Not So Goode

by Jasinda Wilder

  He propped himself forward, cupping his wounded…well, brain, such as it was. The only brain a lunk like him ever used, anyway. Now, leaning over, he was in the perfect position for me to give him my hardest open-handed slap. Not a girly, how-dare-you slap, either. A martial artist trained open-handed palm strike to the ear and jaw.

  With a windup, and a twist of my body to add power, and follow-through, aiming my strike for the other side of his dumb ugly head.

  The big bitch went down.

  And the bar was silent.

  Crow was…right where he’d been. One foot hooked over to prop his toe on the ground, elbow on the bar looking equal parts tickled pink by my little display of badassery, and ready to pick me up and carry me outside and fuck me silly up against the wall.

  I stepped over the moaning lump of empty bravado and sat myself primly in the chair beside Crow, who made an elaborate show of stepping into me.

  He leaned over me, palmed the back of my neck, and slashed his mouth against mine. “That was hot as fuck, Charlie,” he murmured, and then kissed me hard enough that I saw stars and forgot to breathe for a few seconds.

  Adrenaline was pounding through me, making me shake, making me daring and bold. I reached up and scraped my fingers into his hair and pulled him down to me, gripping his leather cut in my other hand and kissing him back, adding tongue to taste the crisp malt beer on his tongue, kissing him until he growled in his chest and yanked away.

  “Fuckin’ hell, woman, you want me to drag you into the bathroom and drill you up against the stall wall?”

  “Drill me?” I arched an eyebrow at him.

  “Way I’m feelin’, darlin’, that first time won’t be slow and pretty.” The primal promise in his voice made my sex clamp, heat rushing wet through me until I felt it literally, actually soak my underwear. “So yeah. You keep kissin’ me like that, woman, and you’re gonna find out what it means to get drilled, hard and fast.”

  “That’s crude and demeaning,” I murmured. “And strangely arousing.”

  He rumbled a laugh. “You handled that big asshole like you’ve done that before.”

  “Mom sent all of us girls to self-defense classes for women. We all went together, every Saturday morning at eleven, from the time I was twelve and Poppy was six. I went all through high school, until I graduated. And yeah, I’ve had to do that before. Men are pigs.”

  He frowned. “Not all of us.”

  I smiled at him. “No, not all of you. You’re one of the good ones, Crow.”

  His frown didn’t dissipate. “Wouldn’t go as far as that, but thanks for the sentiment.”

  “Why didn’t you step in, out of curiosity?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I was gonna, but then you got in his face and I wondered how you’d handle it. You were god almighty feisty that night we met, and had you been sober I don’t think those fuckers would have wanted to tangle with you. So, yeah. I wanted to see what sober Charlie would do when threatened.” His eyes met mine, hard and serious. “I was only a few steps away. I’d have stepped in before he laid a hand on you.”

  “So what you’re saying is, you trusted me to handle myself, and only planned on stepping in if it became more than I could deal with?”

  He nodded. “About sums it up, yeah. You ain’t no helpless little thing, Charlie. I called you a sweet little filly, and that pissed you off and I get it, but don’t for a fuckin’ second think I underestimate you.” His eyes, those deep turbulent dark brown eyes were hot and serious, and not at all tame.

  “That means more to me than you can imagine, Crow,” I said.

  “You’re a hell of a woman, Charlotte Goode.”

  My eyes stung. My heart squeezed. Had anyone, ever, thought as highly of me as he seemed to? Had anyone ever in my life shown such admiration for and belief in the woman and person I was?

  Mom, perhaps, but that was her job. Not that I valued it less for the fact that she was my mom, by no means. But it was her job to prop me up and believe in me, and she had. It was getting that from…well…from a man that I craved.

  My dad had been great at being playful and affectionate when we were kids, rarely raised his voice, called us beautiful. But as he grew older and we grew older, and as whatever it was eating him up inside gnawed away at his soul, he’d withdrawn from us all. That affection and playfulness and love had slowly been taken away. And when he’d died unexpectedly, it was gone forever. But, in truth it had been gone well before that.

  I’d been searching for that validation for a long, long time.

  And suddenly, in the wild nomad that was Crow, I’d found it.

  And it scared me half to actual death. More than that, actually.

  I couldn’t hold his gaze for long. I was too afraid of falling into those eyes. Too afraid of falling any farther into…anything.

  I dropped my eyes and scratched a fingernail on the sticky bar top. “I’m hungry.”

  He nodded, accepting my change in subject. “Well, I hope you like a cheeseburger and fries, because that’s about all they got, and that’s what I ordered us.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I said. “I could eat a shoe, about now.”

  The bartender came by and set a beer in front of me, but didn’t leave right away. His eyes cut to me, and then Crow. “Watch your backs.”

  Crow showed no surprise at the unexpected, low-voiced warning. “He’s got buddies, I imagine.”

  “Mean ones. The Yak doesn’t take kindly to strangers at all, much less those who make a fool of him in his own territory.” The bartender was tall, thickly built, with long blond hair and beard, resembling Fat Thor from that last Avengers movie.

  I snorted. “The Yak?”

  “His name is Yakowski, or something along those lines. But his build? Folks just call him the Yak.”

  “Well, he makes me wanna yack.”

  The bartender laughed. “Beers are on the house, because I’ve wanted to see someone take that dickhead down to size for years. The fact that it was a gorgeous woman is just fuckin’ gravy on the roast, man.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  He shrugged. “Just…do me a favor. Eat, have some drinks, and skedaddle. Don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Thanks for the warning, but I can handle whatever comes our way.” Crow said this with no sense of boasting, just calm confidence.

  Having seen him in action, I knew it was no idle brag.

  “Been around enough to know you ain’t lyin’, just lookin’ at you, man. But Yak has a lot of friends, and he ain’t the biggest or the meanest of ‘em. So just watch it.”

  He went back to the other end of the bar to take an order, and Crow and I drank our beer in silence.

  “You worried, Charlie?” Crow asked.

  I shook my head. “I remember very well how you handled those guys at the concert. I just don’t want to be the cause of any more trouble. Especially not for you.”

  He rolled a shoulder. “Eh. Been in trouble my whole life. Shit, I’ve been the trouble. A little bar fight with some big drunk bikers? I’ll be right at home.”

  I frowned at that. “I guess I’m a little confused at the timeline of your life.”

  He laughed. “Me, too.” A sip of beer, and then our food came, and we dug in; he started talking around a mouthful. “So, when my parents died when I was eleven. That time period is a blur, so I don’t remember exactly. Maybe that’s weird, I don’t know. You’d think I’d know the exact day, you know? But I don’t. I wasn’t with them at the time. River Dog and Mammy were down in Mexico somewhere, off the grid as they always were. Mom, Dad, Uncle Snake, and a big portion of the MC was gone, and I was left alone at the compound with Crutchy and his old lady, Delilah, and a few other kids. All’s I remember is I was doing schoolwork. Delilah had been a grade school teacher before hitting the road with Crutchy, and she was, I guess you’d call it homeschooling me, along with the others. Then, we heard the bikes. You always know when the c
rew is back, you know? But there weren’t enough bikes. Tran, Boots, Brady, Slovac…Yank, and…Queer.” He scrubbed the back of his neck. “They’re the only ones who came back, out of the twenty who had left that morning.”

  “Queer? Really?” I half laughed at this, around bites of burger. Which was, surprisingly, very good.

  He snickered. “It was a joke. He was as straight as anyone else, but he was just weird as fuck. So Tran used to say he was just queer, in the old, original sense of the word, like weird. Teasin’ him. And, as shit like that goes, it stuck.”

  I shook my head. “You boys have the weirdest nicknames.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Except you.”

  He laughed. “Angling for the full name again, huh?”

  “I’m curious. Can you blame me?”

  He laughed, shrugged. “Nah. Guess not.” Sobered. “So yeah. Mom, Dad, Uncle Snake, everyone I knew best and loved most was dead. I was never close to the guys who did come back except Tran––they weren’t my parents’ part of the crew. You don’t care about those old inter-crew politics. Point is, I was eleven and suddenly an orphan. No one knew where River Dog and Mammy were. Dad may have, because he seemed to always just know where they’d be, probably because they’d been making the circuit from Mexico to California through the four corners into Texas and back down again since Dad was a kid.”

  “How did they make a living, just out of curiosity?”

  “Who? My parents, or my grandparents?”

  I shrugged. “Both, I guess.”

  He sighed. “Full of tricky questions tonight, ain’t’cha? Mom and Dad got their living from the club. Which, to be honest, operated largely in gray areas of the law, or on the other side of it. That’s how the shootout happened that killed ‘em all—a deal gone wrong. The risk you run, livin’ that way, I guess.” He shrugged. “What exactly my parents did for the club, I’ve never known. Didn’t know as a kid—and I knew better than to ask—and then I didn’t wanna know later. River Dog and Mammy? They were artisans. Mammy made jewelry, small fine leather goods, stuff like that. Not cheap roadside shit, either. She sold it to museum gift shops and the fancy tourist stores in places like Sedona. Expensive shit, real quality artistry. May have seen my antler-handle knife—she made it. River Dog was a luthier.”

  I frowned. “I’ve heard the term, but can’t remember what it is.”

  “He made guitars.” His voice was quiet. Distant. “Best guitars you’ll ever hear. Taught me to play, taught me to make ‘em, too, but I haven’t tried my hand at that in years.”

  I blinked. “You can make a guitar?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got a storage unit in Dallas full of River Dog’s old tools, and some of his guitars, their truck and Airstream.” A long pause. “Including the one he was working on when he passed. Been thinkin’ I’d finish it, one of these days, if I ever get the hankering to quit being a nomad.”

  “Wow.” I shook my head. “You are a complicated man, Crow.”

  He made a face somewhere between a frown of puzzlement and a shy, complimented grin. “What? Why?”

  “You look the way you do, you’re a hard-as-nails ass-kicking biker. You’re sweet, you’re sexy, you’re incredible in bed. You can play the guitar, and you can make them?”

  He grinned. “I’ve written the music for most of Myles’s songs. May as well add that to the list. He writes the words, I write the music, we hang out with a bottle of whiskey and smash the two together, and he’s got a song.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Is there anything you can can’t do?”

  “Resist you.”

  Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Direct hit.

  “Smooth,” I said, swallowing only with major difficulty, and sounding like it.

  He touched my cheekbone. “Ain’t a line, and I wish to fuck I was kidding.”

  “You wish you could resist me?”

  He nodded, and I saw no humor in him. “Helpless to resist feelings ain’t a fun place to be, you know?”

  “Feelings?” I tried to joke us out of the conversation. “Lust doesn’t count as catching feelings.”

  “Lust is way the hell up there, not gonna lie, babe. I wanna do some real nasty, dirty, sinful shit with you, and I want it in the worst way. Want things that I’m not sure you’ve even dared fantasize about.”

  I swallowed hard. “Like what?”

  He just smirked. “Not gonna sidetrack me with that this time, Charlie. Yeah, babe, I got a whole hell of a lot of lust for your sweet-ass body. But I’m catchin’ some serious and seriously scary feelings for you.”

  “Don’t say that,” I whispered.

  “Why not? You scared?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I am.”

  “Me too.”

  “You’re a nomad. You live a rock star life. Your life is totally incompatible with everything I thought I’ve ever wanted in my life: stability, a family, a good job doing something I like. Sure, it’s vanilla and boring, but it’s what I want.”

  “Well, there ain’t a single goddamn thing about me that’s vanilla, so I don’t know where that leaves us.”

  “Me neither,” I whispered. “Because I’m catching feelings, too, and that’s why I’m scared stupid by it all, because you represent everything that’s…literally just the complete opposite of who I am. Yet I still want you.”

  “You do?” A flat statement and a question at the same time, both sounding a little surprised. “Want me, or feel lust for me?”

  “Both.” I whispered it, admitting it to myself as well as him. “A lot of both.

  We lapsed into silence, then, and it wasn’t tense or uncomfortable, but it was clear we both had deep thoughts circulating in our brains.

  Crow tossed a stack of cash on the bar, and didn’t wait for change. “Come on.” He took my hand.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I gotta piss, and I ain’t leavin’ you alone in this crowd. Too pure, too beautiful. You draw trouble like honey draws flies.” He winked at me. “Don’t worry. I’m in control. I won’t deflower your fucked-in-a-bathroom virginity just yet.”

  “Awww,” I said, staring boldly at him, heart hammering, core clenching, thighs shaking. “I’ve never been drilled before, much less in a public bathroom. Sounds kinda…fun.”

  We reached the bathroom and he yanked me in behind him. Two men were at the sinks, washing their hands; Crow seemed to swell, his presence and his persona and his energy just…darkening. Threat poured out of him.

  “Out.” His voice was the icy hiss of a razor blade sliding across a whetstone.

  The two men—both gargantuan and tattooed and decked out in leather cuts and ragged jeans and chain wallets and pocket knives and shit-kicker boots—took one look at Crow, at each other, and left without a word, their hands still wet.

  Scary.

  And then he turned, whirling on me. Palms pressed up against the door. One hand slid down and turned the lock. The snick of the lock hitting home sounded awfully final.

  His eyes were nearly black, radiating primal, feral hunger. That aura of hyper-threatening dominance was now turned on me, and in my case, he wasn’t threatening violence, but something…similar.

  Potentially violent, in a delicious, erotic sort of way.

  Oh god. I didn’t want rough sex.

  Did I?

  Wait, wait. Did I? I hadn’t thought so…until this moment.

  Shit, shit. Did I really, truly want the kind of raw, demanding, violent fucking Crow’s eyes were promising me?

  Until now, sex for me had never been anything but sweet, and gentle.

  And half-assed, if I’m honest.

  Pathetic, in comparison to the way Crow had made me feel so far.

  “Do not tempt me, Charlotte.” That low sharp rasp was still there, but this time it was guttural with heat, rather than icy with menace. “Self-control ain’t a strong suit of mine, babe. Look at me the wrong way, say the wrong thing right now, and I can’t promise I’ll be able to hold back anymore.�
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  I held myself tall, staring boldly up into his eyes. “Is that a threat, Crow?” I ran my hands up his bare chest. “I’d use your full name, but I don’t know it.”

  A long, hard silence. He chewed on the inside of his cheek. Sighed. “Corvus Crow. No middle name.”

  I bit my lip, blinking. “Corvus.” I racked my brain. “Isn’t that the—”

  “Latin name for crow.” He hooked a single index finger in the front of my leggings.

  I giggled. “Ah. Now I see. So your name, literally, is Crow Crow.”

  “Yeah. Fuckin’ stupid. Parents were stoned when they named me, and that ain’t a joke.”

  “I’ll stick with Crow,” I said.

  “Good plan.” He tugged down. Bared the very top of my sex, an inch or so, but no more. “Tell me no, Charlie. Tell me you’re too good for this shit.”

  “What shit am I too good for, Crow?” I didn’t dare blink, didn’t dare look away from him.

  I had my fingers clawed into his chest, adrenaline racing through me.

  He tugged again, but the leggings were stuck on the swell of my ass—his hands scoured around, palming my buttocks and sliding down, taking the leggings with his rough, fiery touch. “This dirty-ass bathroom.” A pause. “Me.”

  “Crow…” I breathed.

  “You’re too good for this kinda thing, Charlie.” He sank to his knees in front of me, bringing my leggings down around my ankles. Stared up at me. “Too good to let me do this to you in a fuckin’ dirty-ass dive bar bathroom.”

  “What if—“ I gasped as he kissed up the inside of my thigh. “What if I…holy shit, Crow. What if I’m tired of always being too good for everything?”

  “You say that now, when it’s feelin’ good, babe. But will you still feel that way when we gotta walk outta this bathroom together, everyone in that bar knowing what we were doing in here? What I did to you, in here?”

  A thought occurred to me, then. “On the bus—Myles, your whole band, they were all on the bus too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wasn’t quiet.”

  “Nope.”

  “So they all knew. Jupiter knew. He sat across from me and talked to me like…oh shit. Like nothing had happened. And he’s your friend.” I let my legs fall open as he kissed from my knee to my groin, switched to the other thigh and started over, each kiss taking him closer to my sex, and I felt each kiss in my core, in my stomach, in my thighs, in my bones. “You think I’m so pure, so good.”