Page 41 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
Anger surges up hot and fiery, that same brimstone inferno bullshit. I really and truly am of the devil, aren’t I?
“During the last three months, I’ve grown a lot,” I tell Grainger, trying and failing to keep the emotion from my voice. There’s some anger in it, sure, but there’s so much more than that. I’m tired. I never expected to live beyond the walls of the mafia’s stronghold. Then, when I’d accepted that I could marry Grey and fight another day, I had a whole life imagined that was nothing like this one. “I’ve learned to stop lying to myself. That, and I won’t let my pain control me anymore.”
It seems for a minute there that Grainger might just take off the way he usually does.
Instead, I find myself surprised when he comes for me, grabbing my face in much less gentle hands than Beast used. He kisses me then, his mouth a punishing heat that forces me back several steps, until my arching back is pressed to the trunk of a tree.
The kiss doesn’t feel like a promise, however. Or an apology. Not an admission or even a goodbye.
It feels like a punishment.
Because I know Cade Grainger so well, because we’re cut from the same cloth, I see this for what it is.
He’s going to punish me for not choosing him. For stealing Grey. Maybe he’s even punishing me for that night, the one where I chose him first, and then proceeded to fuck three other men in quick succession. Had he thought he’d won then? Did I do something to push him away?
Regardless, that’s what’s coming. That’s what’s happening right now.
We’ve been in purgatory, Cade and I. This, this is his castigation of me.
“No,” he growls against my lips, barely allowing either of us room to breathe. Still, I can see him, limned in moonlight and raging. Wanting. Needing me. “You don’t get to come back here and act all grown-up, like some wiseass seer who’s learned her lesson.” He rises up, putting space between us with the sole purpose of looking down at me—literally as well as metaphorically. Ironic that, considering we both dwell in the depths of the underworld. “What I did for you was a favor, Gidge. That’s it. A favor to Crown, a favor to Beast, to Sin. Shit, a favor to Cat.” He points at me, his tone cutting. “If he knew about this, and he had to put you down, he’d never be the same man.” Cade grits his teeth as he pulls back from me. He looks like a man who’s lost a war. Devastated, that’s the only way I can think to describe him right now.
He’s voicing the worry I had before, about this whole scenario being about Cat.
I’m too smart to accept that lie for what it is: complete and total bullshit.
“You’re angry because I’m marrying Beast and not you. If I’d asked for you, you’d be treating me a hell of a lot better right now.” I stand my ground, even when he looks at me like he wants to kill me. To the uninitiated, to the ignorant, to the inexperienced, anger and passion look quite similar from afar. To someone who’s seen their fair share of both, I know what it is that I’m looking at.
Unbridled passion.
Without reins, it’s the most dangerous thing there is.
It makes us reckless, volatile; it makes us seethe.
“Better?” Cade snorts, looking me up and down and running a hand over his hair. “I don’t know about that. I’d have you on your back on the forest floor.” He stalks toward me, but I remain where I am, my back pressed to the trunk of a tree. “I’d have you on your knees in one of the dorm rooms. Shit, I’d take you on the back of my bike the way Crown did.” I cringe a little at that; I wasn’t aware he knew every detail of what I’d done with the other men. “Consider yourself lucky that you didn’t pick me.”
He looks me over with lascivious eyes, with wicked intent simmering like hot coals. His tongue slides out to tease one of his lip rings.
“Oh, if you only knew the fucked-up shit I’d like to do to you. You’d run, Gidge. You wouldn’t chase me into the woods with your teenage bullshit. You think I have a crush on you? That I want to take you to prom?” He laughs then, and the sound carries. If I’d heard that sound out of context, it would likely give me the chills.
It’s a warning, that laugh. One that I refuse to heed. Because I’m not scared of Cade Grainger. Never was. Never will be. No matter what he says or does.
“Then do it,” I challenge him, knowing that this is how we function best together. Odds and ends. Push and pull. We fight and claw and bite because it’s all that we know. “All of those fucked-up things. Do them.” I push away from the tree and come to stand in front of him, just to prove a point. “It didn’t stop you when I was sixteen, so why should it stop you now?”
