Page 128 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
I watch as he moves back toward me, playing with the item in his hands.
“At least I know you never brought girls back here,” I tell him as he sits down on the edge of the bed.
“How many of them did you fuck in my bed?” Sin retorts, studying me and hiding the item he was carrying in his lap.
“Just Crown,” I say with a bit of a smarmy smile. “Balances out, considering I saw you fuck a groupie of the hood of Gaz’s sportscar once.” That gives Sin pause, and he cants his head slightly to one side.
“I always made an effort to keep those sorts of things from you,” he admits, which I already knew. I’ve been aware of that since I met the guy. Whenever my sisters and I came to the clubhouse, he would accommodate us. If he had a girl on his lap, he would push her off.
“I know. I snuck out of the clubhouse and watched you from the bushes.” I sit up slightly, trying to see what it is that he’s got in his lap. “You’ve got game, Colton.”
“Colton,” he repeats with a snort. “Call me Sin.”
“I’d rather call you ‘Ryan’,” I start, and then he’s turning to me and snatching my wrists up in his hands. The jingling metal manifests into a pair of handcuffs that he uses to latch me to the headboard. I yank on them, a small surge of fear striking through me as I’m transported back to that bed in the Grey Wolfe Mafia stronghold.
“If you call me Ryan, you’ll regret it,” he promises, and then he pauses when he notices the way I’m trembling. “Gidge?”
I close my eyes and take long, slow breaths to steady my racing heart. I survived that. I want this. Two very different things.
“They chained me up,” I tell him without opening my eyes, “the mafia.”
The bed creaks as Sin adjusts himself, and I know without even asking that he’s moving to take the handcuffs off.
“No, no, leave them.” I open my eyes to find him hovering over me, staring down, trying to figure out if he should trust my words or the slight trembling in my naked body. “I’m over it.”
He frowns at me, but he doesn’t take the handcuffs off.
“You’re not,” he says, adjusting himself so that he’s lying beside me. “You don’t always have to walk through fire and pretend like you didn’t get burned. Be honest, Gidge. Feel the feelings. Otherwise, they’ll take control of you; they’ll own you far better in denial than they ever could in acceptance.”
His words are wise enough, but practicality doesn’t always work in this dark, twisted life we live.
Sin takes his phone from his pocket, setting it on the windowsill behind him. Music is still playing; I recognize HELL TO HAVE YOU by Our Last Night and Sam Tinnesz.
“I like this song,” I breathe, trying to fight back the fear. I did it with the bike; I can do it now. I’ve never allowed a single one of my life’s many tragedies to mark me; I don’t do triggers. I fight them. I destroy them. I, as Sin stated so aptly, walk through fire.
“Yeah?” he asks, listening to it for a moment. He smiles then, and I see it again, a hint of possibility. Of fun. I mean, I am handcuffed in a house of murder with a large, wealthy crime syndicate trying to assassinate me, a father who’d shoot me in the face if he knew the truth, and a brother that’s a two-timing snake. But still. Close enough.
I definitely do not expect Sin to lean in toward me, tracing his fingers over my lips as he starts to sing.
He’s singing.
He’s singing to me.
Sin’s very clearly heard the song before; he has no problem keeping up with the rap portion in the middle, doesn’t skip a beat of the chorus. The lyrics are so appropriate, almost disturbingly so. He sings them to me, his voice molten, comforting; it fills in all the cracks inside my twisted psyche. I knew it! I knew this boy could sing.
As I’d always expected, Colton Young is wasted potential in a leather cut.
If my hands were free, I’d bury them in his hair and drag him to me. Instead, I rub my thighs together and turn toward him as much as I can, the chain on the handcuffs clinking against the headboard.
When the metal portion of the song starts and the singer begins to scream the lyrics, Sin pauses, nuzzling his face between my neck and chin.
“I really would,” he promises me, “go through hell to have you. I just never wanted you to do the same for me.”
“Too late,” I choke out, and then he’s drawing back and tucking a finger under my chin, turning my face so that he can kiss me. As soon as he does, I see that he was never really kissing me before. This is the full and endless power of his true kiss, his true intent.
