“Why are you telling me? You wouldn’t talk to Stud about my case because I wouldn’t give you permission.” Calder hadn’t been trying to convince Gavin to trust Diamond for no reason. Besides being a hell of a lawyer, she knew how to keep her mouth shut. She didn’t talk about other clients’ cases.

“Because, when I had an office in Jamestown, all my cases were here. Several of those cases were for the Destructors, and those include Crazy Bitch’s.” Diamond stepped to the side, motioning for him.

She lowered her voice to make sure no one in the offices could hear them. “When I talked to Crazy Bitch last night, she said she knew something didn’t feel right when the sheriff showed up. She said, as many times as she’s dealt with the cops, the sheriff has never responded to a call. She’s right. I grew up here. I’ve never dealt with him, either.

“He comes to work about ten and leaves about four. Anytime I’ve had to come to the station, he’s always in his office. Crazy Bitch said that when the deputy put her in his car, he told her that she hadn’t blown the stop sign.”

“Why would he tell her that?” Becoming indignant at Crazy Bitch’s treatment, he warily looked around the room to make sure no one could overhear their conversation.

“I think he did it to set her off. Anyone who has access to her rap sheet would know she has anger issues.”

“What kind of anger issues?”

“Nothing for you to worry about.” Diamond’s mouth closed tightly.

Her discussing Crazy Bitch’s record showed she felt he needed to know this to understand that Diamond believed Crazy Bitch’s traffic stop had been a setup.

“I agree. I may have seen a few of those issues.” Calder thought about the night she had goaded the rednecks into coming up to their hotel room. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“I don’t doubt you can. You have a few issues of your own.”

“That’s what makes us the perfect couple.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but you two definitely deserve one another.”

“You being sarcastic?” Him liking Diamond took a nosedive at her comment.

“Don’t look at me like that.” She gave him an encouraging smile. “I meant it as a compliment. There is no perfect couple. They each have their differences, like two pieces in a puzzle that fit together. But when you put them together, they fit. You and Crazy Bitch fit, like me and Knox fit.”

He solemnly stared at the door again. “I never felt like this before. I feel whole, as if a part of me has been missing, and now it’s suddenly there. I don’t know where it came from.”

“I understand.” Her eyes grew misty as she patted her barely recognizably pregnant belly. “Must be my hormones making me so sentimental.” She pressed her fingers to the corner of her eye.

“Do you know what you’re having yet?”

“You’re kidding, right? I don’t need an ultrasound to know it’s a boy. It’s Knox’s kid.”

The two of them laughed, breaking the moment of sharing their love for their partners as the door opened and Crazy Bitch was escorted out.

“I’ll be seeing you.” The sheriff gave her a threatening glare.

“Not if I see you first.” She was snapping her head back around when her eyes locked on his. “Hot thang! You didn’t forget me!” She ran toward him, her arms out.

Calder couldn’t help it; he laughed as she jumped into his waiting arms, wrapping her legs around his waist.

“I only saw you about thirty minutes ago.” He stroked her cheek with his.

“You and Killyama need to be more circumspect.”

Crazy Bitch turned her cheek away to glare at Diamond. “Don’t lift that snooty nose at me, girlfriend. Don’t act like you don’t jump Knox’s bones two or three times a day. All bitches are the same under the sheets.”

Calder broke the budding argument. “I see you have a new piece of jewelry.” He tapped her ankle as her legs slipped from around his waist.

She snorted. “As if anyone could keep me in town if I wanted to leave.”

Calder saw the sheriff fiddling with his handcuffs. “Let’s go before you talk yourself into being rearrested.”

“I need to get my purse. My phone is in there. How’d you come up with the money to bail me out?”

“Train.”

“That’s it? Just Train?”

“Yes.” Calder couldn’t understand why Crazy Bitch was beginning to look irritated.

“That lucky bitch!”

“Who?”

“Killyama.”

“I don’t understand,” Calder stated.

Crazy Bitch’s irritation cleared. She reached up to pat him on his cheek. “Never mind, hot thang. I still have her beat. You’re better looking.”

“Thanks… I think.”

“Let’s get your stuff. I need a nap.” Diamond tapped her foot to speed them up to the counter.

“Jeez, I’m coming. Being knocked up has turned you into a real bitch. Wait.” She came to a stop, putting a finger to her forehead. “You already were one.”

“OMG! Can we please leave?”

“Okay, okay. It’s my stuff.” Crazy Bitch leaned cockily against the counter, giving the deputy behind the counter an evil eye as he turned to get her belongings. “I need to get my phone so I can call Train and thank him.”

Diamond glanced down at her wristwatch. “I’d wait and call him later,” she said, looking back at her.

“Why?”

“Killyama promised him a special surprise for bailing you out of jail.”

“Huh?” Crazy Bitch’s face scrunched in a worried frown.

“I said…” Diamond repeated. “Killyama promised—”

“I heard you the first time. Hurry up!” Crazy Bitch slammed her hand down on the counter. “I need that phone.”

“What’s the hurry?” Calder moved closer to her, not wanting her to piss the deputy off.

“I have to save a life!” she yelled hysterically.

“Who?” Calder, Diamond, and the deputy asked as he came back to the counter with a plastic bin with her belongings.

“Penni.”

* * *

How long did it take to find a key?

Calder bit back the groan at the back of his throat. He had missed her over the last four days, and instead of wanting to come back to her apartment immediately, she had wanted to grab breakfast.

Crazy Bitch had sat next to him, teasing him the entire time, sometimes deliberately, like keeping her hand intimately on his thigh as they ate, or unconsciously when she licked a dollop of strawberry jelly from her bottom lip. On the ride to her apartment, she described what she wanted to do to him in detail. Every time he had to stop because of traffic or a red light had become a sexual torture. Now he had to watch her search for her apartment keys.

“You want me to find them?” he asked, bracing one hand on the doorjamb and laying the other one on her ass, squeezing it firmly.

“I got it.” Taking out her keys, Crazy Bitch slid the key in the door, turning it with a sharp twist that had his gut clenching.

Instead of opening the door, she turned around, resting her back against the door.

“How’s your dick?”

“Open the door and find out.”

Calder wasn’t about to ignore the invitation of her waiting lips. Leaning down, he licked her bottom one, tasting the strawberry jam she had enjoyed. Parting her lips, he searched for more, delving into her mouth with lust-filled intentions.

Crazy Bitch buried her hands in his hair; the crick in his neck echoed the pain in his dick.

“You need a haircut.”

“That isn’t all I need,” he moaned against her lips.

“What do you need, hot thang?” she murmured back seductively.

“I need to fuck you!”

“Then go inside!” a voice behind them groused as a woman passed them, going to the apartment next door.

Crazy Bitch’s soft laughter filled his mouth as she broke the kiss. “Sorry, Ollie.”

Her neighbor didn’t bother to say anything, going inside her apartment.

“Something wrong with your door?”

“No, why?”

“You haven’t opened it yet.”

“You haven’t said the magic words yet.” She wadded up his T-shirt, pulling him closer to her. He felt the pinpoint of her nipples beneath her thin top.

He swallowed hard, his cock swelling inside his jeans so much that he became worried the zipper would bust, and become a viral video of anyone passing by on the landing. “Please.”

“That’s not it.” She started to languorously rub her breasts against his chest.

Trying to come up with a word that would get her to open the door was beyond his capabilities when all he wanted to do was tear her clothes off and fuck her.

“You need a hint?” She gripped his cock through the denim of his jeans.

“Fuck me!”

“Wow. Give the man a cigar.” She twisted the doorknob behind her back, letting the door fall open behind her.

Calder lifted her up by her waist, carrying her into the apartment and using his foot to swing the door closed.

“I have two words for you,” he grunted out, turning her around to face her forward as he pushed his hips into her ass. “Bend over.”

Toppling her over the back of her couch, he slid his hand to her hips to jerk her jeans and panties down, baring her ass.

When she would have risen up, he smacked one luscious cheek.

“Motherfucker!” she screamed, trying to wiggle out of his hold.

“That’s for not telling me about Sam.” He placed a firm hand on her back, keeping her exactly where he wanted her. “Diamond said you got that mark on your forehead by trying to bang your head through a steel door. That true?”

“Fuck you!”

Another smack landed on her ass.

“That’s in the same spot!” she bellowed.

“Good. That’s where I was aiming it.” He deftly kept her immobile as a series of smacks turned her cheek a rosy red.

“What are those for?” she screeched.

“For the crick in my neck. I nearly killed myself four times getting here when Stud texted me that you had been arrested and that you resisted.”

“I was framed!”

He spanked her again.

“Ouch! That one hurt!”

“Do you know how frightened I was for you? Do you?”

She quit trying to get away from him. “No.”

“I’ve been in jail. Do you not see the rips in your T-shirt and jeans?” He leaned over her back, placing kisses down her spine. “How can I catch you if I’m not there?”

“I don’t need you to catch me.”

Calder wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard her voice tremble.

“Maybe I need you to catch me. You think of that when you were hurting yourself?”

“No,” she acknowledged.

This time, he was sure her voice was trembling.

“Well, I do. If anything happens to you, it happens to me.” He stroked over the curve of her ass before slipping inside the crack to find the heated warmth of her pussy. He expertly strummed her engorged clit.

“Omph!”

“What did you say?”

Crazy Bitch lifted her head from the couch. “I said, do that again!”

“Oh, baby, I am. I’m going to fuck you so hard that the next time a cop tells you to get in the back of the car, you’ll say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

“That is go—ouch!”

“What did you say?” he asked, lifting his thumb from her clit.

“Nothing! I didn’t say a damn thing!”

“I didn’t think so.” He moved his fingers to another target, sliding roughly inside her wet pussy and fucking her with them until her hands splayed out on the couch, trying to give herself traction so she could fuck back against him. He didn’t let her have it. Keeping her off balance, he controlled her by keeping her feet off the floor, holding her farther over the back of the couch.

“You know, about halfway from Lexington… Did I mention the crick in my neck?”

“Yes!”

“Anyway, halfway from Lexington, it dawns on me that I may have given you the wrong impression. You think I am a gentleman, that you can just run over me. Did I give you that impression?”

He listened intently, not hearing a peep from her.

“I see that I was right. Anyway, I made two decisions on the rest of the ride, that if I was going to pursue a relationship with you, I was either going to get a chiropractor, or make you realize that every time you decide to be a pain in my neck, you’re going to feel my pain on your ass. Do you feel that’s fair?”

“Not really,” she mumbled, raising her shoulders up as she tried to look back at him.

He let his fingers slip out of her cunt, letting her see that he was about to spank her again.

“Yes! Yes, it’s fair!”

“Good. I’m glad we can see eye-to-your-ass that this will make us both happier.”

Calder used the hand he was about to spank her with to reach into his back pocket, taking out his wallet. Still keeping a firm hand on her back, he used her back to open his wallet and take out a condom. Letting the wallet fall down to the couch, he then used his teeth to tear the wrapper while using his free hand to unzip and tug his jeans down.

“You want to know what will make me happy?” Crazy Bitch pushed her ass backward, jiggling her still pink ass cheek.

Finally managing to cover his cock, he aimed his dick at her opening, driving inside with a hard plunge that had him gritting his teeth.

“Fuck!”

“That’s it! Oh, God! Do that again!”

It took all his willpower to slide his dick back out of her opening, just letting the tip remain inside, then driving it forward again higher. Repeating the motion, he rhythmically set a pace that stroked the fire in his balls and had her whimpers escalating into moans.

Lifting her higher over the couch, he was able to watch his cock slide into her silky pussy, his stomach clenching at the erotic sight.

The pleasure at seeing his hands holding her ass open as he fucked her made every miserable night he had spent in prison worth every minute. Hell, every minute of his life was worth this moment in time. Having her spread before him as he drove into her depths, trying to reach for something he had never managed to reach before, to catch Crazy Bitch before she could run out of his reach, to reach the point where a mountaintop soared over the land and met the sky.

He thrust deeper and higher, his hips surging forward and backward, trying to slow her down with his hands as he climbed faster. The desire tingled at the base of his cock, traveling along his length until he could no longer tell where he began and she ended, fusing them together as he felt her muscles rippling as she climaxed. He was determined to keep his promise.

He tumbled down, disappearing in a free-fall that neither would be capable of surviving intact.

“Damn. Next time I fuck you, I’ll say my prayers.”

Calder grinned, helping her off the back of the couch. “It was that good?”

She shakily pushed her hair back from a flushed face. “Hot thang, it was so good you should come with a warning.”

“You’re the one who should have come with a warning.”

“What would it say?”

Calder loved it when they bantered back and forth. It was then she would slip out of that armor she hid behind to have fun.

“Continual use will result in a stiff neck and a sore dick.”

She saucily took off her T-shirt, throwing it over her shoulder toward the couch, following it with a wispy bra that didn’t quite make it, hanging drunkenly over the back before dropping to the floor.

“I thought you said your dick was better?”

He grinned, taking off his own T-shirt and throwing it toward the couch with hers. “I said continual use, sweet cheeks. We’re just getting started.”