He is a beast of a man. Six and a half feet of granite muscle, velvet skin, and a mane of unruly black hair that trails down his back. His eyes though… they shine silver like the stars.
Oh, yes, it is his eyes that get me.
I swallow and press myself back against the cold metal because standing in his leather-scented shadow, I feel like the silly little girl that I am.
I’m not going to die tonight.
Apparently, the man before me agrees with that sentiment. “Gonna hurl yourself off that ledge, girl?”
I want to protest him calling me girl, but I don’t. Instead, I open my mouth and snap back. “Do you know what it’s like to have your father call you a waste of life because youwere responsible for killing the one person they loved? To see your mother slowly dying before your eyes because she can’t cope with the death of her son.” He just stands there listening. I continue, “I was stupid and careless and that fucking second took it all from us. He died right away. The thing is, it fucking should’ve been me, but it wasn’t, so yeah… I was planning on doing something that’s going to end it all because I fucking want to. I can’t live like this, knowing that I’m a murderer.”
There’s something cathartic about saying all the shit that’s been on my mind since the accident that took my brother from me.
I don’t know what I expect Steel to do, but he lets out a dismissive snort and arches a black brow at me as if to sayis that all you’ve got?
Maybe it’s the fact that Steel is my father’s enemy. A man who’s spent years trying to tear down all my father’s achievements. My father’s a billionaire. The head of a giant, successful real estate company that eats up the little guys and slams up concrete structures in their wake. He’s also mayor of Helena. A man publicly lauded as a success, but in private he’s ruthless and power hungry.
Donovan Harris never saw me. He never wanted me. Even before the accident, he hated me like he hates that the one person standing in his way between complete domination of this town is a dirty biker, the leader of the notorious club that’s done more good for Helena than my father ever has. I never gave the MC much thought, but tonight it seems like we’re on the same side. At least when it comes to my father.
I shrink up against the cold metal of the tower, oddly thrilled and afraid all at once. When I drag air into my lungs, it’s infused with his scent. The scent of a man, when allI’ve known my entire life is boys. Stupid boys, boys my age, boys who pretend to be men but are really nothing more than a speck of insignificance, a lost child themselves, at heart. Men like my father.
Men who aren’t men at all.
“I know who you are, darlin’, and I know what happened. You don’t wanna do this. Seriously. That fall ain’t high enough to kill you. Don’t take the chance. You want to do it? I’ll pass you my gun, so you can do it right. But if it’s just that bone-eating grief you feel, sorrow that feels like it’s gonna rip you in half, believe me, I’ve had enough of that in this lifetime to know two things. The first is that it hurts like hell for a long fucking time. The second is that one day it won’t. And I know a third—you’re no murderer. What happened was an accident, and you’ll feel that guilt, carry it with you always, but you’re smart. One day, shit’ll get better. You’ll leave this shithole town, and you’ll carry all of it with you, and you’ll be thanking me for risking my ass to come up here and pull you off this fuckin’ tower.”
He pauses. Waits. He waits so long that everything inside of me crumbles. He is right. I don’t really want to do this. It just hurts so fucking much.
“I don’t have anyone,” I say on the verge of a whimper. “Liam was all I had.”
Steel extends a hand. He wears a huge metal skull ring that winks silver in the moonlight.
I shake my head so hard that wispy blonde strands of my hair coat my cheeks, which I’m shocked to find are wet. I didn’t think it was possible to cry anymore, but my eyes just leaked on their own. Like a tap that needs to be shut off and fixed because it keeps flooding and ruining everything.
“Trust me, darlin’, you go out tonight, this might be it.”
“I don’t believe in heaven or hell,” I sneer. “Not anymore. No god would let my brother die like that. He never hurt anyone. He was the kindest person I knew. I’m not doing this shit so that I’ll see him again. I know I fucking won’t. I’m just so tired.”
And I was. Exhausted straight down to my bleeding soul.
Steel nods in apparent understanding, but he leaves his hand outstretched. “I promise you one day you won’t feel that way. I know what it’s like—got my brothers and daughter to pull me through that shit—so you just have to find a way. Find your strength because I know you have it.”
My mind conjures up an image of Steel’s daughter. She’s three years younger than me, she was in Liam’s class at school. His girl’s as raven-haired as he is, and pretty, with pale skin and huge pale gray eyes like her dad. She always dresses in black, so the kids at school whisper behind her back. They call her ‘the reaper’. She is also partially deaf, and talks a little strangely, which is another reason they whisper about her. Not that she can hear, but she can read lips like a pro. One wrong word and I’m sure kids think they’ll be fed to some huge, hungry, pissed off biker. They’re probably not wrong either. Liam was never mean to her. He was never mean to anyone. Ever.
“You can do this, Leah. Take my hand.”
Steel smiles like he doesn’t want to scare me, and it makes me realize just how perfect those lips are. Gorgeous lips set into a hard, brutally masculine face. His nose is strong, but has a slight hook at the bridge, a dead giveaway that it has been broken a time or two. His cheekbones are prominent too, high and sharp, but his cheeks aren’t hollow or gaunt, so somehow,they suit him. He has a strong jaw, square like the rest of him and coated with a thick growth of black stubble that matches the wild cascade of black hair that travels past his shoulders.
I glance towards the edge of the tower and take a tiny step forward, away from his hand. Apparently, it’s the wrong thing to do because before I can blink or take another breath, he moves like a blur, and I’m carted up against a wall of solid muscle. Strong arms wrap around my shoulders and back.
At that moment, I know.
The pain of being claimed is agonizing. The way Steel holds me, one huge hand with the thick, powerful fingers cupped at the base of my neck, over my hair, the other wrapped around my back, left little doubt of anything else. It breaks me, shatters me. And then he looks down at me as he tilts my head up. He destroys me in ways I didn’t even know I could be destroyed and that promise of it all is my undoing.
We’re united in this moment. Tied up together by destiny’s strings. By the fucking universe. And who am I to fight against what everything I have never believed in has already decided for me? I might be young and naive. I might not have slept for days. I might be soaked in grief. But I can sense it. Like straddling two worlds—the living and the dead—have given me wisdom I didn’t have before.
Steel stares back at me with those piercing gray eyes, and when he leans forward and places a hot kiss to my forehead, it’s like a benediction.
“You’re smart,” Steel says, his breath touching my lips. “Spread those wings and fly, and I don’t mean off the edge of this fucking tower. You got me? You’re gonna hang on because you’re a spitfire. You might’ve been raised by the kind of parentsyou got, but you’re not them. You’ll never be them. Finish school and you’re free.”
