Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(98)

While depositing my underwear in a drawer, the glint of metal sparkled in the light and caught my eye. Once I focused on the object I froze. Not just my body, but every molecule of my being.

I was no longer in the cluttered yet comforting, warm room. I was caged in by concrete walls, cold, the bitter air sucking every inch of life from my naked body. The steel rubbed against my wrists and I could barely stand it, the pain. No, the pain I could stand; it was the filth I couldn’t. I couldn’t escape it. Those cuffs held me in place, kept me from trying to escape the dirt. Try to get clean.

I started to shake. I couldn’t stop and it racked my entire body. I was paralyzed but inwardly I writhed, trying to get free of that prison inside my mind. I was trapped, and the thought had me wanting to sink to my feet. To run. To find it. Nothingness.

“Becky?”

The voice made me jump but I didn’t turn. Didn’t speak. I was too busy fighting.

He came closer, his heat at my back. “Babe?” he asked, voice thick with concern.

It was his hand on my hips that did it. The gentle pressure of him pulling me back into his hard body. His clean body.

I ripped out of his grip, finding my motor skills then.

“Don’t touch me,” I half shrieked. My feet moved, my body working on pure survival instinct. I ran towards the bathroom, one destination in mind.

One goal in mind.

To get clean.

I didn’t even realize he’d followed me, too busy on my mission. I reached to turn the shower on and started to strip down.

“Baby. What’s going on? Fuckin’ talk to me,” he ordered, his voice hoarse.

I could feel his presence but he didn’t touch me. Thankfully.

“I can’t talk. I’ve got to….” I trailed off, yanking my shirt off my head. “I’ve got to get clean,” I muttered, more to myself than him. On autopilot, I divested myself of all my clothes, everything in the room going soft around the edges. It blurred so I was half in the dirty room, chained to the bed, and half in the bathroom filling up with steam.

Then I was in the shower.

I wasn’t sure how I got there, considering I didn’t exactly remember turning on the shower or stepping in.

I met hazel eyes.

Gabriel. He was in the shower with me, fully clothed and holding me up. “You’re clean, baby,” he murmured.

It was then I realized that something soft and rough was moving over my body. Not his hands but a pink loofah, trailing suds everywhere.

I watched his hands move it up and down.

“You have a pink loofah,” I observed.

His eyes stayed on mine. “I do,” he agreed.

“Don’t they sell matte black ones? I feel like that’d be more suitable for you.” I paused. “For me.”

His eyes were hard. “No. This is perfect. For you. For me.”

He let the words and the weight of them hang between us as he cleaned me. The best he could.



We were lying in bed afterwards, me wrapped in his arms. That was a feat in itself. To be curled against his chest, him stroking my back, without wanting to crawl out of my own skin?

A miracle.

Catching a glimpse of the cuffs in his closet had been horrific. An instant ticket back to that room.

It had also been something else.

Him seeing it. Me. I was an ‘it’ now. Stripped down raw to the nerve. He saw it and yet there I was, in his arms.

We hadn’t spoken as he climbed out of the shower, cradled me in a fluffy towel like a child, and put a clean-smelling shirt over my head. He’d changed from his soaking clothes and there we were.

“The f*ckers who did that to you, they’re monsters.” He broke the silence, his voice sandpaper.

My head lifted from his chest and I met his eyes, shaking my head. “No, there’s no such thing as monsters. People did that, which I think is worse. Monsters were conjured up as a way to excuse the treachery that man is capable of. Because there are some acts that we want to put on an inhuman creature rather than admit that our fellow man is able to do such a thing.” I stared at him. “Monsters, real ones, the ones made of nightmares, they don’t exist here.” I held my arm out into the open air. “They exist here.” I moved the same arm to point to my temple, swallowing hard. “Sometimes there’s so many of them I don’t know if I can fight them anymore. Then I look in your eyes and I see the same monsters. They haven’t killed you. You’re still here.”

He tightened his arms. “Yeah, I’m still here,” he rasped. “And I’d die for you, firefly.”

I held his eyes, even though it caused me physical pain to see the devotion, the truth in them. “Don’t say that,” I whispered. “Anyone can promise death. To die for someone is a split-second decision, an instant. I don’t want you to die.” The thought of a world without him turned my tongue to dust. How close to reality that had been. Because of me. “I don’t want you to die for me. I want you to live. Make a conscious decision every day. That’s so much harder. Means so much more, to brave the shit of this world and keep going. That’s it.”

He kissed my head. “Okay, I’ll live. Only if you make that same promise.”

I stared at him. “Okay, I promise.”

Or I’d try my best.