Wanted: A Bad Boy Romance

WANTED

A
Bad Boy Romance

MAYA
HAWK

*
COPYRIGHT 2015 MAYA HAWK * ALL RIGHTS RESERVED *

All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in
any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in
or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s
rights. Purchase only authorized editions through Amazon.
 

This is a
work of pure fiction. Names, places, and incidents are solely a product of the
author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
businesses, events, or locations is coincidental and unintended.

To
my readers –

Completely
awed and inspired by your rabid support with my first novel.

This
one’s for you.

Maya

Also by Maya

PIERCED

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DESCRIPTION

JORDANA

I don’t know why bad things happen to good people, and I
don’t know what makes good people do bad things. All I know is my past and
future intersected the day I met Titan Blackstone. He’s aloof and cryptic, cold
and unfeeling. We’re cut from two entirely different cloths. I’m patient and
forgiving. He’s distant and callous.

I’m intrigued. Confused. Awestruck. Overwhelmed with sheer
infatuation. Obsessing over the one thing I can’t have.

And yet I’m drawn like a moth to his flame, addicted to the
burn because it’s the only thing that makes me feel alive.

TITAN

I’m damaged goods, baby. Bitter. Angry.
A convicted
felon on a warpath.

I have no intentions of changing for anyone, and looking out
for number one is my only priority.

Five years locked up and the first thing I see on the other
side is her - some goody-two shoes parole-office intern attempting to satisfy
her newly discovered rebellious side with a taste of bad boy.

She doesn’t belong in my world but she’s as stubborn as she
is gorgeous, and I kind of like the way she makes me feel…

Wanted.

But I’m a man on a mission. I have business to attend to now
that I’m free, and if Jordana’s smart, she’ll move on. But if I’m smart, I’ll
never let her go…

AUTHOR’S NOTE
:
This is a full-length, standalone romance with HEA and no cliffhanger.

Love,

Maya

“Inmate Titan Blackstone. Roll
up.”

I rise from the flat mattress
I’ve called home for the last five years and stand back as the corrections
officer unlocks my cell. My fists clench at my sides, but I’m not angry. I’m
not even nervous.

I’m ready.

They say being locked away gives
a man time to think. I was supposed to spend those years reflecting on the pain
and suffering I’d caused. Instead I spent that time ruminating on the pain and
suffering my victim caused my family.

My rage burned harder, faster, and
deeper than ever with each passing day behind bars. Being locked up like a
caged animal only intensified it. Years of pumping iron and fighting for status
and territory in the yard have made me an even more brutal force to be reckoned
with. My jumpsuit barely contains my steel barrel chest and my shoulders have
hardened like smooth stone.

I didn’t sleep at all last night.
Then again, I rarely sleep.

“You have any dress outs?”
Another correction officer asks as we approach receiving and discharge. Her
dark beady eyes offer neither sympathy nor excitement as she stares down from
behind wire-rim glasses. This is just another day in the office for her, but
for me, this is where everything changes.

The beginning
of an end.

“No,” I say, quite positive my
father, Dr. Lewis Blackstone, hasn’t taken time from his busy surgical schedule
to shop for release-day clothes for me.

Another C.O. approaches from
behind with a plastic bag of clothes. “You can wear these.”

“Do you have a ride?” the first
C.O. asks, signing a white form and sliding it across the counter toward me.
“Sign here.”

“I called my dad last week. He
said he’d send someone.”

“We can provide you with a bus
ticket if you need a ride,” she says, taking the paper and tearing off the
carbon copy. She hands me a packet with my name and inmate number scribbled on
top. “Your parole officer’s information is inside. He’ll be contacting you to
set up a meeting sometime this week.”

A guard by the doorway peers at
me from his perch, his hands resting on his duty belt. He lifts his thick-knuckled
fingers and curls them in his direction, motioning for me to head his way.

“You can change in there.” He
motions toward a small bathroom. “Your ride is here.”

I glance out the reinforced
window expecting to see a taxi sent by my father. Instead I see a raven-haired
girl sitting in a bright red Toyota Corolla.

“Your girlfriend?” he asks, like
it’s any of his business. The guards are invasive like that. Privacy isn’t
allowed here in any shape or form. His lips inch into a dirty smile.

The last thing I need to divulge
right now is that I have no fucking idea who this woman is.

He shakes his head and wears his
smug half-smile like it’s part of his shit-brown uniform.

“She said she’s here to pick up
Titan Blackstone. You’re Titan Blackstone,” he says.

I head into the bathroom and
change into the sack of donated clothes I’ve been provided: tight, torn blue
jeans, a white wife-beater, and a rainbow-hued Hawaiian button down.

You’ve
got to be fucking kidding me.

I swallow the hard ball of pride
that’s lodged itself into my throat and suck it up. My dignity will have to
make itself known by the way I walk, the way I carry myself. Fuck this Hawaiian
shirt. It’s coming off the second I get off the grounds.

The guard stifles a smile the
second I emerge. I’d punch him across his stupid mouth if I weren’t minutes
away from tasting freedom. He walks me out to the pick up lane, where the dark
haired girl climbs out of her car and walks around to meet us. I’ve never seen
this broad in my life, but damn if it takes every ounce of me not to get hard
right here, right now because she’s fucking sex on legs.

And it’s not because I haven’t
seen a fuckable woman in five long years. This chick is straight up sexy as
hell.
Full, juicy lips.
Shiny, black
hair that drips down her deep caramel shoulders.
Dark,
almond-shaped eyes.
She’s the whole package with a side of tits, hips,
and ass.

I lick my lips and drink her in
like a shameless manwhore who hasn’t felt the touch of a woman in far too long.
A hint of her smooth stomach peeks out from between her tank top and the top of
her jeans, and her bra hardly contains her generous cleavage.

If I were a recovering crack
addict, this woman would make me relapse so hard.

“I’m Jordana,” she says,
extending her hand like we’re in some sort of job interview. She pulls her
shoulders back, inadvertently pressing her tits out to say ‘hello’ as well.
“Your stepsister.”

Stepsister?

The guard’s eyes dart from her
face to mine and back.

“Ah, yes. I’ve heard about you,”
I lie. “Dad mentioned you the last time we talked.”

I glance out to the busy highway
where cars zip past. I want to be there.
In the car.
Leaving this place. I’ll worry about the details of my father’s new marriage in
a moment. The last thing I need is this guard to throw a wrench in my plan by
raising a stink about the fact that I’m leaving with a complete stranger.

Everything’s a red fucking flag
to these ass hats.

“Better be going,” I say,
brushing past her and reaching for the passenger handle of her Toyota. She
skips around back and climbs in next to me. My hand finds the recline lever,
and I sit back, inhaling a lungful of the coconut car freshener wafting from
the palm tree hanging from her rear-view mirror. It’s nice to smell something
that isn’t bleach or must or the dirty cock and balls of my cellmate.

“Buckle up,” she says with a
smile, revealing a row of perfectly straight, white teeth. She’s sweet. Too
fucking sweet. Filled with saccharine, butterflies, and rainbows. “Lewis talks
about you all the time.”

She pulls out of the pick up lane,
flies through a green light, and merges onto the highway.

“You don’t have to lie,” I say.
“What was your name again?”

“Jordana.” She says it slowly,
like, “Jor…dan…uh.”

“Dad didn’t tell me he got
married.” My fingers twitch.

Mom and Taylor died five years
ago. I suppose he had to move on, but it would’ve been nice to get a heads up
from the bastard.

“Well, they’re not technically
married. Not yet. They’re engaged,” Jordana turns toward me, cocking her head
to the side like an adorable cheerleader.

“Since when?”

She glances back toward the road.
“It was last year. Maybe around Christmas?”

The fifth anniversary of Mom and Taylor’s deaths.
How poignant.

“When’s the wedding?” Not that I
care, but it’d be nice to know these kinds of things.

She lifts a single shoulder.
“Soon? I don’t know. They’re obsessed with each other. I’m not exactly thrilled
about this whole thing either, just so you know. But I’ve never seen her so
happy, and it’s been a rough few years for her, so I don’t say much about it.”

“What’s your mom’s name?” I ask,
rolling down the window and basking in the fresh air and sunshine. I’d stick my
head out the window like a dog, but I’m too cool for that shit.

“Laticia,” she says. “My mom’s a
professor at Holy Hope College. Our parents met in a support group for the
grieving. Specifically for people who’ve lost children.”

She says it carefully but
matter-of-factly. I don’t sense rage or anger behind her words, which tells me
she’s the kind of girl who lets life happen to her and doesn’t fight back.
 

I’ve got news for her. I’m a
fighter. I fight for what I believe in. I refuse to lie down and let life fuck
me in the ass. Didn’t do it in prison, sure as hell not doing it on the
outside.

“Who’d you lose?” I don’t have
time to choose my words carefully, like she does.

Her hands grip the steering wheel
and she pulls in a quick breath. “My brother. Jerome. He was beaten outside a
bar a few year ago. We’re not sure if it was a hate crime or a random act of
violence, but no one’s been able to find the perpetrator.”

“Sorry.” I hate that word. It’s
too light.
Not nearly heavy enough to numb the sting.

“I’m sorry about your mom and
sister,” she says, pressing her lips together. “Your dad has a whole notebook
full of articles. He has the ones about you too. About what you did.”

“He’s lucky I didn’t kill the
sorry bastard.”

It was my intention. I wanted to
kill the
drunk
son of a bitch who crashed into my mom
and sister on their way home from the mall Christmas Eve. I’ll never forget
looking into his eyes as he begged for his life. I offered him one final blow,
his face already blackened, bruised, and bloody, and dropped him on the frozen
concrete outside the local bar he’d just crawled out of after I stalked him
like a lion hunting a gazelle.

He was awaiting trial for
vehicular homicide, released on bail. Rumor had it he was going to serve thirty
years and be free as a bird, less if he was released for good behavior. A
lifetime behind bars never would’ve been enough. Our state has a track record
of being particularly easy on drunk drivers. I consider it a fault line, a
crack in the system.

“He has a scrapbook of
clippings?” I ask. It doesn’t sound like my father.

Jordana nods. “Several. He was
kind of obsessed. Now he’s just kind of…obsessed with my mom.”

I imagine my father putting in
his twelve hours at the hospital, coming home to a dinner of takeout and the
echoes of an empty house once filled with family, and
pouring
over newspaper articles.

Maybe it helped him bide the
time.

“My mom was the same way when my
brother was killed,” Jordana says. “She’s got at least five binders about
Jerome. Any newspaper or
internet
article she could
find, she’d put in there. They’re two of a kind, our parents.”

I place my hand up. I don’t want
to hear another word about how perfect Laticia is for my father.

I catch a glimpse of the bright
yellow of my sleeve and suddenly remember how I look. My fingers work the
buttons of the Hawaiian hot mess I’m wearing until I’m free. Yanking it off my
shoulders, I toss it out the window, watching in the side mirror as it flits
and rolls down the highway and stops between a
thicket
of weeds.

“Why’d you do that? You looked
really good in yellow.” Jordana bites away a smile. And then I catch her gaze
falling toward my shoulders before snapping back toward the road.

Much better.

We merge onto a stretch of
highway I haven’t seen in years. In twenty-seven minutes, we’ll be pulling into
the tree-lined drive of the Blackstone residence.

Jordana reaches for the knob of
the radio, tuning it to some pop station that makes my ears want to bleed. The
second her hand returns to the wheel, I lean over and change it.

“Hey,” she says. Her hand shoots
to mine, covering my knuckles with her delicate palm. Her nails are colored in
some bubblegum pink color that reminds me of Pepto-Bismol. “I liked that song.”

“I didn’t.”

I lean back, pressing my shoulder
against the glass of the passenger door and staring out at the Kansas cornfields
that pass us by.

I expect her to switch the
station back, but she doesn’t. She’s probably feeling sorry for me, remembering
I haven’t had access to a lot of things over the last five years. I don’t like
the way her pitied stare weighs me down.

“Stop feeling sorry for me.” I
clear my throat.

She whips toward me, her dark
hair cascading down her bare shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

“I can feel it.” I shake my head.
“I can feel you feeling sorry for me. Don’t. Just…don’t. I changed your
station. You should turn it back.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. When someone
disrespects you, you shouldn’t take it lying down.”

Jordana laughs. “It was a song.
I’m sure I have it on my iPhone. I can listen to it whenever I want.”

“Don’t be a pushover, Joanna.”

“Jordana.”

“Whatever your name is.”

“Now that was rude.” She huffs as
she angles her nose up into the air.

I tilt my head, a shit-eating
grin consuming my face. The only names I care to learn are the ones attached to
a beautiful pussy.

God,
I’d kill for some fucking pussy right now.

Hot.

Tight.

Wet.

Addictive in every possible way.

It’s not right to deprive a
twenty-something man with a sex drive higher than fuck for five years.