Free Blaze: Kings of Hell MC by Leah Wilde Page A

switch by the door and the apartment was filled with atmospheric accent lighting along the walls, the bar in his kitchen, the fountain where I would have expected there to be a fireplace, and along the floor in the hallway leading to his bedroom.
     
    Outside, against the backdrop of the beautiful night sky, the city was lit up like so many stars. I hurried to the window and stared out into the night. “It’s so beautiful,” I told him. “So, so beautiful.”
     
    I stood like a child in a candy store, looking back and forth, trying to take in everything I could possibly see. I could see the headlights and taillights of cars speeding along the streets below us. I could see traffic lights, streetlights, and the lights in all the windows of every building downtown.
     
    “Do you ever get dizzy standing here?” I asked him.
     
    He chuckled behind me. “No. Honestly, I don’t really pay it much attention. Like yourself, I’m usually working and not giving myself time for things like the view from my apartment.”
     
    I turned to face him, and he towered over me, an intimidating, looming figure carved in stone. I wanted to touch him, but he seemed so unapproachable in that moment, as if he had somehow been removed from the scene.
     
    His apartment was not at all what I expected. I would have expected someone as rough around the edges as Gage to live in a place more like mine—small, old, cramped, and cluttered. I hadn’t pegged him for the kind of guy who would have smooth immaculate wooden floors, tall ceilings, mostly bare walls, and a wall of glass overlooking downtown. I expected posters for old rock bands, his favorite movies, girls in bikinis, that sort of thing. I walked around in a dreamy daze, looking at how every surface in his apartment was completely spotless. It was rather impressive indeed, and it just made me want him more.
     
    “So, were you serious about the bed and the couch?” I asked him at end of my impromptu self-guided tour of his apartment.
     
    “Absolutely,” he said, putting his hand on the small of my back again and leading me down the hallway to his bedroom. “Step right this way and I will show you the amazingly comfortable king-size bed I’m offering you for the duration of your stay with me.
     
    He pushed the door to his room open, and the lights were already on around the top of his king-size canopy bed. The four posts around the bed were like wooden columns carved out for the temple of some Greek god or goddess. Sheer curtains were gathered at the posts, hanging from the railing at the top of the canopy.
     
    This is where you’ll be sleeping,” he said, stepping over to the bed and putting his hand down on the mattress. “Here, have a seat.”
     
    I sat down on the bed, and the mattress welcomed me like an old lover wrapping their arms around me for the first time in many years. I lay back and sank into the bed. “Oh my God, it’s perfect,” I told him. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m never leaving this spot. You’ll just have to sleep around me whenever you want to sleep in your bed.” As the words came out, it occurred to me how they might have come across as teasing or tempting, but I didn’t care. Part of me wanted to tempt him.
     
    Part of me didn’t want to sleep alone tonight.
     
    “Stay as long as you’d like,” he said, his voice heavy with suggestion.
     
    It was possible, I hoped, that he was thinking the same thing I was.
     
    After lying in his bed for a few minutes, he shook my foot. “Hey, Julia, how do you feel about Chinese?”
     
    I pushed myself up on my elbows. “I’m fine with Chinese,” I said. “Are we going out?”
     
    He looked down at me and smiled. “No, I’m having it delivered so we can have a lazy night in and take it easy.”
     
    “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day,” I told him, lying back down on his bed.
     
    I was asleep before dinner ever made it to us.
     
    I woke up early the next morning still