Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(82)

“I’m not drunk, and I’m not embarrassed. But I don’t want you on display.”

“Well, I’m not sayin’ I want to f*ck on the pinball machine. It’s taken, anyway. Isn’t there like…ooh! Outside. Let’s f*ck outside. I want the night air on me while you f*ck me silly.” She slid her hands under his t-shirt and scratched her fingers lightly down his chest.

He pushed her arms away. “I’ll f*ck you outside sometime when we got some privacy. I’ll take you out on my bike and f*ck you good and proper on the saddle. But not here, Willa. Let’s go upstairs.”

She knew she was being silly, and drunk, to be hurt, but hurt she was. Angry, too. Also jealous. “Fine.” She shoved him away. “Forget about it. And don’t come upstairs with me. Snooze you lose, butthead.”

She stalked out of the party room and found her way to the stairs, then stomped up to the room that was to be her home for the next undetermined number of days.



oOo



Willa was half asleep, sprawled face-down on the bed, when the door opened and she heard Ollie’s tags jingle as he came into the room. Shit, she’d forgotten to call Ollie when she’d come up! Bad mom!

“Lay down, boy.”

Rad sounded irritated. Well, good. Willa was irritated, too. Ollie lay down with a huff, and then Willa sensed a large presence at the side of the bed. “You awake?”

She cracked an eye open and looked up at him. “Maybe.”

“Sit up.”

“Bossy butthead.”

“Willa, up. Now.”

Knowing she was behaving like a child and not able to care, she turned her face to the wall.

Then she squeaked when he grabbed her and flipped her over, propping her up against the headboard. “I’m not talkin’ to your goddamn backside, woman. Look at me.”

She did, crossing her arms over her chest. When she’d gotten into the room, she’d stripped down to her panties and t-shirt, wiggling her bra out of the sleeve in the way every girl in the world learned before she graduated high school.

“I told you not to come up after me.”

“Tough shit.” He sat down on the side of the bed, just beyond her bent knees.

When she opened her mouth to call him a bully, he threw his hand up between them like a Supreme performing ‘Stop in the Name of Love.’ His rings glinted in the light from the little lamp on the chest. She liked the look of his hands with their rings—especially the underside. There was just something extra sexy about those bands of silver against his palms.

“Call me a butthead or a bully or an *, I don’t give a shit. You’re gonna listen. Then I’ll crash somewhere else.”

She kept her mouth shut and let him have his moment. Damn, she was drunk. Not drunk enough for this not to matter. Just enough to be unable not to act like a twat.

He opened this big speech he apparently needed to get out right now with, “Well, now I know you’re a bitchy drunk,” and Willa hit him—punched him in the chest. He grabbed her fist and held it in his—and not gently.

“Scrappy, too. Good to know. You wanna throw down and have some angry sex, some real wild, work-out-our-shit sex, I’m your man, baby. I will f*ck you raw and hear you beg for more. But not while you’re drunk and I’m not. And not shit you wouldn’t do sober. Fuckin’ Christ, I just spent a whole goddamn night and day at your side while you were sick from drugs that bastard made you take. Shit he gave you to make you do things you wouldn’t do on your own. If you think I’m gonna f*ck you out in public when you’re drunk two goddamn nights later, and you never said before you’d like somethin’ like that? What do you think I am?”

Somewhere in the middle of Rad’s speech, Willa stopped feeling hurt and angry and started feeling guilty. And safe. And in love. And less drunk. And horny as all hell again.

What Jesse had done to her this last time was real and awful, but she didn’t remember much of it. She didn’t even remember much of her day of recovery. Those things she did remember, like Rad’s constant presence, or the long talk they’d had in the living room when she was feeling better, were covered over in gauzy layers left behind by the drug. She knew they’d happened, and she could recount the details, but their edges were padded. She wasn’t traumatized. Not even by the fact that she’d killed a man, or the thought that his friends might come looking for payback.

She had made herself safe, and Rad was keeping her safe, and she trusted that she was. She felt fine.

But he’d had a different experience of those hours, and in some respects, at least from the moment that he’d found her, his experience was the more acute one. She’d been hurt and ill, but she’d been unconscious for most of that. He’d been awake and afraid.

She tugged on her hand, and he let it go. Then she rose up on her knees and hooked her arms over his shoulders.

“I’m sorry. I was a bitch.”

He nodded, his eyebrows up as an emphasis to his agreement.

“I love you. Thank you for taking care of me.”

He gave her a sidelong, suspicious look. “You’re welcome. I love you, too.”

She straddled his lap. He set his hands on her hips, lifting her weight from him.

“Willa…what did I just f*ckin’ say?”