Page 10 of Unmasked Anarchy (Fallen Sons MC #3)

He’s shirtless, his muscled body on display under the dull light of the lamp. There are purpling bruises mapping his ribs and biceps. His hands are laced behind his head, the veins still raised from the events of the night, and the lines around his mouth soften with sleep.

I watch the rise and fall of his breathing, try to fit the feeling in my chest to the man I married.

He’s beautiful. I hate how beautiful he is, how even like this, he is the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.

I sit down on the edge of the bed. The movement stirs him, but he doesn’t wake.

He just shifts, head rolling toward me, lips parted, one arm dropping loose at his side.

A heat pools in my belly, guilt moving cleanly through it.

I want to wake him, want to crawl inside those arms and ask for an apology or to beg his forgiveness, or just to have him look at me like I am something he owns again. I want to be held down and ravished by him. I want him to declare to the world that I am his and mean it in a way that’s deep.

I pull the sheet down. His cock curves against his thigh, heavy and delicious. I bite my bottom lip, knowing I should just turn and leave, but I can’t bring myself to. I run my palm over the length of him. He grunts, hips twitching, but doesn’t wake, and that just spurs me on.

I lean down, placing my lips on the tip, then my tongue.

I suck him slow because this is for me, not for him.

Each movement is deliberate, a way to reclaim a part of myself that feels lost. It’s a pathetic trauma bond that I know is toxic, yet I can’t seem to shake the need I have inside for this man.

The connection is a tangled web of emotions, a mix of desire and desperation that pulls me in despite the warning signs.

I’m aware of the danger, the way this bond wraps around my heart, squeezing tighter with every encounter.

Yet, there’s a comfort in the familiarity, a sense of belonging that I can’t find anywhere else.

It’s as if he holds a piece of me, a fragment that I can’t bear to lose, even if it means sacrificing my own well-being.

The toxicity is palpable, a constant undercurrent that threatens to pull me under, but the moments of closeness, the fleeting glimpses of something real, keep me tethered to him.

It’s a cycle I can’t break, a need that refuses to fade, leaving me caught between the desire for freedom and the pull of a bond that feels unbreakable.

He stirs. His thigh tenses under my hand, the muscle like iron.

His voice is rough, distant, a grumble trailing up from his chest. "What—" I don’t move away, I just take him deeper. It doesn’t take him long to figure out it’s me, because he moans, head falling back, one hand searching for my hair.

He finds it, tangling his fingers until my roots ache, until my mouth is full of him and nothing else matters.

I gag, just a little, and he growls, a filthy little reward. I don’t stop. I want to take all of him, want to feel the victory of making him come apart.

"Stop," he pants finally, pulling my head up. I look up at him, and fuck if he doesn’t look good right now. His eyes are nearly black as he stares down at me.

“This your apology?” he growls.

“Is it enough?”

A moment of silence.

He wraps his arms around me, the embrace crushing, and flips us in one violent motion so I’m pinned.

It’s a miracle the bed holds up, but the only thing I care about is the way he kisses me.

His tongue is warm against mine, all masculine and hungry, and when he pushes inside me, I bite his shoulder so hard I taste copper.

He fucks me like he’s trying to banish the entire night.

There’s none of the measured possessiveness from before, he’s rough, relentless, holding me down with a strength that’s more desperate than angry.

In the dim bedroom, the air is thick, and the hollow of Gage’s throat is slick where I bite it, again and again, until he gasps and snaps my wrists into one of his hands.

He doesn’t say a word as he pins my arms above my head and keeps my legs wide with his hips.

I buck my own hips as he drags his cock out, slowly, before plunging it back in.

My pulse washes out my senses; all I can focus on is the way Gage’s hand bruises my wrist, the way the bed shudders under us, the way his breath flames out in short bursts against my neck.

“Say it,” he growls, his voice rough. “Say you’re mine.”

I bare my teeth, twist hard enough to wrench one hand free. “No.”

He laughs, genuinely laughs, and grabs my hair with his free hand, yanking my head back. I try to turn my face away, but he catches my chin, digging his thumb into the soft spot until my jaw aches. He thrusts so deep my insides burn, but I don’t want it to stop.

“Say it, Sabie,” he hisses. “Or I’ll stop and leave you desperate for more.”

I hold out as long as I can, but he knows my body, knows exactly how to angle, how to grind against me. The pressure is building, the ache so deep I don’t think I can hold on for a second longer.

He stops, and slowly the pleasure subsides. I squirm beneath him, gasping out a curse.

“Tell me,” he growls.

“Yours,” I hiss. “I’m yours, you son of a bitch.”

Gage laughs again and suddenly pulls out, flipping me over onto my stomach. The sheet twists under my knees, a burn against raw skin. He drives back in, faster now, knuckles digging into the back of my neck to hold me down.

I love it. Hate it. I think about Kael, about the soft way he touched my body, and then I arch my back so Gage can go deeper. When I cum, I do it with a broken scream of pleasure that I can’t explain.

Gage follows close behind me.

His growl of pleasure sends shivers down my spine.

Then, he is gone, and I am left with that cold, empty feeling again.

We don’t say anything. There isn’t anything to say. The only thing that matters is that he’s marked me. For tonight, at least, nobody else gets a fraction of me.

He reaches over, taking a cigarette and lighting it.

I push up on my hands and knees, staring at him.

“Where were you tonight?”

He is asking, but I fear he already knows.

I can’t say it, though.

Can’t admit it.

I’m afraid if I do, he will lose it.

“I found a bar in town. I didn’t want to be here. Not after everything.”

“You don’t ever fuckin’ leave after an attack, you hear me?”

He’s acting like he cares.

We both know he doesn’t.

“Can I ask you something?”

He inhales deeply, not answering me, but not telling me I can’t either.

“Why are you with me, Gage? Why did you come for me all those years ago? It’s clear you don’t love me, so why?”

He considers the words for a long time, then brings the cigarette to his lips and gives me a quiet look.

“Truth? You’re the only person in the world who ever looked me dead in the eyes and told me I was a monster and got in the car with me anyway. You don’t run from the shit in people, even when you should.”

He’s not looking at me when he says it. He flicks the end of the cigarette into a chipped mug on the nightstand, then rubs his jaw.

“I’m not a nice man. World burned that out of me before I could spell my own fuckin’ name.

But you keep tryin’ to see good in things that got no business having good in them.

You see it in me. I hate you for it, and I fuckin’ need you for it. ”

I stare at his chest, the tattoo with my name scrawled in black, and all I can think is how little sense any of this makes, how a man could love you so hard and still never be able to say it.

He looks at me, really looks. Then he looks away. “You want cute answers, go to Hallmark. I got nothing for you except alive, and I can only promise to keep you that way until the ride stops.”

“Then why don’t you let me go?”

His eyes pin me. “Because you’re mine, Sabie. That is never going to change.”

That’s what I fear the most.