Surrender A Section 8 Novel - By Stephanie Tyler Page 0,20

ropes would take her. Bared her teeth like an animal, because if that’s what he wanted, that’s what he’d get.

The ropes were so tight they chafed. She angled for a better position, wondered if she could do any damage to him at all. All Dare did was look at her with a frown.

After a long moment during which she was pretty sure he was about to come over and rebuke her, he came over and instead closed the shades.

“Too dangerous for you to be near an open window.”

And then he bent and untied one wrist completely and loosened the other.

It was a dangerous move for him—and from him. The way she was raised to fight, she could do a lot of damage with that one hand.

He must know that.

It was either a test or a dare. She wondered if she should fail miserably or pass with flying colors, then decided she didn’t give a damn either way. She still refused to be anyone’s puppet.

She’d rather die. And it might come down to that.

* * *

After dinner and her check-in call with Dare, Gunner walked Avery back to the tattoo shop, only this time, they entered from three doors down, inside an underground garage. He pointed out his motorcycle and car to her, and Avery took note of them plus the exits and entrances that led to various alleyways.

“I’ll get you some keys,” he assured her as he let them into the back of the shop and upstairs to the second floor, grabbing the bag she’d come in with along the way.

There were several bedrooms—he picked one for her seemingly at random, but she had a feeling there was no such thing when it came to him.

“Now it’s time to fix you up. Bathroom’s that way—get changed. I’ll get the dye.”

“Dye?”

He reached up and touched the brim of her baseball cap. “You’re going to get hot and look suspicious as hell if you keep wearing that.”

She glanced back in the oval mirror above the dresser and realized that her long blond hair would need to go, and fast. Then she took off the cap and stared at the ponytail that had been there for as long as she could remember.

But now wasn’t the time for sentimentality. Instead, she changed quickly and let Gunner help her with the cut and color.

He was surprisingly good at both. With the short, pixie-like cut and warm brown color, her eyes stood out even more.

She didn’t look like her old self, and she really didn’t feel like it either. Scaling down the side of a building with Dare had changed everything. She’d conquered a lifelong fear in a moment of danger—and could only hope she’d be able to do it again if necessary—escaped jail and met a brother she’d never known she had, literally in the space of minutes.

And now she’d embraced a new lifestyle that promised nothing but trouble.

“Better,” Gunner told her. She was barely dressed, with a towel over her shoulders, wearing only a bra and a pair of shorts she’d borrowed from him—and Gunner was looking, but she didn’t care; she liked the way he looked at her.

“What about the tattoo?” she asked now.

“I don’t tattoo drunk women,” he told her, and she wanted to argue that she wasn’t drunk, not really—at least not with alcohol. But she was intoxicated for sure.

People do crazy things in New Orleans, her mother had warned her, but there was always a soft light in her eyes when she said it. Because this was where her mother had met Darius. This was where Avery was conceived.

Now Avery was in New Orleans, and her mother had been right. Avery felt crazy, and she liked it. In this town, she could go wild; she could turn into a mercenary like her father had been and still be a woman, a lover.

She could be everything. Live or die, but do either proudly.

“You’d best cover up or you’ll end up naked in my tattoo chair,” Gunner told her, a lazy smile on his face that told her he was anything but.

“I thought you didn’t tattoo intoxicated women.”

“For you, I’d make an exception.”

Chapter Nine

Dare wanted to see if she could fight. He wanted to see her fight. But instead Grace fisted her hand against her thigh and stared up at him with those dark eyes that saw right through him. His groin stirred. Again.

Her dress had dried, but it still molded to her figure well. He wanted to stare even though he