If I had to share any one of them with three other girls, I’d snap.
I’d make them choose me or else I’d walk.
How can I expect anything else from them?
Crown doesn’t answer me; that’s his way of saying he either can’t or won’t. At least not yet.
“Tell me more about Gaz,” I say instead, because I can’t work with partial information anymore. Crown’s been the biggest holdout; the other guys have been telling me whatever I need to know. But old rule follower over here? He’s a tough nut to crack.
In silent agreement, we start to walk. I allow Crown to lead us; he’ll know where guards are posted, where we’ll have the most privacy, the least chance of being caught.
“Back then, someone told the mafia about the casino. It’s a tribal casino, a great place to wash money. Native American tribes are sovereign nations; the US government doesn’t like to dig into their finances the way they might with a different business. It was quite literally the perfect place for us to launder money.” Crown licks the edge of his mouth in annoyance. “We weren’t involved in running the casino whatsoever. We gave them the funds, offered a substantial cut, and waited for a clean return. For the mafia to know about it, someone had to have talked.”
“Why couldn’t it have been someone from the casino?” I ask, trying to puzzle this out. “They could’ve approached the mafia and offered a deal on their own.”
“That’s what I thought,” Crown says, pausing again and tucking his hands in his pockets. “That’s why we … interrogated a few of them.” He stares right at me, as if daring me to protest, to be sick, to run as far and as fast as I can. But I already did that. I ended up in hell. They saved me from it. Here I stand. Yet I know that if I asked for it, Crown would put me on a plane and watch as it took off, never to return again.
They’d all let me go, wouldn’t they? If I really wanted that.
“So someone in the club blabbed?” I continue, thinking about Gaz. That would be just like him, to do something like that. Was he drunk? Was it for clout? Was he looking for money? “Then what?”
“Gaz is the one who told us where to find Kian,” Crown offers up, still watching me, still waiting for a reaction. My blood aches and burns, but I keep it together. He’s waiting to see if I can do it, if I can rein in my temper. “You know that Gaz used to take Queenie to the casino, right?”
I … I knew my sister had her own life. She did things she never told me about. But going to the casino? With Gaz? It isn’t really all that surprising. Queenie believed in our older brother in a way that Posey and I never did.
She loved him in a way we never did.
She trusted that there was good in him.
And he … he got her killed?
“That’s where she met Kian,” I say, testing out the idea. It makes sense. It all makes horrible, horrible sense, even if I don’t want to believe it. “If Gaz happened to meet someone from Grey Wolfe, and they offered him a deal …”
Whether he was working with them at that time or not doesn’t matter.
He’s most definitely working with them now.
He was on his way to get Reba last night.
For what purpose?
“Gaz was a traitor then, just like he is now. But how the fuck do I tell your father that without putting you at risk?”
“Us at risk,” I clarify, and Crown lets a heavy frown cross his gorgeous mouth.
“The drugs,” he starts, sighing again. He looks so tired. I feel responsible for that, but if he won’t let me help him, what can I do? He has to want me by his side. “You asked why you had to do that.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” I start, but it does. Crown knows that. He grabs my chin in his strong fingers, and even though the move could be called patronizing, I don’t care. His fingertips burn my skin where they grip me, as hot and flagrant as the wildfires raging in the distance.
“The Grey Wolfe Mafia cooks up their own drugs, Gidget. They invent new drugs. The underboss, Ivan Wolfe, is famous for the designer drugs he sells to the upper-class in Ashbury. In Eugene. Portland. Seattle.” Crown slides his hand down to rest on the side of my neck, and I close my eyes against the press of his palm on my pulse. “They were selling that cocaine up and down the West Coast, peddling it as some miracle drug. But only in specific areas, to specific people. They were using it to slaughter anyone that had ties with us: politicians, the chief of police, suppliers.” Crown continues sliding his hand down, over my shoulder, my arm, making me shiver. “We needed to know what was in it.”
“And me giving it to a bunch of kids …” I start, trying to push past the feeling of his heavy hand on my waist. I want so much more. I want everything. I want Crown to push that fire into me until I’m burned to ash and drifting on the wind. Even now, I can feel it settling on my painted mouth, bits of ruined things, people, homes, trees; it’s blowing in the wind, and I can taste it on my tongue when I breathe deep.
“We have a friend in the FBI. He made a suggestion. If a bunch of kids died from bad drugs, they’d need to have them tested. We could find out what, exactly, was in them.”
“But nobody died …” I hazard, thinking back on the day that I left. Sin’s words sound in my mind.
“Your dad wanted them all dead. But Crown argued against it. Nobody’s dead.”
“We cut their product with some of ours; I don’t like to kill kids, Gidget.”
“It’s Gidge,” I choke out, and then Crown is putting his mouth against mine, smearing lipstick and ash between us.
“You two want to ride off on a white horse?” a caustic voice asks, and we break apart just in time to see Grainger striding through the trees toward us. I wonder how much he heard. How long he’s been watching us. His brown eyes find mine before turning back to Crown. “We’ve got church in a half hour.”
Church. Not the religious kind. Oh no. The boys’ club, ‘let’s meet to discuss bro business’, sort of church. It’s the term all MCs use to refer to official club meetings.
Crown starts to pull away from me, but I curl my fingers under the waistband of his jeans. Grainger notices, eyes tracking the movement.
“A half hour is plenty of time,” I suggest, and Crown makes this frustrated sound, like he’s falling right into temptation that he knows will stain his skin with sin for the rest of eternity. That’s what I want. I want to stain and sin with them forever.
Cade scowls and storms over to stand beside us.
“You chased all the groupies away,” he tells me, looking me over with that sharp, horrible face of his, the one that I want to wake up to someday. I want to fuck him all night, and sleep beside him, see what it’s like to wake before he does and study his peaceful face. “You gonna do something about that?”
The other night, they said they were testing me, that they wanted to see if I could handle the responsibility of carrying the leashes to four demons. Well, I can. I will. Most importantly: I want to.
I lower myself to my knees, wondering if they might stop me. If one of them might walk away.
Since Crown is the most likely to take off—Grainger is pretty solid when sex is on offer—I undo his pants first, letting the heat of his cock warm my palm. I give the tip a lick before reaching over to undo Grainger’s pants.
He grits his teeth at me, but he doesn’t move. Neither of them do. They don’t look at each other either. Only me. Just me.
Slowly, languorously, I sweep my tongue over my palm, letting saliva and lipstick smear across my skin as the men watch. Once it’s lubed up to my satisfaction, I curl my fingers around the base of Grainger’s cock. I stroke him while I do the same to my other hand, taking Crown in the same way.
It’s exhilarating, to have them both towering above me, their competing scents mixing together in a musky cloud that blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. In reality, I cannot have them both. In my fantasy, they’re inextricably mine. Forever. Always.
My lips drop to Crown’s tip
, pressing a kiss right over the pearly bead of pre-cum. My tongue flicks out, cleaning it off as the fingers on both my hands stroke and caress. I lower my mouth to Crown’s shaft, sweeping my tongue around him and drawing a male sound of satisfaction from his throat. When he drops a hand to my hair, I pull away, redirecting my mouth to Grainger’s cock instead.
I try to do the same to him, but he thrusts deep as soon as my mouth is open, dragging the velvety heat of his cock along my tongue. I suck hard, grazing my teeth across his skin as I draw back. He tries to keep me there, but I dig my nails into his dick and he growls at me.
Back to Crown I go, sliding my mouth down the length of him, comparing the taste of the two men. I love them both. I want them both. Like an ice cream cone with multiple scoops. I lick and suck, back and forth, back and forth, until they’re both trying to tangle their fingers in my hair and keep me.
I draw back, squeezing them both with my fists, jerking them off with hard, demanding motions.
My eyes trail up, searching Crown’s face first. His eyes are half-lidded, lips parted, his attention a searching, questing thing, like he’s actually considering if he might be able to do this, share his woman with another man.
Grainger … well, Grainger is lost in the heat of sex. As much as I was burned by him, I think he was burned by me, too. I hurt him when I took Sin that night. Part of me wonders if I’d told Sin to leave, and I’d played into Grainger’s hands, would we have gotten together?
Or is he too impossible? Too much of a bastard? Too much of a whore?
The way he stares at me, licking his lips, running his own hand up his belly and under his shirt, like he wishes it were me touching him there, makes me wonder. Do I have him already? Is he mine?
I work both men up toward their own orgasms. When I see one of them getting ahead of the other, I slow down, relax my grip. Their sacs tighten, their muscles tense.
“Gidge, I’m warning you,” Crown says, but I don’t care. I know what I’m doing. At least he’s offering me a chance to change my course; Cade would shove his cock down my throat if given the chance.
I feel like I’ve got them both on the same rhythm, but Crown surprises me by coming first, his cock throbbing as hot liquid pulses out and onto my face, my lips, drips down to my chin. Cade, because he’s a horrid asshole, grabs my hair and turns my head, shoving himself deep and blowing his load on my tongue.
I swallow him down, even as I’m cursing him out in my head.
“Goddamn it, Grainger,” Crown snarls as Cade pulls away from me with a guttural groan. He doesn’t look at all ashamed of himself as he zips up his jeans. The vice president, on the other hand, takes his shirt and swipes it over my face to clean me off.
It’s almost cute. Almost, because even as he’s cleaning me off, he’s being a rough, controlling dick.
I pull away from him and use the trunk of the tree to get to my feet.
“No other woman will hurt you the way I will,” I tell them both, knowing that I’ve got to run my ass in the house and upstairs to the shower before Reba sees me. “But no other woman will hurt this good either.”
Cade meets my eyes but says nothing, frowning hard as he crosses his arms over his chest.
“You can’t use sex to sway me,” Crown says, and I know that’s true. But I also know that he loves me. He said as much just now—with words as well as actions.
He told me what I needed to know, about Gaz, about the casino, about the drugs.
The Grey Wolfe Mafia really is out to obliterate the club, aren’t they?
I’ll personally see to it that they don’t.
Who knew that I’d be defending something I hate? But also that, in many ways, I love.
Love-hate, what a splendid toxin.
Reba and I sit together in front of the fire later, after the sky has gone dark and a cool chill laces the air outside. Sin is on the balcony, smoking a cigarette and staring up at stars that are remarkably close to the color of his eyes.
I wish he were in here with us, the flames licking at the stone interior of the fireplace and casting dancing shadows over both our faces. Fem yawns, pink tongue stretching out in a curl before he draws it back in and grumbles, rolling onto his side with a dramatic sigh.
“When I close my eyes,” Reba begins, her green gaze focused on the fire, “I can still see ‘em.” She glances over at me, and I turn to look at her. There’s a sadness to her that wasn’t there before, a weight on her shoulders, a flare in her eyes. I recognize it because I’ve been carrying it around with me for so long: pain. One of the reasons I think I feel for these four assholes is because they have it, too, and like calls to like.
I reach out and put my hand over hers.
“Your parents?” I clarify softly, prompting her to continue. I wasn’t ready to hear about Sin’s sister a few weeks ago, but … I think I am now. I’m ready to hear his pain. Reba’s pain. I can handle this.
“My poor mama,” she starts, her eyes darkening as she turns away toward the wall. “She didn’t stand a chance. She opened the front door and there they were, six men and … Grey.” She stares down at our hands, tangled together atop Fem’s thick coat. “They slit her throat like it was nothin’, like you might cut into an apple.” She turns back toward the fire, but there are no tears there.
Reba has, in her own way, always been as strong as I have. Stronger, actually.
“My daddy though,” she starts, and then a harsh, angry laugh escapes her. She swipes a hand down her face. “He was like Lot and his daughters.” Reba looks back at me, as if to discern whether or not I understand the Biblical reference.
“The douchebag who offered up his daughters to be gang-raped?” I query, and her smile gets tight and funny, far-off and twisted. Reba stares at the fire again, as if she’s trying to sink into its greedy orange fingers.
“That guy,” she says, but her voice is thick with a righteous rage. “He offered up his daughters to protect two angels that the citizens of Sodom were threatening to rape.” She scrubs at her face, a tiredness creeping into her gestures that scares me. That isn’t a physical sort of fatigue, but a mental one. “Except my daddy offered me up to protect himself.”
Oh.
Shit.
I grit my teeth against the imagery. Wesley, on his knees, slumped forward onto his face like he’d been praying before they slit his throat. Guess he was just begging the men to take his daughter and leave him be? I can’t even imagine. Okay, well, actually, I can. Cat would … well, I don’t know what Cat would do anymore.
He saved me from the mafia.
He’s abused me my whole life.
It hits me suddenly that I’m just like Crown. I’ve been looking at the world as if it were black and white. As if there’s such a thing as truly good and truly evil. But Beast is right. He’s so fucking right.
This world is painted in shades of gray.
This whole time, I’ve been laboring under the idea that the club was black. In order for that to be true, other parts of the world would have to be white. But that isn’t how things work, not at all. Nobody is perfect. Nobody is a heroine in every scene; nobody is a villain likewise. Sometimes, things are complicated.
Life makes zero narrative sense.
Cat loves me, in his own way. He loved me enough to come for me. To risk the lives of his men for me.
As much as I think about it, I don’t … he wouldn’t suggest the mafia take me to save his own life. Would he kill me if he knew that I betrayed him? He would. And that isn’t okay. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take any comfort in knowing that Cat, in some ways, was and is more righteous than Preacher Wesley Keller.
“Do you want to talk about what happened after?” I whisper, and Reba nods.
“After, I kissed Grey. Or rather, he kissed me. He shoved me into the wall, and he kissed me.” She sounds pained, almost horrified. I suppose I would be, too, if I didn’t understand Grey’s motivations. He was claiming Reba for himself, in front of the m
afia goons. He was preventing them from touching her. By claiming her as his, he was saving her.
How he managed to survive the aftermath of the wedding, I’m not sure. I wish we were able to talk to one another in private. I still don’t have a phone or access to the Internet. That is not an accidental move on my father’s part.
“He told the men that he wanted me.” She shuts her eyes and covers her face with both hands. That’s when it happens, the very first tears I’ve seen from her. Fem lifts his head up with a whine, but I’m already crawling around him and throwing my arms around my best friend, covering her from behind, holding her close.
If you have strength in yourself, it’s a blessing to be able to gift it to others.
It’s a blessing to stand up and fight.
“When he kissed me, Gidget, I realized something.” She turns her head, so I lift my chin from her hair to meet her gaze. “I liked it,” she breathes, sounding horrified. “Not in that moment, but later, when he kissed me a second time. He did it in front of his father to prove a point, I think, but I’d already gotten to know him by then. I liked it, and I liked it too much.”
She turns around to face me, so I let go of her, sitting back on my calves until we’re face-to-face in the dark.
“I’ve seen what love’s done to you, Gidge, and I can’t put myself through that. I’m not judging you, but it isn’t something that I want.” Her eyes are big and round, but her voice is firm. Firm enough that my first thought—that this is an impulse, a gut reaction to a bad situation—seems faulty. Reba has that rapturous look about her, the one that she gets when she’s talking about God. “I realized while I was with Grey that I didn’t like my daddy’s church. I mean, I knew that, but it was more than that. I’m not sure that I like any church, but what I do know is that I love God.”
I blink back at her, and I recognize the feral gleam in her eye, this wicked rapture for something more, something outside of herself. That’s how I look at those four stupid men.
I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 30
