Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,28

the top of my to-do list.

The black strands were thick, strong, and the color was the perfect contrast to her skin. I wasn’t an artist, not like she was. If anything, my skills were in shit that no one really understood—not because I hadn’t shared the truth with anyone, but because my brain drifted through chemical formulas that went over most people’s heads. I didn’t have to be an artist, though, to register how truly beautiful she was.

Her cheekbones weren’t all that high, but she was too skinny and as a result, a little gaunt. It meant that her lips were framed, and she usually painted them in a lurid shade. I’d seen her wear anything from bright yellow to dark green. She suited the darker colors though. I’d come to learn that her lipstick represented her frame of mind, and knew she had a color for every occasion.

Someday, and it would be soon, I’d change that.

Until Indy, I hadn’t understood that a woman, sometimes, would make herself purposely ugly.

To reflect what she felt inside.

That this gorgeous creature might ever feel that way messed with my head, and I liked logic far too much to be happy about how illogical she made me.

Truth was, Indy and me should never have been anything other than fuck buddies.

But she’d flipped my switch. Tripped my trigger. Something I could never have envisaged her doing.

In the past, I’d liked my permanent subs soft.

Delicate.

A sub I fucked could be independent, but I liked them dependent.

Indy was strong. Hard.

Only on the inside was she fragile.

My thoughts came to a crashing halt because they were getting me nowhere. I knew all this already, but whenever I watched her slip to her knees, it took my breath away.

This woman wasn’t supposed to kneel for any man.

Yet she did for me.

That was some heady stuff.

I strode out of the shadows of her small living room and toward the doorway where she was kneeling. With each step I took, she tensed, and I knew why.

This was not a comfortable position for her.

Every time I did this, I half-expected it’d be the last time she’d allow it, and I dreaded it even as I kept on prodding the beast. It was like when you had a canker sore and couldn’t stop running your tongue over it, prodding it and making it hurt worse. Human nature, sure, but it meant that every time with her could be the last, and it made her more precious to me than she probably knew.

My boots thudded against the stripped wooden floor as I wandered through the apartment toward her, passing the esthetic that came as another surprise. You looked at her and you saw a rebel. Tats everywhere beneath a facade that screamed tomboy. This place was girly. All furry rugs and shit on console tables. A million photo frames, plants here and there, small ornaments that represented something to her. She was the kind of woman who, before she slept, had to take about a dozen throw pillows off her bed, and had a dozen more furry ones on her sofa.

I slipped my hand over her hair when I reached her and, carefully, tugged on her ponytail, drawing her head back so that she was looking right where I wanted her to—my eyes.

When our gazes collided, I felt something inside me settle.

A truth.

A recognition that was undeniable.

I was pretty sure she felt it too, because her gaze shuttered, and she tried to drop her chin, but my hold on her hair prevented that maneuver.

Exactly why I’d done it.

“What’s going on? You didn’t text,” she rumbled, her voice low and wary as she looked up at me.

“Bad day,” was all I said, but I let go of her hair and stroked my fingers over her silky smooth locks.

“Gonna take it out on my ass?”

Any other woman would have said that mockingly. Indy? I almost felt the need.

I’d known a lot of women in my life, known plenty of subs, but something about Indy spoke to me. Called out to me in a way I’d never known before.

She needed me in a way no other ever had, and I responded to that in ways that weren’t necessarily the wisest.

I was rougher with her than I ought to be because she responded. If she didn’t, I’d back off, but under my attentions, she was like a flower blossoming in the sunlight.

I fought my inclinations, tempering them, but when I let loose, and she did too? It messed