Make Me Your Villain (Battle Crows MC 2)

I was on the back of the man’s bike, my entire body pressed up against him, and I was acting like an alien Iris.

I, Iris Magenta Dalton, did not do one-night stands.

Though, if I was being technical, this didn’t feel like a one-night stand. Especially since I’d now been with him for two days. Or, at least, four hours that spanned over the period of two days.

“Just a warning.” He moved his hand so that it pressed against the outside of my thigh, making a chill sweep up the length of my body despite the heated weather. “Lindy will hear about it, and if she can, she’ll make it awkward as fuck.”

I shrugged. “Can’t be any worse than having your ex-boyfriend following you around town.”

He straight up laughed in my face.

“Just wait,” he teased. “Just wait.”

He wasn’t kidding.

It was as if his ex had stayed up waiting for him.

The moment we walked into the house, he cursed. “I left via my bedroom window. Swear to God, I don’t know how she always knows when I’m on the way home. Or even left.”

The moment we walked through the door, I heard two things.

One, the sound of music—quite loud music—coming through a door at the end of a hall. And the hiss of a breath as his ex saw us walk inside.

“Are you telling me,” she demanded, “that all this time, I’ve been listening to this stupid fucking music, and you’re not even home?”

I strained my ears to hear the music and nearly giggled.

He had on a Garth Brooks song. And, from the way I’d just heard it click over, it was on repeat.

Seemed the man had a thing for ol’ Garth.

“Sorry,” he apologized halfheartedly. “Didn’t realize that I’d be gone for this long.”

The ex’s eyes turned to me, and that was when I realized what true hatred was.

“And who the fuck is this?” she snarled.

I bit my lip, then couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Well, that’s up to you. I have an apartment that you can lease, if you want to switch with me. I’m in need of more room than I have, and Callum brought me here to help hash it out with you.”

The man behind me froze.

That’s when I realized that I probably shouldn’t just blurt out the things that I think before I actually think them all the way over.

But, all of a sudden, I hadn’t been able to think of anything but how miserable we both were with our current living situations. And how much of a benefit it would be to at least attempt to fix that one part.

The suddenness of her going absolutely still was somewhat eerie.

I mean, she looked as if she’d taken a sucker punch straight to the gut.

“I…” She hesitated. “But…”

That’s when I really looked at her.

Her face was a mask of shock, her breathing had stalled in her lungs, and she was clenching and unclenching her fists.

“It’s a one-bedroom, one-bath, massive closet and kitchen apartment about two blocks from here. It’s a mother-in-law apartment/basement. It has its own access through a set of stairs off the side of the house, with your own driveway parking,” I explained.

Still, she didn’t reply.

“Anyway, rent is four hundred and seventy-five dollars a month,” I continued as if her silence wasn’t creeping me out.

Or maybe that was her eyes.

She looked absolutely furious.

“My name is on this lease,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m not sure it’d be easy to just switch our names on leases.”

I smiled. “I have a good friend that’s a lawyer. She can do anything that we want her to do.”

The hand on my hip tightened, and I watched as Lindy’s eyes narrowed on it.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, she wasn’t going to take my offer.

I knew that with a certainty that I knew that the woman in front of me was still in love with the man behind me.

“Come on,” he rumbled, sensing the dam about to burst. “Let’s go to bed.”

With those words, he hooked a finger in my belt loop closest to his hand on my hip and twirled me around more easily than I would’ve ever thought possible.

Suddenly, I was being guided into a bedroom that was off the living room and the door was closing behind us.

The music was loud, which was amusing.

“You left this on repeat?” I asked curiously.

“She hates Garth Brooks,” he admitted. “It took me a month to find a certain artist that she hated. Now, when she really pisses me off, I put it on repeat and leave.”

I couldn’t help it.

Out of all the things that he could’ve done, he chose to freakin’ do this, find an artist that really offended her, and then played the song.

He could make her life miserable. He could do so many other things that could be much more harmful, yet he chose harmless.