“Beautifully manicured gardens don’t often hide bodies, Gidge.” He crosses his arms over his chest, muscles rippling, his Americana tattoos a red, white, and blue festival across his biceps and forearms. I reach out to stroke the wing of an eagle, and he catches my hand in midair. “Don’t.”
I exhale sharply and reach up to push my hair back from my face. A prospect could—should—be doing something as menial as gardening. He’s bullshitting me, but for what reason, I can’t discern.
“I’ve been chasing after you since I was fourteen,” I admit, and he cringes. Like, visibly cringes. If you think about it, he’s twenty-six now and I’m eighteen. It’s not a terrible age gap. “Why are you always running away from me?”
Sin looks away from me for a moment, turning to stare down the length of the tunnel. He’s clearly in the middle of club business right now. This is why my family never spent much time in this house after my grandmother died. It’s club space. We aren’t meant to see what happens here. I can only imagine that Cat’s keeping us here now out of an abundance of caution.
He just crashed a mafia wedding.
Dozens of higher-ups were killed.
This isn’t going to end on a peaceful note.
I wonder what happened to Grey. I figure he must still be alive because I would’ve heard about it if the club had managed to track him down. My hope is that he escaped both the club and the mafia in one go. There’s not much of a chance he can ingratiate himself with his family after that fuck-up.
Eventually, I realize that Sin isn’t going to answer my question, and I turn away.
I’m just about to exit the shadows of the tunnel when I hear his boots on the cobbled stone beneath our feet. He surprises me by wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me in close. This isn’t about licking my scars or thinking horrible thoughts, this is something more.
Yep, world’s greatest romantic gesture and I have no idea how to handle it.
Lying to the club. Lying to Cat. Lying for me.
“I wish it were me,” he breathes, his mouth against the side of my neck. I end up putting my hands over his where they’re clasped together around my waist. His skin is hot from working all day in the sun. I savor the roughness of his fingertips, wishing I could feel them play across every part of my body, all my soft places and the new rippled pinkness of my legs. “I wish you’d chosen me.”
I close my eyes and lean back into him, letting his cinnamon and leather scent swirl around me. It mixes with a hint of jasmine from the nearby trellis, the buzz of bees and the distant sound of digging entangled with the chirping of birds. Digging. Somebody’s dead. Somebody’s getting buried. I barely care anymore.
“You know that I couldn’t,” I whisper back, because it’s true. Doesn’t make it any less difficult. When I think about taking Sin as my husband, curling my arms around his waist and breathing in the leather scent of his cut, my heart soars. What goes up however … must always come down. When it does, sometimes it shatters.
“I’m ready to tell you about my sister,” he whispers, pressing a smoldering, sharp-edged kiss to the side of my neck. I arch back into him, putting my left arm up to curl my fingers in his hair. But, as he always does, he stops at a kiss. It’s as if he’ll only allow himself to stray so far from the beaten path. A kiss is daring. Just daring enough to get away with.
Sin pulls away from me. I don’t turn to look at him. That didn’t exactly go well for Orpheus and Eurydice, now did it? Might be a Greek legend, but it’s just the sort of tragedy I could imagine being summoned by the stygian power of this place, of my tempestuous heat for Sin.
I keep his words in mind as I walk away, heading back toward the house and another of Nellie’s surprisingly good lunches. I’m not ready to hear about anyone else’s sister, not just yet, but if he’s willing to tell me, that means we’re making progress.
Grainger is on the front porch, smoking a cigarette and staring down the length of the hill toward the parking lot. It’s the very same parking lot, in fact, that I stole Crown’s bike from. Cade just barely glances my way when I step outside.
“Am I going to rot in here forever, or is someone going to fill me in on what’s going on?” I ask, and he snorts at me, stabbing his cigarette out in a nearby ashtray. It’s filled with cigarettes, like maybe he’s been chain-smoking for the last several hours.
“You were shot in the chest,” he quips back at me, glancing over and then reaching out with a single finger to tug down the neckline of my top. His knuckle grazes my collarbone, and I’m forced to bite my lower lip to hold back a gasp. That’s not why he’s looking, I don’t think. Cade studies me with a furrowed brow, examining my injury with feigned disinterest. The bandage is still in place; Nellie’s been changing it out for me every so often, inspecting the puckered pinkness of the wound. “You’re not a superhero, much as you’d like to think otherwise.”
He lets go of me and turns back to his guard duties, staring out at the horizon and the distant shape of the clubhouse. I’ve just finally—thanks to Nellie—found out whose blood was pumped into my veins.
“Thank you, by the way,” I tell him, and I swear, he startles so badly that you’d think I slapped the guy. Grainger turns his brown eyes toward me and scowls—his usual go-to expression—but with substantially less heat than normal. “For your blood.” I reach out and run a single fingernail over the mark in his right inner elbow. He lets me do it and then shudders, taking his arm away and stepping forward so that he can rest his elbows on the porch’s railing.
“Don’t thank me. It isn’t like I had much choice,” he snaps, but that’s a lie. I know it is because Nellie and I have the same blood type, too. She told me that Grainger stepped in because she’d used after I went missing, and she didn’t want to expose me to that.
Maybe part of that is true, but I think it was something else.
It’s because he hates me so damn much.
I mimic his pose, resting my own arms on the railing. Our elbows brush together, and he scowls at me yet again. It’s his signature go-to look. I recognize it now for what it is: a mask. Living with the mafia for three months has brought me a strange, quiet sort of clarity. For years, I let my emotions blind me. That anger that Nellie mentioned, it’s had its hold on me for so long that I can’t even begin to pinpoint its initial birth. Not when my sisters died, but long, long before that.
“What do you want, Gidget?” he asks finally, his tone cutting and acidic. He’s angry at me. Because of Grey, I’m sure. But also … for not picking him? I can no longer stand around and plead ignorance to the world around me. For some time, I think, I’ve been reveling in it. Ignorance is, after all, its own special sort of bliss. “Don’t you have another grand escape planned? Some master plan to steal Beast’s bike and take off?”
I smile at him, my own expression a stropped razor.
“If only. That’s what you like about me, isn’t it? I can’t imagine you falling for a girl who’s anything less than wild.”
That gives him pause. For a moment there, he just goes completely still, muscles stiffening, hands clenching around one another. His tattoos look like comic book art, ready to pop off his knuckles in violent animations. He cracks them and stands up straight, turning to look at me with the most serious expression I have ever seen on his face. More serious than that day at the lake when he warned me that the mafia was back in town.
“Falling for a girl?” he repeats, but even though he’s almost scarily still, even though his face is a horribly sad and dangerous thing, I reach up to put my hand along his stubbled jaw. He wastes no time in pushing me away and stepping back, like I’m dangerous. No, more like he’s always done: like I’m impossible. “Get lost, Gidge.”
This time, I know I’ve got him where I want him. He called me Gidget first. Now it’s Gidge. That’s better.
“You can’t keep a secret for me and then …” I trail off, closing my eyes briefly as I remember his hot hands pushing the folds of my
wedding dress out of the way. Fucking me. Even though there was a huge risk to both of us. It was like, we couldn’t bear to resist. Death was preferable to spending another second apart. Three months was too long. The two years between the time we first fucked and now … an eternity.
They pushed me away, and I let them. Because I wasn’t ready then. But I’m ready now.
“Then?” he queries back in challenge, giving a harsh laugh and trying to storm past me. I grab his arm and he goes still again, turning his head slowly back to look at me. It occurs to me then that I really am playing with fire here. Since when did I ever get it into my head that any of these men were less dangerous than Gaz or Cat? That any of them gave a shit about me? Back then, I must’ve been working on instinct, recognizing that fragile red thread that connected our souls.
Now, I’m working on fact.
“You fucked me in the chapel, Grainge,” I tell him, my voice so much softer than normal. “Like you needed me.”
He grits his teeth, running his hand over his mouth in frustration. Whatever lies he wants to tell me—or himself—he can’t deny the facts.
“Maybe I just wanted one, last taste of the president’s daughter?” he queries, but not like he’s even trying to be cruel, more like he’s asking himself a question with an answer he knows but doesn’t care to admit to.
I frown at him.
“Don’t cheapen it,” I warn, feeling that old, familiar blanket of anger sweep over me. “You’re right about one thing: I am the president’s daughter. You forget sometimes that, despite your boys’ club bullshit, I know everything there is to know about club culture.” Our eyes meet, that sacrilegious heat burning between us. Hellfire, that’s what it is. Grainger is a demon, and I am the devil’s daughter. “You’re keeping a secret that could get me killed.”
“Something you’d best keep in mind before you go poking at bears.” He snatches my wrist and yanks me close, putting our faces near enough to kiss. It marvels me then, that he’d use the same animal in his metaphor that I’ve been using inside my own head. “My blood is one thing. A quick fuck is another. Don’t turn this into something that it isn’t.”
He releases me suddenly and takes off, pounding down the front steps and heading in the direction of the clubhouse. I chase after him, even though my bare feet bruise and bleed on the rocks and sticks and pine needles scattered across the lawn.
Abruptly, Grainger turns direction and disappears into the woods.
I pause briefly, one hand resting against the trunk of a tree. This is an invitation if I’ve ever seen one. And yet …
“Go.”
I didn’t hear anyone come up behind me and yet, there it is, that smooth, Southern drawl. I turn slowly, catching sight of Beast behind me. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve snapped my neck before I even realized he was there.
My future husband, the consummate killer.
“Go?” I repeat, trying to understand what it is, exactly, that he’s trying to tell me.
Beast looks past me, toward the shadows of the woods where Grainger just disappeared to.
“I’d prefer to have you to myself,” Beast tells me, and a chill goes down my spine. He’s so goddamn calm, almost disturbingly so. But, like I said, I’ve never been afraid of him. He doesn’t look at me the way he looks at everyone else, that is, like prey. He looks at me like one grizzly to another. Just two predators passing in the night. “I’m not a man that likes to share.”
I quirk a brow. It’s so weird, talking to him like this. We haven’t exactly had many scintillating conversations. Did he eat me out to the point that I thought I might die? Sure. Did he fuck me into the pavement? Yep. Did he see that pregnancy test I didn’t want to show him? You betcha. But talking? Nah, me and Beast don’t talk.
Except if we’re going to get married, we might need to start. Because—despite Grainger’s guesses to the contrary—that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Marry Beast. If this is the only way for me to join the club, by becoming a proper old lady, then I’ll do it, like venom inside the club’s veins.
Taking a backseat isn’t exactly in my blood; it isn’t what I want for my future, and it’s not what I’m taking. During my time with the mafia, I learned something. That is: I’m not afraid of anyone or anything.
Not Cat. Not Gaz. Not the Death by Daybreak Motorcycle Club. Not the Grey Wolfe Mafia.
I almost lie here. I almost let my anger dig her red, pointed claws into me and take hold. Tell Beast you picked him out of convenience, she hisses. But that isn’t true, not entirely.
“You were the most logical choice,” I tell him, ignoring his last words. “I’m not a man that likes to share.” Those words—and the matter-of-fact confidence contained in them—make me ache and burn and want in a way that I can’t quite explain.
Like my father, I’ve always wanted my own demons. My own horde to command. That rush of power, it’s always been in me. I’ve never actually hated the club: I hated my place in it. These four men, they’ve changed everything.
“I was,” Beast agrees, circling me. The motion makes me shudder, but not out of fear. Not out of revulsion. Out of desperate, violent want. I want to fuck Beast and claim him, just like I did when I was sixteen. Some girls—probably most of them, to be honest—might’ve been the victim of an unbalanced power play, might’ve been taken advantage of by older, powerful men. I am not that sort of girl, and I don’t like being painted with the same brush.
When I locked Beast between my thighs and held him there, I was taking exactly what I wanted from him.
“But I can’t deny that there’s something here,” I admit, as he continues circling me. Again, not like I’m prey. Like I’m a mate. His mate. I wet my lips with my tongue just in time for him to pause in front of me, his blue eyes tracing the movement. I meet his gaze. “You really want me, huh? Not out of pity or obligation, but … you really want me? For the rest of my life? The only woman you’d be allowed to fuck.”
He smiles at that.
Allowed.
The only way I can control Beast is if he lets me. He’s three hundred pounds of muscle, thirty-three years of rough-and-tumble experience, a decade of professional MMA bouts. I’m a hundred and something pound eighteen-year-old with a hard past and a roughshod personality.
To give me his leash, to offer it up, he must like me. Not just my body either. He could have any number of gorgeous groupies from the clubhouse, women with curves and perky tits and pretty smiles, perfect hair and flawless makeup, and legs that aren’t covered in scars.
This is something else entirely; it always has been.
“Was I subtle about it?” he asks me, his voice dripping like honey. I’m a sucker for a good accent. Beast steps toward me, and I feel my body begin to tremble in response. I want him to touch me so bad that it hurts.
“You didn’t exactly vocalize it,” I retort, and he finally, blessedly, like a gift from God himself, lifts his big hands up and presses his palms to either side of my throat. His touch is gentle, but firm. Possessive. Here is a man who breaks necks for a living and yet he’s holding mine in just such a way that he can cup my face, brush his rough thumbpads over my parted lips.
“Was I subtle, Gidge?” he repeats, looking down at me.
It takes me a minute to swallow past the surge of emotion. Three months I was gone. Enough time and space to give me distance, to make the familiar seem foreign, enough absence for the heart to grow fonder.
“No.” Just that. It’s all I need to say. That must be what it is with me and Beast. We don’t need a lot of words to convey our feelings.
He nods again, like that was the answer he was hoping for. Unfortunately, he also decides to withdraw his hands, letting them hang loose by his sides. His eyes, though a light blue in color, are dark with emotion. There’s a feral look about him that promises his control isn’t just for show; there’s a lot going on inside of him that needs to be leashed.
The moon cuts sharp silver lines across Beas
t’s huge form, its light glinting off his septum piercing and making the red and black eclipse tattoo on his right arm burn like it’s caught fire. His dirty blond hair is styled the same way it always is, shaved down the left side, the right side long and arranged so that it falls over the shorter side. It shimmers gold as the trees shift in a light breeze, making silver sparkles of moonlight dance across it.
“Go,” he repeats, lifting his head up and gazing off in the direction that Grainger went.
“I don’t understand,” I murmur, glancing back to see if I can spot whatever it is that Beast sees in the shadows of the woods. Unlike him, however, I see nothing. I have no doubt that he can actually tell where Cade is right now. Beast reaches out and hooks a finger on my chin, turning my face back to him.
“Forbidden things have power, Gidge,” he tells me, the words like sweet, ripe fruit as they fall from his pretty tongue. It’s a double entendre, that phrase. I know what he’s trying to tell me. I was a forbidden thing. Not just to him, but to all four of them. Too young. Too reckless. Too … Cat’s. “Crown didn’t have to lie for ya,” he adds, exhaling sharply before releasing me once again. “Sin either. I owe them both for bringing me into the fold, for keeping my old lady safe.” He gives me an expression that I might call a cheeky smirk on anyone else. The thing is, Catcher Coffey is never cheeky. He’s too much of a badass for that.
“And Grainger?” I ask dryly, still trying to puzzle out what this conversation is meant to convey. “How and why did Crown and Sin ever think to include him in the first place?”
“If you touch her,” Grainger said that fateful day, just after I gave my first time to him, “I will end you.”
He said those words like I belonged to him. Like he really and truly meant them. He’d bleed his brother just to keep me close. Is it horrible that I almost wish that he had? That he’d thrown Sin out and pinned me to the bed, fucked me until I admitted the terrible truth?
I wanted to be his. I still do. And I hate that I feel that way.
I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 10
