me,
The man who’d sold my brother the drugs that killed him.
“That’s why you weren’t worried about retaliation,” I murmured, eyes on the man. “Because you had him here.”
His clothes were filthy, ripped. I didn’t know if that was a result of his kidnapping or part of the uniform drug dealers wore. Because he didn’t look like he had been beaten at all.