His Little Bird: The Metal Crows MC

003 - Fiery And Innocent

CADE

I told myself I gave her the jacket because she was shivering.

That's half true. The other half is that the rain had beaded on the swell of her large t**s like pearls on smooth, golden skin, and a man can only be so much of a gentleman before the Lord tests him. Eight years ago she was a skinny kid with a sketchbook and a glare that was my main source of amusement at the time.

Skin and bones and eyes so fiery and innocent I just wanted to lock her up and keep her safe so she'd never be tainted by what went on in the club.

I haven't seen her in eight whole years.

Now she's a body the brothers back home would've been rubbing one out over for a month, shoved into a feathered costume that should be illegal in at least six states.

With intense brown eyes that roved down my body with heat…not the innocent little crush I’d found funny years ago…this was a woman looking at a man she found attractive.

She's also Ace's little sister, so I'd rather chew glass than think about it.

I put the thoughts in a box and nail it shut, because the fucker running toward us has just stopped dead, and he's looking at my jacket on her like it's his property.

He's tall, I'll give him that. Big but not as big as me, green-eyed, with a pretty-boy face that's probably never taken a punch. Drunk, high, and still working up the nerve to open his mouth. Wonderful. I love a talker.

I recognize him immediately as the bastard Ace always complains about over the phone when he talks about his sister. She's engaged to the i***t if I'm not mistaken.

Or was, from the look of things.

"Clover." His eyes slide over me and back to her. "Who the f**k is this?"

She doesn't answer. Her chin is up, but her shoulders are curled in under my leather.

"Oh, I get it." He laughs, it sounds grating as f**k. "That's why you didn't cry harder. You've been sleeping around behind my back, haven't you? Two-timing me with some…some biker trash!"

Biker trash. I roll that around and decide I'm flattered.

"Was it you?" I ask, mild as milk as I watched his twitching fingers for a few seconds. "The marks on her arm. Were those your hands?"

He ignores it, which is an answer. "Man, don't fall for her schemes. She's a liar. She's been playing you the same way she played me, and I bet she fed you some sad story, right? Whatever. She's two-timing trash, always has been. She likes it when multiple men f**k her all at once, you know that? The more the better."

Behind me, a sound cracks out of her. A small, choked sob, the kind a person swallows and can't.

I turn my head.

Her face has gone white under the streetlight. Her eyes are fixed on nothing, wide and hollow, like she's standing somewhere else entirely, somewhere I can't see and she can't leave. I've seen men come back from bad places with that look. I've never seen it on her, and I don't understand it. I just know it takes my blood from a simmer to a boil.

I inhaled sharply to keep myself from grabbing her shoulders as shaking some answers out of her.

Instead, I turn back to the fucker, who still has his mouth open, dying to keep going.

"Didn't your daddy ever teach you how to speak to a woman?"

"What?" A confused blink.

My fist meets his nose before the word finishes leaving it.

The crack is wet and satisfying, and blood bursts down his chin and onto his shirt. He folds with a howl, hands flying to his face, and the dark stain spreading down the front of his jeans tells me he's gone and pissed himself too. Spineless little s**t.

Tiny fingers clamp around my arm and yank.

"Stop! Cade, stop, please." Clover is tugging at me with both hands, tears running down her face again. "Don't hurt him. Please, we should just go."

Don't hurt him.

I stare down at her. She's crying for this? For the tall, pretty, piss-soaked fool bleeding in the gutter, who just called her every filthy thing he could think of? Irritation claws up my spine, it's hot, uncomfortable and ridiculously ugly.

I stalk to the bike, yank the spare helmet out of the saddlebag, and jam it onto her head with a hell of a lot more force than necessary. She squeaks. I pretend not to hear it.

I swing on. She climbs up behind me, stiff and silent, bare thighs cold against my jeans, arms barely touching my waist.

"Seventy-four Alder Lane," she says, muffled and miserable. "It's twenty minutes from..."

"We're not going to your apartment." I start the engine. "We're going to Ace's."

"No, I want to go home. Cade..."

"Keep arguing, Little Bird, and I'll go back down there and crack that pretty-boy skull of your boyfriend's against the pavement." I glance over my shoulder. "So sit still and keep that pretty little ass where it is."

She goes rigid. I take that as a yes.

The bike tears away from the curb. Wind and rain whip against my face, and her arms lock around my waist, grudging and tight, her breath warm against my back. A muttered word reaches me over the engine, and I catch most of it.

"...kidnapper."

I almost laugh. It dies halfway.

With everything going on with Ace, the real reason I came to LA is the woman clinging to my back, hating me for it.

She has no f*****g idea.