And never worn them before. It had been a rare impulse purchase at the mall.
Because I didn’t think I was the person to wear lace-up, blush-pink suede booties.
Because I’d never thought I was the person to feel at home pressed into one of the craziest bikers in Amber. The biker she belonged to. The biker she’d had sex with moments after he confessed to murder.
I would’ve said such a thing was impossible.
But Gage was impossible.
So I did ride on the back of his motorcycle to dinner at Valentines.
He didn’t speak to me when we pulled up, just rested his hands lightly on my hips once I’d climbed off, kept me rooted in place while his eyes ran over the V-necked cami underneath my blush pink jacket. It was black silk with a lace trim, the lace covering the fact that it dipped way low.
Another thing I didn’t think I’d wear.
Didn’t think a man as sinfully hot as Gage would be gazing at it with pure and filthy hunger.
And he was.
Of course, that was when my grandmother pulled up.
I was glad, because I loved my grandmother and her company. And because it meant I could exhale with the moment broken.
But I wasn’t broken.
Not in the way Gage’s gaze promised.
And I wanted to be.
I wanted him to break me in.
But he didn’t.
Instead he listened to my grandmother’s crazy story about “that time at Studio 54” as we walked into the restaurant, pointedly ignoring me, apart from the fact that his strong hand was wrapped around mine for the entire journey to the table. Then it rested on my thigh as soon as we sat down.
For the entire dinner.
He ate with one hand just so he could keep the other on my leg. Normally the lapse in table manners would’ve gotten to me, because my father had stressed the importance of such things. And because it was what my ‘safe’ men had. The set of skills utilized by those living within the confines of a logical society.
But something as menial as proper table manners at a nice restaurant didn’t mean much at all when he’d murdered a man the night before.
Obviously they didn’t mean anything to me either, because I’d known he’d murdered a man and I was letting him have dinner with my grandmother. Letting him keep his hand tightly gripping my thigh.
Loving the thought that I’d have fresh bruises in that spot.
He wasn’t exactly the most articulate of company—definitely not to me—but he had engaged my grandmother in his version of polite conversation, which of course meant he used the word ‘fuck’ as a comma.
That did not bother my grandmother.
In fact, it amused her greatly.
Gage himself seemed to both amuse and impress her.
As did the club, when she asked about the leather at his back and what it represented.
I expected him to give her the sanitized version. This was my grandmother, after all. And we were both ‘civilians’ and not sanctioned to know too much information about the club. I knew because Niles had tried for years to get Lucy to do a piece on the Sons of Templar. She never had. They were family.
Her loyalty was ironclad, and despite her position ‘on the inside,’ which could’ve taken her right to the top, she didn’t use it. It said a lot about her. But I also thought it said a lot about the club that everyone thought was a gang full of murderers and lowlifes.
The past, present, and the future were all leading reasons why I thought Gage would give my grandmother the publicity statement that they were just a club of motorcycle enthusiasts and mechanics.
But Gage didn’t give way to reason.
And he wasn’t about publicity statements.
He was about the truth.
No matter how ugly.
“Club started as a place for disenfranchised Army vets to find a home. A family. Somewhere that made sense when they realized the freedom they’d fought for, their friends had died for, didn’t exist,” he said, just after our meals had been delivered. He’d put down his utensils down in order to give Grandma his full attention. “So they made their own freedom. Away from the bullshit life that had no place for the damaged.” His hand at my thigh tightened as he paused, as the words out of his mouth described not just the men from the past but the man sitting right next to me.
The damaged man.
The dangerous man.
The one I was falling for.
Or maybe I’d already fallen. Hit the ground, shattered at the bottom, and now I was just waiting for him to pick me back up.
“Freedom isn’t cheap,” he continued, eyes still on my grandmother, but every bit of his energy was focused on me. I knew because my entire body was focused on him, despite the fact that I was making a serious effort to focus on toying with the straw in my drink.