Make Me Your Villain (Battle Crows MC 2)

People either loved you or hated you.

Either way, people didn’t stay away.

CHAPTER 2

It’s called gross pay because it’s disgusting to see how much you would’ve made before taxes.

-Iris to Shine

IRIS

“Your parents are dead?”

I overheard the women and the men at the next table talking, and I glanced surreptitiously over my shoulder to see if I could make out the face that belonged to that annoying as hell voice.

She sounded like a balloon that was losing air.

“Yep,” the guy said.

The guy’s voice, however, wasn’t nearly as annoying as the woman’s voice.

He sounded like a sexy beast of a man that gargled with gasoline and growled out obscenities at the top of his lungs for fun.

At least, the hoarseness in his voice spoke of that anyway.

Maybe he was a smoker.

I hoped not.

Smokers made me want to vomit.

Not because of the habit being bad for you—though it was—but because the smoke literally made me nauseous.

That, sadly, was a childhood memory that I couldn’t quite shake.

I looked again over my shoulder and finally pinpointed the man that was talking.

And, oh, holy shit.

Just staring at him made my freakin’ heart skip a beat.

He looked like Thor.

Like, no joke, that golden-blond hair and beard, paired with all those muscles, fit underneath a white skintight t-shirt? Yeah, he could easily pass for the God of Thunder.

The black motorcycle vest on his back made me even more curious.

I hadn’t lived in Intercourse—God, gag on that name—Texas for long.

In fact, it’d been a little over six and a half months since I’d moved into town, but in that time, there was one particular group of people that I’d been warned about, over and over again.

And that was the Battle Crows MC.

I’d heard good things and bad things, but out of all of those things, the bad far outweighed the good.

Take my coworker, for example.

A coworker that’d dated one of the members of the Battle Crows MC.

Granted, I didn’t know which one, but the way she spoke about him made me genuinely curious about why she’d stayed with him for so long.

But if the man behind me was an indication of what the rest of the men in the group would look like, good God, now I knew why she’d stayed.

With a body like that, he had to be packin’.

Then again, my coworker—whom I had never quite gotten around to liking—had really great taste in men. Each and every one I’d met over the last few years that we’d been working together had proven to me that it wasn’t the guy, it was the girl.

The one good thing I could say about her was that she was good at her job and never left me hanging when we needed to get to work.

Five years ago, when we’d met on the first day of orientation, and realized that we’d lived within a mile of each other, I’d been wary about carpooling with her.

But for the most part, she sat in the passenger seat and didn’t say a word while she listened to her phone with earbuds.

Which meant that I could listen to whatever I wanted on the car radio and not talk back.

“They’re dead,” the Thor look-alike behind me confirmed, making me strain to hear him over the excitement in the bar around me.

“How did they die?” a breathy voice asked.

I felt a headache start to take root behind my brow.

God, did she talk like that all the time?

She sounded like she was exhaling her words.

That had to be exhausting.

“Yep, dead as a doornail,” Thoralike confirmed.

“Are you even listening to me?” I heard Teller growl.

I looked over at Teller and winced.

For a few seconds in time, I’d forgotten he was there.

I’d forgotten that I’d come here with the intention of getting food, drink, and entertainment in the form of people watching, and what I’d gotten was my ex sitting at the table with me because he just couldn’t leave it fucking be.

Then I shook my head. “No. I don’t see how this conversation can ever go up from where you’ve taken it down. I’m sorry.”

Teller growled in frustration. “Can you please let me explain?”

He started talking, and again, my mind wandered to the table behind me.

“My papa drove a truck nearly his entire life. And it drove my mom crazy being a trucker’s wife,” the man said, making me once again home in on his words. “One night, he came home from being out of town. Had some roses and a bottle of wine and only found us kids.”

I smacked my hand against my forehead, then turned around with a fuckin’ smile on my face.

Which, after the night I had, was fucking impressive seeing as I’d had to deal with Dick.

Well, his name wasn’t actually Dick. It was Teller. I’d just started calling him Dick when he’d started acting like one more often than not.