“Love you, Lo.” She leaned in for one more kiss, rubbing her lipstick off my cheek with her thumb before stepping back and looking at Gage, who was standing in front of us, arms crossed.
“You take care of my granddaughter,” she demanded. “And I don’t mean keep her safe. I mean show her a little danger. She’ll show you a little safety.”
And on that, she blew Gage a kiss and sauntered to her car with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible from a woman her age, and in five-inch heels.
But she was kind of like Gage in that respect, making anything and everything possible.
Her car roared into the night at a troubling speed, both of us watching the headlights disappear. The stillness of the night took over, silence heavy and painful between us. My heart splintered my ribs as Gage’s eyes ran over me. I continued to stare at the empty road, too cowardly to meet them. Because I was too terrified to face a goodbye that I knew was inevitable.
But my choices were taken away from me when the dim glow of the moon was blacked out by something much darker than the night.
Gage.
Fingers bit into my hip as the other hand gripped my chin painfully.
I expected him to speak immediately. People who demanded attention in such a brutal and physical way usually did it because they had something urgent to say.
But Gage was not people.
So he didn’t speak. He just stared at me.
Gone was the cold blankness that had been present all night. The cruelty.
There was violence in his gaze, because there was violence in his soul. It roused the part of me he had awakened that night on the side of the road. That he had fed with every touch, every kiss, every brutal grip, every intense gaze, every uttered word.
The part of me that would starve without him.
The part of me that I was terrified of.
Silence yawned on. Silence that was louder than anything I’d ever heard in my life.
“Lauren, get in the fucking apartment. Now,” he ground out, letting me go and stepping back, his body so tight it was shaking.
My body cried out in protest from the loss of his touch. From the loss of his violence. And then my body responded to his order, my brain registering his barely restrained chaos.
So I got in the apartment, taking the stairs nearly two at a time, overcome with fear. With erotic excitement. I expected the slam of my front door to follow me, the thud of motorcycle boots against my stairs to vibrate my bones with the echo of his approach.
But there was only silence. Apart from my rapid heartbeat and shallow breathing, of course.
I made it to the middle of my living room, unsure of what exactly to do with myself without Gage’s order. I wasn’t a submissive. I didn’t want to follow a man’s order. Bend to a man’s will.
But this wasn’t a man.
This was Gage.
And I wasn’t going to bend to his will.
It was going to break me.
Fear clutched my throat at the thought of him not slamming my apartment door. Not entering my apartment along with his fury and violence. Of not controlling my body with his barked and brutal commands.
Maybe that’s why he wanted me in there, so he could roar off into the night and leave without me doing something mortifying like cling to his motorcycle boot and beg him to stay.
I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t.
Because he had been in my life for mere moments, in the grand scheme of things. But there was a lifetime in those moments. A dark and painful one, but one I wanted to live in. Die in.
When had I welcomed such dark thoughts? Or maybe they’d always been there and I hadn’t let them actualize out of fear.
My entire body jerked with the slamming of the door. I blinked as the sound of boots on the stairs crashed into my stomach, stoked the burning fire in my core.
My knees shook.
Gage reached the top of the stairs and his gaze found me. It fricking devoured me. He had pushed his sleeves up, exposing the rippled and scarred flesh of his forearms. His hands were fisted at his sides, veins pulsating within his rippled flesh.
His hair was no longer in the bun that melted my panties the second I saw it. No, it was wild around his face, smooth and messy at the same time, as if he’d been running his hands through it.
My palms itched to clutch it, to fist it while he pounded into me.
His gaze was pure sex.
And pure pain.
His eyes had been doing the same inventory of me as I’d been doing with him, the fire in my body evidence of his stare.
Then he moved.
Not fast and violent like his stare might suggest.