Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(40)

I found enough balance to yank out of his grasp. “Trust me, I know.”

We stared at each other for a long moment and I was sure he was going to address the elephant in the room, but then his face changed. “Let’s go. You’ll be treated to what most people usually have to pledge their firstborn children for.” He paused dramatically. “My chocolate chip pancakes.”

“Chocolate chip pancakes?” I repeated. My gaze traveled his muscled and tattooed body once more. “Is this a Freaky Friday situation? Are you actually a forty-year-old housewife who crotchets and somewhere in suburbia a woman is wearing an apron and cursing and throwing knives at her husband?”

Lucky chuckled deeply, sending little shivers down my spine. “Nope, I’m just a very complex man. There’s more to me than meets the eye.” He winked, then turned his back, walking from the room. “Pancakes in twenty, so get that hot ass showered and dressed. You can keep the tee,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“I don’t want your smelly shirt,” I called after him.

I inhaled once more. I was totally keeping the tee.



“Now you’re just f*cking with me. That’s not a word,” I said.

Lucky glanced up, grinning. “It is a word.”

I quirked my brow. “Use it in a sentence.”

He didn’t even blink. “I, the king of Scrabble, used the word ‘muzjiks’ to kick Becky, the poor little Scrabble peasant, out of the running for supreme ruler.”

We were playing Scrabble. Fucking Scrabble. And I was enjoying it. Despite the fact that Lucky was an absolute menace at the game and so far had used three words that I didn’t even know existed in the human language. He showed me via an online dictionary that they did indeed.

I gave him a look.

“Okay, muzjiks were called Russian peasants under the tzar,” he said with a straight face.

I gaped at him. “You hustled me. At Scrabble. You hustled me.”

He shrugged. “I’m in it to win it, baby. No place for morals in board games.”

I froze just a little at the term of endearment and the casual use of it. No doubt it was offhand, and he most likely called every girl he banged by that name. I’d had my fair share of guys use it, most likely when they forgot my name. But this was different, especially doing something so domestic, so intimate. Especially after the day we’d had.

It was a good day.

I hadn’t expected it.

Good days were few and far between in my life, even more scarce since I’d decided to self-medicate. Totally absent since I’d decided to stop self-medicating. But defying the odds, junk didn’t ruin the day for me. Sure, the craving lurked under my skin like a constant itch that only one thing could scratch, but I managed it. And without wanting to throw up or scream or murder someone.

Lucky wasn’t screwing around. His pancakes were the shit. So much so, I had two servings. My first bite reminded me how hungry I was, how ravenous. It’d been a long time since I’d had any kind of appetite for anything but heroin, but there it was. For chocolate chip pancakes made for me by a friggin’ biker.

“Who taught you how to cook like this?” I asked through a full mouth. A lady I was not.

He had been watching me, leaning against the counter with a small grin on his face. The grin dampened slightly. “My mom,” he said flatly.

I barely noticed it. “Thank her for me.”

Then I went back to my breakfast, not thinking twice on his reaction.

After breakfast he declared he was going surfing.

“I’ve got an extra board. Want to join me?” he asked after I’d recovered from seeing him shirtless.

No, I didn’t recover exactly, just found a way to act like I did. Hours later, I was still recovering from his fricking eight-pack, his caramel skin mingled with tattoos and art.

I’d managed to snap my head up and not lick the V cut out of marble and hugely visible in his low-slung board shirts. “Are you joking?”

He grinned. “Always.”

I shook my head, mostly to get images of me pressed against that naked torso out of my mind.

“There are sun loungers, and a shit ton of books in the living room. Saw you had an overflowing bookshelf at your old apartment. You read?”

I nodded. Before I started screwing up my brain and ability to concentrate, I’d loved to read. Reading was a healthier form of escapism than drugs. If only I’d stuck to that.

“Awesome. Well, read or fantasize over my godlike body. I won’t be long.” He leaned in and kissed the top of my head. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fantasizing over yours too.” On that note he left the kitchen and walked outside, leaving me blinking like an idiot in his wake.

I’d done as he said, fantasizing about his body and reading. Spent the entire day doing both, in fact. I didn’t have a swimsuit to lie out in, but considering I was pale and got scorched in the sun, that was probably a good thing. I slathered on the SPF and hid from the rays under the umbrella while I immersed myself in a book from the decent collection Lucky had. I didn’t imagine he read Virginia Wolfe, which had me curious about who lived here. It was obvious a female had, as the woman’s touches were hard to miss. The fairy lights strung above the vintage patchwork sofa. The scented candles on the coffee table, which was also littered with motorcycle magazines. Because I was too wrapped up in myself, I hadn’t asked about this place.