Gage’s eyes darken dangerously, but the light in their depths is like a candle flickering in the darkness, soft and alluring and more powerful than a room full of lights.
“She had something of her own. She had you.”
I have to squeeze my eyes shut to stem another tide of tears. I have no idea where they’re coming from. I haven’t cried in a long time. I was afraid that if I started, I’d never be able to stop, and it seems like I was right. I have an ocean locked up inside of me and it’s spilling over the barricades I’ve built, even after the furious storm abated.
“It still wasn’t her fault. I made my own choices.”
Gage’s hands grip my shoulders, so roughly that his fingers dig into my skin right through my cardigan. He shakes me. Hard. My neck snaps back and forth and I nearly bite my tongue in half. My eyes fly open and I stare at him, shocked.
“No. None of that was your fault. None of it. It didn’t matter how old you were. He was a sick bastard who took something he had no right to take. He drugged you, raped you, and left his sadistic mark on you. He should have been put the fuck down. Who knows how many other women he’s harmed. Fucker probably tortured animals as a kid.”
His words leave me ice cold inside.
In all the years that I’ve thought about what happened. In all the years I’ve spent fighting, trying not to remember, I never thought about that. About what he could have done because Inever told a soul. About how many other women there might have been. Victims, just like me. Women who are too ashamed to tell someone. Anyone. Ashamed because they were raped. Ashamed because they don’t know what happened in those black hours of stolen time. Ashamed because they were branded, made an outcast and an undesirable with that single word inked so roughly and crudely into their flesh and into their souls. Ashamed. And afraid.
“You- you don’t understand,” I stammer, tears clogging my throat. I swallow hard, determined to get the words out. “You have no idea what that fear is like. Fear that he’ll find you. Fear that if you tell someone, anyone, that he’ll come for you. That no one can protect you, not even the police. I didn’t want my father or brothers doing something stupid and going to jail for the rest of their lives because of me. I’d had enough stolen from me already. But more than that, more than the shame, I was afraid. Afraid that he’d go to jail for a couple years. That he’d get off. That he’d come for me, and no one would be able to stop him. To keep me safe. He’d already proved that he could take and take and take, take everything I had and everything I was…”
“Your family would have kept you safe. The police—”
“You don’t know that!” I shove away from Gage, breaking his hold on me. “You don’t know that at all!”
I watch his throat bob as he swallows. All the muscles tense up, the veins throbbing around his Adam’s apple. “You might have been alone then. But not now. Not now, Ami. Now, you have me. You could have a family. A real family. If you wanted it.”
I stare at him dumbly, hardly believing that he’d extend an offer like that. The Riders. I know that they could find thebastard. That they could make him disappear. That even if they didn’t, they could make him pay for what he did and keep me safe.
“I can’t,” I whisper, thinly. “I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to remember. What I want… what I want is to forget.” I sweep my tongue over my bottom lip, my heart hammering wildly when I think about Gage pressing me up against that wall, pinning me with his powerful strength. It should have terrified me, but it didn’t. It thrilled me, especially after what happened to me, but it didn’t. It made me feel powerful. Like a woman. A real person. Before I even know what I’m asking, I hear the words, falling from my own lips. My tongue. My mouth. “Can you make me forget, Gage?”
Chapter 14
Gage
Istare into the pleading eyes of the woman in front of me. A complicated woman. A broken creature that I have no business trying to heal.
If she knew about the black shit storm of rage brewing inside of me, she’d never ask me to heal her. She’d know that I’m incapable of it. What I want to do is find the bastard who dared to lay a hand on her, and any other woman walking this fucking planet, and erase him from existence.
I’ve never killed a man before. Never thought I would, even with The Riders, because we don’t do that kind of shit willingly and the scum Edge and Steel have put down over the years were definitely better off on the wrong side of the turf. For this piece of shit, I could make an exception.
“Gage?” Her voice, so tiny and lost, slams me back into myself.
“No.” I hate that the word, like my voice, wavers. I try again, forcing the pain and the emotion out of my tone. “No. I can’t do that for you, Ami. Nothing can make you forget what happened. Nothing is going to erase the past and the damage he did. I don’t know if there can ever be peace with that kind of shit.”
She’s beautiful with a body made for sin. A born seductress and a temptress. She’s like every creature ever made to tempt a man, from myth and legend. I want her. I fucking want her,and I’m sick of telling myself I don’t. Because I’ve wanted her since the second I saw her. I want her as mine, but I want her to choose it. To realize it and acknowledge it and submit to it.
Her face falls and before fresh tears can spring to her eyes, I take her face in my hands, roughly digging my thumbs into her chin. I force her to look up at me.
“I can’t heal you, Ami. I can’t get inside your head and take out those memories. I can’t take you back to the past to erase what happened. I can’t open you up and stitch up all the bleeding parts of yourself. What I can give you… what I can give you is my strength. The backing of the men who have become my brothers. My club. I can give you my honor and my protection. I can help you fucking see that you were made to be worshipped. That starting from now, I can transform you. That I can help you change how you see yourself, because you are fucking beautiful and you should know it. You should know that not all men are like that. That I would treat you reverently. That any pain I would give you would only be because I want you to know that there’s pleasure in it. Pleasure you can’t imagine. That I… I would do anything to make you feel whole and happy and wanted. With me. I can’t change any of that shit. I can’t erase it. I can give you a future. A fresh start at all of it.”
“How?” She shakes her head, her eyes denying me just like her words. “How can you promise me those things? You don’t even know me. We’re just strangers.”
“Because I want you,” I snarl. She stares back at me with those wide, terrified eyes, but I know she’s not afraid of my strength, or my touch. She’s scared of the kind of pain that people cause each other, the kind of wounding that goes beyond physical. “I don’t fucking understand it myself, but I know that when I’m near you, all I can think of is making you mine.Protecting you. Making you happy. Bringing you pleasure. It might be fucking insane, because it defies logic and sense, but I know you feel it. I know that when I kissed you, you felt it too.”
“That’s just lust,” she snaps. “It’s not real. It doesn’t mean anything.”
My eyes flick down to her chest, where her nipples are beaded through the thin cotton of her dress. When I inhale, I can smell the sharp scent of her arousal. My body reacts like any hot-blooded male. When I was eating her, I nearly came in my fucking jeans, and my cock kicks to life again, wanting to prove her wrong.
“Maybe,” I admit, though it fucking kills me. Literally, since it feels like my balls are currently up in my throat, strangling me. “But I think both of us are too realistic to believe in anything else at first. Or maybe even later. And all feeling, whatever you want to call it, real or not, has to start somewhere.”
“Do you use that line with every girl you’re trying to take to bed?”
