Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,45
was just depressing.
I dipped my chin, preferring to focus on the one thing that always got me through—ink. “You want me to schedule you in for some time on your back tat?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
Nyx, finally having quit with the kissy goddamn face with Giulia, muttered, “It’s taken you a fucking lifetime to get that cross finished. If you weren’t covered in ink, I’d say you were too much of a pussy to go under the needle again.”
Cruz smirked, looking far too hot for his own good.
And mine.
Jesus.
What was it about him that got my juices flowing? Without him spanking me, scraping my skin with the back of his knife, or choking me?
I mean, I knew he was beautiful, and even though some might not consider ink to be an art, I sure as fuck did. My canvas was living, breathing. It moved, it had life. I didn’t paint a piece of goddamn fabric and hang it on a wall. My work existed in more than just a 2D kind of way. And that was Cruz all over. Sure, he was covered in ink which was like my kryptonite, but more than that, he was just fucking gorgeous.
His hair was dark. I’d never liked dark guys, because they reminded me of my brothers, but Cruz’s hair was like mink. It felt so good against my hands.
His eyes were a kind of hazel. I said a ‘kind of’ because they were neither blue nor green, and there were little amber top notes that I recognized because they danced around the iris on the rare occasions he smiled. Those top notes made his eyes lean toward a grassy color, but just labeling them green was underselling them. Like calling a diamond a rock.
He was, I recognized, grumpy by nature. I knew he’d classify himself as grim though. Like the reaper. He had this image of himself in his head that was worse than the one I had of myself. Why? I didn’t know. What he had in his past didn’t torment him. I’d have recognized a fellow survivor, someone who was drowning in the quagmire. Cruz wasn’t drowning. If anything, he was surfing through life, but something drove him.
Something…
I pursed my lips as I wondered what that might be, tracing my gaze over the strong jawline, the wide set eyes, the soft brows that felt good under my thumb whenever I smoothed one down on the rare occasions I instigated the connection now and touched him. His stubble prickled the best way against my skin, and it glinted silver and gold when it was long enough.
His body was rangy. He wasn’t like Nyx, wasn’t a muscle-head, but his body was toned, strong. In his own way. It was like sleeping with a runner, I guessed, instead of a weight lifter.
He had the sweetest smile lines either side of his eyes which told me he’d smiled frequently at some point in his life, even if he didn’t have matching lines bracketing his mouth, and his nose had been broken.
He looked like a damaged angel. With the skeleton tats on his hands and chest, the massive cross he had which was why he’d been given his road name, and then, at his throat, the big tat that was mostly black ink. I’d looked to see if it was a cover up, but I thought the negative ink was representative of something, something he hadn’t, and maybe never would, share with me. There was a reason, after all, he was inked like a living skeleton.
The thought of him keeping secrets shouldn’t have hurt. Not when I’d shared the bare minimum with him. He knew about my past when no one else did, but that wasn’t the only part of me that mattered.
We were two bodies that came together in the night, with violence and passion, but I wasn’t sure if there was more. Not yet, anyway.
Maybe two weeks ago, I’d have been okay with that.
But yesterday, something had changed.
It wasn’t something he’d done, nor something I had. Even if he knocked down barriers without even trying to when he made me piss in front of him, or when he’d shoved his cum-soaked fingers down my throat.
No, Stone and Steel had done that.
In they’d walked, hand in hand. Stone stiff from riding bitch, when she wasn’t supposed to yet. Steel with such an intense look in his eyes, one that had hit me with the force of a laser.