HIS VIRGIN VESSEL: A Dark Bad Boy Baby Romance (War Cry MC)

by Nicole Fox

  Not that Fiona couldn't take care of herself. There was a pool cue behind the bar that was well-used despite never having been anywhere near a pool table. But that wouldn't be of much use if Sheriff Brian Dugas got his way. The Black Book contained my client list and enough evidence to put me and the rest of War Cry away for a long time. Fiona herself would probably do some time too for receiving stolen goods. More importantly, with War Cry gone, she'd be without protection.

  "He saw you there last night. He'll be on the look-out now," said Fiona.

  "Yeah.”

  "Any of your boys up to it?"

  I pulled a face. There were too many youngsters in War Cry these days. I supposed there always had been, but it never seemed like it when I was one of them.

  "What about the girl?"

  I frowned. "What girl?"

  "The Dugas girl."

  "Corinne?"

  "Unless you're banging the other one as well."

  "I'm not banging ..."

  Fiona rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure. It's all perfectly innocent. You rode up with a twenty-one year old tight ass ..."

  "Twenty-three."

  "... clinging to you like a limpet. Then you take her back to your place for half an hour and come out looking flushed. But nothing happened. All very innocent."

  "Fine, don't believe me."

  "I don't," said Fiona. "I'm struggling to figure out why you can't talk about this one. What makes her different?"

  That was a question worth asking. What did make Corinne different?

  "Look," Fiona continued. "The girl likes you, yeah?"

  "Maybe."

  "Quit playing dumb. She's crazy about you. They always are. I bet she'd do anything you ask. So, ask her to find out where her dad keeps the book and steal it for you."

  There was no doubt in my mind that if I asked Corinne to do that, she would. Partly to please me, but mostly to anger her father. Why should I care if Brian Dugas had a bad relationship with his daughter? The man was, after all, trying to stick me behind bars. But that was his job, and I'd broken the law, and that was the way it went. Dragging family into it was different. You didn't do that. I didn't have the greatest of childhoods. My dad's drinking made him violent, and that drove my mom to drink, and neither of them much wanted me. War Cry gave me a family—not a good one, but better than the one I was born into.

  From Corinne's behavior, I could guess that Brian Dugas maybe hadn't been the perfect dad, but I'd have laid odds that he was better than mine. He was a trier, and even if he had failed where Corinne was concerned, you had to rate a man for trying. I had a scar on my head from where my dad cracked a bottle over it. That was the only thing he gave me that I’d kept. However screwed up Corinne's relationship with her old man might be, I didn’t want to screw it up further. I knew firsthand how that worked out, and the world didn’t need any more people like me.

  "Her dad trusts her about as much as he trusts me," I said to Fiona, which wasn't all a lie. "No chance of her getting the book. We need another plan."

  "Do you have one?"

  I was about to answer when the door to the bar opened and in walked Corinne Dugas. With one thing happening after another, I hadn't had much of a chance to look at her last night, and I took the opportunity now. She really was a stunning girl, with an attractive tangle of wavy red hair piled up on her head, bright green eyes, pale skin, and a cupid's bow of a mouth. She was wearing a short denim skirt that hugged her tight backside and showed about nine feet of bare, shapely legs, taut, toned, and accentuated by heeled boots. A vest top hung loosely on her frame, with no evidence of a bra to support her high, firm breasts. It occurred to me that I really shouldn't be taking this much interest in the girl I had very much rebuffed last night. It wouldn't end well for either of us. But it was impossible to ignore the thumping desire that was welling up from within. The damn girl looked incredible, and I wanted her so badly I could taste it.

  "Something wrong?" asked Fiona, who had her back to the door.

  "Nothing," I said, as Corinne spotted me and gave me a cheeky little wave. She might be in her twenties, but with Brian Dugas for a father she was still jailbait to me. I turned my attention back to my dinner companion. If Corinne wouldn't take no for an answer, then perhaps there was another way. I reached across the table to take Fiona's hand.

  "Have I told you how good you’re looking since I got back?"

  Fiona looked at me quizzically. "No, but you very seldom do."

  "I should. You're a very beautiful woman, Fiona."

  Fiona looked more bemused than flattered. "Is this just because you didn't nail the girl last night?"

  As subtly as possible, I kept an eye on Corinne and was gratified to see the petulant expression on her face. She stamped towards the bar like a teenager who didn’t get her own way.

  "It's been a while since you and I ..." I let the sentence hang.

  Fiona nodded. "It has. But I'll be damned if I'm going to be a surrogate for the Dugas girl. When you're with me, I expect you to be thinking of me. I'm not that hard-up, Asa. You may not believe it, but there are other men in my life."

  "I don't doubt that for a second," I said. But I was now becoming distracted. Corinne had sidled up to a man at the bar, an irritatingly handsome guy in his mid-twenties, and was flirting coquettishly. As she sat, her skirt rode even further up her thighs, and I thought I caught a glimpse of red underwear before she crossed her legs.

  "How about a dance?" I suggested to Fiona.

  "What is going on with you? We haven't danced in years."

  "Then it's past time."

  "You're a lousy dancer, Asa," Fiona said, shaking her head. "I hate to be the one to tell you, but you've got two left feet."

  "It never used to bother you back in the day."

  "That's because you were very good at something else, and dancing was kind of the prelude."

  "Well, then." I stood and offered her my hand. I wasn't sure what was on the jukebox, but whatever it was would do.

  "Look, I've got a bar to run," said Fiona, coming close to laughing in my face. "I know it's not exactly busy, but ..." Before I could stop her, she had looked past me to the bar and a smile spread over her face. "I see. Well, that's no way to treat a girl."

  I shrugged. She had a point. "Sorry. I didn't mean to ..."

  "Use me as a way to avoid dealing with the girl with the crush?"

  "Okay, I did mean to do that."

  Fiona eyed me, and I found myself struggling to tell what she was thinking.

  "What is it about her?"

  "What?"

  "I've never known you to act this way around a girl."

  "One dance?"

  Fiona took my hand. "It has been too long."

  Maybe I was a lousy dancer, but I still enjoyed dancing with Fiona. It got a lot less enjoyable, however, when Corinne and her new friend joined us, dancing so close that you couldn't get a five dollar bill between them. I watched the man's hands steal optimistically towards Corinne's backside and felt my fists tighten even as I danced with Fiona.

  "I'm going to do you a favor," Fiona whispered in my ear. "And maybe do us all one in the long run."

  "What?"

  "Speak to her about the book."

  "What?"

  Fiona let go of me and strolled over to the other couple. "Mind if I cut in?"

  I remembered when I met Fiona, that aura of sexuality she had for a man in his teens (barely even a man yet). She had lost none of it over the years, and the man with Corinne looked like he was having the best day of his life. Still, I didn't think he'd have let go of the younger woman so readily if Corinne hadn't instantly said, "Yeah, sure."

  She slunk over to me, hips swaying as she walked.

  "Can I have this dance?"

  I should have said no. I wanted to say no. I knew that I had to say no. But there was no way that I was going to say no.

  As if on cue, the music slowed. Corinne's young body pressed against me, her head rested ag
ainst my chest, and I inhaled the scent of her hair.

  "This is not a good idea."

  "No," she replied, not looking up. "But some things you can't fight. You can try, but they're going to happen one way or another."

  "I don't believe in that meant-to-be bullshit."

  "I didn't say meant-to-be. I just meant that when there is an attraction between two people, like there is between us, then it's like a bullet from a gun. There's no stopping it till it hits its target."

  Only now did she look up at me, those vividly green eyes staring into mine. Sure, there was a seductiveness about her, almost a calculation in how she had gotten me here, but there was a plaintiveness too, as if this was something she needed more than wanted. It was like not having it would cause her a physical wound.

  I had no idea which of us moved first. I vaguely remembered it being her, stretching up to me, but she might have been responding to an unconscious move on my part, because God knew I wanted it as badly as her. Our lips met, and the taste of her was a flood of sensation, like I'd only ever seen in black-and-white and was now seeing color for the first time. Her sweetness seemed to flow into me. She crushed her hips against mine, and I knew she was feeling my hardness firmly against her. She wanted it. She wanted to be a bad girl. I wanted to stop, for all the reasons that had seemed so clear early on. But if a girl wants to be bad, then one way or another she's going to be. And if this particular girl was going to go bad then, damn it, I wanted it to be with me.

  "Same goes as last night," Corinne whispered hotly into my ear.

  "What?"

  Her eyes met mine again, wide and wicked. "I'll do whatever you tell me to."

  Fair enough. If she wanted to be a bad girl, then I was going to show her how to be a good one.

  Chapter Five

  Corinne

  So, now you know. My father wouldn't have believed it, nor would Risa. Rebellious Corinne, the girl who did everything wrong, whose boyfriends were dangerous and inappropriate, who took after her cheating mother, was still a virgin at twenty-three.

  It was stupid, when you thought about it. Risa, who stuck to the rules and did everything right, was eighteen when she lost her virginity. Of course, she was in a committed relationship with the boy, and he had prospects that went beyond stealing her rent money, but still. The good girl lost it, and the bad girl didn't. Although, of course, I'd been pretending that it was long gone, as part of my bad girl persona. It may well have contributed to the failed relationships of my past. Some boys will cheat on you, or dump you if you consistently fail to put out. They shouldn't, and the ones who do are jerks, but my boyfriends had mostly been jerks. When they learned that they might have to wait for me to be ready, then they didn't hang around.

  Why was I still a virgin when I was so intent on being a bad girl? Honestly, I was scared. It felt like leaving something behind and taking a step into a world I wasn't ready for. And the longer I left it, the more it felt like that. I dreamed about it, of course, as a sort of perfect act, something wonderful and beautiful. That put so much pressure on the first time that nothing, and no one, was ever going to measure up. It was never something I had felt comfortable with. Until now.

  Like I said, I dreamed a lot about my first time: how it would be, who it would be with, where it would be. Me being me, those dreams tended to take place in the back seat of a car, in my Dad's bed while he was downstairs, on a crowded bus—anything forbidden. A storage closet was close to being a public place and so came close to being forbidden, but nobody's fantasies, not even mine, featured the words 'storage closet.’

  With someone else, that might have mattered.

  Asa didn't look like the men who took my virginity in my dreams. He looked better.

  I hung off of his neck, urgently kissing him, as his surprisingly gentle fingers dragged my skirt up my thighs.

  "Oh, my ...!" I clapped hand over my mouth to stop myself from crying out as his fingers brushed against my most secret entrance. The explosion of sensation was unlike anything I had ever felt before. Last year, during a particularly forceful attempt,one boyfriend had grabbed me down there and squeezed, but that had just felt unpleasant. This ... there were no words. Asa's nimble fingers slipped inside my panties, and I pressed my hand more tightly against my mouth as he explored. Lightning fast shocks of pure sensation ran up and down my body, enervating me from head to toe. Then one of his fingers slipped where no man had gone before, and I thought I might pop with excitement.

  There was a man inside me. It was just his finger, but right at that moment, it was hard to believe that anything could feel better than that.

  Asa gently kissed my mouth, then he knelt, lifting my top as he went so he could kiss my belly on his way down, swirling his tongue around my belly button. I stumbled backward a step, finding something to lean against. I wasn't sure my legs would hold me much longer. To look down and see Asa there, his face mere inches from my panties, was as exciting as any part of this. He was mine. My man.

  I bit my lip as I felt his thumbs hook into the waistband of my underwear, drawing the lacy garment down my thighs and leaving me on display to his heated stare. I thought I would feel embarrassed or nervous in this situation, but I felt oddly proud. I wanted him to look at and admire my nudity. Above all, I wanted to see the desire in his eyes. I wanted him to want me as badly as I needed him. Asa leaned forward.

  "MMMM!" Once again, I slapped a hand over my mouth, barely suppressing the squeal. My other hand found Asa's head, and my fingers tangled in his hair, dragging him tighter against me as his lips brushed my heated pussy. Without warning, his tongue delved further, and my world exploded into fireworks. I'd had orgasms before, or at least I thought I had, in the privacy of my room, with the help of a mail-order toy, but nothing like this.

  When I came back down to Planet Earth, I saw Asa looking up at me. "I'd say you needed that."

  "You have no idea," I gasped.

  His gentle hands traveled up the back of my legs and around the curve of my ass, drawing me back to him. "I call that level one."

  He dove back in. My hand slammed back over my mouth, and I yanked at his hair in desperate need both for him to stop and for him never to stop. I had no idea how long Asa spent on his knees, using lips, teeth, tongue, and fingers to pleasure me. I had no idea how many orgasms he gave me. But when he finally stood, I was as limp as a rag doll, my chest heaving, my body bathed in sweat, and my face flushed. This wasn't how a person was supposed to lose their virginity. You were supposed to start off slow and build your way up. Losing my virginity to Asa was like learning to drive in a racing car. And, technically, we hadn't started yet. I was still a virgin.

  I pulled him to me to kiss him, tasting myself on his lips and not even caring. He took one of my hands and guided it to the tremendous bulge in the front of his jeans. This was going to happen. This thing was going ... Well, it was going somewhere.

  A nervousness came back over me, but it was swiftly lost as Asa kissed me tenderly. His hands gently caressed my body, his touch enflaming my skin wherever it landed. The night before he had seemed so dominant, and he was, but there was another side to him as well, and I loved them both. I wanted them both.

  I squeezed hard where he had placed my hand and felt an answering throb.

  "You're not going to make me wait, are you?" I asked, all nervousness forgotten. It was time to put all that bad girl theory into practice.

  But Asa grinned wickedly at me. "Not wait, exactly, but I think you owe me a little something, don't you?"

  At first I wasn't sure what he meant, but then it dawned on me. I tried not to look flustered, for fear of letting my bad girl act slip, and I suppose I must have succeeded as Asa guided my hand once again, this time to his zipper. I started to kneel down, but he stopped me.

  "Hang on, you'll need something to kneel on. You don't want to get your knees dirty."

  He grabbed the hem of my top, and I raised my arms to allow him to pull it over my head. Asa
's eyes gleamed as he revealed my breasts, and I was glad that I had chosen not to wear a bra today.

  "Damn, you're beautiful."

  "Funny how men only say that once they've got my top off." I played it cool, still acting like I did this sort of thing all the time.

  "I'm sure they think it all the time," Asa said, his eyes still glued to my chest. "But it is nice to have it underlined."

  He stooped, and I squeaked involuntarily as he gently kissed first one nipple then the other. He licked and kissed his way between the two, now and then nibbling the tender flesh, making me bite my lip and squeeze hard at the swollen organ pressing into my hand.