I shouldn’t have made conversation, I tell myself as I break open a new jar of peanut butter and set it on the shiny stone countertops. I shouldn't have talked to him at all. I move to a different cabinet—a fancy custom one with scrollwork on the edges—and open it, grabbing a plate. Back in the day, we had orange linoleum counters and an avocado colored fridge that froze things on the bottom shelf and let ones on the top go bad. Mom and Cat were always drinking and shooting up and leaving us to party at the clubhouse.
I'd give anything to go back to that time—my arms, my legs, my eyes, my heart. Because it was ripped out and crushed when my sisters were killed. It was smashed to a pulp and stolen into a night of blood and hate and criminal pissing matches between men like Cat, like Sin, like Grainger and Beast and Crown.
Nellie trying to be a real mom, Cat trying to be a real dad, this big house with all its fucking stuff and that Escalade in the driveway … I hate it all. I'd rather be that little girl, stuffing earbuds into her skull to block out the fucking and the fighting and the drinking. That little girl didn't know how screwed up her life was.
But I do now.
“You shouldn't have gone to that bonfire last night,” Sin says, and even though he's the least intimidating as far as looks go—clean-shaven, younger than the other officers, with a scar that pulls the edge of his right lip up just enough that it looks like he's smiling—I have to remember that he's dangerous.
Mm.
Or really, that he's a fucking asshole.
“Really?” I ask as I lay out two slices of bread and start spreading peanut butter across one of them. “You're on Cat's side now? After all this time?”
“I'm always on Cat's side, Gidget. He's my fucking president.”
I glance over at him, at those stormy silver eyes framed by a bronze-skinned face. You didn't seem to be on his side when you were rescuing me and my sisters from the clubhouse, spending your nights at our place, putting your hands on my hips and …
“Right.” I screw the cap back on the peanut butter and head to the fridge for a jar of blueberry jam. “Because the club comes before all else, because you'd suck Cat's dick if he told you to, because you'd kill me if he asked you to do it.”
Sin's semi-crooked mouth twists into this weird semblance of a smile, like a ghost. No, like a demon because that's what he is, some leathery winged monster riding a red-eyed black stallion behind my pointy-horned father, heading into battle against a host of angels.
God, I wish I lived in a fantasy novel.
Sometimes I think my life would make more sense if I did.
I slop a gob of blue jam on the bread.
“Don't be ridiculous,” Sin says, his voice this dark, angry buzz that somehow never manages to rise above a sensual whisper. “I'm just the road captain, Gidget. If Cat wanted you dead, he'd send Beast.”
I slap the two slices of bread together, refusing to look back up at him again.
There's no secrecy about how Sin managed to earn his nickname.
“Hilarious. Cat, the ex-addict and the womanizer and the—” I start, turning with sandwich in hand and finding Sin's long fingers cupping the side of my face, hard. Pulling me in. Making me drop my food on the floor.
Without even realizing what I'm doing, I raise up on my toes and meet the hard, wild press of his lips. Sin's mouth is like the blade of a knife, double-edged and so easy to cut myself with, so sharp, so shiny and irresistible.
His tongue sweeps mine, just one hot, aching arch and then he's drawing back and drawing me in, face dark and closed-off and empty.
Fuck.
I hate that about him.
My breath comes in harsh pants and my hands shake. God, I'm just trembling inside. Between my legs, I feel that answering heat, the response to the hard bulge in Sin's dark denim.
“You asshole,” I snarl, and then I'm digging my feet into Nellie's wool clogs near the front door, grabbing the dog's leash, and going out for a walk.
Sin follows along behind me … both physically and metaphorically.“Y'all can stand there and look down at me like I don't matter, but I'm made of tougher stuff,” Reba says, walking between four men dressed in leather Death by Daybreak vests and into the house. I can hear her through the crack in my window, sitting on the edge of my bed with my dog, Feminist.
Yes, I named my male husky Feminist. Cat refuses to say the word (he calls him that fucking dog most of the time) and Nellie just calls him Fem-fem which I hate. I'm not sure why it's a debate on whether men and woman are equal. Must be because of ignorant a-wads like my dad and his club.
