I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC, #2)

by C.M. Stunich

I can hear Cat talking, but I’m shaking so hard, and I’m tasting blood, and I wish with all my heart that I had someone around to hold me. Someone to protect me. Someone that’s on my side. It never truly occurred to me until that moment how completely and utterly alone that I am.

Because I’m a barbarian among the genteel, I reach out and snatch a wine bottle by the neck, clacking it up against Grey’s glass before chugging hungrily and slamming it back on the table. I smile at the Don with red-stained teeth. Like a bear with bloodied fangs.

his expression scares the shit out of me. Grey is my only ally. Not just here, but in the whole world. He’s literally the only person I have left. If he betrays me … well, I wish I were someone who gave into defeat that easily. If he betrays me, it’ll hurt, and it’ll suck, but I’ll fight through. Because that’s what I do. It’s what I was born to do.

Grey has a habit of stating something like it’s fact, and then getting tangled up in whimsy. He stares up at the clouds a lot, lost in thought. Sometimes, when the light hits him just right, and I glance his way, I can see an internal struggle playing about on his features, like he’s at war inside his own brain, his own heart.

He’s urbane and polished, and I’m craggy and wild. We’re basically exact opposites in our mannerisms. On the inside, we’re the same person, just two birds trapped in a cage.

I always found that a bit weird, that Cat had a mother at all. Like, wasn’t he just birthed into existence in hellfire and brimstone? The idea that he came out of a woman’s body is disturbing.

“I’ve learned to stop lying to myself. That, and I won’t let my pain control me anymore.”

“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.”

He isn’t being nice, not at all. And I love it. That’s not why I like Cade, because he’s nice. I like him because he’s an antagonistic asshole. Just like me. We’re the same, me and Grainger.

I shove them all down, right into the same box, the one that hides beneath the shadows of my heart, the one filled with monsters of memories. “Chin up, best foot forward, other stupid ingratiating idioms,”

but permission from a place of submission is often just coercion at its finest.

“You didn’t really buy me a house, did you?” I ask, moving up close to Crown and watching as his moss green eyes slide my way. “It’s simultaneously romantic, and also creepy.”

“I figured you’d turn eighteen, run off somewhere, meet a guy.” Here he clenches his jaw slightly. “Break up with that guy. Maybe then I’d find you and ask you to have a drink with me, and you’d say yes.

My life will never be a fairy tale, regardless of how the rest of it turns out. My sisters are dead. My father is a monster. My brother is a creature from a nightmare. Even the men I love have hands drenched with blood, hearts of smoke and shadows, pasts dipped in pain and loss.

We could be each other’s homes, I think, and then I almost gag on the idea. Since when did I get it in my head that things might actually work out here? That eventually, I could find some small sliver of happiness.

“You only get married once, Gidge,” Reba says, and I cock a brow at her. “There is such a thing called divorce. It’s been around for a while. You ever heard of King Henry the Eighth?”

My husband. He could kill me right now if he wanted to, snap me like a twig. But he won’t. Because he loves me. Because he’s given me his leash to hold.