BADDY: A Small Town Crime Romance

by Nikki Wild

  “That was… incredible,” he murmured into my ear.

  “Not much has changed,” I smiled softly, wiping a finger of sweat from my forehead.

  “That’s not true,” Hunter whispered into my ear. “You’ve changed for the better…”

  “You flatter me,” I gasped as he gave me another quick little thrust inside, forcing my lips into an involuntary little moan.

  I flashed him a mischievous, snarky little smile over my shoulder, and he pulled out. I could feel his seed slowly begin to slip down my thigh.

  “It’s true,” Hunter reassured me, a finger lifting my chin as I turned to face him. “When I knew you before, you were a little brat… adorable, yes, but maybe a little more trouble than you were worth… and now…”

  “Oh, trust me,” I grinned, leaning back against the kitchen island but resting my head against his chest. “I can still be a bit of a brat when I need to be. Part of me will always be that little teenage girl that you fell in love with… just like part of you will always be that tough, strong man I loved so much.”

  Hunter nodded, reflecting on these words.

  “Are you positive that you have to go? There can be a life for you here… you fought with the Devil’s Dragons. They already accept you as my woman, but now they’ll consider you one of their own…”

  I sighed, nodding against his chest.

  “I need to go,” I sadly answered him. “My lieutenant already wants my badge and my gun. There’s no reason to make that any harder than it is.”

  Hunter lifted my chin with his finger again, steeling his gaze as he forced mine to meet it. He whispered the most vulnerable words I had ever heard him tell me:

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  The conviction, and the pain, in his eyes told me how truthful he was being. He meant those six words with everything that he had.

  It pained me to give him my inevitable response.

  “I don’t have a choice, Hunter.”

  Chapter 21

  The gravel crunched under the oversized tires of my old Jeep wrangler as I pulled into the parking lot and came to a complete stop. Before turning the key and killing the ignition, I sat and stared at myself in the rearview mirror, reflecting on the eternity that had dragged on by since I’d last been here…

  It had only been a couple of months since I returned to Phoenix – but that time had made sure to be plenty eventful.

  True to his word, Lieutenant Crabbe ensured that I was stripped of my badge the minute I showed up at his office. Unfortunately, he had already caught wind of an interesting development – a whole van load of missing women, my kidnapped cheerleaders included, had appeared in an El Paso hospital in the middle of the night.

  He wasn’t exactly shy in grilling me for six hours in an interrogation room over that one, but I stuck to my guns.

  I knew nothing.

  I saw nothing.

  I simply spent that afternoon drinking some beers with old friends and watching my career fall apart.

  It was complete bullshit, and the entire precinct was well aware of that… Everyone from the Chief on down the line knew what had really happened. They didn’t know the details, but they knew that I’d found those cheerleaders… and somehow, I’d found them below the border. In a quiet, closed-doors meeting that was officially off the record and after office hours, the chief privately thanked me for whatever miracle I had pulled off – telling me in no uncertain terms that I was owed a favor… And that I needed to go away quietly. My career was over.

  I’d saved him a lot of media backlash for incompetency of his entire department, and saved our partners in Tucson the same trouble… And I was shown the door for it.

  Watching everything you’ve worked for crumble around you hurts…

  My father, on the other hand was overjoyed.

  He didn’t ask me for the truth – he knew I’d tell him if it was safe for him to know.

  He told me that he couldn’t be prouder.

  In the time since, I had plenty to do… at least for a couple of months. I took the Chief up on his favor, and was able to find myself a new career that was even more rewarding than before.

  Which only left me one tiny little problem to finally address.

  Ripped from my reflection, I glanced over at the dilapidated old bar. With a small smirk, I finally killed the ignition and stepped out over the gravel, feeling it crunch beneath my boots once again.

  When I walked back into the bar, I strolled past the regulars and straight up to the sour redhead behind the counter – whose friendly face darkened the closer I came.

  “Hi, Elmira,” I greeted her nonchalantly. “I’ll take a glass of water… easy on the spit.”

  She stared at me with a smug look on her face. “I told you before, and I’ll tell you again – we don’t serve your kind here.”

  “Well, it’s a damn good thing I’m not that kind of girl anymore,” I responded with a lighthearted shrug, reaching into my pocket and tossing a card onto the counter.

  In bold letters and embossed print, it read:

  Sarah Buchanan

  PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

  “Now, if you’d be so kind, bartender… fetch me a goddamned glass of water.”

  A familiar laugh piped up from the darkness. My eyes zeroed in across the bar, landing on a cross-armed man in the shadows. He was clad in the leather of the Devil’s Dragons MC, with a rugged voice stained with smugness.

  “You’d be quicker to pour this woman a drink if you’d seen the way she shoots…”

  Hunter smiled as he leaned forward off of the wood paneling, strolling into the light from the outside windows. He lifted a few strands of hair from my face with a tender pair of fingers.

  “Had a feeling you’d be back, sooner or later…”

  “You know that I had to keep my distance while the media spun their tops over those girls,” I replied comfortably.

  “Couldn’t even spare me a little phone call, could you?” He asked, his voice smooth and soft.

  “I wasn’t sure that I could trust myself if I did…”

  “Well, you’re here now,” he observed calmly, his eyes firmly locked onto mine. I heard and ignored a veiled scoff from the redhead bartender. He leaned a little forward, eyebrow arching, and said, “Do you trust yourself to be a good girl?”

  A smirk crossed my lips.

  Did I?

  “I’m here because somebody with deep pockets lost a cargo container… and word on the street is that you’ve got operations out in California. I know that the Devil’s Dragons run the port of Los Angeles.”

  “All business, no pleasure?” Hunter chuckled, reaching out to turn my hips until I was facing him.

  The same crystal blue eyes gazed mischievously into my soul, inviting me to surrender for a few hours. That same sexy stubble shifted beneath his smile, and I spotted that same sexy dragon tattoo rolling down his arm…

  “Maybe a little pleasure, too,” I admitted, feeling the heat of my face flushing red as the bikers nearby began to hoot and holler.

  “In that case, I’ll clear my schedule…” Hunter murmured, his finger lifting my chin. “Maybe we’ll talk business tomorrow, hmm?”

  The men around us cheered again.

  My eyes caught the piercing but approving gaze of Grizz, his arm still locked up in the cast from that bullet he took in Juarez. I figured he’d have discarded it already, but it would probably be coming off any day now…

  “I think business can wait one night,” I spoke, turning back to Hunter. “But there’s something that you need to know.”

  “Don’t worry, Princess,” he chuckled hungrily. “I know it’s been a while. You’re probably out of practice… I’ll go easy on you.”

  I smirked, shaking my head. “It’s not that.”

  The room slowly drifted silent, the whistles and laughs gradually drawn back. The single sound in the bar was water pouring from a tap into a cup behind me, slamming onto the countertop harder
than necessary.

  “Hunter… I’m pregnant.”

  The End, but you’re still not done! Turn the page for ROUGH RIDER, my bestselling biker romance!

  I hope you love it! You are the reason I write…

  -Nikki xoxoxo

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  Novels by Nikki Wild

  Bad Boy Sports

  Play Dirty (A Bad Boy Football Romance)

  Running Game (A Bad Boy Football Romance)

  Bad Boy Fighters:

  Knockout (A Bad Boy MMA Romance)

  Bad Boy Bikers:

  Saving Landon (A Bad Boy Biker Romance)

  Saved by the Bad Boy (A Devil’s Dragons Biker Romance)

  Pride and Pregnancy (A Devil’s Dragons Motorcycle Club Romance)

  Roughneck (A Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Romance)

  Rough Rider (Outlaw Kings Motorcycle Club)

  British Bad Boys:

  Royal Prick (A Bad Boy British Romance)

  Arrogant Brit (A Bad Boy British Sports Romance)

  Rock Hard (A Bad Boy British Rockstar Romance)

  Played (A Bad Boy British Romance)

  Bad Boy Rockstars:

  Illicit Behavior (A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance)

  Rock Hard (A Bad Boy British Rockstar Romance)

  Bad Boy Stepbrothers:

  Lust (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)

  Richard (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance)

  Bad Boy Billionaires:

  Protect And Serve (A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance)

  Pretend Married (A Sexy Billionaire Romance)

  Rough Rider

  A biker romance from Nikki Wild

  For a limited time, EVERYONE who signs up to the WILD LIST will receive a free exclusive romance novel from Nikki Wild that you can’t find anywhere else!

  The Wild List will send you exclusive updates from Nikki Wild and you can be among the very first to receive all of my hottest new releases!

  Prologue

  101St Street

  Ozone Park, Queens, Nyc

  FOURTH OF JULY BLOCK PARTY

  “Step right up! See the World’s Tiniest Woman with your own eyes! A freak of nature, right in this very tent!” The tiny wrinkled man was missing a few teeth, his black hair cut into a deep mullet, with a long braid extending down his back. He leaned down to the little girl watching him, a slow sneer spreading across his pockmarked face, the stench of his stale breath stinging her green eyes.

  “She’s even smaller than you, little one!” His laugh was short and jagged like the thin, dirty finger he pointed at her nose. She recoiled in horror, stepping back into her mother’s skirt.

  “Come along, Gabriella,” her mother grabbed her daughter’s hand and pulled her away from the man quickly and together they threaded through the crowd.

  “Mama,” the girl asked, “why is the woman so small?”

  “I don’t know, darling,” her mother replied. “Some people are just born that way.”

  The girl wrinkled her brow, hoping she didn’t stay this size. She was already taller than most of the kids in her class, and she was still growing. But she hated being little. It was so unfair. There were so many things you couldn’t do. You couldn’t see over people’s shoulders, for one, so that meant she couldn’t see how far away they were from the Ferris wheel her mother had promised to take her on before the fireworks later.

  “Oh, hello, Vicky,” her mother said, stopping abruptly. The girl ran into her mother’s soft skirt, and her mom pulled her hand away to shake Vicky’s. They stood talking forever, about whatever mom’s talk about. Vicky had apparently just had a new dishwasher delivered, and she rattled on and on about it as the crowd streamed past them.

  The smell of cotton candy drifted through the air, seducing the girl like a siren’s song with the promise of pink fluffy heaven. Her feet began moving as if they had a mind all of their own, or rather, a nose of their own. Gabriella was just an eager participant, along for the ride, her mother long forgotten behind her, still nodding politely at Vicky’s unleashed stream of consciousness, completely oblivious to the fact that her daughter was wandering off without her.

  Gabrielle weaved through the sea of thighs like a snake - quietly, smoothly, efficiently. Her sight was blocked, so she followed her nose, her mind focused on one thing only - the anticipation of the blissful first moment when that sticky cotton candy touched her tongue.

  She’d fallen in love with it last year at the Fourth of July block party that Mr. Giannetti organized for the neighborhood every year. Each Fourth of July, he closed down the entire block of 101st Street outside of the Bugotti’s Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park. He had all these amazing carnival rides brought in that you could ride for free and turned the street into a real bona fide carnival, inviting the entire neighborhood. Everyone loved it, and everyone loved him.

  Nobody seemed to mind where the money came from. As far as they were concerned, he was a saint. He kept the crime out of the neighborhood and he helped out the families when they needed it.

  Gabrielle’s mom, especially, loved him. She’d never say that out loud, of course. But the girl saw the way her mother batted her eyes at him, the way her hand flew to her heart every time he said hello to her. She actually blushed and she didn’t do that around her dad.

  The girl was a little embarrassed about it. He was her father’s boss, after all. But her dad didn’t seem to notice, so the girl kept it to herself. She liked Mr. Giannetti too, but only because he was responsible for the carnival. It was her favorite time of the year.

  The cotton candy was just one of the reasons.

  The sea of thighs parted and she found herself near a large tent. She followed around behind it, mostly because there weren’t a lot of people that she had to maneuver through. Her mission had not wavered. Cotton candy was the only thing she could think about.

  Gabriella looked around for other people but didn’t see anyone. She walked around the tent and saw an open flap at the back. Voices rose from inside and she peeked in.

  Her father was there, standing proudly in his impeccable signature black suit. He was yelling at a man she’d never seen before. That man wore a brown suit and a brown hat like the man at the grocery store that Gabriella’s father took her to get ice cream on Sundays. Chocolate, always chocolate.

  “Leo, I’m sorry, please…” the man pleaded, as her father pointed a gun at his chest. Another man, who she recognized as her father’s friend Tiny, entered the tent from the front, huffing and puffing as if he’d been running for a while.

  “Boss says we gotta do it, Leo,” Tiny said, shaking his head.

  With wild, desperate eyes, the man begged her father again.

  “Please, Leo, you can’t leave my boy an orphan. I got a family, Leo! My wife!” the man pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, Paulie. The Boss says so, and you know what that means,” her father said, shaking his head.

  “Leo, it’ll kill my Ma. Her heart can’t handle a thing like this, she’s so frail. Leo, please don’t!” the man kept pleaded.

  “Daddy,” the girl whispered to herself, watching with wide eyes
from her hiding place.

  “Don’t beg, Paulie. Go quietly, while you still have your dignity,” Leo said.

  “No!” The man screamed, and then took a step back, pulling a gun from his jacket.

  Shots rang out and the girl ducked.

  “Get down!” she heard a muffled voice just as arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her ten feet away. She landed on the ground under a shrub with a boy on top of her. Bullets whizzed by their heads as he covered her body with his.

  When the bullets finally stopped, they looked up. A bullet had ripped through the tent exactly where she had been standing moments earlier. The flimsy door of the tent was flapping in the breeze and they could see the man in the brown suit lying there, his hat lying next to him, dripping with blood.

  She turned her head and stared up into the darkest pair of eyes she’d ever seen. They were wide with fear and worry, scurrying over her body.

  “Are you alright?” he whispered urgently. He couldn’t have been much older than her, she thought. His black hair was almost as dark as his eyes. His lashes were longer than hers and she stared up at him curiously.

  “Yes, I think so,” she nodded. “Thank you. Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” he replied, staring down into her big green eyes.

  “We should get out of here,” he said.

  “Gabriella!” Her mother’s voice broke the silence as they continued to stare into each other’s eyes, their gaze locked together. “Gabrieelllllaa!!”

  Footsteps shuffled inside the tent, the sound of them disappearing out the front of the tent and fading away.

  Are they going to come back? the boy wondered. He didn’t want to wait around to find out.