Page 67 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
He opens his mouth to reply, but I’m not done. I’ve needed to say this for a while. Not just to him either. To all of them. Everyone. The world.
“I’ve been through things that people three or four times my age have never seen, that they wouldn’t understand. I’m not saying it makes any of this right, but what in this world is? We all can’t measure up to the same rubric. Every person has a different threshold.” I shake my head, squeezing my hands so hard that my knuckles begin to ache. “I grew up a long, long time ago. Maybe when my sisters died. Maybe before that. Whatever. Call what you did wrong if that assuages your conscious, but that’s not how I see it.”
Sin is quiet for a long while, checking his phone again, putting it back, staring at me.
“You’re not leaving this building,” he tells me, and that just does it. I throw a punch at his face, and it connects. He curses at me as I stumble back, turning and heading for the stairs. I’m about halfway up them when he grabs me from behind, yanking me away from the door as I yowl like the very animal my father is named for, the one that purrs and mewls when it wants something, and kills for the fun of it. “Gidge,” he snarls at me, his mouth pressed right up against my ear. “No.”
“If you don’t let me go, Reba dies,” I scream back at him, struggling hard, clawing at his hands and making him bleed. Hot, sticky liquid drips onto my shoulder, slithering between my breasts. The cleavage in this dress is off the charts, but the pale skin of my chest is marred by Sin’s blood. I stop struggling just long enough to glance over my shoulder.
I’ve really hurt him.
He throws me onto the old couch that’s shoved up against the wall, and then he pins me there. Hands on my wrists, muscular thighs straddling me. He’s panting hard, bleeding everywhere.
“You’re lucky you’re a woman,” he chokes out, turning his head to the side and spitting blood. “Or I would’ve hit you back.”
“Oh, don’t hold back just because I have a pussy,” I warn him, thrusting my pelvis up enough that my hips graze his body. He makes a face at me, a sneer that’s all the more terrifying for the blood running down his chin. “That’s right, I said it: pussy.”
Sin laughs at me then. But he doesn’t let me go. That’s the important part of this equation.
“You tricked me once, Gidge. It isn’t happening today.” He leans down and puts his mouth dangerously close to the side of my neck. I don’t expect him to lick me, but it happens anyway, and I shudder. “You’re not getting the keys to the kingdom this time.”
I’m breathing hard, my muscles quivering with the need to run, to go find Reba. To save her. Because if she dies, then this whole scenario is all for naught. I didn’t rescue Grey to see another person that I love die. No, I … I’m not sure that I’d survive that, and I’m a scrappy bitch.
“You said you wish that I’d chosen you,” I say softly, so much so that I’m not sure he’s heard me at first. Not over the panting and the frantic heartbeats and the creak of the old sofa springs. “Why say that if you really wanted me gone?”
“If you were mine, I would send you away,” he tells me, pulling back just enough to look at me. “Like Cruce’s wife.” As it usually does, it takes me a minute to match the name to the man behind it. Cruce, one of the old-timers with a wife half his age. Cue my eyeroll. Not that I can’t admit that I have a bit of a fetish for older men, but I still scoff at everyone else. Because the world is gross; even the slice I’ve taken for myself is wicked pretty. Also, if I didn’t scoff and sneer at everything, I wouldn’t be Gidget Kesselring anymore.
“Cruce’s wife is going to school in southern California,” I say absently, thinking about the possibility of that, of actually having a life while still being married to the club. It excites me in the strangest of ways. At this point, I’m still on the mafia’s hitlist, but this war can really only have two possible conclusions.
We win, and I’m as safe as I’ll ever be.
Or we lose, and I die.
My hips come up to brush against Sin’s, and he shoves my wrists down hard against the back of the couch.
“Stop doing that.” He licks his lips, trying to clear the blood away. It works. Sort of. But he’s still bleeding. “If you were going to marry into the club, yeah, I wanted it to be me.” He laughs again, a sound too bitter for someone so young. We’re both dressed in it now, that sin that he wears as a nametag. “But really, I just wanted you to go. I wanted you free from all of this crap. Why do you think I took you home all those nights, why I stayed and watched over you? More than anything, I wanted you to run.”
