Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills Series Book 6)

by Mary B. Moore

  At that moment, I was damning and thanking them because they allowed my dick to have some space without squashing it, given how hard it was, but they were also a barrier between us.

  Like she was reading my mind, her hands shifted under the elastic waistband and started to push them down, taking over with her feet when she couldn’t reach it anymore.

  By the time I kicked them off, I had her panties pulled down, managing to get them to mid-thigh without too much of a problem.

  It was when she moved her legs to take over their removal that I said a quick prayer that she wouldn’t knee me in the crotch in the process. Thankfully, that never happened, and after some laughter from both of us, as she stuck her leg over the edge of the bed and kicked it around to get rid of them, I was able to lower back down on top of her—skin to skin.

  My hand had only just started to move up her thigh toward her pussy when she pulled my face away from hers with another tug of my hair.

  “A couple of facts that you need to know right now: I’m on the pill, and I’m clean,” she said seriously, then added, “Oh, and I’m ready.”

  Two of them made sense, but the last one wasn’t computing for me. “What?”

  Mustering as much patience as she could, which wasn’t a lot given the tone she ended up using, she explained, “Logan, if you don’t get inside me in the next ten seconds, the coroner’s going to have to figure out how to tell my parents I died of sexual starvation. Please, do me a favor and make it a better day for them all than that.”

  Grinning wickedly, I went back to moving my hand to where it’d been headed before. I should have known—really should have known—that the joke was going to be on me, because when I felt how wet she was, the smile dropped from my face.

  Any humor and joking left the situation completely as I took my cock in my hand and notched it at her entrance.

  “I know for a fact I’m clean, but regardless of what you said, I can still get a condom if you’ve changed your mind.”

  It would always be her choice.

  Keeping her eyes on mine, she lifted her hips, pushing me slightly into her.

  I swear I stopped breathing. Maybe I died for like a second, I don’t know, but I’d never felt anything like this before in my life. I was numb all over except for the part of me inside her, and it felt like everything in the world was focused on this moment and the two of us. Was that corny? I didn’t give one iota of a fuck about if it was because it was damn well true.

  It was vital that I got to see her reaction as I pushed farther into her, so I held back from even blinking as I pushed gently into her again. I wasn’t going to rush it even if it killed me, so every move I made was small and controlled.

  It was after I’d just pulled out of her and was about to move my hips forward that the chorus for Take It Easy by the Eagles started blaring from my cell, meaning that I jerked forward and deeper into her than I’d intended, leaving half of my length buried inside her.

  Groaning at the feeling of the wet warmth squeezing me tightly, I froze to make sure she was okay.

  With her nails embedded in my back, she moaned, “Holy shit.”

  I held myself in place as we both tried to catch our breaths after the song stopped before it started up again. “What’s that?”

  Then it sank in. “Damn it, that’s DB.”

  Her limbs tightened around me as she lifted her head to look over my shoulder, which didn’t help with how much it was taking me to hold back from moving again. “Where?”

  I was so focused on what I was doing that her question didn’t make sense. “What?”

  “Where’s DB?”

  “Oh, on the phone.”

  The music stopped again, and I relaxed, but it was quickly replaced by the chorus to Thank God I’m A Country Boy.

  I could see and feel her fighting laughter. “Who’s that?”

  Seeing the humor in it, my lips twitched. “Carter.”

  You’d think having the cognitive abilities to identify ringtones with people would make it hit home that work was calling, but unfortunately, it didn’t. It still didn’t when Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac took over the playlist.

  Before she could ask, I identified it for her. “That’s Garrett.”

  All of the tension left her body as she dropped her head onto the pillow and burst out laughing, squeezing down around me and making me groan.

  “I think work’s trying to get in touch with you,” she wheezed, tightening again.

  Take It Easy started playing again, and I lunged toward the phone, managing to reach it without detaching from her.

  I didn’t even get to say anything as I hit the green answer icon.

  “Richards, get your ass in here,” he snapped and hung up just as a call waiting beep sounded with Carter’s name on the screen.

  Glancing at Bex, I hit answer. “It’s cool, I just spoke to DB. I’m on my way.”

  “Yeah,” he growled, the sound of his indicator following it. “Did he tell you we have a problem and how big a problem it is?”

  Looking away from her, I stared at the headboard, thinking how good it would be for her to hold onto while I took her from behind.

  “Logan, for fuck’s sake, focus,” Carter clipped down the phone, making me wince.

  “I’m focused,” I said defensively, ignoring Bex’s snicker. “What’s happened?”

  As he laid out why we were being summoned in the middle of the night, my eyes narrowed.

  “That little bastard. Give me twenty, and I’ll be there.” Hitting the end call icon, I kissed Bex as apologetically as I could. “Trust me when I say there’s very little that would be able to take me away right now, and that I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t urgent.”

  Her expression went from curious to concerned. “Is everything okay?”

  “No,” I told her honestly. “But I’m hoping it will be.”

  “Will you be safe?”

  Her words were as beautiful as they were painful. She still didn’t hold a grudge against me, and even now she was putting me first.

  Pushing her hair away from the side of her face with my thumb, I leaned down and touched my lips gently against hers. “I will be. If I don’t get to see you before you leave for work, do you have space in your day to come and see me?”

  I meant it. It was important to me that I got that extra time with her before I came home, no matter when it happened.

  “I’ll make sure of it.”

  Wild horses couldn’t have pulled me away from her, but the one person who was considerably smaller than one but a massive pain in the ass could.

  Fucking Diego Mantoya, the little hemorrhoid pimple.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bexley

  “Explain it to me like I’m five,” Ava said through my car speakers, and I turned the volume down on them in case she repeated anything I told her.

  We’d all been there, pulled up at the lights with someone on their in-car system next to us, every word of their conversation broadcasted to the people around them. There was no way in hell I was risking it.

  “You guys were in the process of bumping uglies—”

  “Bumping what?”

  “Doing the nasty,” she explained, and it clicked.

  “I mean, I didn’t get to see his penis during it, but I did before then, and it isn’t ugly. I guess no penis is good looking—”

  “Or vagina,” she interrupted, and I had to agree with her.

  “I haven’t held a mirror up to my own rose garden, but I’m gonna agree with that,” I shuddered.

  “Really? I’ve looked at mine. How do you check to see if you trimmed the bushes equally?”

  I blinked at the car in front of me, hoping that we pulled away soon. How many people could hear this?

  “I don’t have bushes, per se, more like shrubs—”

  “Amen on the non-bush gardens. Imagine if it was super bushy putting a tampon in?”

  I grimaced, just as movement to the left of m
e caught my attention.

  The first thing I saw was Tom Townsend staring down at me from the truck beside me, his sunglasses lowered so that he was looking over the top of them. His mom was also grinning over his shoulder, her body shaking as she laughed.

  Like that wasn’t bad enough, she gestured with her thumb behind her at the sidewalk, making me glad I couldn’t see who was there.

  Smiling weakly, I looked to my right to break the awkward eye contact and then groaned. My freaking dad was staring at me with his mouth open and cheeks bright red, holding up the toilet plunger I’d asked him to pick up for me, like he was going to throw it at Pops’ car.

  And, oh, it got so much worse the more I looked.

  Standing next to him was Logan’s dad, who was staring down at his feet like he was trying to pretend he wasn’t there. It was Logan’s grandad, though, who was the reason that my foot hit the accelerator when the car behind me beeped.

  Why? Because he was standing next to Hurst, his head tipped back as he laughed his ass off, waving a pair of shears in his hand, reminding me was headed over to mine after I got off to help me cut back the bushes in the front and back yards.

  As soon as I heard that beep, my foot pressed down, and I shot off from my spot…

  Right into the back of the car in front of me.

  Which belonged to my mother.

  I’d been so focused on the conversation with Ava that I hadn’t seen her. I’d later find out she’d been waving and tapping her brake to get my attention, and that pretty much everyone who shouldn’t have heard our conversation about vaginascaping had.

  Fifteen minutes later…

  “You know, when I asked you to come and see me, I didn’t mean for you to do it like this,” Logan said behind me, where I was standing next to Mom as Dad checked over both our vehicles.

  Yes, they were still looking at the damage because that’s what a group of men with nothing else to do did, apparently. One looked and made a noise, then the next one looked, then the next. Then they discussed it and weighed up their opinions, before going back to do it all over again.

  The relief at having him there was immense, but I also felt guilty that he’d had to leave whatever he’d been working on since he’d left the house. To be fair, I’d specifically said not to worry him, but I guess Naomi decided he needed to know.

  So, spinning around, I face planted against his chest, squeaking when I didn’t encounter him but instead headbutted his body armor vest thingy, which was as solid as a rock.

  “Yeah, that probably didn’t feel so good,” he murmured, rubbing my back soothingly.

  “It feels like I headbutted a superhero,” I replied, smiling when his chest moved as he laughed. It didn’t feel so great as the vest moved up and down my face, but I had an ear-to-chest front-row seat for his laughter, and I’d had a shitty day.

  “Wanna tell me what happened?”

  “Not really,” I replied honestly.

  Doing that would mean I had to explain how it happened, and hadn’t I suffered enough?

  Instead, I changed the subject and poked the pocket on the front of the vest. “Is that a bullet?”

  “Nope, it’s a device we attach to the vest with a small light that flashes in the dark. A few months ago, the mayor suggested we keep loose bullets in there instead of the pockets on our pants, but he has shit for brains and doesn’t know what he’s doing. If we got shot and it hit one, can you imagine what would happen?”

  I didn’t like that reply at all. “You get shot?”

  “It’s happened,” Carter interrupted behind me. “We kind of get judged on the actions of others, so not everyone wants to play with us when we stop them or go to speak to them. Their response tends to be a gun—”

  “Or fucking tear gas bombs,” Logan growled, reminding me of what had happened to him not long ago.

  Still, it was his job, and I knew supporting him was better for Logan than getting pissy about stuff he had no control over. He was a deputy who worked to keep the town safe from assholes.

  “Did you manage to sort out whatever happened last night?”

  His arms tightened as he stiffened at the question, but it was Carter who replied. “Fucking Mayor.”

  I hadn’t had a lot to do with Dirk Kirkwood, the Mayor of Piersville, since he’d taken up the position, but I remembered him well from when I was a kid.

  He was the guy who came out yelling if you cycled down his street laughing, called the police if you were on a skateboard, and advocated for his sons to get high profile recognition here and in the next town over.

  Doesn’t sound so bad? I guess not, unless you look at the fact that he’d turned a blind eye to how much shit his sons did and then greased the palms of officials when they were caught. One of them was now a lawyer and a total asshole, and the other one was getting the biggest building contracts in the area somehow.

  Let’s also add into it that he was shooting buds with the longest-serving Piersville judge, so anything he had a vested interest in here happened how he wanted it to.

  In short: he was a dick when I was younger, he was a dick now, and how he’d become Mayor was highly suspicious.

  Turning my head so that I was facing Carter, I saw him glaring at the ground. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  His answer was simple. “Yeah, don’t vote the cock or his fuckhead sons in again. That whole family belongs behind bars.”

  Coming up beside us, my parents, Bill, and Hurst all chimed in with their agreements. Logan didn’t say a word throughout it all, he just continued to rub up and down my back in soothing, slow movements.

  Tilting my head back to watch him, I took in the dark circles under his eyes and the tension in his face. “You need some sleep, dude.”

  Lowering his head, he gave me a smile that had zero power behind it, just exhaustion. “No shit. I also need assholes to stop fucking around, but so far, they seem dedicated to doing just that.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  The question had been an innocent one, but the way his eyes softened and lowered to my mouth proved he hadn’t taken it that way. His answer backed it up. “Tonight. No interruptions, no phone calls, just you and me tonight.”

  If I was a lady, I might have been offended by how certain he sounded that it’d happen. Thankfully I was no lady, and my coochie was a whore who would’ve screamed ‘Yes!’ if she could. “I like the sound of that.”

  He was just opening his mouth to say something when Dad asked, “Weren’t you due back in school?”

  Apparently, the news train only choo-choo’d quickly with juicy gossip here, because I’d have thought they’d all have known what’d happened as soon as it went down.

  “There was a malfunction with the fire alarm system. The alarm started blaring out of nowhere, and the sprinklers in the offices and some classrooms went off. We vacated the school while it was checked to make sure there wasn’t a fire, but then they realized there was a problem anyway—not all of the sprinklers that went off were on the same circuit. We also don’t know why it was triggered, so without a functioning and reliable fire alarm system until it’s fixed, we can’t be in the building.”

  “How old is the system?” Logan asked, sounding irritated by it all. “That’s dangerous.”

  “Here’s the kicker—it’s eight months old. The school was ordered to upgrade its system last year, so Kirkwood took bids for the work and awarded it to—”

  “Lemme guess, a company associated with his friends or family,” Hurst drawled, sharing a look with Bill.

  “You should run for mayor, Hurst,” Dad suggested, and suddenly they all started talking again about what a great idea it was even though Hurst said he’d rather pluck his nose hairs with chopsticks.

  Using their distraction, Logan leaned in and whispered, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Huffing out a breath, I looked at Pops’ car sadly. “Yeah, just embarrassed and upset that I dinged his vehicle
. It wasn’t that bad an accident, but I wanted to keep it the way he’d left it. Every time I drive it, I’m scared I’m going to do something like that, so I was really hoping my car would be here by now.”

  “It means that much to you?”

  Biting down on my lip, I realized how dumb it sounded, given that either Mom or I could’ve been hurt, but I couldn’t help it. “I learned to drive in his old truck, so when it broke down and couldn’t be repaired, he put it in the garage and made sure rust didn’t set in. He didn’t want to ever stop driving it because of the memories we had in it, so he sort of preserved it to keep those memories.

  “Two years ago, I came home one weekend, and we went to find him a new one.” I pointed at the Toyota 4Runner. “That one. We took it out for a test drive together, drove around for a while after he bought it, had a picnic in the back while we discussed my job and plans for the future…” I swallowed back the tears that wanted to come out thinking about the memories. “He didn’t have it long, but he wanted memories of us in it, so every opportunity he got, that’s what we did.”

  “I get it,” he sighed, surprising me. “I absolutely get it. The truck I used to drive us around in is in the barn behind my parents’ house. I couldn’t get rid of it when it broke down, either.”

  “Well, I’ve got some good news for y’all,” Jarrod Klein announced, having joined us at some point during the aftermath of the incident. “It can be fixed, no problem.”

  Okay, I’m not going to lie, every time I looked at Jarrod or his brothers, I got flustered. There was something magical in the water when those men were conceived, and they had the kind of hotness that made your brain just flatline. I don’t know how Katy did anything with him around because all I’d do is stare and drool.

  Like I was doing right at that moment.

  With my arms around Logan.

  Oops.

  A glance around showed that my Klein-predicament hadn’t gone unnoticed, so I didn’t dare look up to see what Logan’s expression was. Instead, I tried to wing it.