“He’s the sergeant-at-arms,” Beast says which isn’t exactly an answer to my question. “He’s supposed to keep club members in line, not lie to them. There are only four people besides yourself you can trust, suge.” Suge. Short for sugar. And just as addictive, the sound of this man’s voice. Beast looks past me again, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “When you choose me, I want you to choose me for a reason other than logic.” He scoffs that last word before returning those blue eyes to mine. “Fact is, I’d rather you were entirely illogical when you chose me.”
I cock a brow. He said ‘when’, not if.
“Overconfident much?” I query back, and Beast chuckles. It’s a rare sound, a diamond dug from the mud that glitters even when it’s covered in dirt.
“Four people you can trust; three people you can fuck.” He gives me a look as I crinkle my face in confusion. “I’m not touchin’ you until our wedding night.”
I stare at him.
“You’re kidding me, right?” The words pop out before I can gather together one of my usual quips. Something the old me would’ve said, something like, “you really think I want you, old man?” Only, that would be me lying again. And I can’t do that anymore. Not to these men at least. “Why?”
He flattens his mouth and reaches up a hand to touch his beard. I don’t usually like beards on men, but Beast wears it well. He keeps his clean and well-trimmed, unlike some of the other Daybreakers. Gaz, in particular, comes to mind.
“Did you wrong more than once,” Beast admits, shaking his head. “I won’t make that mistake again.” He gives me a long, hard look. “This is the last time I’mma say this: three people. Nobody else. After our wedding, I can’t promise I’ll be inclined to share.”
Beast turns and takes off before I can sputter a single response.
“Fuck,” I murmur finally, rubbing my hand over my face. I’m off my game. Too much time has passed since I’ve seen these men, and I’m losing my edge. Eventually, I turn and take Beast’s advice, heading into the shadows of the woods to find Grainger leaning against a tree. His back is to the trunk, eyes closed, arms crossed over his chest.
“What’d your old man want?” he growls, his words clipped with jealousy. He wanted, I think, more than anything for me to pick him. That’s what they all want, isn’t it? All four of them. I can almost believe it, too, with the exception of Crown. That’s … that’s a lot to take in. Then again, he’s the one that I Tased, the one whose bike I stole, the one who held my fate in his hands and made a choice I never even dared to allow myself to imagine.
“First off, he isn’t my old man yet. Second …” Words fail me yet again. But I can’t stand there and look at Cade Grainger and not appreciate how damn beautiful he is. The moonlight bathes his rust-colored hair, turning it red. His lashes are long and dark, his features classically handsome. His leather cut and the short-sleeved shirt beneath it reveal two arms corded with muscle and covered in ink made up of celestial wonders. Speaking of, I catch sight of that moon and sun tattoo near his hairline, the one that looks like night and day are fucking.
Grainger opens his eyes, probably wondering if I’m sick or still suffering from the effects of blood loss. Rarely can I keep my mouth shut for such an extended period of time.
“You wanted me to pick you.”
He listens to me, blinking through the words, and then shaking his head like I’m a crazy person.
“Not a chance in hell. I wouldn’t marry you if you got on your knees and begged me.” He flicks a glance my way. “If you weren’t engaged to my brother, I might tell you to get on your knees and try right now. Even if you sucked me nice and good though, the answer would still be the same: no.”
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?”
The look he gives me then is thick with disgust, harsh and biting.
“Cat’s made a decision; that’s law.” He snorts then and runs his hand over his face. “Unless, of course, you decide to steal another hostage and take off. Fuck my fucking life.”
“Cat said I could marry Beast, that’s it,” I clarify, shaking my head. “He doesn’t say who I can or cannot sleep with.” I purse my lips and narrow my eyes, gaze sliding to one side. I’m honestly flabbergasted by this whole situation. It feels like a dream. A dark dream. Maybe even a nightmare. Anyway, it doesn’t feel real.
I’m back. After three months, after rescuing Grey, crashing Crown’s bike, I’m back.
These men—the ones I craved so badly I was willing to bleed for a single taste—have lied for me. They’ve cleared the way. They have, knowingly or not, switched their true allegiance from Cat and the club to me.
Too good to be true. Which means something bad is going to happen. What I need to do now is keep these men close. Trust is not something I easily give, but they’ve all earned it, each and every one of them. I just have to crack their shells a bit, dig beneath their armor, and find my place inside their black, brutal hearts.
Because at this point, I’ll only allow them to be gifted to me.
Amber—and whatever other groupies might be interested in the officers—best take a note.
“What?” Grainger bites out, canting his head to stare at me like I deserve that spanking he long-ago promised and never delivered on. “Have you lost your mind?”
I meet his gaze dead-on, refusing to back down or be intimidated. He thinks he’s tough? Then what the hell am I? At this point, my skin is like Kevlar and my heart is forged of iron.
“Nellie is the president’s wife,” I begin, and I can tell Grainger knows where this is going. “She fucks who she wants, when she wants.”
Now that gives him pause. Cade Grainger is not someone who’s easily shocked into silence.
“With your father’s permission,” he corrects, and I swear, I see red. I throw my arms around his neck, crushing my mouth to his. He remains stiff, immovable. Annoying. Told ya I hated the guy.
“Since when have I ever cared to get permission from anyone for anything?” I retort, and then I’m biting his lower lip so hard that it bleeds. That salty taste in my mouth wakes up every single one of my senses. Grainger’s saffron and cumin, black pepper and vanilla smell assaults me. It’s mixed with a heady dose of sweat and testosterone. I can taste his rage along with his blood, the same blood that even now is feeding my racing heart, that’s filling his cock and making it hard for me.
“Every time I wonder if you’re worth it …” he growls, and then he’s throwing me to the forest floor. I hit the ground just hard enough to take my breath away, but not hard enough to hurt. Cade is good at that, walking the tightrope of my tolerance. He descends on me like one of those demons I so like to compare him to, like some hulking thing with black leathery wings and horns.
His body hovers above mine, but he keeps his weight off of me. The only parts of us that are touching are our lips. And oh, those lips … Cade kisses me with such desperate brutality, I can feel every moment of waiting and wanting. All those times he looked at me and wished he could have me.
Forbidden things have power, Gidge.
Beast was so right. There’s so much energy stored up between me and Grainger, like two thunderclouds clashing in a stormy sky. Yes, he’s still punishing me. Yes, he still sees me as forbidden.
Yet, he can’t stop himself.
He can’t control himself.
None of them can: not when it comes to me.
Each sweep of Grainger’s tongue is like the swing of a blade, sharp and violent. I have no choice but to meet him tit for tat, kissing him with a fervency that I didn’t realize I had until now. He’s mine, always has been. The thought comes to me unbidden, a dirty little secret that isn’t so secret anymore.
“You little shit,” he growls at me, nipping at my lower lip and making me writhe. “How dare you? How fucking dare you do this to me?”
When I try to hook my arms around Cade’s neck, he pushes them aside, looking down at me with a seriousness that I’ve never seen in him before. He uses his bitchiness and his anger as a shield, but that possessiveness I’ve always simultaneously loved and hated? It’s still there, shield be damned. That was always real.
“I thought I got so lucky that night,” he tells me with a bit of a laugh. We’re both breathing so hard, stirring one another’s hair with each exhale. I’m so tempted to touch him, whether he likes it or not, that my fingertips tingle as I dig them into the forest floor beneath me. “This hot piece of ass waltzes into the bathroom, and I forget for a moment that I’m a useless, angry bastard.”
“Call me a hot piece of ass again,” I warn, but I’m arching up enough that my breasts tease the front of his chest, and he snarls in response.
“I knew as soon as I saw you that night that you had to be mine. Period. Nothing else was acceptable.” He pauses and glances to the side, clearly lost in memories of that fateful night. Did these men know what they were doing then? Committing to me in a way that was soul-deep, that was so much more than bodies and cunts and cocks. It was everything. “Then I figured out who you were …”
He trails off then, and I start to understand that this speech is as much for him as it is for me. He’s explaining why he needs to punish me. Why I deserve it. Why he’s in the right, and I am oh so wrong.
You’re going to pay for this later, I think, but for now, I want him to fuck me, so I let him talk.
“Too young,” Grainger murmurs, shaking his head and brushing some of that rust-red stubble against my chin. I rub against it, and he curses hot enough to make a sailor blush. “You’re still too young, although nobody would know it, considering that mouth you’ve got on you.”
I slap him and then grab a handful of his hair. Grainger returns the favor, snatching my hair in his fingers and wrapping it around his fist. We continue to stare at one another.
“Tell me I’m a helpless victim who doesn’t know what she’s doing. I survived the mafia, Cade. And I did it without your help. Without any of your help. I could’ve been married to the future Don of the Grey Wolfe Mafia.”
“Would’ve been the heir to a crumbling throne,” he mocks, but not like he’s unimpressed with me. More like he knows something about this long-trodden warpath that I don’t. What’s new? “Being your enemy was never an option for me, Gidget. Even if it means destroying the only real connection to this world that I have left.”
That’s it, all I’m going to get from him.
Thank fuck because I’m done talking.
Grainge kisses me, pulling my hair just hard enough to hurt, walking that tightrope yet again. Our mouths slide together, tongues dancing, but he’s still not touching me anywhere else. It’s hard to believe that my first time was with this man, this stupid, broken, bitchy asshole.
He jerks back suddenly, releasing my hair. I gasp at the break in contact, like two live wires being separated, destroying the electrical current passing through them.
Much to my surprise, he retreats between my legs, grabbing hold of my sweatpants and yanking them down my hips. My breath releases in a rush as my ass hits the leaf-strewn ground, and Grainge tears the fabric over my feet, panties included. He tosses the bundle of cloth aside and then puts his hands on my knees.
“I’ve fantasized about how you’d taste,” he breathes, his voice this vicious hiss that makes my lower stomach muscles tighten in anticipation. “Fucked my fist in the shower thinking about it God only knows how many times. I was w
orried that since you’re such a snarky brat, your cunt would drip poison. But this …” I throw my head back and close my eyes as he shoves my legs apart, his violent tongue sweeping over my folds and making me gasp. “It smells and tastes like honey.”
Grainger takes me with such vigor then, you’d think I was doing him a favor. He consumes me with his mouth, claiming me with a sharp tongue and a bruising grip on my hips. Cade isn’t shy as he dives in, savoring me, grazing my folds with his teeth with a voracity that’s startling.
“Jesus,” I curse, and he laughs at me. The sound is amplified by his position between my legs, his stubble grazing my inner thighs as he moves his tongue to my opening. He fucks me with hot, slow licks, pushing into me as I writhe against his face, fingers digging into the dirt beneath us.
“That’s right, Gidge. Pray for me. I’mma need it.”
We sin together in the shadows of the woods, my head thrown back in demonic bliss, my bare heels digging into the dirt. The term eating out seems to fit this scenario: I’m being consumed. Grainger possesses me with his mouth, and then he drags my soul out, kicking and screaming onto that sinful tongue of his.
My legs wrap his head tight, squeezing him between my thighs as he works me up to the edge of an orgasm and then, abruptly, jerks back. My legs hit the ground hard as he sits up, leaving me panting before him.
He watches me with a dark sort of expression, a frown twisted across that annoying mouth of his.
I leverage myself up on my elbows, my pulse racing, my skin damp with sweat. If he leaves, so help me God, I will murder him. Instead of disappearing this time, he tears his shirt over his head and undoes the button on his jeans.
His cock is hard and ready, springing free as he grips it with a rough palm.
“Lay the fuck back down, Gidge,” he warns me, and then he’s descending on me again, kissing the side of my neck like he’s the vampire he once accused me of looking like. He licks my throat, forcing me to lift my chin, to expose my neck to him. This bastard.
It feels too good to stop though. Too sharp and brilliant to resist.
I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 11