His dark gaze shot back up to mine, and I felt it in my core.
“I am covered in blood,” he agreed, voice rough. Brutal. “Always will be.”
I blinked slowly as the tenor of his voice settled over my skin, electrifying every inch of it. “Whose blood are you covered in right now?” I asked, my own voice shaking.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t move a muscle. “A dead man’s.”
I flinched at the simple and emotionless response. I also read between the lines. He was wearing another man’s blood. A dead man’s. And it was not a dead man he’d tried to help, tried to save before he died. No, this was a man he’d killed.
But was I surprised? I’d known Gage was dangerous from the start. And not just because of his bike, his cut, the club he belonged to, but because of his eyes. I’d seen it. The death in them.
I should’ve recoiled at the mere fact that I was being touched by a murderer. That my crisp white pajamas, my crisp white life, were being stained with a murdered man’s blood.
So why wasn’t I?
“Who was he?” I asked, my voice small but not shaking as it should’ve been. I should’ve been terrified that he was so large he could snap me in two. That he was covered in blood. That it wasn’t the first time he’d killed someone, if the still and resigned tone to his voice was anything to go by. And it wouldn’t be the last.
His eyes changed, swirled, his body taut, humming. Something flickered over his iron features—surprise, perhaps. Maybe he didn’t expect me to be asking questions like that. Not screaming. Not fighting.
I was surprised too.
“Does it matter?” he replied finally. It was a challenge, his gaze. His question. It was the crossroads where I was going to be forced to make a choice that would either change—maybe destroy—my life beyond repair, or would yank me back into my safe and boring existence with only the lingering aftertaste of chaos on my tongue.
I thought on it.
Yeah, it did. It really fricking mattered. This was a person’s life. I was going to take an educated guess and say the person wasn’t good. They likely swam in the underbelly of society, committed sins against that same society. Because I was taking the same educated guess in thinking that Gage didn’t kill innocent people—if there were any of those left anymore. That he wasn’t some kind of true monster who killed without conscience.
Or maybe that was just a prayer.
A prayer that no god would ever answer. Because I was looking at a man who had abandoned faith, and faith had abandoned him. Prayers weren’t heard here. No way were they answered.
Or maybe this was the dark answer to something I didn’t even know I’d been asking for. Something I’d been too afraid to crave. Someone I was too afraid to crave.
But no matter what, murder was murder. And it mattered. Because I wasn’t a person who lived in the underbelly of society and regularly stained my clothes with blood. I wasn’t used to violence. And I wasn’t suited for it. This life would chew me up and spit me out. This life would destroy me.
This man would destroy me.
So I needed to say yes, that it did matter, and walk down that fork in the road that promised safety and order.
“No,” I whispered. “No, it doesn’t matter.”
That time there wasn’t just a flicker of surprise. Gage’s entire body flinched at my words.
But I didn’t let him speak. Didn’t let myself think. I went up on my tiptoes and pressed my mouth to his so I wouldn’t have to hear any more ugly truth. So there was nothing else stacking up as to why I should be running from things that were going to destroy me, not kissing them.
But I wasn’t kissing them.
Because the second my lips pressed to Gage’s, my actions stopped.
He froze for about a millisecond, one I was able to recognize because our kiss gave way to another cliché—time stopping. Everything seemed to move in slow motion between the moment my lips touched his and the small pause before he started to well and truly destroy me.
My heart was a roar in my ears, every part of my skin tingling with electricity, fear, excitement. Desire pooled in my stomach.
And then I couldn’t recognize any of my feelings as a low growl in the back of Gage’s throat drowned the thundering of my heart.
His mouth opened to me, and any control I had over the kiss disappeared as he clutched my hip with one hand and tore into my hair with the other, yanking our bodies together as he attacked my mouth with brutal ferocity.
The kiss was madness. There was only one way to describe it.
A fall into insanity.