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

by C. M. Stunich

  My four stupid men.

  Because I have to have them all.

  Because they have to be mine.

  “I won’t question your conviction,” I tell her, because I wouldn’t like it if someone questioned mine. Because I believe her. Because sometimes you just know something is true, even if you can’t explain it. And even if it’s true just for now, that doesn’t make it any less powerful, any less important.

  “I think I’d like to devote myself to Him permanently.” She takes my hands in hers and squeezes them. “The Catholic church has its fair share of problems, o’ course, but … when I was with Grey, I saw the pageantry of it. And I liked that.” She glances away from me and wets her lower lip. “I think I’d enjoy studying to become a nun.”

  I just stare back at her.

  As I’ve said before, we are opposites. We are sin and salvation. But on the inside, where it matters most, we’re the same. We feel and understand passion in a way that many don’t.

  “If that’s what you want, I’ll support you,” I promise her, giving her hands a squeeze. “Always.”

  She smiles at me, sniffling and swiping away the last of her tears.

  She isn’t over what happened—she won’t be for a while; I know from experience—but she’s got plenty of heart and spirit left to try.

  “Maybe you can be a nun assassin?” I suggest playfully, cocking a brow at her. “You could be Grey’s righthand nun badass and help him take over the mafia.”

  Reba gives me one of her looks, and then reaches up to touch the side of my face.

  “I missed you while you were gone, you know that?” she says, and my throat gets tight. I brought this on her, just as I feared. I started this. I even fell for and loved and fucked four men so thoroughly that I’ve frightened her. Maybe she should be frightened by it? Maybe I should be, too?

  “I missed you, too,” I promise, bringing her hands to my mouth and pressing a chaste kiss on her fingers. It feels so good to have female companionship. Even if all she wants to talk about is the Bible, and all I want to talk about are dudes, we work together. Actually, we work better like that because we’re never in competition, we’re never bored, and we’re always learning something new. “How is …” I start, but then I look away, filled with shame at the memory of the Artefact party, the one where I passed out the cocaine. At least I now understand why. “How is everyone at school?”

  It’s been weeks since Reba’s been to class. She, like me, can’t exactly go back right now. Still, any information she has would be appreciated.

  “Well,” she starts, sighing but looking relieved at the change in subject. “Trevone couldn’t finish out the season, and Dena lost a modeling gig.” Reba sighs and shakes her head. Dena, like Grainger, is one of those people who just inspires that sort of thing. I decide not to mention that she was at the party the other day; Reba’s dealing with enough right now. “But they’re okay. A few emergency visits here and there, but otherwise, nothing too serious.”

  “I didn’t want to do it,” I tell her, spilling the truth like rubies from a treasure chest. It glitters and sparkles, most especially because it’s surrounded by and drowning in lies. “I didn’t have good choices.”

  “I know, sugar, I know,” she tells me, reminding me of Beast. Beast. My future husband. Jesus. “Don’t let your past mistakes haunt you; let them guide you instead. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Reba quotes the Bible and then kisses my hand the same way I did hers. “I’m going to head to bed. You okay if I take the dog?” She gestures toward Fem, and I nod. Reba deserves comfort right now. That, and Feminist won’t allow me near Sin—or any of the guys—without being a total dickhead and growling. So this works out for all of us.

  Reba leaves with a click of her tongue, one that snaps Fem to alertness. He glances back at me briefly before heading out the door with her.

  Once I’m certain she isn’t coming back, I lock the door and head out onto the balcony to talk with Sin.

  He’s leaning back in his chair, ankles crossed on the balcony railing, and staring up at the stars. His arms are crossed behind his head, and his silver eyes sparkle as he flicks them my way.

  “A nun, huh?” he asks, and I frown at him. “What? You think I couldn’t hear you in there? It’s my job to hear what you say.” Sin drops his feet from the railing and lets the front two legs of the chair hit the wood of the balcony floor. “More than that, it’s like a passion project.” He exhales sharply and turns his gaze forward, looking out across the dark expanse of woods that blanket the house.

  Under the shadows of those trees, there are Daybreakers prowling the night, sniffing out the blood scent of the mafia. They cannot, however, do their jobs properly when there’s a … well, I’d say wolf in the sheep’s pen, but we all know that isn’t a good metaphor.

  “A passion project, huh?” I ask, eyeing his lap and watching as he gives me a warning look.

  “I’m on duty, Gidge,” he says, but we both know that hasn’t stopped us before. Sin studies me as I move in front of him, leaning over the balcony and knowing that my ass is just about eye-level with him now. He curses, but he stays seated. Damn him and his self-control. It’s not as legendary as Beast’s, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

  “How many men died rescuing me from that wedding?” I ask absently, eyes scanning the woods, as if I’ve got some sort of supernatural-like sense the way the guys do. I don’t see a damn thing, just the wind gently tousling pine boughs around.

  “I was wondering when you were going to ask me that,” he says, and I close my eyes at the sound of the chair creaking. Sin moves up to stand beside me, leaning his elbows on the railing and looking out at the trees.

  I suppress a moue of disappointment.

  In his own way, Sin can be just as stubborn as Crown sometimes.

  The thing is, no matter what they say to me, no matter what they do, how they pretend, I know the truth.

  Words say one thing; actions tell the full story. The actions of these men have solidified any strange, lingering feelings inside of me.

  As Reba said, passion has ruined me. Passion has tainted me. But passion is also the only thing keeping me going right now. Joy, as I’ve said before, is so fragile. Passion, on the other hand, burns like fire and destroys everything in its path. It’s meant to cause destruction; it’s meant to burn.

  “Do you remember that day in the garden?” he asks me, still looking into the distance and not at me.

  “I remember,” I say, thinking of the sound of digging coming from beyond the tree tunnel.

  “We were burying our guys.” Sin lights up a cigarette, takes a drag, and then offers it to me. I accept it, turning and parking my ass on the railing. Reba is on a new mission to get me to quit, but come on, I deserve a guilty pleasure, even one that’ll kill me one day. If you really think about it, the club—and these four men I’ve claimed as my own—are the same way.

  Deadly.

  Sin still hasn’t given me a number, but it’s obvious there were at least a few casualties. A few lives traded for mine. Cat made the choice to come for me, knowing what he was risking. I was that important to him.

  That important to them.

  “What would you have done if Cat had refused to come after me?” I query, smoking my cigarette as Sin lights up a fresh one for himself. He takes several drags, exhaling gray smoke into the darkness. He’s silent for so long that I wonder if he’s going to answer me at all.

  “You have a wedding coming up,” he tells me instead, finally glancing over at me. “What do you want to happen after? What does the rest of your life look like?”

  I look over at him, and I ache. I burn. I suffer.

  That’s why love sucks. That’s why I hate it so much. Because it doesn’t matter if I love my dog, or I love Reba, if I loved my sisters, if I love these men. Love is pain. It’s also the impetus of everything. The be-all, end-all.

  “I’m here be
cause of you,” I whisper, and Sin nearly drops his cigarette, cursing as it burns his fingers, and he manages to get control of it. “And I ran away because of you. Grey, obviously, was a big factor. But the four of you? I knew if I didn’t get away, something bad would happen to me. Something horrible.”

  “Something horrible?” he says, his voice dark and low. He sounds annoyed. I can understand that. He … well, I think he cares for me so much that he’d throw me hard and far, watch me fly away and be glad to be rid of me. Because he thinks this life is too hard. Because he wants better for me.

  “Falling in love is horrible,” I breathe, and Sin closes his eyes like he’s in pain, turning back toward the woods and letting his head hang.

  “You’re not in love with me,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re not in love with any of us.”

  “Don’t tell me who I’m in love with, Colton,” I warn him, standing up straight and turning to face him. “Don’t tell me how I feel. Have you ever considered that I don’t want to leave? That I … much as I hate to admit it, that I like this life?” I shake my head, putting the fingers of my right hand against my temple as I close my eyes. “I mean, parts of it anyway.” I open my eyes again to stare at him. “I just don’t like being left out, having decisions made for me, feeling helpless. That is what I don’t like.” I stab my cigarette out in the nearby ashtray.

  “You deserve so much more than riding bitch seat,” Sin agrees somewhat reluctantly, standing up and turning to face me. He’s not wearing his usual jeans and t-shirt topped with leather look. Instead, he’s got on joggers and boots, a black wife-beater that shows off all those beautiful tattoos of his. I see the eight ball that once captured my attention when I was younger, the pair of red lips with the white teeth. “Even if I’d rather you were living a different life entirely.”

  “For someone who’s so critical of the life, it’s interesting to me that you started being a hang-around at such a young age.” I’ve just changed the subject, and he’s noticed. I hate that, how perceptive he can be sometimes. He’s supposed to be the youngest of my men, the easiest to trick. Instead, I feel as if he’s getting smarter by the minute.

  “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” Sin tells me, and somehow, I get that this is both an answer to my question and also a reminder that I do. That I could. I could have somewhere else to go. “Why else would a sixteen-year-old ever step foot in this place?” Sin sighs and rubs at his face with an inked hand. “I’ll admit: you weren’t the reason I came, but you were the reason I stayed. That’s why it’s hard for me to imagine you doing the same for me.”

  “You stayed for me?” I query as he steps forward, sliding his knuckles along my jaw. His touch ignites me in a way that I can’t explain, like more than just our bodies are interested. It’s like, we have these two, broken souls with impossible edges, edges that are too twisted to fit with any other human.

  Except for another broken one.

  That’s what it is.

  “You and Posey and Queenie,” he says, and his voice breaks, snaps, shatters. He loved my sisters as surely as I did. He loves me. Whether that’s as a sister-like figure or … fuck. Why would he do what he did in the basement if … I choke on my next breath, like his grief is perfuming the air and I can smell it. “You needed someone.”

  “You were only a year older than Queenie,” I remind him, but he just smiles sadly.

  “True. But I didn’t have school. I didn’t have a home to sleep in. I didn’t have anything. It was easier to take care of you three than it was to think about myself.” Sin slides his fingers through my hair, touching the back of my neck. His touch is so faint, it may as well be a graze. Just a light fucking grazing that makes me crazy. “You know I had a sister. You know that.” His eyes darken and he shakes his head. “She was killed, Gidget.” Here Sin stops, like he isn’t entirely sure he wants to go through with it. He casts me a look, as if he’s gauging my ability to handle this. “I told you I don’t give out second chances, right?”

  I smile at him. It’s a real smile, which is rare for me, but it’s also tinted with pain and heartache. Nothing in our world can be beautiful without being tainted somehow, someway.

  “Only me,” I tell him, and he nods, stepping back and releasing me from the thrall of his touch as he leans his perfect ass up against the balcony railing. He slides his phone from his pocket and selects a song. More noise to obscure our words. We might not be talking betrayals and traitors just now, but Sin doesn’t want anyone else to hear this story.

  Just me.

  Only me.

  I lift up on my tiptoes to stare at his phone screen, watching as he selects Play With Fire by Sam Tinnesz and Yacht Money. It’s a slow, sultry song, one that seems to whisper the very rhythm of my soul. I identify with it immediately.

  He slips his phone back in his pocket, muffling the music a bit.

  For the duration of the song, Sin says nothing. It’s clear that he’s gearing up to tell me a story, so I stay quiet. These men are not the easiest people to get information out of, and I’m not blowing my chance with mindless chatter.

  Instead, I lean my forearms on the railing and look down at the Edison bulbs strung across the back patio. They’re not on right now; I don’t even know if they work. But I imagine how pretty that spot would be if there was a big wooden farm table, a bottle of wine, and good company.

  Hah.

  May as well have imagined a unicorn.

  We’re more likely to see skeletons rise from their graves and start sweeping the patio than to see any sort of normalcy or joy out here. The wind tousles my hair, but when I reach up to brush it behind my ear, Sin intercepts me. Our hands brush together, his touch a scintillating flicker as he tucks my hair back for me.

  He withdraws his hand, and I bite my lower lip to stifle a protest.

  “My father was a bastard,” Sin says, getting out another cigarette and lighting up. I watch his inked fingers as he lifts it to his mouth, imagining what his lips might feel like on my aching cunt. I want to try it all, with all of them. Everything. No exchange is too personal or too much. “Always was, but he got so much worse after my mom died. He used to disappear for days at a time, play cards, drink, whatever. One day, he brought a man home, someone he owed a debt to.” Sin’s voice is twisted, his expression far away. “He offered up my sister to satisfy the debt.”

  My breath catches and I move over to stand beside him, taking comfort in his nearness, in that cinnamon scent of his.

  “I couldn’t let that happen, so I took her, and we ran away.” Sin continues to smoke, staring at the exterior wall of the house instead of the woods. “My father found us eventually, camping out in a foreclosed house nearby.” Sin lets his silver eyes slide to mine, like a mimicry of the moon behind his head, hanging heavy and pregnant in the sky. “He convinced me to come back; he promised things would be different.”

  “What was your sister’s name?” I ask, thanking her departed spirit for the ferocity and the love she instilled in this man. She might not be here to benefit from it, but I can—if Sin will allow it.

  “Leilani,” he says, his voice breaking, as if it’s been a long, long time since he’s said her name. He hooks a wry smile, the scar on his mouth turning the expression into something tragic. “Before my mother met my dad and let him ruin her life, she was born and raised in Hawaii.” He exhales sharply, dropping his still smoking cigarette into the ashtray. “The name means ‘heavenly child’.”

  He stands up, his sweats sliding too low on his hips, revealing that pair of tattooed angel wings on his Adonis belt. It’s … it’s a lot to look at. I tear my gaze away and force it back to his face.

  “Well, surprise, surprise. Daddy didn’t change. He continued on with his gambling and whatever the fuck else he did. Got himself killed actually.” Sin reaches out and lets my dark hair cover his hand, watching as the silken strands slide through his fingers. “His debtors showed up at the house to collect, so I told Leilani to
run.”

  “You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to,” I offer, but Sin is committed now. This is happening.

  “The men beat the shit out of me while she took off. She didn’t make it very far. Actually, she only made it about as far as the street. She was hit by a car, Gidget. And those men? When they were done with me, you know what they did? They walked right by her while she lay bleeding on the pavement. The driver of the car was never found.”

  “Were you able to see her before she passed?” I ask, and he nods.

  “I made it outside; I held her.” He reaches up to rub at his face. “I held my nine-year-old sister as she died.” He glances over at me as my heart stutters and breaks for him. Pain calls to pain. His is mine and vice versa. We understand each other in a way that someone lacking in tragedy might not. “And then do you know what I did?”

  Leilani was nine when she passed … I was nine when I met Sin.

  He exhales sharply, and then he’s grabbing me by the shoulders and shoving me up against the side of the house. I let out a small sound of surprise.

  “Listen to me, Gidget.” He stares me down, but I don’t startle easily. He knows that. “I was so angry then, and I wanted revenge.” Sin licks his lips, eyes gleaming. I’m damn near certain I’m the first person to hear this story in God-only-knows how long. “I tried to steal a gun from a Daybreaker outside a bar.”

  I just stare back at him, gobsmacked.

  Stealing a weapon from a patched-in member? That’s a death sentence right there.

  “That Daybreaker just so happened to be Cat.” Sin stops talking, swallowing hard. “He wasn’t president then, obviously, but he took pity on me. He gave me his gun and told me to kill the fuckers who took my sister from me. He said if I did, I could start staying here on the compound. Have a bed. Have regular meals.” Sin taps the weapon in his shoulder holster. “He let me keep the gun, this gun right here. I shot three men at age sixteen, and I killed them all. So I get it. I understand what it’s like to grow up the wrong way, to learn suffering and hate before you learn stability and love. I get that.”