There’s always been this strange thing between Sin and me when it comes to kissing. It’s where we connect the hardest, where our souls resonate the loudest. So it was the day he kissed me against a tree at my sister’s funeral. When he broke from years of shunning to kiss me in the kitchen and make me drop my sandwich. To the kiss we shared at the hospital that reorganized the stars in my sky.
He groans with relief against my mouth, dropping his hands to my waist and kissing me back with all the wild furor of a young couple long parted. There’s an urgency there, a need. I press harder against him, encouraging his tongue to seek mine out. His hands slide down my back, feeling me up, taking me in.
“I don’t want this to be a secret,” I whisper when our mouths part and, because my luck is that good, I happen to glance over and find Nellie staring at me. She seems surprised, even though she heard that conversation between me and Crown the other day.
Sin glances her way, but he doesn’t release me; he then puts that sharp mouth of his very near my ear and makes me shiver. “Of course not. I just didn’t want to tongue-fuck your pretty mouth until I was sure you were ready.”
“Gidget, can I talk to you for a minute?” Nellie offers up, but I don’t feel particularly inclined to give Sin up just yet. I lower my arms from his neck, but I don’t move.
“We can talk here,” I reply, even if the grit in the air is starting to get to me.
“I’d rather …” Nellie starts, and then she gives Sin a look. “I’m so glad you’re safe, Colton,” she tells him, and he smiles back at her with a genuine warmth in his eyes. Not surprising. Sin practically grew up here, didn’t he? He was, what, sixteen when he started hanging around the clubhouse?
He’s known Nellie a long, long time.
“You can say whatever you need to say,” he tells her, and even though he looks strong, there’s a bandage on his neck that reminds me to take it easy with him. Not that I won’t ride him hard tonight, just that I’ll be nice about it. Well, niceish.
I return my attention to my mother’s face.
With a sigh, she straightens out her jacket—Cat’s jacket, to be technical about it—and stares the pair of us down.
“Lord knows I’ve never been a saint, and that your father and I had our fun, but you don’t do this sort of thing out in the sunlight.” Nellie lowers her voice and steps closer when a pair of women walk out and pass by the three of us with gossipy sidelong glances. I resist the urge to flip them off and focus on Nellie instead. “You and Beast can make your own arrangements, but they should be private.”
As if her exploits were ever private. But I know what she means. She’s saying, sure, fuck other guys, but do it in the dark, in the clubhouse, during a party with sex and drugs and cigarette smoke and half-dressed groupies everywhere.
It isn’t the sex part of my relationship to these men that bothers her, it’s everything else: the romance, the living together, the family aspect.
“Mom,” I say, because I’ve been practicing that, calling Nellie by her title instead of her name. Every time the word comes out, it hurts a little. But I’m learning to try to heal the hate in my heart. Some of it was real, certainly, but it isn’t serving me anymore. At this point, I need to either eliminate those sorts of people from my life or try to move on. And by eliminate, that could mean simply ceasing communication or … you know, blowing their goddam brains out. Giulia Wolfe, your clock is ticking. “Have you looked around at the world we live in?” I gesture with my left arm toward, well, everything. The fire-tainted sky, the compound overflowing with families and outlaws, the invisible but no less deadly pressure of the Grey Wolfe Mafia. “Life is short. It’s hideous. We find beauty where we can.”
I look back at Sin to find him watching me with eyes that are very truly the color of melancholy. He embodies it with that silver gaze of his, like the moonlight when the sky isn’t cursed.
“I’m your beauty?” he queries, with a cocky, little smile. “I’ve never heard that line before.”
I snort at him and look back at Nellie.
“Beast knows, and he doesn’t care. Let us run our marriage the way we want to.” I’m not entirely sure how this is going to work long-term, but we’ll figure it out. He told me to go for it. Three men only. Three men I could fuck. Three men he trusts with not only his life but also mine.
