BADDY: A Small Town Crime Romance

by Nikki Wild

  “It's called a little black book,” Janie said, leaning over to tuck in a corner sheet. I stood back and let her. She was a nurse. She could do those hospital corners. Me? I was used to making beds for animals, and they didn't care about crisp sheets.

  Then again, considering who I was making this bed for, maybe my veterinary experience was more appropriate.

  “Misty!” Janie's voice snapped my head straight. She was holding a pillow out to me. I took it and stuffed it into a pillowcase, wondering what the pillows were like in prison.

  “There was the guy with the pierced dick, remember?” I said, recalling my last encounter with the opposite sex.

  “Oh, right,” Janie said. “It was snowing then. It hasn’t snowed since…”

  “Stop,” I warned.

  “But he's hot, right? You mentioned something about James Dean...?”

  I grinned, taking a quick break from pillowcase-stuffing to glug at my drink.

  “He shaved off that James Dean hair,” I said. “But yeah… you could say he's hot. Hot as a stolen car.”

  “Mmm,” Janie hummed. “I wish I had a buff, tattooed man sleeping in my house. Ex-con or not...”

  “Come over and share his bed,” I snipped. “Just don't let me hear it. These walls are thin.”

  I wished I could take it back as soon as I said it. Maybe I didn't want anything to do with Rev's engine, but I didn't really like the idea of Janie having anything to do with it, either. His job was to protect me and help me, not bed my best friend. There were ten thousand reasons I didn't want Rev and Janie getting together, and exactly zero of those reasons had anything to do with my own feelings about Rev.

  Nope. He didn't have anything I wanted. Anything I could get from him, I could get just as damn easy from my vibrator. Purrloin appeared in the doorway just as I had this thought, as though reminding me of our kindred spirits: we didn't need men. Didn't need 'em and didn't want 'em.

  “Misty,” Janie's voice snapped me straight again. This time, she was shaking our equally-empty glasses. “Can we get a refill, or are you too busy mooning over your new prince?”

  “He's not my prince,” I said, grabbing the glasses and making for the kitchen. “He's my...uh...he's my Irish Wolfhound.”

  Janie looked at me blankly as I set about fixing a new round of rum and cokes.

  “You know. The big dogs. They hunted wolves. Chased them off the grounds or whatever? Protected the royal family?”

  “So, he's going to wag his tail and get you dinner?”

  Right. In my tipsiness, I forgot that Janie didn't know the whole story. I told her the bare bones; he was an old friend of the family who needed a place to crash after prison. Janie knew my old man well enough to know that it wasn't too unusual for me to associate with criminals, and she didn't judge me for it, which was nice. And once I told her that he wasn't much older than us and that I'd once had a crush on him...

  Why had I told her those things again?

  Maybe these drinks were a little strong.

  “All I’m saying is, if you’ve got a Jaguar in the garage, why bother driving the PT Cruiser?” Janie took the drink I offered.

  “Can we talk about something else? Anything else?” I asked. His bed was made. No reason to linger. I led Janie to the living room, plopping down on the couch and flipping on the TV. Extreme Hoarders was on. Perfect. There was nothing Janie loved talking about more than sad people on reality TV shows. She flopped down beside me and quickly launched into an in-depth psychological profile of a woman who lived among newspaper piles that resembled the Tower of Babel.

  I drank steadily, doing my best to keep up my side of the conversation. If Janie noticed my distraction, she was kind enough not to harp on it any more than was necessary. By the time she left, just before midnight, I was ready to collapse into bed, my head swimming and the room close to spinning. I didn’t like how much I needed to drink to get Rev out of my mind. What would it be like when I actually brought him home?

  That was the last thought I had before my head hit the pillow, but it wasn’t long before dreams took hold.

  I found myself outside Guvcheck. I waited patiently as the guards walked him towards the gate. He wore prison-issued gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt that did nothing to hide the body underneath. He was free. And he was going to take that freedom very liberally.

  “Misty-Lee,” he growled, approaching me at the car while the guards turned around to go back inside.

  “How does it feel to be...”

  I couldn't finish the sentence, my words devolving into a moan as he lunged forward. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, wrenching my head back on my neck, exposing the white length of my neck to his lips, to his tongue, to his teeth. Immediately, my blood rushed, veins pumping hot fire through my whole body. His knee slipped between my thighs as his tongue danced down my flesh, his lips sucking, his teeth nipping. My nipples stiffened to tight points.

  I let him do it. I let him do everything. I let him spiral his tongue across the hollow of my collarbone. I let his thigh grind up to my delta, my hips giving out and driving downward until I could feel my clit rubbing against the seam of my shorts.

  “Rev,” I moaned, his hands finding my breasts, kneading them through my shirt – why hadn't I worn a bra? Because now his mouth was lower, sucking my tight nipples through the thin fabric, his hand plunging down the front of my shorts and finding my center, wet and hot and throbbing. He sucked each nipple in turn, growling like a wolf feeding on my flesh. And I let him. And I loved it. I begged for more with my rolling hips and arching back. He ripped at my panties until his thumb met my clit and rubbed it, hard.

  “This what you want, Misty?” he growled, looking up at me with a beast's terrible eyes. “You want me to fuck you, don't you? You want me to spread your legs wide and lick you until you scream. You want to give me everything. You want me to turn you into a dirty little...”

  His fingers pushed upward, into my dripping slit.

  “Y-yesss,” I hissed, gushing at once, ready to be anything he wanted me to be, say anything he wanted me to say, just for this singular pleasure. Just to feel his muscles against my soft skin, just to feel him split me open and take everything inside. “Yes, Rev, please...”

  He pushed me against the car, my back bending unnaturally as his teeth dug into my flesh again. His fingers inside me pulsed, crooked, his thumb still rubbing my clit in hard, slow circles.

  “Come for me, Misty, come for me, come for me, come for me,” he muttered, again and again as he fucked me with his fingers. As he brought me closer and closer to a height I hadn't seen in a long time. His masculine scent enveloped me and his thumb rubbed my clit and his lips claimed my throat.

  “Y-yess,” I moaned again. He growled, long and low, and I could feel it in my own chest. His fingers seemed to swell and grow and lengthen until they were filling every inch of me, and his thumb was a tongue lapping at my clit, suckling it until it hardened and throbbed and shot shards of impossible pleasure up my spine.

  “Come. For. Me.”

  And I did. I quaked and came, right there in the open air, against my father's car, at the demand of this rough-handed, foul-mouthed criminal. I let Rev buckle my knees. I flooded his palm. I bucked and seethed with hardened relief, my body breaking out in a sweat that stuck my sheets to my skin...

  My sheets. My sheets. My pillow, damp. Heart heaving like an old engine that won't turn. Blood running hot. Fingers...wet.

  Shit.

  I was in my bed. Of course I was. I wasn't in front of Guvcheck. I wasn't letting Rev finger-fuck me in full view of the guards and any inmate looking out the window. I sure as hell wasn't telling him I'd be anything he wanted.

  I was in my house. I was dreaming. I was having a fucking wet dream. I'd have to change my damn sheets. And – oh God – had I been making noises? What if he'd been in the other room? What if he'd heard me moaning his name in my sleep? This couldn't happen again. I'd stay awake for the rest of the
year if I had to, because another dream like that...

  Fuck. It would totally undo me.

  Even ol' faithful in the drawer beside my bed couldn't make me come like that. I wasn't sure I'd ever come like that. Holy shit.

  I rolled my eyes to the clock. Holy shit all over again. I was going to be late picking him up. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. I didn't even have time to wash the sex off my skin.

  To hell with it. I needed a shower. I was in no rush to get to Guvcheck. He could wait for me if I was late. I needed every precious second to get this bullshit out of my system.

  Twenty minutes was enough time for me to get myself cleaned up, dressed, and on the road… but it wasn't enough time for me to get the taste of that dream out of my mind. The smell of it. The rich, raw, lusty feel of it. I had the irrational fear that he would know. That he would take one look at me and know. And he’d smirk that stupid smirk and his eyes would be those perfect awful black pools and… I’d be his…

  I turned the radio as high as it would go and put the windows down to try and wash that thought straight out of my head. I took my blessed time.

  I had three hours of driving back with him in the front seat. Not to mention however long he’d be living under my roof. It was time to get my head out of my pussy and into the game. Leave the wet dreams to the 14-year-old boys and keep my eyes on the prize. And remember what the prize was in the first place! Namely, staying the fuck alive. If anything could douse the fire between my legs, that could.

  So why the hell didn’t it?

  Chapter 8

  Rev

  There’s just no way to describe it. After four years of living in the world’s worst circus, walking back out into the normal world is…sorry, I’m just gonna repeat myself. There’s no fucking way to describe it.

  The sky was blue – bluer than any day I’d seen in my whole life. And the sun was out and shining. Standing in front of Guvcheck I kept hold of my little drawstring bag of personal affects. This was all I had left in the world. I had a hundred bucks in my pocket and clean clothes on my back… and I didn’t care. I was free, and nothing could bring me down.

  I didn’t even care that my ride was late. Sure, I couldn’t wait to see that godforsaken place dwindling to a pinprick in the rear view, but for the moment it was enough to have hot tar baking under my feet and know that I could walk in whatever direction I wanted for as long and as far as I damn well pleased

  Within state lines, of course... The parole officer had made that perfectly clear.

  But I wasn’t about to get tangled in the technicalities. Especially once I heard that old Bel Aire approaching. Poor Millions, outlived by his car. Aw, hell - he would have wanted it that way. And if I made sure the person driving it stayed upright and sniffing the air, Millions wouldn’t have any beef with me when we met in that big bank safe in the sky.

  She was wearing sunglasses and a short green dress. She reminded me of that song, “Boys of Summer.” Like she brought the beach with her even though we were a full day’s drive from any kind of ocean. Maybe I was just feeling sentimental about cruising my ass away from Guvcheck in such a pretty set of wheels, with such a pretty lady at my side.

  She pulled up next to me and lowered the sunglasses, nodding to the passenger side door, window open and music playing loud, the faintest smell of tobacco wafting towards me. Misty, a smoker? I doubted it it, but her old man did smoke like a chimney. Maybe the car still clung to the scent. I’d given up on smoking behind bars. Some of the people in there would do anything for just one more drag off the cancer-stick. Smoking on the inside wasn’t worth the damn price.

  “Can I drive?” I asked, leaning down with one elbow on the window, enjoying the feel of its hot metal on my skin. “Pretty please?”

  “No,” she said. “No one drives this car but me. Might as well have been Dad’s dying words.”

  She didn’t flinch when she said that, but I could hear the wincing in her voice. I offered her a grin to soothe her soul and got a scowl in return. Clearly, I was the only one feeling like a lotto winner on his way to cash in his ticket. And why should Misty-Lee – Misty – feel as good as me? She wasn’t getting out of prison. She was getting me, an ex-con with a penchant for trouble and a four-year itch to scratch.

  I wasn’t even a consolation prize.

  I slid in beside her, immediately recognizing Dwight Yoakum on the radio. The day just kept getting better and better. Hot damn, I was ready to call the Bel Aire my own slice of Valhalla.

  Misty didn’t say anything as she put the car into gear, which was decent of her. She also didn’t waste any time turning that car around and putting Guvcheck behind us for what I hoped was the last time.

  “So,” she said. “You’re a free man.”

  “Street legal, sweetheart,” I said, refraining from the urge to hoot. “Free as a short stack on free pancake day. Say, can we stop at IHOP? I haven’t had a real pancake in years...”

  She looked a little overwhelmed by me, which was fine. Her eyebrows were stuck fluctuating between her hairline and her brow, not sure if they wanted to look surprised or pissed. Her lips screwed to one side, then the other. She looked at me in short, staccato glances. I couldn’t see her eyes behind those sunglasses, but I could picture them well enough.

  “IHOP?” she finally said, turning the radio down a smidge as though it was getting in the way of us talking. It wasn’t, but for some reason I found that smooth motion, her arm drifting to the dial, her fingers turning it, impossibly sexy. And when she brought that hand back over to the wheel, leaning forward a bit in the seat and glancing out her window as we made a turn, forget it. As far as I was concerned, she was a Playboy centerfold in the flesh.

  She was saying something while I stared, completely transfixed by every little thing her body did. All those little movements we make that we don’t think about. All the beautiful mechanics of our limbs and muscles.

  “….Rev?”

  “Yeah? What? Yeah?” I asked, snapped out of my stupor. She lifted the sunglasses, settling them on her scalp, pushing back some of that brown hair and letting me get a good long look at her graceful, angular cheekbones.

  “I asked if you really wanted to go to IHOP,” she said. “You really want your first meal out of the pokey to be IHOP?”

  “The pokey? Holy shit, woman! Do you think they brought me to the station in a paddy wagon when they arrested me?”

  “No IHOP for you,” she snapped.

  “You could be a little nicer to a man who’s only wish is a Grand Slam,” I said, trying not to drool as she craned her neck on the highway entrance ramp, showing off the slight flutter of her heartbeat in her jugular.

  “That’s Denny’s,” she said, and now I thought she was hiding a smile, or something like it.

  “You want Denny’s, or IHOP?”

  “I thought you said we weren’t going.”

  “We’re not going if you don’t make up your mind.”

  She merged into traffic slowly, making me believe that even though I hadn’t been behind the wheel in four years, I would still out-drive her. That was my job once, after all. Getaway driver. Three guesses why they called me Rev. Some fools took it to be short for Reverend.

  They were wrong.

  Misty’s slow merge onto the highway had us nearly running into another car, and the driver honked. She threw him the bird without a second thought. She was so beautiful I wanted to put her in a museum and charge people entrance fees just to look at her.

  This was going to be harder than I thought… I needed to get laid something fierce.

  Shit. Misty was talking again.

  “…outside of town. And I don’t like this one gal that works there, so it’s gonna have to be Denny’s. That copacetic?”

  “It’s beautiful, it’s perfect, it’s all my dreams come true,” I said with a grin the size of Cuba. There she was, fighting another smile. I was a little surprised at how this was going. I wasn’t an hour out of jail and I was sit
ting in Misty-Lee Constatino’s car, discussing breakfast options like it was any other Monday morning.

  She didn’t seem scared of me, which was to be expected, given her father’s rep and choice of company. But she also didn’t seem like she wanted to make my life miserable. I was going to be working for her, impeding on her life, living in her house, generally causing a disruption to her daily operations. But she wasn’t bitter about it as best I could tell.

  I had something to offer her in return for all that. It was almost like she had a little empathy for a man who was trying to make sense of a world that hadn’t stopped spinning for the four years he stopped living in it. Like she wanted me to feel normal, a regular part of regular society. Like she gave a shit about me, even though she didn’t have much reason to.

  She wasn’t just beautiful, which was a product of my lust being in hyper drive. She was also goddamn sweet. Just like I remembered her.

  “So, you wanna start talking shop?” I offered, not wanting to think about what it meant for a woman to be drop-dead sexy and also have a nice personality.

  “About the threats? Sure, but it can wait a little while, too,” she said, relaxing into the driver’s seat. Her eyes darted to mine, then flipped back to the road. You need a refresher on the past four years? Bowie’s dead. Ebola came and went. A Malaysian plane disappeared.”

  “I think I’m good. Higgs boson, Ferguson, Aleppo. Newspaper’s good for reading and wiping your ass in Guvcheck.” I teased. “I was in jail, not a coma.”

  “I’m sorry… I’m just anxious,” she replied, gripping the wheel a little tighter.

  “I’d be pretty anxious if I were you, too,” I observed. “Have there been any developments?”

  “Another letter,” she said. “That’s it.”

  “Same as the last two?”

  She nodded, exhaling a breath. I watched the way her lips parted, wishing I could capture them with my own.

  I shook it straight out of my head. For the next two hours, we “talked shop.” Mostly, I talked about who I could talk to. Who was still around to talk to. Who was working with who, if Misty knew the answer – which she mostly didn’t. Couldn’t blame her for ignorance. Apparently, she worked as a vet tech at the animal shelter now, which was so cute I wanted to lick and suck every inch of her, and make her scream seven ways from Sunday.