Craving BAD: An Anthology of Bad Boys and Wicked Girls

by A. J. Norris

  “Heath.” His name left her lips before she was able to stop it. “I’m sorry for last night. I was a little drunk and really bitchy. You didn’t deserve me snapping at you like that.”

  “Since when do you drink?” he asked, frowning.

  Her thoughts flashed back to her messy drunk of a mother passed out on the floor and she held up her hands. “Oh, no, not like that. Rebecca came over and we had some wine. I don’t even keep alcohol in the house.”

  “Sorry, I’m overstepping again.”

  “Do you…do you want to come over tonight?” she asked him quietly. “I’ll make some dinner and we’ll talk? You were right when you said you deserved answers.”

  His hazel eyes widened. “Yeah, sure. What time?”

  “Six?”

  Heath nodded and ran his fingers through his hair, brushing it away from his face. “Cool, I’ll be there.”

  Vera watched as he walked away, then slumped against the banana stand, trying to control her rapid heartbeat. It had been years since Heath had been in her home, and she thought it was a good idea to invite him to dinner? Mentally punching herself, she took a deep breath and continued on her trip, trying to figure out what the hell to cook.

  “You what?” Rebecca screamed into the phone, her voice echoing in Vera’s bathroom.

  The shrill shriek made her jump, causing her eyeliner to shoot across her face, all the way to her hairline. “Ugh, Rebecca, I just screwed up my makeup.”

  “Good, I hope you look hideous.”

  She rolled her eyes and wiped away the jagged line with a piece of toilet paper. “Well, that’s not nice.” She reapplied the black kohl, hoping it would make her green eyes pop.

  “What possessed you to invite your ex to dinner?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself,” Vera muttered wryly. “I guess for closure.”

  “Girl, closure is a myth. There’s no such thing. Now, call him up, tell him you are violently ill, and move on.”

  “I don’t have his number.”

  There were several minutes of incoherent mumbling before Rebecca asked, “Vera Jane Campbell, are you going to bone your ex?”

  Vera held back a burst of laughter. “No! It’s just a simple dinner between two old friends.”

  “I saw him out there in the yard. That skinny beanpole certainly filled the hell out. And those tattoos…”

  She glanced at the little clock beside her mirror and saw that it was almost six. “Hey, I have to go. He’ll be here in a few minutes and I’m not even dressed.”

  “Ooh, cutting out the middle man, I see!” Rebecca cackled.

  “Okay, bye!” Vera yelled before hanging up the phone.

  She walked into her bedroom and picked up the light summer dress she pulled from her closet. It was a soft, gray jersey fabric that wrapped in the front with a deep v-neck and a tasseled bottom. It hit just above her knee and hugged her hips. She thought it might be a bit too sexy for a dinner between friends, but she was never one to dress down when she could be dressed up. There was such little fun to be had in small-town Pennsylvania, and so few chances to wear such pretty numbers.

  Vera tossed some long, beaded gold strands around her neck, but thought it might be too much, so she took them off and tossed them to the top of her dresser. Then she padded, barefoot, down to the kitchen, stopping to admire the way her loose waves framed her face in the hall mirror. Happy with the reflection that peered back, she continued on.

  The lemon chicken simmered merrily in the copper pan and she went to the refrigerator and pulled out the asparagus. After a quick wash and trim, she tossed the vegetables into a fresh pan, sprinkled some salt and pepper over them, and squeezed some lemon juice over top. Then she covered it tightly with a lid and turned to set the table. She had just placed the forks on the napkins when she heard an approaching motorcycle. Vera waited in the kitchen for a knock on the door before answering.

  Heath wore a plaid button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled up to show his ink. His leather vest was nowhere to be seen. “Hey,” he said, stepping inside when she opened the door. His gaze slid over her appreciatively. But the gesture didn’t make her uncomfortable. It seemed almost natural to bring him into her home.

  “Come on, dinner’s almost ready.”

  “Smells great.”

  “I hope it tastes as good.” She laughed, leading the way into the kitchen. “Go ahead and sit down.”

  Heath took a seat at one end of the table. Vera could feel his eyes on her as she finished up the cooking. Her thoughts were verified when she turned to put the full plates on the table. It wasn’t until she sat down that Vera began to feel awkward like everything was wrong; the chicken too spicy, the sweet tea too sweet, her dress too revealing. They ate in silence and the only sound was the light clattering of silverware.

  “You okay?” he asked as he cut into his food.

  Vera nodded, plastering her waitress smile onto her lips. “Of course, how’s your food?”

  “Really good,” he replied as he finished the last of his asparagus. “I don’t remember you being this great of a cook.”

  “A lot can change in six years.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could call them back. Silence fell between them—long, awkward, and uninterrupted.

  “I guess that’s my cue to bring up the whole ‘I need answers’ thing.” He was smiling, but the gesture didn’t reach his eyes.

  Vera sighed. While she knew the conversation had to occur, she didn’t need to like it. “Let’s go into the living room.”

  They sat together on the couch, which seemed so much smaller than it had when she was sitting on it with Rebecca. Their knees almost touched and Vera fingered the fringe of her skirt, not knowing where to start. But after several minutes of silence, she thought she might as well start at the beginning.

  “So…you know my mom was a mess…always drunk with all these guys and drugs and…she was just a mess. I knew that if I left, she would die. I was the only person left to take care of her,” she began quietly, her eyes still on her bare thigh. “My grandparents are gone and no one’s seen my uncle in years. If I was gone too…”

  “It wasn’t your job to take care of her. You were just a kid.”

  “But old enough to run off with you?” she asked, looking up at him.

  He shrugged. “Touché. Still…you could have at least come to see me off when I left. You knew I didn’t want to spend my life working and dying in the mines. You knew I thought we were both getting on that bus. I thought you were going to come with me.”

  “I was,” Vera insisted, feeling her eyes well up. She never talked about her mom. Even when she was being lowered into the ground, she couldn’t think of anything to say by the vacant graveside. Only the local pastor said a quiet prayer. “I packed a bag and was going to leave…but she was just lying there. I thought she was going to die and I just…I couldn’t leave her.”

  “But you could have told me, Vera,” he insisted, reaching down and taking her hand. It was warm and firm and one of the knuckles had a small rose tattooed on the small strip of skin. She kept her eyes trained there. “I stood at that station waiting for you and you never came. When I got to the next town, I called, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I couldn’t,” she breathed, trying to swallow the tears that threatened to pour over. “I knew that if I told you that I wasn’t going to follow, there was a chance you wouldn’t really leave. I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t drag you back to this town.”

  “I loved you, Vera,” he rasped, squeezing her fingers.

  Vera couldn’t take it. A sob escaped her throat and unbidden tears dropped down to her bare leg. Heath murmured something and pulled her to his chest. She clutched onto his shirt, breathing in his scent of leather and mountain air. It felt good to be back in his arms after so many years. It felt right. More right than it should. And she clung to the feeling as she came undone.

  “Shit, V, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to ma
ke you cry,” he whispered into her hair.

  “It’s…it’s not your…fault,” she replied through hiccups, pulling back and wiping away the dampness on her cheeks. “God, I’m so embarrassed.” She looked down at her knees, but Heath tucked a finger beneath her chin and forced her to look up.

  Their eyes met and their gaze held steady, betraying all the unsaid emotion of six lonely years. Before Vera knew what happened, Heath brought his mouth down to hers, covering it with a deep kiss. She felt her pulse race and her breath hitch in her throat. For a moment, she thought it would be better to pull away, but she couldn’t. An unseen force pulled them together, and she went with the feeling, putting her arms around his neck, her fingers tangling in his soft brown hair.

  “God, I missed you,” he whispered into her lips, his hazel eyes now peering down at her. “I missed this.”

  “Me too,” Vera confessed, feeling his hand snake up her thigh, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

  She didn’t want the moment to end. When he left their town that night, she thought she would never see him again. For six years, she pined over what could have been, letting every short-term boyfriend take second place to the ghost he left behind. But he was there, really there…at least for a little while.

  “Do you…do you want to come upstairs?” she asked him in a low voice.

  He didn’t answer but instead whipped up, taking her with him. She was wrapped in his arms, being spirited bridal style up the narrow stairs to the second floor. Vera found herself laughing at his enthusiasm.

  When they got to the landing, Heath pushed open the first door on the right, frowning when he found the room covered in piles of boxes. “Wow, my memory really deceived me. I could have sworn this was your room.”

  “It was,” she assured him, slipping from his grasp and taking his hand. She pulled him down the hall to the master bedroom. Vera had had it redone after her mom died and took it over for herself. It was bright and airy with pale yellow walls and framed photos of all the places she longed to visit. Strings of white Christmas lights glowed in the darkness over a large bed draped all in white.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place.” Heath stood behind her, skimming his fingers up and down her arms.

  Vera leaned back against his chest and practically melted in his arms when he brushed the hair away from her neck and pressed his lips to her pulse. Her nipples hardened beneath the jersey fabric of her dress, and it didn’t escape Heath’s notice. He brushed his palms over her breasts, making her moan.

  “I like that sound,” he growled, spinning her to face him. He kissed her again, biting her lower lip and teasing her with his tongue.

  She pressed against him, feeling him harden against her thigh. She thought that she wasn’t that kind of woman—the kind to fall into bed with a man before she even served dessert. But Heath wasn’t just some man…Vera’s mind went blank as he pushed the straps to her dress over her shoulders. It fell and pooled around her feet, leaving her in nothing but her lace panties.

  Heath made a small noise in his throat as he cupped one breast, his thumb grazing her nipple. Her fingers flew to his shirt in response, undoing the buttons in record speed. Soon, it joined her dress and he was pushing her backward, kicking off his boots as they went.

  As soon as her legs hit the edge of the mattress, she fell backwards, sprawling against the down comforter. She watched as he reached into his pocket, pulling out a foil wrapped object and tossing it beside her on the bed. Then he unbuckled his belt, his gaze never leaving her. Vera remembered when she was young; her own body and the newness of intimacy scared her. Strange to think how different she was now. Her eyes took in each sharp muscle of his chest, the defined slopes of his abs, and the delicious lines that lead into his boxer briefs.

  He crawled into the bed with her, his mouth overtaking hers in an instant. She pulled him against her, allowing him full access to her body. When he pulled off the small strip of lace that covered the final piece of untouched skin, it was like his touch burned her, ignited something within her. She wanted him, craved him, every piece. She ran her hands over his broad shoulders as his lips trailed downwards, finding the peak of her breast. When he began to touch her velvety folds, she called out.

  Groping over the bed, she finally found the piece of foil from Heath’s pocket. She pressed it into his hand. “Hurry,” she begged.

  Heath quickly complied, ripping off his boxers and pulling on the condom before pushing inside her, each tantalizing inch making her long for more. She wrapped her legs around his trim waist as he moved inside her. He bit her neck as his thrusts quickened and her nails dug into his back. It wasn’t soft and gentle; it was hard and heavy, their bodies coming together in a tangle of pounds and moans.

  “Fuck, V,” he groaned in her ear. “The things you do to me…”

  Vera held him tightly as the swell of orgasm threatened to overwhelm her. Their bodies fit together perfectly and it was too much—the pleasure, the emotion, the lost years. She felt her climax hitting its peak and crashing over her body. Vera called out his name as she caught her breath and she could feel Heath hitting the cusp of his passions as well, in a final, deep, thrust.

  Heath kissed her forehead, her cheeks, the lip of her nose, her lips. “You’re perfect,” he told her. “Stay right here.”

  Vera pulled the comforter over her as he stepped through the open bathroom door and closed it behind him. She smiled, stretching, feeling sated. It had been fast and hard, but it fulfilled so many years of slow and steady. While she wasn’t that kind of girl, she apparently was for him.

  “You all right?” Heath had come out of the bathroom and pulled on his briefs before sliding beneath the blanket with her.

  “Mhm,” she replied, curling alongside his body. Her eyes trailed over his torso, the sleek lines of his tattoos interesting her. The once blank plane of his skin was spattered with ink. “Ironside Sinners” sat above his heart and along the side of his ribs was ship breaking against a rocky shore. Her fingers traced a line of Roman numerals beside a sugar skull and rounded the edge of a Norse ax blade before she found a small letter, tucked away on its own above his wrist.

  “It’s a ‘V,’” she muttered, outlining the two straight lines.

  He lifted up his arm, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about, and laughed. “Oh, yeah, it was my first.” He tossed the arm over her, pulling Vera to rest against his chest. “I thought it’d be my only one. But an eighteen-year-old kid can’t get by on his own. I found the Ironside Sinners—well, they found me. A few years later, I collected some more.”

  “Couldn’t you have gotten it covered?” Vera asked quietly, enjoying the ease with which they spoke. “Artists do that kind of stuff all the time.”

  “I was never going to cover this up. You’ve always been a part of me, V. Even when I didn’t want you to be anymore. Even when I wanted to hate you, you were my girl. And you never cover up your girl’s name.”

  Chapter Three

  “Hey, how was your dinner?” Rebecca asked as she slid onto a bar stool the next night.

  Vera leaned her elbows against the bar and looked over at the last remaining regular still clinging to his beer before whispering, “We…did it.”

  Rebecca raised a brow. “You fucked? You can say it, Vera, we’re not twelve.”

  “Okay, yeah, we did. And then he stayed over.”

  “Wow, that’s interesting. You guys playing house now?”

  “It’s not like that.” She turned and pulled two shot glasses from the shelf behind her, filling them with whiskey and a dash of lime juice. She pushed one to Rebecca and, wordlessly, they clinked glasses before downing the liquid, thumping the empty vessels back onto the bar.

  “Then what was it like?”

  Vera sighed. “Hell if I know. The dinner was good, the discussion was sad, the sex was awesome, the cuddling was top-notch, and he can flip a pancake like nobody’s business,” she told her, thinking back to the sight
of Heath making her breakfast before riding off.

  “Sounds like a fun night.”

  “Yeah, it was. He even called me ‘his girl,’” she admitted a little shyly.

  Rebecca pursed her lips and paused for a moment before asking, “What are you guys doing?”

  “I’ve been asking myself the same thing all day. It was great. The whole thing was so much fun and it was just like old times, only a million times better. I thought it would just be one night…” She drifted off and she ran her hand over her face. “This is a mess.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  Vera watched as the last patron slapped his money on the bar before walking slowly out, nodding at her in passing. “It feels so weird. Like we’re picking up where we left off.”

  “But you’re not, it’s been six years,” Rebecca pointed out.

  Vera shrugged and washed their shot glasses before dumping the lone beer bottle into the recycling bin. She then began wiping down the bar. “Do you think I’m just being stupid?”

  “Nah.” Rebecca shook her head. “You guys were good together.”

  “We were teenagers.”

  “Hey, most of the people in this Podunk town get married at nineteen if they didn’t at sixteen when they got pregnant.”

  Vera giggled and flipped off the light switches that illuminated the liquor display. “I guess you’re right.”

  “If it works out, it works out. Maybe he’ll stay and not sell his uncle’s place.”

  “Maybe…” Vera mumbled, leaving the empty bar to grab her purse from her locker. When she came back, she said, “but I doubt it. He’s got this whole motorcycle club thing…I don’t think he’d just dump them. He basically told me they were his family.”

  “But he said you were his girl.” Rebecca jabbed a finger in her direction.

  Vera flipped off the last of the lights and led the way out of the bar. “Yeah, in a post-sex haze of hormones and lust. It makes people say a lot of crazy things.” She stuck her key into the deadbolt, locking it behind her.