Better When He's Bad

CHAPTER 6 Dovie

I KNEW SOMETHING WAS off with that text message. Just like I knew I was in trouble when I woke up on that couch and Bax had been holding me like I was something to be treasured. I never felt safe, never felt protected, even with Race in my life. I still knew every day was going to be an uphill battle. But in that instant, while I was all wrapped up in him, I felt like nothing bad could ever get to me again. That’s why I bolted. Sure, I didn’t know what his ultimate agenda with my brother was, but more than that, I was starting to think he might be developing a separate one for me. It wasn’t smart to send Brysen back to the Hill after the fight without me. I should be running from this guy as fast as I could, yet every time I turned around, I seemed to end up closer and closer to him.

It had taken every fiber of control I possessed not to return his text in the middle of the week, and there was no denying I dragged Brysen to that fight more to see him than out of any real hope of locating my brother. I was dangerously attracted to him; he was magnetic and so hard to get a handle on, and after the violence of that fight, I knew he had vicious brutality floating close to the surface of his tattooed skin. He was also losing way too much blood from that knife wound, and stubbornly refusing to let me take him to a hospital. Instead he had shoved some money in my hands and ordered me to stop at a drugstore and buy the basic first-aid stuff I would need to keep him from passing out from blood loss. He also told me to grab a couple tubes of superglue. I didn’t even want to know what his plan for that was.

By the time we got back to the bungalow, his eyes were squeezed shut and deep lines of pain were radiating out from the corners of each eye. His skin looked kind of waxy and pale, making that black star prominent and so ominous where it throbbed at his temple. I had to scramble around the side of the car and get the door open for him. I gasped when I saw the wet spread of blood that had soaked through the side of his hoodie.

“Bax, that’s a lot of blood.”

He just grunted at me and struggled his way to the front door.

I had to reach around him to get it open and almost got lost in the endless darkness of his eyes as he looked down at me. I gulped a little and blinked up at him. He gave his head a shake and started struggling out of the blood-soaked hoodie before I had the lights on. The T-shirt he was using as a makeshift bandage was so saturated that all he could do was toss it in the trash on his way to the single bathroom that was in the hallway. I wasn’t sure what I should do. I got him someplace safe, he was a big boy and could clearly take care of himself, Brysen only lived a minute away and I could be back, safe and sound with her in a heartbeat, but none of that felt like the right answer. I argued with myself as I followed his half-naked form into the bathroom.

He already had black-and-blue marks flowering all over his taut skin and that knife cut on his side had just barely missed the naked pinup that covered his entire side. His face had a steady stream of blood trickling from the cut on his cheek, and his bottom lip was back to being split wide open. He was a mess.

“Sit down on the toilet and I’ll clean you up as best I can.” I was no stranger to patching up Carmen’s boys after scuffles with other kids in the neighborhood. Granted, this was on an entirely different level, and being that close to him made my skin feel like it was electrified.

He looked at me emotionlessly in the mirror over the sink. He looked like he had just come out of a war zone.

“Are you scared of me?” His voice was scratchy.

I met his gaze steadily in the glass. “Terrified.”

His chin dipped in a little nod of acknowledgment.

“Do you trust me?”

“No.”

I saw a shadow flit across that midnight gaze. He lifted a knuckle and rubbed at the blood smeared across his face.

“You going to go to bed with me?”

I sucked in a hard breath through my nose. I wanted to look away but he wouldn’t let me. “Probably.”

He finally looked away and picked up a washcloth and slapped it on the cut.

“I was hooking up with Roxie at the beginning of the week. I’m not a nice guy. I don’t know how things with me and your brother are going to play out. By the time I’m done with Novak, there’s a good chance I’ll be dead or back in jail. You still gonna go to bed with me?”

My heart did a weird flip and my blood did a weird thing where I felt like I could actually feel it slow down in my veins. At least there was no second guessing with him. He turned around and leaned back on the vanity. I sighed and reached around him to put a towel on his steadily leaking side. His blood-caked skin was warm, despite the fact he had goose bumps raised along his naked torso.

“If I do, is it going to be any different than you going to bed with Roxie or that stripper?”

“Do you want me to lie to you?”

I grabbed his hand and forced him to hold the towel so I could work on his face. I cleaned him off with a cotton ball soaked in peroxide, which had him swearing and scowling at me. I found the little butterfly Steri-Strips I bought and slapped a couple on his cheek.

“Yeah. I think I do.” I couldn’t tell the difference when he lied to me anyway.

He grunted and narrowed his eyes even farther at me when I slimed some antibacterial goo on his lower lip.

“Then no. You would be exactly like all the rest.”

I flicked my gaze up to him and we stared at each other for a drawn-out minute.

I cleared my throat. “Let me get something wrapped around that knife wound.” I gave a dry laugh. “Those are not words I thought I would ever have to say to anyone.”

He winced when I pulled the towel away from his side. “Hang out with me a little bit longer and they’ll become a regular part of your vocabulary.”

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I ran some warm water in the sink and tried to clean up the bloodbath. It was a long gash, probably five or six inches, but it was clean and didn’t look like it went deep into the muscle. I blew a wayward curl out of my face and pulled open several of the large bandage pads and the Ace bandage I had bought. I went still when one of his rough, callus-tipped fingers brushed across my forehead and moved a loose curl out of my eyes. That was what undid me about him. He was unpredictable, he was a criminal, he was hazardous to my sanity, but then he held me when I couldn’t sleep and he touched me like I would break. It was an intoxicating combination that I was having no luck in fighting.

“Lift your arm up if you can.”

It obviously hurt him to do it, but he got the thickly muscled appendage out of my way so I could secure the wrap all the way around his broad chest. I had never been around a man who built his body up to use as a weapon before. I couldn’t ignore how impressive it was. Even with the stark black ink that covered his abs and spread across his shoulders, it was still a nice sight. When he shifted I noticed he even had ink peeking out of the top the band of his boxers showing above the edge of his jeans.

“If you really don’t want to go to the doctor, that’s the best I can do with what we got.”

I took a preventative step back.

He moved stiffly and bent to pick up his ruined hoodie off the floor. The cream-colored tiles were stained crimson where it had fallen.

“If it’s still bad in the morning, I’m going to have you seal it shut with superglue.”

I made a disgusted face and followed him out of the bathroom. “Gross. No way am I doing that. If it’s not better tomorrow, we’ll take you to the hospital.”

He just ignored me and made his way to the back bedroom, where the bed was still barren of sheets and blankets. He threw the hoodie on the dresser, popped the button on his jeans, kicked his heavy boots off, and plopped across the naked mattress on his back.

“I don’t need a doctor. This is fine.”

“You’re white as a sheet.”

“I just got my ass kicked. Of course I look like shit.”

He didn’t really. He looked battered, worn out, and a little rougher than usual, but I really thought it would be impossible for him to look like shit. His eyes were closed and his chest was rising and falling in a pretty steady rhythm, so I thought maybe he was falling asleep. I needed to snag his car keys and go get some food and stuff for this shell of a house. He might not like it very much here because of the memories attached to it, but he seemed to keep landing back here for safety and security and he needed provisions.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

His voice was sharp when I turned to go back to the living room, where he had thrown the keys on the coffee table.

“To the store. I need to get food and stuff. This house is empty.”

“No.” His eyes were still closed and he sounded mad.

“No, what?”

Before I could react, he was up off the bed and had one arm locked around my waist. I gasped when the soft mattress was suddenly under my back and he was looming over the top of me, black eyes blazing like coals.

“I want you here with me.” He was braced above me on his good arm and using his injured hand to unbutton the front of my flannel shirt.

“Bax. The house is empty. I need to get food, need to buy the basics. I’ll be gone for like a second.”

Why wasn’t I making him stop undressing me? The front of the shirt split open and fell to the sides. I had on a serviceable black bra that was nothing fancy, but it made my skin look even paler and more speckled by contrast.

“Holy fuck . . . no wonder you dress like a hobo. You would never be able to leave the house if you walked around flaunting these babies.” His voice dropped an octave and his gaze flicked up to mine. Nothing but pure male admiration shined back at me. Apparently Bax was a boob man, and I had a really nice set, no getting around it.

“Look, Bax, I said I was probably going to go to bed with you, I didn’t mean tonight.”

He took a knuckle and ran the edge of it along the top cup of my bra. I shivered in response. His skin was rough and darker next to mine.

“We can’t have sex. No protection. I’m an asshole on my best day, but I would never put you at risk like that.” His mouth tightened and a muscle in his jaw ticked. “You really don’t want to know where I’ve been.”

He was right—I didn’t. I was surprised he didn’t cart a pack of them around with him until I remembered the girls he was used to hooking up with had to have them on hand for business purposes. Gross.

“Besides, I can barely move. I asked if you were going to go to bed with me, not if you were going to fuck me, Dovie. I just want you here.”

I needed to argue, to make him let me up, but with a gesture born of pure familiarity with getting women naked, his hand snaked across my ribs and popped the fastener of my bra open. Because my arms were trapped in the straps and the loose material of my shirt, I could just stare up at him in a mixture of apprehension and wonder when he tugged the cups down to fully expose me.

My breasts were on the large side considering that I was tall and lean. They were dusted with freckles just like the rest of me and crested with nipples that were the palest pink and, at the moment, puckered and not shying away from those black eyes. This was wrong. He was wrong, but I didn’t have the words or the will to rein it in.

“Pretty. At first I wasn’t sure, but now I can’t believe I missed it.”

“Bax.” It was a warning and a question all mixed together on air escaping from lungs that felt like they were squeezing shut. I wasn’t the most sexually experienced girl in the world, but I knew enough to know that I was restless and achy, feeling heated and light-headed, and he hadn’t even so much as kissed me. He was way more than I was ready to handle, and then he was sliding the button on my jeans out of the hole and my belly was sucking in.

“You have to stop.” Only the zipper followed down and my black cotton underwear that was in no way intended to be on display was suddenly just that. His eyes were like obsidian, his mouth was tight, and I wasn’t sure if the light sheen of sweat beading up on his shaved head was from battling back discomfort or from arousal. I could feel the press of an impressive erection through the denim that separated us, but he was moving slow and had said he had no intention of having sex. He was a liar, though, so I shifted and made a move to cover myself back up.

He used the hand that wasn’t holding his entire weight off of me to snatch my own as I pulled at my bra and the sides of my shirt. I tugged futilely to get him to let me go, but he forced my palm flat on my quivering stomach and trapped it between my skin and his palm. He smiled down at me, and it wasn’t nice. It was wicked and promised all kinds of dark and scary things. It made my breath catch in my throat and I was momentarily stunned enough that it didn’t register that he was dragging my much smaller hand across my belly, below the hollow of my hips, and into the waistband of my underwear.

I panicked a little—okay, a lot—when I realized his intent. I could feel that even though my head knew I shouldn’t be here with him, my body was all for it. I was slick across my own fingers, damp, warm, and pulsing. I saw something in his eyes flare. I struggled to pull away again and it just ended with a broken moan coming out of my throat as he actively forced both our hands farther into my pants and closer to the parts of me that were well aware of what a guy like Bax could offer.

“Tell me to stop.” His voice was low and lost somewhere in the haze of sexual intoxication he was spilling all over me.

“Stop . . .” It should’ve been harsh, sounding sure and defiant, but it wasn’t. It was raspy and breathy because he got my hand where he obviously wanted it and was making me stroke my clit while his thick digit went on a tour to find my G-spot.

“Mean it.” He rumbled the words against the side of my face, where I felt the soft brush of his damaged mouth. I had never experienced anything like this before. I couldn’t escape the drag and pull of it. I arched my back and moved my hand in tandem to his ministrations, never looking away from the velvet drape of his gaze.

I tossed my head to the side and he took advantage of the distraction to suck the tip of one breast into the scorching cavern of his mouth. I heaved up so hard that it drove his fingers harder into me and made me grind my own hand harder against aroused and ready-to-go flesh. This was out of control. I didn’t do things like this, especially not with guys like him, but when he switched his attention to the other breast and added another finger and growled at me to press down on my quivering little point of passion with my thumb, it was all over. I thrashed under him, forgot he was hurt, and used my unoccupied hand to claw at the back of his head where it was latched on to my breast. I lost it all . . . control, sanity, decorum, reality. It all went out the window and I was just a mass of nerve endings and boiling pleasure that couldn’t be contained. It spread all over us, across my hand and his, and I felt moisture build up in my eyes as I scrambled to catch my breath.

He pulled his head up and looked down at me, not with smirking satisfaction or any kind of gloating, but with longing and a hunger like I had never seen before.

“You are so sweet and tight and all shiny and new. Are you sure you’ve done this before?”

I yanked my hand free from where it was still lodged in my pants and put both palms on his chest to shove him off of me. He went, but not before swiping his lingering fingers over my clit one last time. It made me shiver and glare at him as I scrambled back into my clothes.

“I told you, Billy Clark when I was a teenager, and then there was a guy from the restaurant when I first moved here. I’m busy, and typically I’m not interested. We can’t all have strippers and hookers at our beck and call.”

He snorted and resumed his position on his back on the bed. I made a face when I saw that blood had worked through the bandage on his side.

“Sure you can. That’s what strippers and hookers are for. Come on, Copper-Top, I’m beat. Climb up here and go to sleep.”

I don’t know how he could just close his eyes and act like none of that had just happened. The front of his boxers was bulging and I could see a small wet circle on the fabric. I shoved frustrated hands through my hair.

“I told you to stop.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down at him. He cracked open one eye and shoved his good arm under his head.

“You didn’t really want me to.”

I huffed out an annoyed breath. “You don’t get to be the judge of that.”

He sighed and let his open eye drift shut. “I do when you’re leaning into my fingers, one hand touching yourself, the other pulling me closer. I’m pretty sure you left half your fingernails in the back of my head. And ‘oh, Bax; please, Bax; more, Bax’ sounds a whole lot different than ‘stop.’ If I was more mobile I wouldn’t have needed your help. If you’re going to do this, Dovie, then commit; if not, then call your friend and take off. I don’t like rules, yours or anyone else’s. Like I said, if you want me to stop or you really don’t like something I’m doing, you need to mean it. Now, either come to bed and I’ll get up and take you to the store in the morning so you can buy groceries and whatever other girly shit you need, and I can buy a big-ass box of condoms, or go away. My head hurts, my side is on fire, and you are ruining a really nice buzz I have from getting you off with minimal effort and one working hand.”

I wanted to choke him. I stood there and considered whether or not I could actually get away with murder. I should call Brysen. This was out of my wheelhouse and there was no way I was up to going rounds with him like this. He said commit; I didn’t think I could. I was going to find my phone and call Brysen and leave him to his own devices. That’s right; I was going to do the smart thing and walk away. Only his eyes snapped back open and he levered himself up so he was sitting, and he snagged me around my waist, and pulled me down on the bed so I was sprawled across him. His breath was warm and seductive as it whispered across my face.

“Don’t be a pain in the ass.”

He stroked his hand all the way along my spine and I let my eyes drift closed. What on earth was I supposed to do now?

RACE AND BAX MIGHT have grown up together, but they were as opposite as day and night. And not just because my older brother came from a privileged background, and Bax was oh-so-obviously from the streets. It went beyond their light and dark looks as well. I woke up early again, mostly because I was surrounded by brawny, half-naked Bax and he had his hands tangled painfully in my hair. Even in sleep it was like he was struggling, fighting some unseen enemy, and that made my heart hurt for him. Race slept like a baby. He sprawled out, snored, and wouldn’t wake up if a bomb went off next to his head.

Grocery shopping with Bax was like a full-contact sport. He blazed through the aisles, throwing things in the cart at random with no idea or rhyme or reason as to what they went with or what they could make as a meal. He clearly had a sweet tooth because there was more candy in the basket than any grown man could possibly consume. Race made a list, broke it down in meals, and avoided the aisles that didn’t have the stuff he wanted in them. Not to mention the other shoppers. Bax ignored them, or glowered at them if they stopped to look at him too long. He was the one who had tattooed his face; I would’ve thought he would be used to it. It didn’t help matters that without his hoodie, there was no missing the smear of red high along his side on the fabric of his gray Henley he had pulled out of the back of the Runner. Race was affable. Liked to chat and flirted shamelessly with any old lady or teenage girl we went past. I was having a hard time figuring out how the two of them managed to have any kind of friendship, let alone a brotherhood that Bax had been willing to go to jail to protect.

I pulled up short when I realized we were in the pharmacy aisle and he was looking at me with a raised eyebrow. There were giant boxes of condoms in front of him and he was waiting for me to decide what I wanted to do about it. All I could do was stare at him. If he didn’t seem to be two different men, it would be easier. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the brute that bossed me around and tried to intimidate me, but the guy who held me at night and brushed my hair softly off my face I kind of had a major crush on. It sucked that they both inhabited the same battle-hardened, impossible-to-ignore body.

I sighed. “Just get them. Better safe than sorry.”

He laughed at me and then made a face and put a hand on his side. I had refused to use the superglue on his cut, but now I wondered if that was a good idea. The wound was still oozing blood and it obviously hurt him when he moved wrong. He tossed not one, but two boxes in the cart and wheeled around so we could go check out.

“I still think you should go see a doctor and get stitches. You were stabbed.”

He looked down at me. “I was sliced, not stabbed; big difference. It’ll be fine. That was a sharp-ass knife, it was a clean cut.”

I noticed a woman next to us in line giving him the once-over. He just seemed to have that kind of draw to the opposite sex. I rolled my eyes.

“How did Nassir know you were going to win? I told you he handed me that money before that big guy slammed you into the ground.”

He gave me a sharp look and then noticed the other woman checking him out. Where my brother would have smiled at her, maybe offered her a little wink or something, Bax just stared at her until she had no choice but to look away.

“I had to win because you were there.”

I handed him stuff as he tossed it on the belt. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“You fight until one guy is down, like out, unconscious or dead. If I lost, then you would be in that club and Nassir would have served you up to the wolves. Benny, Novak, whoever he thought he could hand you over to, and get the most out of it. He knew I wouldn’t lose.”

I just looked at him like he had suddenly sprouted horns.

“That other guy had a knife. He could’ve won.”

“But he didn’t.”

I growled a little, which made him smirk at me. “I knew I should’ve ignored that text. How would Novak even get ahold of my number to set you up like that?”

He lifted a shoulder and handed a bunch of bills over to the cashier.

“Criminals always seem to have the information they need. Come on, we need to stop somewhere so I can grab a new hoodie and some T-shirts.” He rolled his gaze over me and a grin kicked up the side of his mouth. “You should let me buy you some pants that actually fit.”

I wanted him to keep his mind out of my pants altogether. I helped him haul all our stuff to the car.

“Where have you been staying? I mean, you have nothing at your mom’s house, and even if you’ve been bouncing from bed to bed in the weeks you’ve been out, you have to have someplace to land eventually.”

He looked at me over the trunk as he slammed it closed. “I have a place I keep in the Point. A crash pad where all my crap is at. I haven’t really been in a different bed every night. I tend to stick with tried and true.”

I gave him a chilly look as he pulled open the door for me to slide in. “I don’t think that makes it any better.”

He just shrugged again and closed the door. “A guy has needs, but so does a girl. She just needs the right person to make her hot enough to ask for them to be met.”

He wasn’t an overly talkative guy, which was a good thing. When he put his mind to it, he could spin words in a way that was hard to argue with.

“I’ve never met a guy I wanted to ask.” I muttered it under my breath, hoping he might not hear me. Of course he did, though, and just laughed at me.

“That’s because you haven’t figured out what it is you need yet. You will, though.”

I looked out the window and openly sulked as he drove us to a small outlet mall halfway between the heart of downtown and the street where the bungalow was located. I was going to be stubborn and sit in the car while he went in and got what he needed, but I should have figured out by now that Bax got what Bax wanted because he bodily lifted me out of the passenger seat and pinned me to the side of the car. I was pouting and he was laughing down at me.

“You can have as big of a fit as you want, Copper-Top. I think you’re cute when you pout.” He put his thumb on the center of my bottom lip and pressed down. I snapped at him with my teeth and then forgot my name because he bent his head down and kissed me.

His lip was still split on the bottom, so there was a weird scrape of raw skin mixed with the soft press of his mouth against mine. He forced his tongue in to tangle with my own, and unbidden, my arms ended up wrapped around his neck while he pressed into me. His teeth worried along the curve of my lower lip, and my heart started pounding with the press and retreat of his mouth. This was mimicked by the slight press of his lean hips where they were pressed against my own. I gasped and he took full advantage by pressing farther into me and twisting his tongue even farther with my own. Kisses shouldn’t make you want to crawl inside the other person, but oh man, his sure did.

When he pulled back his bottom lip, it was slick with moisture and blood. His eyes glittered like jewels and there was no pretending that I wasn’t pressing up on the tips of my toes as high as I could get to reach all of him or that my hands were clutching desperately at his broad shoulders.

“If I had to guess what you needed from me right now, what do you think that would be?”

I wanted to knee him in the groin, but he shifted just in time and clasped my hand in his much larger, more battered one.

“Let’s get some stuff and go put the groceries away.”

I had a sneaking suspicion “put the groceries away” was code for “break into that box of condoms.” I was getting run over by him, and I wasn’t sure if I should be thrilled or terrified by it.