Page 125 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
Then he turns and heads for the balcony doors.
“Wait.” I chase after him and he pauses, looking back at me, his blue faux hawk turning purple in the light from the fire, just like it was during the night we first fucked each other. I had to pry it out of him then. It seems like I’m playing the same game, even now. “So that’s it? You’re going to tell me all of these things and then just leave?”
“My shift is done, Gidge,” he says, turning fully around to look at me. I can’t see his eyes now, but he’s limned in fire. “Beast should be here any minute to take over.”
I take a step closer to him, my bare feet shushing against the carpet.
“Stay a little longer?” I ask, holding the phone to my chest, wishing and wanting for an impossibility. I’ve never demanded something as ludicrous as a happy ending. The world just doesn’t work like that. What I do want, what I would love to see, is a happy for now. A moment in time that I can look back on the way I look back at my sisters, and not regret a single second of. Something that, were I lying in a bed in a dark mafia palace, I could dream about and not be afraid if I never woke up.
That’s it.
That’s all I’m asking for.
Memories that will light the way into the darkness.
“I’ve got to prepare for the wedding,” he says, rubbing at his forehead again. “I need to sleep, Gidget. And I … should give you your distance.”
“What if I don’t want distance?” I breathe, but Sin just shakes his head, already backing away from me. I take a step toward him, sliding my new phone into the narrow pocket on the side of the leggings.
“You’re marrying Beast. At the very least, he can keep you safe.” Sin stares at me, wetting his lower lip with his tongue. The motion fascinates me, captivates me, keeps me enthralled in the dark nightmare that is this life. I live for those little moments, you see. I absorb them.
“Did you not hear me tell the women that you were mine the other day?” I ask, moving over to stand in front of him and curling my fingers around the waistband of his sweats. “Stop fucking running from me. It might’ve been cute when I was sixteen, but I’m eighteen now. I’m in this shit balls-deep, Sin. The Grey Wolfe Mafia thinks I sabotaged the wedding to Grey; they want to kill me. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t leave. Not now. Not unless we were to wipe them out entirely.” Or put Grey in charge. That might work. But I don’t say that bit aloud.
Sin opens his mouth like he might actually try to argue with me, and then curses violently, grabbing me by my hair and putting his lips to mine. No wonder he promised never to kiss me again. Sin’s lips taste like that forbidden fruit that Beast so warned me about.
Forbidden. Impossible. But yet destined.
That’s us.
Sin forces me back until my ass bumps against the railing. With hot hands, he grabs me by the hips and lifts me up. My fingers grip his strong shoulders as he leans in close and puts his mouth near my ear.
“I won’t let you fall,” he tells me, and then that sinful mouth of his is on my throat, his hot tongue tracing my pulse as his hand finds it way between my thighs, his thumb stroking over the seam in my leggings. Beneath the fabric, my body pulses insistently.
Sin’s melancholy for his sister matches mine perfectly. That, and more than anyone else in the world save me, I think he mourned Queenie and Posey most of all. More than Cat. More than Nellie. He cared about them, and he blames himself for their deaths.
I thought that I did. Maybe after telling me the truth—that he turned down a position as head of our family’s security team—he thought I might also.
In the past, I might have. I might’ve blamed him and hated him the way I have for years. Only … I don’t.
“I don’t blame you,” I whisper, and he goes completely still. His entire body stiffens beneath my hands, and he adjusts his gaze over to me. “For my sisters. I don’t. If you’d stopped by that day like you said, you’d just be dead, too.” I glance away, feeling this surge of weird, sticky emotions travel through me.
Anger, I can handle. Sadness, got it. Violence. Jealousy. Pain. All of those are as familiar to me as a sunrise, constants that I can count on.
But forgiveness? Hope? Love? I don’t know. Passion is understandable; love is weird.
“That I couldn’t handle,” I tell him, feeling my voice crack. With each death, each loss, the world gets a little heavier, drags me down a little farther. Something needs to buoy me. I deserve that.
