Better When He's Bad
Page 23

I kissed her hard as I fumbled in the drawer of the bedside table for the stash of condoms I had tossed in there just in case. She kissed me back and twined her arms around my neck so we were plastered together, chest to chest and thigh to thigh. She was pressing against me, eager to get hers, which was hot on so many different levels. The fact that I could make this girl as greedy for me as I was for her was intoxicating.
“Come for me, little Dove.” I pressed all the way into her as she arched up hard against me and coiled her legs around me. Her mouth opened in a perfect little O of pleasure and those darkened eyes of hers danced between green and black as pleasure washed over the both of us. She was slick and soft where I was hard and hot. We burned against each other, melded in a rhythm that had her inner walls grasping at me and my h*ps involuntarily grinding into hers. It wasn’t frantic, but it was close. I wanted to be gentle with her, but there was no way—she felt too good, too tight and clasping.
We moved together like we were made to do it. All I wanted to do was make her feel as good as I felt, which wasn’t that much of a chore because she was already primed and ready to go. She tossed her head from side to side and dug her fingers into my sides.
“Jesus, Shane.” Her eyes fluttered closed and I kissed her right as she broke apart underneath me. I could taste the pleasure, the satisfaction I had given her on her tongue as it twisted and danced with my own.
I picked up the pace, was probably rougher with her than I needed to be, but it only took a minute after she found her release for me to find mine. I groaned into the hollow of her throat and buried my face in her endless fall of hair. I don’t know if this was what her intention had been when she ambushed me in the living room, but I had to admit I was a fan.
Her hand caressed my sweaty shoulders and I felt her trace the letters of my name that stood between my shoulder blades. She was rubbing the bottom of her foot up and down the length of my calf and I never wanted to move, ever.
“I changed my mind, Bax.” Her voice was raspy and she sounded as sated as I felt.
“Hmm . . . ’bout what?”
I started to suck on the ridge of her collarbone where my mouth had landed. All parts of her were like candy on my tongue.
“You don’t need anyone to show you how to be good, you’re so much better when you’re bad.”
She sighed in delight when I moved away from her neck and started to kiss behind her ear. Lucky for her I had no intentions of trying to be good anytime soon. Bad was what I was best at, it was what worked for me, and after that bout of sex, I was pretty sure Dovie could make bad work for her as well.
CHAPTER 10
Dovie
IT WAS THURSDAY AFTERNOON and the restaurant was dead. Brysen kept giving me looks as we stocked the tables and I kept ignoring them. My week had been a blur of activity. On Tuesday, I had to work and Bax had strong-armed me into letting him replace my schoolbooks. I thanked him for it all night long. On Wednesday, I had class, which was nice because I needed some breathing room from Bax. At this rate, I was going from sexual amateur to pro overnight with no room for me to catch my breath or process it while it was happening. Bax was out running around on Wednesday night, so I had told him I would just crash with Brysen. I thought he was okay with that until I got a call at three in the morning telling me he was outside my friend’s house and I had two minutes to get my ass out and into the car. I wanted to ignore him, wanted to make him stand out there and feel bad for dictating to me, but I didn’t. I was in the car and back at the house and under him all in less than twenty minutes. He just took everything over, and as much as I didn’t like it and was scared spitless by it, I couldn’t seem to stop it from happening either.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
Brysen pulled out one of the empty chairs at the table I was restocking and I was forced to look at her.
“You disappeared in the middle of the night with a guy I watched snap another guy’s arm in half with his bare hands and you don’t think I’m going to worry? Who is this guy, Dovie? More importantly, who is he to you? Because ever since he came on the scene, you haven’t been acting like yourself.”
My hair was back in a ponytail for work, so I couldn’t play with it like I did when I was nervous.
“I told you, he’s going to find Race.”
“When? It’s almost been a month and Race hasn’t made an appearance. I know you’re sleeping with him. Are you sure he isn’t just leading you on so he can get a piece of ass without having to work for it?”
It was a valid question, but Bax wasn’t the kind of guy who had to work very hard in order to get laid.
“It’s not like that, Brysen.”
“Then tell me what it’s like, Dove, because I’m worried about you.”
I sighed and pulled out a chair next to her. I propped my chin on my hand and looked her dead in the eye.
“I want him, Brysen.”
“Well, duh, he’s a babe. All guys with that wrong-side-of-the-law swagger are, but you’re smart enough to know he’s dangerous and that nothing with him is going to be permanent.”
“I am, but it doesn’t seem to matter. He just looks at me and everything inside me heats up, and if he touches me, it all boils over. I feel like I’m addicted to him or something. I know he’s bad for me, but I don’t care.”
“Dovie . . .” Her tone was warning. “You need to stop whatever it is you’re doing with him before you’re too far in. Wanting someone is different than needing them, and there is no way in hell you need anything that guy is carrying around. Stay with me until Race shows—or better yet, get the hell out of town until all of this blows over.”
I bit my bottom lip and just shook my head in the negative. I didn’t want to leave the Point, and not only because my brother was still out there somewhere.
“I can’t.” And she was wrong. When Bax got distracted and forgot to be Bax, all the things Shane brought to the table I very well could need from this point on. Bax made me crazy and sent my control out the window. Shane made my heart hurt and made the foolish, girly part of me want to make everything in his life better; make him forget five years of his life had been wasted behind bars.
She wanted to say something else, but just then the door opened and we were suddenly packed for the early dinner rush. I put it all out of my mind and worked on staying on top of my tables and making some decent tips. I was doing a pretty good job of it too, until I got a rowdy table of guys who were obviously from the heart of the Point. I think they were already drunk when they came in, and no matter how many trips I made back and forth between their table and the kitchen, I couldn’t get them to be quiet or stop trying to grope me. I was getting frustrated and short-tempered with them because I knew they were going to stiff me. Ramon the bartender refused to intervene because he was busy and . . . well . . . a giant pu**y.
Brysen kept giving me sympathetic looks, but her hands were full with her own tables, so I was in the trenches on my own. I was keeping it all together, just wanting them to be gone, when all five of them got up and headed toward the front door before I had even dropped the check off. That made me see red, and without thinking that they were already loud and out of control, I hurried to catch them before they could leave me stuck having to pay the bill.
“Hey, wait a minute! You guys need to pay for your dinner!” I put my hand on the elbow of the guy closest to me and gasped when he not only yanked free but shoved me away with both his hands on my chest.
“Shut up. The service was lousy. We aren’t paying for nothing.” His cohorts chuckled at his boast while my face got hot with fury.
“Your service was fine. You have to pay.”
He took a step toward me and I backed up instinctively. I glanced at Ramon, but he was steadfastly ignoring the drama. What an ass.
“We wanted the hot blonde, not you. Fuck off, Red.”
He pulled back his hand like he was going to smack me and I flinched involuntarily. The last thing I wanted to do was try and explain to Bax why I was walking around with a black eye. I sucked in a breath and opened my mouth to scream, only I didn’t need to because all of a sudden the drunk was gone from in front of me and I was staring at the back of Bax’s shaved head. He grabbed the guy by the front of the shirt and hauled him through the crowd of his gawking followers. The guy was making gurgling noises and frantically calling to his friends for help the entire way.
“Crap.” I started to follow him out to the front of the restaurant when Brysen suddenly stopped me.
“Are you okay?”
“No. I have to go, Bax will kill him.”
“Let him. That jerk was going to hit you.”
I flinched. “I know.” But Bax didn’t need more blood on his hands because of me. I didn’t want to be that to him.
“Dovie,” Brysen called out to me as I rushed to the door. “Forget what I said. You deserve a guy who makes the rest of the world treat you right.”
There were raised voices, and it didn’t surprise me that not one of them was Bax’s. I had seen him in action. He didn’t waste time talking when he had a point to make. The guy who had raised his hand to me was unconscious, facedown on the asphalt of the parking lot. Bax had one of the drunken buddies on the ground next to him with the sole of his black boot on the back of the guy’s neck. The look of fury on his face was enough to keep the rest of the crew a safe distance away.
“Bax, let him go. This isn’t necessary.”
His black gaze shot to me and I shivered. I hated it when all I could see in it was myself looking back.
“He was going to f**king hit you. He’s lucky I don’t break his neck.”
One of the guys in the crowd held up his hands in surrender. “Dude, we know who you are, we didn’t know she was your chick. It was an honest mistake.”
That was the wrong thing to say because Bax removed his foot off the other guy and stalked toward the guy who’d just spoken. He made a really pathetic squeaking noise and tried to back up, but Bax snagged him around the collar and hauled him to his tippy toes while he got right in his face.
“So if she wasn’t mine it’s okay in your world to raise your hand to a woman? Why? Because they’re too small and scared to fight back?” He shook the guy so hard I heard his teeth snap together from where I was standing. “What about me? Why don’t you take me on, ass**le?”
The guy looked like he was going to cry. “I saw you break that guy’s arm after he stabbed you at Nassir’s. You’re crazy!”
“Damn straight, and I wasn’t even pissed then like I am now.” He let go of the guy and sent him flying across the parking lot with a hand on the center of his chest. “When your buddy wakes up, remind him I have his wallet, so if he wants to get shit-faced and act like a douche anywhere else, I can find him again, and it isn’t going to end well.”
The remaining guys who were still mobile hobbled their injured and unconscious friend into the flatbed of a pickup and raced away from the restaurant.
“Bax.” He held up his hand and pulled his phone out before I could ask him what he was doing here, though I had to admit his timing was perfect. He might have called Race an altruistic bastard when we first met, but apparently he had some strong threads of chivalry running through the dark fabric that made him who he was.
“Titus, it’s Bax. Tell your drunk patrol to pull over a red pickup on the south side.” He rattled off the license-plate number without telling his brother thank you or good-bye. He turned those dark eyes on me and I felt like they were pulling me in. I sighed and walked over to wrap my arms around his waist.
“Did you have to knock the one guy out?”
“He had a glass jaw and he’s lucky that’s all I did. You don’t hit girls. In fact, if Benny’s nose wasn’t already broken, I would shatter it in retaliation for him knocking you around.”