Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (2 page)

“
I
am
the architect of my own destruction.”

-Prince of Persia

I
t started with a pill
. Harmless, really. Everyone was doing it. ‘A party favor’ was what one of the girls called it. Never one to turn down anything to do with a party, I took it. It was surprising I hadn’t indulged sooner. Maybe it was because before, I had deluded myself into thinking there was a way I could escape. Get clean. Transcend the life I was born to. At that moment, that time when that little pill was offered, I had been educated on how fucking wrong I was.

So I took it.

And it was awesome. Everything was better, more colorful, more complex. It was as if that little pill took the film off my eyes which had been there since birth and I could see the world. Really see it, in all its beautiful color.

I had been searching for an escape, but I’d been doing it in the wrong places. Trying to trick myself into thinking I could escape by becoming better, by becoming a doctor, learning how to clean the dirt off my soul.

I was wrong. Escape didn’t come with college education and a medical certificate.

Escape came in the form of that little pill. I forgot. I forgot all of it. That I sold my body for a living. That filth was flowing through my blood. That the woman I considered a mother was fading before my eyes.

It was all gone. So easy.

I
was easy. Weak. Took the simple way out. When the devil held out his hand and invited me into hell with that little pill, I took it without hesitation. And I descended into the fiery depths before I knew better.

I read somewhere that it apparently takes a few hundred injections and a year to make an addict. So written by an addict. What a wonderful romantic thought to have.

So then, by those standards, I was not an addict. The thought comforted me.

Tightening the elastic at my elbow and positioning the needle right at the vein that protruded after I did so, I paused. Not for long. Too long would be to bathe in the bitter sticky bath of shame that submerged me in these moments. I was always tainted by this feeling, knowing that the only person who gave a shit about me didn’t see the filth. But in those short moments between expectation and exhilaration, the need and the fix, that was when my body crawled with shame.

What would Faith say if she saw me now?

What would Lily say?

What would that little girl who was curled up in a lumpy bed, broken and violated, say? The little girl who had had her innocence wrenched from her tiny body before she had time to realize it was something to be stolen?

They’d all rear away from this stranger in disgust. I’d do the same if such a thing were possible. But I couldn’t run from myself. Couldn’t escape nightmares when they existed when I was awake. I could only choose the things to make it bearable to stumble through the life I’d been given.

I chose the easiest escape. What was another mark on an already stained soul?

I was flying high. Not exactly high; that’s what the pills did. Shot me into space until I was floating and plucking stars from the air. Heroin was different. Gave me a happiness that had been unfamiliar until that first hit. It wasn’t just happiness, but contentment. Life, for the first time since forever, was okay. I was okay. It wasn’t gray anymore; it was color, it was fresh. My job wasn’t dirty, or shameful. It was fine. It was good.

And the grief melted away. It still existed, but it wasn’t draining me. It was part of me. It was okay.

Since the moment we buried Lily’s mom—
my
mom—I had relied on the prospect of my next hit to get me through. Through the pain that not only sliced my soul, but the utter devastation that lay beyond my best friend’s beautiful eyes. I couldn’t surrender to that pain; I’d learned that early in life. I also had to be strong, put on that mask I’d become so skilled at hiding behind. I had to do it for my friend. My sister. The only person in the world who didn’t see the filth.

I hid behind the drugs while her grief hid the drugs from her. I used them as a way to feel nothing in order to take care of my best friend as well as I could. Which wasn’t exactly well. And I took it to escape my own demons.

When it got down to it, I just took them to make it easier.

So, as I strutted my barely clad ass onto the dimly lit stage, I was high. Soaring.

That meant the world was fuzzy around the edges, and everything seemed like it was underwater. I was wading through at exceptional speed. I could feel the music inside me, as if the beat originated within me. I let my vacant mind move my vacant body to the music, aimlessly looking over the crowd that was focused on me. I didn’t see them. I never did. I learned quickly not to look at the mostly disgusting men leering at my naked body.

Drugs helped.

But I glanced at Lily’s portion of the bar, just to make sure my girl was okay. Because even though I may be flying high, forgetting all the bad that took up ninety percent of my world, I wouldn’t forget the good. The ten percent. My girl. And if anyone fucked with her, they were dead.

I was trying to help the best way I knew how. The only way I knew how. Dragging her around to parties where she knew no one and could embrace the anonymity. Be someone other than herself. Hide from the pain. Escape with the help of a cocktail or five.

I was a fucking terrible friend.

Bringing my socially anxious best friend to the strip club where I worked, which was full of disgusting assholes who would eat her alive.

Yeah, a bad friend. The worst.

Just add another stroke to the lines staining my soul.

My step stuttered slightly when my gaze landed on her. And on the
hawt-as-balls
biker who had his hand firmly around her neck. Then moved quickly to two more bikers, their eyes on me. I didn’t have time to focus on them more because I was flying. Flying meant thought was hard to capture, like that fucking snitch in those
Harry Potter
movies. I gave up on the golden fucker and did the thing, the only thing I was good for.

I embraced the dirt.

* * *

“
F
uck
, babe, I’ve seen a lot of strippers in my time.
A lot
,” a deep voice exclaimed from beside me. “But you transcended mere stripperdom and became a celestial being. An angel sent down from heaven, designed by God to pursue a career in exotic dancing.”

I rolled my eyes, sucking down the last of my drink and pushing off the bar where I had been leaning. This was the part I hated. I could shake my ass, show my tits, and objectify myself on stage without blinking an eye. Even before the drugs, I was fine with that. Fine with the lap dances where I had to get up close and personal with a wide variety of perverts with body odor issues or drunken frat boys, provided I had some form of mood-altering substance flowing through my bloodstream. Before, I’d had wine. Now I had better.

But this part blew.

Carlos insisted that, after our performances, we ‘mingle’ with the customers. We weren’t at some fucking corporate mixer. There was no need to
mingle
. Unless, of course, you were soliciting; then the mingling was necessary. I would rather chew off my own arm than do that, as Carlos well knew. It didn’t stop him from aggressively insisting I ‘get to know’ my customers, as if communing with the dregs of society, AKA patrons of a strip club, would convince me to let them pay to fuck me.

I had one small shred of self-respect, of dignity, left. I clutched it in a death grip and I wasn’t ready to let it go, even though I’d let poison into my veins. A girl’s got to have her hard limits.

Prostitution was a hard limit. Pretty much my only one.

“I can die happy, then, knowing that I’ve pleased you,” I retorted sarcastically.

I may have to mingle, but I didn’t have to be polite. I was also cranky because my palms itched and a cloud descended over my mind as I came down. I needed another fix.

“I’ll have to return the favor, firefly,” the voice said, a hint of promise tingling his playful tone.

I finally jerked my head from the perusal of my glass to face what was a no doubt middle-aged man with a beer gut and receding hairline. His voice may have been manly, but I knew I wouldn’t be so lucky to meet the man I’d imagine having such a deep rumbling voice. Such men didn’t frequent establishments like this.

“What? You gonna get up on stage and provide me with a strip show?” I asked seriously as I turned.

When my eyes drank in the owner of that voice, I found my sarcastic question being rendered to a hopeful plead. The man in front of me was most definitely not middle-aged, and from what I could see from the tight black tee clinging to his flat stomach, there was no beer gut in sight. I’d wager a six-pack lay under there. Ditto with the hair prediction, though he didn’t have any hair at all; his head was shaved to the scalp, and man, did he work the ever-loving shit out of a bald head.

There was another bulky guy standing next to him, but my eyes were like steel drawn to a magnet.

I moved my gaze down to his muscled arms, which were covered in ink, impossible to decipher in the dingy light. His leather vest had my slow mind realizing he most likely belonged to the biker gang Lily seemed to be tangled up in. I’d seen him earlier, with Lily and the man who’d dragged her out of here. Asher, the man who’d taken her virginity three years ago, who she’d pushed away when she found out her mom was dying of cancer. Selfless as always, she sacrificed her happiness and one seriously hot biker for her mom. The thought punctured through my weary mind.

I was happy that it seemed he’d come back to give her the happiness she deserved. I wasn’t the best person to yank her out of this pit of grief we were both treading water in. Fuck, I was yanking her further down. It made me sick, that thought, but I didn’t know how else to help. I didn’t know how to bring the light back in because my life had been devoid of light the day I was born.

I shook away the self-deprecating thoughts to focus on the hot guy in front of me. Well, two. The other big one with ribbons of scars on his arms was nothing to sneeze at either. But it was the bald one who captured my attention, which was a feat in itself as my mind was becoming jerky and unhinged as it sobered.

“You ask me nice, I’ll don a feather boa and do my best,” he deadpanned. “Though, I don’t think I’ll be getting the same reaction as the little firefly here,” he teased lightly.

I met his eyes and, even through my residual haze of blurriness, arousal settled in my stomach. Yeah, this guy was hot. His features were sharp and pronounced, masculine. He was Hispanic, I guessed, from his latte-colored skin. His hazel eyes were soft around the edges and focused on me. They were also familiar.

“I know you,” I said, searching the recesses of my mind.

He put his hand on his impressive chest. “Well, consider me touched. The little firefly remembers our brief but passion-filled meeting three years ago.” Again his tone was teasing, but something lay underneath it. A heat. An intensity. Or maybe that was just me. It was easy to imagine things when I was coming down. Hard to pick apart what was real and what my high mind had plucked from unreality.

“Though we weren’t properly introduced, apart from you threatening to throw a Molotov cocktail at me,” he continued, winking. “I do like a girl with spirit. Lucky.” He held out his hand.

I stared down at it, unmoving. I did remember that particular conversation. It had not been an idle threat either. Three years back, I’d had to pick Lily—
Lily
,
of all people—up from the biker compound of the notorious Sons of Templar MC. This guy had been there, and had the gall to flirt with me while a red-eyed Lily had been standing in her clothes from the night before, holding her shoes, and obvious sorrow and shame, in her hands. On that day, she looked more like me than herself, and I hated that. I despised everything that turned her into that. Including this guy.

The same went for Asher, the man who’d painted that look on her face, until I realized how much he cared about her.

“Yeah, well, that promise still holds true if any of you decide to fuck with Lily,” I told him icily, suddenly feeling stone-cold sober.

His easy grin instantly dissipated. His hand left the shake position and he crossed both arms across his chest. “That ain’t gonna happen. You’ve got my word on that. That girl won’t be seeing more hurt. I’ll personally mix that particular cocktail if my brother fucks it up again,” he promised seriously.

I regarded him for a long moment. For whatever reason, I believed the hot biker with the questionable sense of humor. “Good,” I said finally, nodding. “I’ve got work to do, and you two probably have a couple of steroid shots to take.” I gave their muscles a pointed look. I was saying this mainly to be a bitch, as their muscles didn’t look like overinflated balloons like the bouncers here. No, they were much more enticing. Hence the reason for me needing to get out of Dodge. I might try and lick one, and that would be embarrassing.