Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(11)

“No, I’m fine. A couple of bruises,” I declared, trying to let strength leak into my raspy voice.

He raised a brow and didn’t say a word. Instead he gathered me, as gently as anything, into his arms and took me to the sofa.

I was grateful for the fact he deposited me quickly on the sofa. I couldn’t have his hands on me. They were clean. Good. That just made me felt even dirtier.

I only got a short respite as he ran his hands over my body, taking stock of my injuries. His face was marble, his mouth set in a tight line. No amusement was dancing in those hazel eyes. I had taken it away.

I tried to jerk away from his touch. “I’m fine,” I declared.

His eyes met mine. They blazed. “You’re a lot of things. Fine in the sense of being a f*ckin’ knockout. That milky skin being tainted with violence from some f*cker is not fine,” he replied tightly.

I couldn’t think of that right now—what those words meant, that anger. I tore my gaze away from those hazel eyes and regarded my best friend. Asher was crouched in front of her, speaking gently with a worried face.

He would protect her. Protect her from me.

My blood boiled at the fact that I was responsible for this. For all of it.

Her gaze moved from Asher to the back of Lucky’s head. “Lucky, you just shot someone.” Her voice was dazed and almost dreamlike.

I gritted my teeth at the fact it could be because she was suffering from a concussion. Because of me.

“Sure did, squirt,” Lucky replied, not taking his eyes off me.

“Give me your gun,” I ordered, moving my eyes back to his. I held out a hand that I was ashamed to see was shaking. “I’ll kill that motherf*cker myself for totally ruining my ability to wear a tank top for the next month, and for hurting my best friend,” I gritted out, trying to move. I wasn’t joking. Though I didn’t add he wasn’t the sole reason I couldn’t wear a tank top. The track marks on my arm did that all on their own.

“Killing someone requires effort. You need to rest. Let us unbattered men do the killing,” Lucky demanded.

Rest. Letting the men take care of their work in the shadows while the bruised women basked in the light.

Problem was I was already in the shadows. Born in them.

My gaze flickered around the room. At Asher crouched over a bleeding Lily. At Dylan bleeding all over my favorite rug. At Lucky. All teasing was gone from his eyes and I saw it then, what he really was. The dangerous man who lurked underneath.

Dangerous not in the literal sense of the word, but dangerous to me and my emotional health. Because lying battered and broken on a sofa, half high and with the man I used to screw bleeding on the carpet in front of me, I wanted him. I wanted to drown in those eyes. Swim in the danger and drown in the something else they offered.

I so needed to get myself sorted. Away from the junk and away from those f*cking eyes that offered me a fantasy.



“Come in,” I said distractedly. The door which had just been knocked on opened and closed. “You’re gonna have to do my pedicures for the foreseeable future, babe. Bending and cracked ribs don’t go together, but I’m not having chipped nails in addition to being a tie-dyed human of bruises,” I said to Lily, who I assumed had come into my room. It didn’t matter that she’d only just left an hour ago after patching me up in my bedroom while the bikers ‘dealt’ with Dylan.

Whatever that meant.

There had been talk of bullets to the brain, which I wouldn’t have objected to, since he hurt Lily in the process of f*cking me up, but she’d vetoed that option. Which was probably good, as I didn’t need to owe anyone. I owed Lily enough already; I didn’t want to owe her attractive boyfriend and his buddies for offing someone for me. I didn’t want to be the reason why they had a black mark on their souls. Though I guessed their souls weren’t exactly squeaky clean. Murder had come to them as natural as breathing.

I tried to convince myself the reason they were doing anything in the first place was because Dylan had hurt Lily, Asher’s ‘old lady.’ They took that shit serious. But that couldn’t explain away Lucky’s fury, his confusing tenderness with me, him trying to make me go to their biker clubhouse and hide from the world.

Let the muscled men in leather cuts protect me.

What a joke.

I didn’t need protecting from the outside world. Despite my bruises, I could take care of that. It was me that I was in danger from. Being close to Lucky was only one of the reasons I’d fought being sequestered in biker heaven. The second was to do with my little habit. Now that Lily wasn’t spending all of her time at the hospital with her dying mother and getting back to a life she deserved, it was getting hard to hide. If she wasn’t distracted by Asher, I guessed it might be impossible.

But bikers, with their shrewd eyes and badass skills, they’d notice. Especially one pair of hazel eyes that melted into me and seemed to see more than I showed the world.

“Doin’ a thing like painting nails might f*ck with my street cred, but I’ll do it if I get to touch those delicious feet,” a raspy voice answered. One that was way too deep to be Lily’s. Plus her voice didn’t cause my body to prickle with expectation. I didn’t swing that way.

I jerked my head up from my nails and most likely f*cked them up. “What are you doing here?” I snapped at Lucky. He was standing, his face light, though he held his jaw hard. His body seemed to take up all the space in my small room. “Plus, delicious feet? Ew. Do you have some kind of foot fetish? They’ve got 900 numbers for that,” I added.