I finally deign to look at him, and I swear, the rough beauty in his face nearly staggers me. A memory prickles, a very specific one, where I’m looking down at our bodies, joined together, seamless, hard to tell where one of us ends and the other begins.
“It was all on you,” I whisper, looking away again. I finally set the scotch aside; I’ve got a nice buzz going. “All of the risk.” I look back at him, but as per usual, he’s nearly impossible to read. “Just like Queenie.” Here is where I start to get choked up. Here is where I find it difficult to breathe. “You put your life on the line for me, Crown. You were willing to die to protect me. My question to you is: what do you want out of all this?”
My question seems to surprise him for a moment.
When it seems like Crown isn’t going to answer, I grab the scotch bottle only to find it torn from my hand.
I look up.
“Don’t you dare try to lecture me,” I warn him, but then he’s throwing the bottle on the floor and my face is between his hands. I’m so startled that I jerk back, leaving room for him to put a knee between my thighs. He nudges my legs apart in a way that’s possessive, like he’s claiming his territory or something.
I’m too buzzed to remember how pissed off I am about that.
I lift my fingers to his face, dragging my nails down the day-old stubble on his cheeks.
“You better not be drunk, Gidge,” he warns me, but I just laugh. He knows I can hold my liquor.
“I didn’t regret it last time,” I breathe against his ear, licking up along the shell of it until he lets out a low growl, pushing me back onto the mattress. Our mouths work against one another as the old king bed creaks beneath us.
Whatever.
If anyone hears anything, they’ll assume it’s Beast. If they see him and think otherwise, they’ll make it his problem. And he, clearly, knows that Crown is in here with me.
“If you’re in here then …” I start, releasing Crown just enough that he can put some space between us with the sole purpose of staring at me.
“Because I told you that I was going to start working on my wants, didn’t I?” he queries dryly. “It’s not over yet.”
“Which part of it?” I quip, rubbing my aching body along the dirty denim that cups his muscular thigh. “Do you really think you can wrestle me away from Beast with that ruby ring of yours?”
That comment annoys the fuck out of him. He sits up suddenly, staring down at me with an inscrutable expression.
“If you wanted to be a part of the club, you should’ve picked me.” This line is delivered with the utmost seriousness; it oozes arrogance, reeks of confidence. “You would be the most popular club wife; every groupie in the clubhouse would envy you.”
“You should know, considering you fucked most of them,” I retort, pushing up onto my elbows. I rub my cunt against his leg again, and he frowns at me. “Dated them, actually. What were you up to? Searching for a wife of a more appropriate age?”
This time I’ve really done it. Crown’s eyes narrow to slits and he leans down, grabbing my wrists and pushing them into the bed. With him this close to me, it’s an assault. His scent is like violets and suede, luring me in toward a dangerous predator I have no business being with. Beast is dangerous, yes. Crown is calculating.
I would’ve bet the lives of myself, Reba, and Fem on him turning me in. Hunting me down himself. Facilitating a kill for Cat or Beast or Gaz.
I must not know him at all. Maybe no one does?
“What would you have rather had me do? Grab your sixteen-year-old ass and haul you to the courthouse with daddy in tow, let him sign the papers so we could get married?” Crown is holding me with one hand, studying my face, searching me for something that I can’t quite explain.
I look right back at him, and even if the quips are good, even if my pussy aches and begs for his touch, I let the whole truth show in my face.
Yes.
“Well, you snooze, you lose. You waited too long, Crown. Now you’re going to have to learn to share.”
His grip tightens on my wrists, and I squirm. It’s been years since we had sex. Years. I’ve had carnal dreams about this man, I won’t lie.
“I don’t enjoy sharing,” he says, his voice dark and dangerous, threaded through with libidinous intent.
“So they all say,” I retort, thrusting my hips up and grinding against his leg for a third time.
He grits his teeth, shoving his leg harder against me and drawing a ragged moan from my throat.
“You were born to be my wife, Gidge,” he says, and even if the words are ground out like an insult, I like them. A lot. “I could have you.” I said that to him once. Even then, I knew it was true. What I didn’t realize was that, even if we both ache and bleed and want for one another, it’s still going to be a challenge.
Fucking other guys is one thing. That’s what Beast’s given me permission to do.
Loving other guys? That’s … it isn’t something anyone in this culture would ever understand.
“And if I’m going to marry Beast anyway?” I start, and Crown makes this deep, guttural sound of frustration, so at odds with his usual put-togetherness. The false cheer he straps on for others, the way he did when he came over with my friends and swam in our pool. This, somehow, feels the most real of all his different sides.
“You are downright determined to piss me off tonight, aren’t you?” he asks, and then he goes to pull away from me. Releases my wrists. Slides his leg back. It hits home then: I crave him, and I can’t bear to let him go. I lunge up and wrap my fingers in his leather cut, my thumb brushing over the patch that says Vice President on it.
“You betrayed the club for me. Don’t you at least want something for your effort?” I breathe, putting my mouth right up against his, tasting him. He tastes so damn good. Like the promise of something I never believed I could have. That I still, in this moment, don’t believe I can have.
But I want it.
I want it so badly.
“Be my armor, Crown,” I whisper, the alcohol convincing me to be even bolder than I normally would. “I want to wear you like a shield, carry you into battle with me.” I suck on his lower lip, and he closes his eyes, his hands finding my hips and squeezing so hard that I let out a small sound. “That’s what I want out of all this. You. Them. The four of you—my dark knights instead of Cat’s. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
He opens his eyes. This close up, I’m struck by the color of them. I’ve never seen another person with eyes like Crown’s, like lichen in the boughs of a pine tree, a soft muted green that catches the wind and rides it.
“We all want things we can’t have,” is his reply, but then he’s cupping the back of my head with a huge hand and kissing me in that infuriating way of his, like roses and champagne or some shit. Only, our roses are red simply because they’re dipped in blood. Our champagne is tainted with ash as it falls from the sky, the only remnants left of a once vibrant wood.
Crown takes control of the situation in a way that’s different from, say, Grainger. He isn’t just possessive—although there is possession in his touch—or domineering; he’s simply in charge. He is, without complaint or doubt or question, the boss.
“You’ll be president someday,” I breathe against his mouth, and he stills. His entire body goes stiff as I wrap my arms around his muscular neck, fingers teasing that gently waving hair of his. “And you’d do a much better job than Cat.”
“Gidget,” he warns me, and then he picks me up off the bed, cradling my ass with his hands. “Haven’t you been treasonous enough lately?” Crown sits down in the billiard green armchair in front of the fire, settling me on his lap. There’s just enough authority in his touch, in his voice, that I feel myself tilting toward him like he’s the sun. Just enough that I don’t feel the need to rebel, to fight, to scratch and scream and run. “Get on your knees, Gidge.”
Well, shit.
I hesitate briefly, but Crown fists his hand i
n my hair, forcing me to hold his gaze.
“I lied for you, yes. That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you run right over me. If you want to play games with grown men, then we’ll play. Get on your knees. This is the last time I’m going to ask.”
I give him a sharp look, my scalp stinging just enough that the energy in his grip travels straight through my Grainger-tainted blood to my clit.
“If you have to ask again?” I query, because I just can’t help myself.
Crown returns my look with one built of solemnity.
“Then I’m going to leave, and I’ll be one of Beast’s groomsmen and nothing more. Prove to me that you can follow orders, and I’ll consider making you a pretty, little soldier.”
Even though his words kill me, even though submission is not in my blood, I do as he asks. I figure I owe him this much, at least. His life is literally in my hands, resting on my scarred palm like a weapon. At any time, I could ruin him. Ruin him the way he ruined me that night.
“You’re not going to tell me to go to my room and keep quiet after this?” I murmur, my hands on his knees. It surprises me how much hurt there still is inside of me when I think about that night. For years, I’ve been telling myself that none of it mattered, that I didn’t care.
Except that I did. I do. I always will.
“You’re not going to be ashamed of me tomorrow?” I continue when he doesn’t answer. My eyes lift to his, but I don’t think he ever stopped watching me.
“I was never ashamed of you, Gidge,” he says with a long, tired sounding sigh. “I was ashamed of myself. Now, be quiet and take my belt off.” The edge of his mouth quirks up in a bit of a smile, a remnant of that vivid grin he gets sometimes, proof that he does know, somewhere deep down, how to be happy. “You didn’t need much of an invitation last time.”
With a huff—because I will always be contrary down to my bones—I lift up on my knees and reach for his belt, the silver buckle in the shape of a star, like something a sheriff might wear. Not for the first time, I wonder how someone as upstanding as Officer Reid became Vice President Crown.
“Lift my shirt up,” he tells me, just after I slide the belt from his loops with a hiss and toss it aside. “Kiss me all over, Gidge. Show me how much you appreciate what I did for you.”
“Fucker,” I murmur, but I can’t pretend I’m not excited by the sight of his abs as I push his t-shirt up and find hard planes and valleys waiting for my hungry tongue. There are tattoos on his hips that I never got the chance to study before. Now that I’m down here, face-to-face with them, I can see that one is a grave and the other is Lady Justice.
A shiver takes over me.
“Tell me your story?” I ask, just before I press my lips to Crown’s taut belly. A shudder ripples through him and he fists his fingers in my hair. There’s something to it, that grip, his control, his power, that makes my entire body flush warm with want.
“Not today,” he breathes out as I lick my way up, lifting his shirt as I go. Crown’s skin is just salty enough that he tastes wholly and completely male, but with an undertone of soap, like his sweat is fresh, like he showered for me first. “But maybe soon. If you’re a good girl.”
That gives me some pause right there. A good girl.
“I’ve never been a good girl, Crown.” My lips move against his skin as I talk, making him tense and groan as I punctuate the sentence with flicks of my tongue. “I’ve always been a very, very bad girl.”
He lifts my head back with his grip on my hair and looks down at me with what I like to call his ‘vice president’ stare.
“You’ll be a good girl for me,” he says, his voice strong and firm. Confident. He fully and utterly expects me to follow his rules. Crown releases my hair and then reaches down, undoing his jeans and taking the heavy, thick length of his cock into his hand. The tip glistens with pre-ejac, proof that Crown is as helpless to fight his desire for me as I am for him. “Suck me off, Gidge. Show me gratitude.”
The fingers of my right hand curl around the base of him, my eyes locked on his face, watching his reaction to my touch. It’s as if we’re weaving a dark spell together, something wanton, something ribald, something lascivious. A dance of devils.
Our gazes stay connected as I lower my mouth to his tip, pausing just a fraction of an inch away and wetting my lips with my tongue. It brushes against him, and he groans, pushing me down and sliding into my mouth. My teeth just barely graze him as he enters my throat, hips lifting up off the chair so that it creaks.
My right hand stays where it is, fisting around him so that when he thrusts into me, he doesn’t go too deep into my throat. My nails tap and tease, tracing across his skin as I bring my other hand up and heft the heavy weight of his balls against my palm.
My eyes flick to his yet again, but when I find him watching me, I close them. I don’t want to see that, the intense heat of his stare. Crown’s grip on my hair is firm, but his fingertips massage my scalp, encouraging me to take more of him, to draw him deeper into my throat.
The fire crackles behind us, casting a warm glow over the scene. Me on my knees, Crown in the armchair, the bookshelves towering over us on two sides.
“Move your hand,” he commands, just after I start to feel his thighs tensing on either side of me. Without waiting for me to comply, he reaches down and removes my right hand, guiding my head down on his shaft with his left. This is only my second time going down on a guy, but I’ve seen enough blow jobs in my time that I’m aware of how difficult this really is. You don’t just deepthroat a dude for fun; it takes finesse.
Inhaling through my nose, I relax my throat and fight my natural gag reflex, letting Crown guide my head the way he wants it. Up and down, up and down, deep, deep, deep.
“Oh, fuck, Gidge,” he murmurs, lifting his hips until he hits the back of my throat. “Right there.” Crown fucks my mouth, keeping my head still with his hand in my hair, lifting his pelvis up to meet my face. The closer he gets to coming, the tighter the muscles in his legs get, the stronger his grip on my hair. His last few thrusts are hard, almost brutal, and then he’s spilling hot seed into the back of my throat, pumping until his balls are empty, and collapsing back into the chair.
I gasp as he slides out of my mouth, swallowing and running my hand across my lips.
Crown doesn’t waste a second in grabbing me under the armpits and hauling me into his lap. I can hear the thundering of his heart as he presses a kiss to the edge of my hairline. The softness of his touch in contrast to the demanding way he just fucked my mouth is startling, but in a good way. In a way that makes me believe that there are butterflies in my belly instead of bats, that romance is real, that Crown actually gives a shit about me.
“Take your clothes off, sweet girl. All of them. Now.” He releases me after a moment and I scramble to my feet, pausing when I remember that I’m not the same Gidget from before, the one with pretty legs and perfect skin. This is … I’m different now. Crown notices my hesitation and lifts a brow in question. “Don’t tell me you obeyed just long enough to suck my dick? The rest of the night was going to be for you.”
“I just …” I start, but then I remember the way Giulia taunted me, shamed me, humiliated me. Or at least she tried to. I won’t let her ugly words weasel into my brain. With a lift of my chin, I slide my sweater over my head first, wincing a bit as the bandage pulls against my wound. I then slip the straps of my bra over my shoulders, spin it, unclasp it, let it fall.
The way Crown’s expression shifts when he sees my breasts … I find myself closing my eyes and shifting slightly, just to rub my thighs together, just to feel some friction where I need it most.
“More, Gidge. All of it.” He leans forward, watching me hungrily, his hands clenched around the arms of the chair so hard that he’s leaving dents in the fabric. “Show me what you did when you wrecked my bike.” He sits back up and gives me an annoying smirk. “Maybe we should go find my new one and you can thank me on the back of it the way
you did before?”
I curl my lip at him, reaching my hands down to my jeans.
“The only part of the whole mess that I’m sorry about is the bike,” I murmur, undoing my pants and then taking a deep breath before shoving them down with my panties, revealing the ruined skin on my legs. The spot on my thigh that was infected is the roughest spot, a dip where the skin should be smooth. I assume over time that the scars will fade a bit more, but even if they don’t …
Sin isn’t the only one who appreciates me the way I am. Crown’s gaze is hungry and dark, and when he rises from his chair to stand over me, I look up to meet his voracious expression with one of my own. Carefully, reverently, he reaches up and traces a finger over the bandage covering my shoulder before taking my head in his hands. He kisses me with that punishing mouth of his, the one that commands armies of leather-clad demons on bikes. The one that dares stand up to Cat, the devil himself. The voice of the man who saved my life with a lie.
Crown’s right hand slides down the side of my neck, over my shoulder, down my arm, and then settles on my waist, leaving trails of fire in its wake. He continues to kiss me, drawing the moment out until it’s hot and sticky, until I’m trembling against him, my fingernails scratching at the leather of his vest. When he moves his hand again, he wastes no time in cupping my cunt with a firm, demanding grip.
“Should I tell you how every groupie I fucked was a stand-in for you? Should I tell you that no woman has ever had power over me the way you do?” He squeezes me, grinding the heel of his hand into my clit and making me raise up on my toes, my thighs parting to give him access.
“No. Don’t talk about other women—ever.” It’s the only command he allows from me, a laugh breaking from his lips just before he presses them to mine again, slipping a single finger into my waiting heat. A groan escapes us both as he teases the silky slickness between my legs, churning up that wild fire inside of me that Grey simply could not summon.
I could’ve married him, ruled the mafia. He offered me something I’d never been offered before: a chance at an equal partnership. A chance to rule. To command. But, as much as I love the guy, he couldn’t give me this.
I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 15
