Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(83)

I let out a breath.

“You can have your job back,” he said quietly. “If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.”

He stood and I did my best not to f*cking freak out at his size and the way he towered over me.

I managed. Just.

“We’re opening again on Friday. You up for that?”

I didn’t miss the way his gaze flickered down my body. He was taking in my tight jeans and equally tight cropped Henley. Not in a male way—I was pretty sure all women were invisible to him except his hot wife—but in a way like he was mentally calculating if this physical form could hold itself up on stage.

I’d put on weight. Not a lot but enough to hide my protruding bones. And my most important assets for this job, my tits and ass, were full and healthy, so he had nothing to worry about.

Friday was two days away. I was so not up for that. “Yep.” I hitched my bag on my shoulder. “All good if I come tomorrow to practice?”

He nodded. “Cadence will be here.”

Cadence was the manager of the dancers and a bitch.

We got on famously, despite her having screwed Gabriel.

She’d even visited Rosie’s a week before. She brought tequila and flowers, and a Glock.

Like Rosie, she was insane.

I nodded. “Awesome. Well, I’ll see you. Say hey to the wife from me.” I went to leave his presence and this f*cking place. It was making my skin itch like nothing else.

“We’ll get them.” His voice was a low boom.

I froze but didn’t turn.

“They’re gonna pay for what they did, I’ll promise you that,” he continued.

I sucked in a breath and then kept walking.

Yeah, they’d pay. I just hoped I got to make them do so.



I’d been practicing my routine for two days straight, and every inch of my body screamed in protest at the abuse I was putting it through.

Stripping, despite what people thought, wasn’t just gyrating on stage and shedding your self-respect along with your clothes.

It was hard, really f*cking hard on your body. There was a reason housewives and idiots who drank green juice started doing it for workout purposes.

And my body had been abused and battered in the most brutal of ways for three weeks. Not as bad as my mind, but still not good. Add to that one month of doing not much at rehab and even less at Rosie’s apart from serial killer marathons. It was safe to say I was rusty.

I wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t good.

Plus, my body hadn’t exactly recovered and it pissed me right off that I landed on my ass when I tried moves that used to be a piece of cake…before.

Just another thing those *s had ruined.

I was sitting on the stage, my feet hanging off it, trailing the new wood. It was all new, thanks to the fire that had been started the day mine went out. But I could feel the skeletons underneath it. It was where Lily almost died, where Gabriel almost died.

My throat started to close up.

“Here,” a voice interrupted my thoughts, thankfully, and a bottle of water was shaken in front of my face.

I glanced up at Cadence and took it. “Thanks.”

She hoisted herself up to sit beside me. “You sure you’re up to this?” She nodded to the pole.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Don’t I look up to it?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “Don’t get me wrong, I dig the hair and you’re still better than half the girls here, but you’re runnin’ on half a tank, babe. Understandable, considering what you went through. It’s heavy shit. You think this is the right place for you after…?”

“After I was kidnapped by my ex-employer and fed drugs while they did unseemly things to me for three weeks?” I finished for her, my voice sharp.

She didn’t flinch as I expected her to. Most people didn’t do well with being confronted by ugly reality, but Cadence looked like she’d seen enough ugly reality to be jaded by my world, which scared me slightly.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

I shrugged. “This is where I want to be. The only place I feel like I can be. As crappy as my old job used to be, when I was on stage, I had a sort of power, you know? Before I f*cked myself up on drugs. I didn’t exactly love the reality of it, but being on stage is….” I searched for the word.

“Freeing?” she finished for me.

I nodded. “Exactly.”

She didn’t press, didn’t try to dig deeper and have a big heart-to-heart, which I fricking loved. “Okay then. That’s all I need to hear. You do what you gotta do.” She jumped back down onto the floor. “It’s good to have you back.”

I smiled at her. “It’s good to be back.”

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t good to be anywhere right now. But I figured if I faked it for long enough it would be.

“You,” a very masculine and very angry male voice echoed through the empty club.

Both Cadence and I whipped our heads to the red-faced, bald-headed, tattooed biker stomping boots in our direction.

“Angry male approaching is my cue to leave,” Cadence declared, leaving just as Gabriel made it to us.

“What the f*ck are you doing here?” he clipped.

I scowled at him. “Hello to you too.”