I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2)

by C. M. Stunich

  I blame my delusions of romance and caring on blood loss and shock.

  “Go on,” Cat encourages, reaching out to touch my knee. He gives me a fatherly pat, and I look at him like a crazy person. He laughs at me and then ruffles up my hair. “Girl, you’ve got balls, I’ll give you that. Three months in the mafia, and you managed to marry their son?”

  Crown stiffens up beside me.

  “I have ovaries, actually,” I correct, and Cat laughs again. See what I mean? Just enough defiance. It’s a fine line, one that I long ago decided I’d cross over whenever I damn well felt like it. Thus, Fem’s leg. Thus, the moment when Cat put a gun in my hand and told me to kill a kid. Only problem here is that, even with the boys lying for me, I’m still in deep shit. I know things. Way too many things. Club shit. And I can’t know club shit and walk away. There’s only one good option for me right now, and I’ve gotten damn good at that, searching for the least shitty option in a steaming pile of turds. “But it wasn’t like that. For days and days, they tortured me.” Leaving me bloody and infected and hurting was akin to torture, so it’s not a total lie. “Grey told them we were in love to save his own ass, so they wouldn’t know he was a rat.”

  I shove at my forehead with the heel of my hand. I’m so tired and disoriented. I really and truly never believed I’d come back here. That I’d never see Cat again unless it was at the end of a gun barrel. That I’d never see any of these men. Yet … my whole world is shifting and changing before my very eyes.

  “Maybe that’s enough for today?” Crown suggests, and Cat gives him a look that very clearly says he doesn’t appreciate the insinuation. The VP of the Death by Daybreak Motorcycle Club curls his hands into fists, but keeps his mouth shut.

  “The Don …” I start, giving a harsh laugh and a shake of my head. “He challenged me to get up and move into a different room. I crawled on my hands and knees. He warned the two of us that if we were lying, we’d both die. So guess what? We spent two months stuck in that room with cameras on our asses—even in the bathroom. Two months trapped in jail. They barely talked to us. I expected interrogation, but …”

  “The mafia has their own tricks,” Cat says with another snort, and a sneer. “So, how’d you end up hitched?”

  “Alvise told us that we were getting married. Period. End of sentence. It’s not like either of us had much choice in the matter. They kept testing me. They gave me a gun with a single bullet, just to see what I’d do. They made us sit at these fancy dinners and talk about nothing.” I swallow hard because this part, even though it hurts the most, is by far the most important piece. “When I asked why they’d kill their own grandchild, they told me Queenie was just a whore carrying a bastard kid. I …” I look up and meet my father’s eyes. “If I get my hands on Giulia Wolfe, I’ll tear her limb from limb.”

  Cat nods his approval and makes to stand up, but I’m not done. I know he isn’t either, that we’ll be having this conversation a good dozen times before he’s satisfied that he’s absorbed every detail.

  “Wait.” My breath catches, and my whole world tips upside down. I can hardly even believe that I’m about to say the words that are resting on the tip of my little devil tongue. “I know a lot, Cat. Too much. I …” I start and then bite my lip, flicking my eyes away and focusing on some loose stitching in the pillowcase. “Gaz won’t be happy. A lot of the old-timers, they—”

  “Nobody’s going to punish you for this,” Cat tells me, resting his hand atop my head. Yet again, I’m struck by the gesture. I don’t understand it. I also don’t trust it. A man who shoots his daughter’s dog’s leg off doesn’t just flip a switch and become a kind and caring father over the span of twelve weeks.

  He turns and starts to move away.

  “Marry me off,” I blurt, before I lose my nerve. Fuck, that room … it’s so quiet, you could hear a body drop. Because, you know, the phrase a pin drop doesn’t really apply to one-percenters. Cat pauses then and looks back at me, cocking one gray furred brow.

  “The hell?” he asks, but I lift my eyes up to meet his, fully confident in the words I’m saying.

  Like I said, I know too much. Cat isn’t just going to let me waltz off to college. He won’t like the idea of me getting too far away from the club. To be honest, this is an inevitability. If I’m married to one of the guys in the club—in particular, one of his officers—then that seals me in, makes me family in more ways than one.

  My mind makes rapid-fire calculations.

  Sin is too young. Even though the thought of a man trying to control me is hilarious, Cat will think he isn’t mature enough to keep me in line.

  Crown is his favorite, the man he relies on for everything. He’s also the vice president which means that, if I were to marry him, I’d have far too much power for Cat’s liking.

  Grainger is a possibility—if he’d even have me—but he’s also the sergeant-at-arms. Again, a very important and powerful position in the club. Guys like him aren’t exactly the marrying type anyway.

  My best chance here is Beast. First off, he beat the crap out of Gaz for me which Cat knows. Last I had heard, they sent him away to spend time in Southern California with the Los Gatos chapter of Death by Daybreak. Likely, he’s only back because I went missing. If Cat sends him away again, I lose the most important ally I have. Every asshole in the club is afraid of Beast—including Cat. They also need him because nobody can do the job he does the way he does it.

  I look up and meet his eyes, the soft blue of a robin’s eggs.

  “Give me to Beast.”

  The words come out like a whip, one that strikes every man in that room in a different way. The nobodies in the back, my dad’s buddies, they all exchange looks. Cat turns around to stare at me like I’m an alien creature.

  “I want to be his old lady.”

  Never in my life did I—or anyone else—ever expect to hear those words leave my lips.

  Sin looks devastated; Grainger is furious. Crown is … I don’t even have words to describe that man right now.

  “You think Beast wants your ass?” Cat chokes out with a laugh, turning to look at his enforcer. Catcher Coffey, the ex-MMA fighter, and complete and total badass, lifts his gaze from mine to look at his president. “How about it, Beast? You want this wily little bitch?”

  Beast adjusts his gaze back to mine, and oh boy. If I were standing, I might be staggered. As such, I’m left breathless and wondering if this is either the greatest decision I’ve ever made in my life … or the worst mistake.

  Several of the guys in the room—the nameless ones that I don’t give a shit about—chuckle, as if anything about this is funny. If they understood the look on Beast’s face, they’d know that it wasn’t.

  “I want her,” he says, his Southern accent dripping like honey from those perfect lips. He swipes a hand over the lower half of his face. “It’d be my honor.”

  “Well, fuck me,” Cat murmurs, giving me an almost sympathetic sort of look, like he’s actually worried about marrying his daughter off to a man named Beast who kills people for a living. I might understand the sentiment if, for several years at least, I haven’t wondered if it wouldn’t be Cat himself who might orchestrate my last and final breath. “Alright then. You want the girl, you can have her. Saves me a load of trouble.”

  “Give her to me,” Crown says, and I go completely still. Every man in that room goes still.

  What … what is happening right now?

  I lift my eyes up to look at him. His mouth is pursed tight, his expression murderous in a way I’ve never seen before. He’s staring right at me, hands squeezed tight. His muscles are so tense that the police car tattooed onto his left arm is distorted.

  “Excuse me?” Cat asks as Crown redirects his attention to his president and then rises to his feet.

  “I’ll take her off your hands,” he offers, which is insulting as hell.

  Cat looks from his vice president to me, and then back again. I really don’t like the way
he’s studying Crown, like he doesn’t fully trust him. That’s pretty much the last thing any of us needs right now. I might have four officers on my side, but that doesn’t mean shit in contrast to the club’s might. There are thirty-three chapters in as many states. Thousands of soldiers in leather ready to hunt down dissenters.

  “Don’t fuck around,” I blurt with a choking laugh, one with absolutely zero mirth in it. “Aren’t you already dating one of the club-whores?” I make the words sound mocking, even if all I’m trying to do is help. Damn you, Crown. Damn you for dumping emotional baggage in my lap today of all days.

  I’ll take her off your hands? Really? What an asshole.

  “You don’t have the time to waste wrangling this girl anyway,” Cat adds with a bit of a scowl—but one that isn’t directed at me, not this time. My father turns and leaves the room; René and the rest of the good ol’ boys go with him.

  Crown watches him go, seething in silence. As soon as they’re gone, Sin moves forward and pushes the bedroom door closed, turning and putting his back against it. He looks almost … broken? Like the idea of me marrying Beast is a nail in his fragile emotional coffin.

  “Don’t you think Daddy Dearest might get suspicious if we start having private caucuses?” I ask, rubbing at my face with both hands.

  “We’re on guard duty,” Crown says dryly. “Again.”

  I drop my hands to my lap and look up at him, right into those moss green eyes and classically handsome face. He could’ve been a star in thriller films or cowboy movies or something. He could’ve … well, Crown has potential. He clearly was and could’ve been so much more than an outlaw.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Gidge,” Cade snarls out, because that’s his favorite saying in all the world. Jesus fucking Christ. Told ya we had a religious thing going on. He stalks up to the side of the bed like he wants to start a fight with me. “You’ve been missing for three months and the first thing out of your mouth is marry my ass off?”

  I look up at him; he’s shaking with rage, and I can’t help but wonder if he isn’t jealous. Or … he’s just mad about the whole ‘traitor to the club’ thing. Right. I must’ve lost a ton of blood; I’m fantasizing.

  “What else should I have done?” I query back, sort of hating the fact that I’m cheapening this thing with Beast. It doesn’t seem as … out of convenience’s sake as I thought it would. “Gaz—and probably a large chunk of the club—is going to be suspicious. And you know the weirdest part? For the first time in my entire life, they’re right. For once, I didn’t toe the line. For once, I—”

  “Sugar,” Beast warns, giving me a look as Sin finally pushes up off the door to come and stand beside us.

  “You don’t want me to say it?” I query, keeping my voice low. Could there be cameras in here? Nah. The guys would tell me about them. And anyway, that’s more of a mafia thing, a snake in the grass sort of move. We revel in brute force and confrontation around here. “That I fucked Sin, stole his keys, and then kidnapped the mafia brat? That I took Crown’s bike with the intention of heading to the airport?”

  None of them stop me when I start to talk. They just stand there and let it happen. I imagine this is a side effect of them having thought they’d lost me forever. I’ll get a bit more leeway than usual (for a short while anyway).

  “What happened, Gidge?” Sin asks me, his voice low and thick with emotion. I look up and into his pretty gray eyes, wishing that I could’ve picked him. Not … instead of Beast, but alongside. How fucked up is that? There isn’t a single part of me that doesn’t wish we could talk like we did before, before my sisters died and he kissed me in the most inappropriate but devastatingly beautiful way on a rainy, ash-filled afternoon.

  As nice as he seems right now, I know he’s angry with me. It’s there, in the trenchant glint of that blade-like mouth, those sharp-edged lips. He could so very easily cut me, make me bleed with words—or another kiss.

  I blink past the metaphor.

  “Not far from the compound, I came across a roadblock,” I say, remembering the moment like it was yesterday. “I tried to stop, but …” I shake my head and then push the blankets back, showing off my scarred legs for the second time. “The bike skidded, and I grabbed Grey. We jumped off just in time to watch it smash into a mafia-owned Caddy and … explode.” It sounds like a bunch of bullshit when I say it aloud, but that’s the truth right there, plain and simple. “Everything else is true.”

  “Why’d you do it, suge?” Beast asks me, squatting down beside the bed and making me nervous in a way that I can’t quite explain. My eyes find his big hands and I wish with a strange fervency that he’d reach out and touch me. Not sexually, not right now, just … for comfort or something.

  “Cat was going to make me kill Grey,” I tell Beast, realizing as the words come out how ridiculous they sound. Didn’t I just fire a machine gun into a crowd of wedding guests? Somebody will have died. I will have killed someone anyway, just the way that Cat wanted. So I’m tied to the club. I’m marrying into the club. Fuuuuuuuck. “I wasn’t going to put a gun to some kid’s head and pull the trigger like that.”

  I let my angry glare trail across the four of them, hating them with every breath and yet wishing that they were different. Knowing that, in fact, they are. They’re all lying for me. They’re risking their lives. They’re putting my welfare above the welfare of the club.

  Just like I always wanted.

  Be careful what you wish for, Gidge.

  “I don’t understand,” I choke out finally, my angry look turning to one of pleading. “Why are you doing this for me? I fully expected to die. I was willing to die.”

  The four of them don’t answer me, not right away.

  Silence reigns for several minutes before Beast reaches out and runs his palm down the length of my leg, making me shiver.

  “I want you, sugar,” he tells me, looking me right in the face. “I want to marry you. But if you don’t, you don’t gotta.” He stands up suddenly, and I scramble to follow after. I’m barely on my feet for a second before my knees go weak, and I’m falling. Once again, Sin manages to catch me before I hit the ground. “And,” Beast continues, moving back toward the door, “if you want to use me for protection, use me, Gidge. You don’t owe me a damn thing.” He leaves and slams the door shut behind him.

  “I’m not going to let you do this for me if you don’t tell me why,” I breathe, and I sound so young when I say that, like an eighteen-year-old girl. I hate that. That isn’t who I am on the inside, some stupid ass teenager.

  “So go tell Cat we’re all lying for you,” Grainger challenges, making me grit my teeth at the acidity in his words. “Get us all killed then, if that’s what you want so badly.”

  And then he’s leaving, too, storming out and cursing under his breath.

  Being with Sin and Crown again reminds me of that last night, when I approached them on the hill and bitched Crown out about the fentanyl-laced cocaine he made me distribute to my classmates.

  “I’m sorry that I used you,” I tell Sin, looking up and into his face. He’s so pretty, I’d almost forgotten. It makes me wonder if there isn’t some dark magic in this place. More specifically, in these men. When I had distance from them, I could almost imagine that I never cared for them at all. Finding myself back here so suddenly … I can’t pretend anymore. “That I fucked you for your keys …” I trail off as Crown throws his younger peer a sharp look. “And I’m sorry, Crown—”

  “Don’t,” he says, lifting a hand and cutting me off in a way that makes me grit my teeth. “We don’t need apologies; we need a straight story.”

  “My story wasn’t straight enough for you, straight shooter?” I quip back, and Crown gives me one of his looks, the ones that have always pissed me off and yet now, for some stupid reason, also seem to have the power to turn me on. “I still don’t understand—”

  “You should’ve asked to marry me,” Crown says, looking away from me like he’s disappointed. I fee
l my face flush red, and if I weren’t in such rough shape, I might sock him in the face. “You only think you’re a master strategist, Gidge.”

  My mouth gapes open as he, too, stands up and makes his grand exit. He, of course, doesn’t slam the door behind him because Crown doesn’t do things like that, right? He’s an adult.

  “He’s jealous,” Sin says, lighting up a cigarette and then offering it out to me. I haven’t had a smoke in months—and even though I know I shouldn’t, I take it anyway. The first drag is almost as heavenly as that first stroke of Grainger’s cock back in the chapel. “I told you he was into you.”

  “Bullshit,” I snort, but now who’s the idiot? The only person I’m lying to right now is myself. Crown wouldn’t have lied for me if he didn’t care. I try to tell myself that he’s just protecting Cat, because if Cat found out, it would kill him, and then he would kill me, and … but that’s just a load of crap. The only reason—and I mean only reason—that Crown would do something like this is …

  I can’t even make myself think it.

  “Isn’t he dating Amber Clearwater?” I say instead, and Sin gives me a look.

  “It’s been three months, and that’s what you want to talk about?” he asks me, his voice sad and distant. His mouth, though, is still sharp, this beautiful blade that I want to drag across my own throat. Make myself bleed hot down my chest. That’s how addictive his poison is.

  That’s the real reason that I had to run.

  I clench my jaw tight.

  “I’m telling Cat the truth, you know?” I say, adjusting the blankets and leaning back into the pillows. Sin takes the cigarette from me and our fingers brush, this dangerous dance of digits that could so very easily lead to something else. All it would take is one small acquiescent gesture from either of us.

  Sin hesitates for a moment, the small silver hoops in his ears catching the light from the fire that I didn’t notice until just now. It’s actually quite cozy in here. You wouldn’t think it could be, considering the number of bodies beneath the floorboards. That, and probably hidden in the walls, little pieces of people who pissed the club off.