Page 39 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
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 Beast’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.
