“Cat wants the clothes,” he says, and I grit my teeth. No way in hell I'm giving up a hundred and twenty dollar leather pants.
“Fine,” I snap, and then I tear the red satin over my head and throw it at him.
Even though I'm not wearing a bra, and my tits are exposed, Beast doesn't skip a beat. He catches the fabric in his hand and then just waits there, looking at me like he expects me to strip off my pants next.
I feel my nipples pebble, hardening painfully in the suddenly charged air between us.
“I don't want what happened last time to happen again,” I tell Beast, crossing my arms over my chest. He watches me, like he's still in the ring, sizing up his opponent. The way he watches me … turns my body to ice and then fucking melts it. “I don't,” I repeat, and I can't tell if I'm talking about the fear … the murders … or the sex.
Beast, who always smells like books because he spends so much goddamn time sitting in my grandmother's library doing … whatever it is he does for the club, leans in close to me and puts one, large hand on the wall near my head. This close, I can feel the heat of him, hear the rustling of his leather vest, remember the way he tastes …
“It won't,” he says, and the finality that rings in those two words almost scares me.
I step back suddenly, heart racing, warmth flickering between my thighs. I feel hot, almost like I'm burning. My skin feels like a shell I want to crack open, just so I can escape. Disappearing into my room, I shove my leather pants to the floor, kick them under the bed and then grab a pair of cheap pleather ones from my dresser. Tossing those into the hallway, I keep my eyes locked tight and refuse to look at Beast again.
From experience, I know what happens when we're alone together.
Beast, he'll ruin me.
They'll all ruin me.
Hell, they already did.Eight years ago …The hazy smoke used to bother me, but I'm used to it now.
“It smells good,” I tell Queenie and Posey, watching as they exchange a glance I won't understand for years. “Like daddy.”
“Daddy's an asshole,” Queenie tells me, trying to put a pair of white earbuds on me. “Gidget,” she warns when I shy away, trying to peep around the corner of the partition blocking off this part of the room. Queenie and Posey put it there a long time ago; I don't remember when. What I do remember is that I used to be able to see all the kissing and hugging, the cards and the glasses filled with amber liquid. I can still hear the laughter and the screams, the shouts that I don't understand, but I can't see anything anymore. “I want you to wear the headphones.”
“But why?” I whine, because I don't understand why my sisters look so nervous being here, why they hate it so much. We've been coming here after school for as long as I can remember. Later, of course, I'll realize that bringing a nine year old, a fourteen year old, and a sixteen year old to sit in a den of fucking, drinking, snorting, and shooting up is probably one of the more disgraceful acts a parent can commit. In that moment … it's all that I know.
“It'll keep you smiling,” Queenie tells me because she's the oldest so of course she knows better. Her red-brown eyes look into mine, crinkling at the edges. “I love you, Gidgie,” she tells me and I feel my lips split into a grin. I might be missing teeth, but I know that Queenie thinks I'm pretty anyway. She tells me every day.
After that, I know I'm going to wear the headphones if that's what she really wants me to do. It won't stop mommy from stumbling over here drunk, wearing high heels and swinging her bleach blonde hair around in a glossy wave. It won't stop the crashing horror of a bar fight, smashing through our partition and knocking it into Posey's face so that she gets a nosebleed. And it won't keep my dad's friend, Sin, from popping his head around the corner to check up on us.
He looks different than the other guys because his face is all smooth instead of scraggly like daddy's. I like that. His arms are decorated with all sorts of fun things—an American flag, a pair of bright red lips with white-white teeth, a black ball with the number eight on it. I could stare at him forever, I think, and keep finding new things to look at.
“I've got Nellie's keys,” Sin says today, before I get a chance to slip the earbuds in. “I'm taking you girls home.” I know that Sin's just a prospect—daddy says so—but for whatever reason, I trust him. He smiles a lot, lets his lips quirk to the side in a way that reminds me of a wolf. I love wolves; they're my favorite animals.
