Crooked Crows by Elena Lawson

The music pulsedas I leaned forward on the couch to watch as Ava Jade collided with Bri’s backside, and the bitch turned feral. I had to admit, I was curious how she would react to the self-proclaimed queen of Briar Hall.

“Hey man,” a kid no more than sixteen stepped up onto the dais, blocking my view. “You think I could talk to—”

“No,” I growled. “Now get out of the fucking way.”

“But Grey said that maybe—”

“Move.”

The kid opened his mouth a third time, but one look from me silenced him and he bolted for the exit. Practically shaking.

“Dude, that was Jesse’s kid. He wants in,” Grey hollered. “He wants to take the trial.”

I shook my head, searching for the new girl again in the crowd. “He isn’t ready,” I retorted. “The kid was about to shit himself.”

I wasn’t wrong. And Grey didn’t argue. I wasn’t about to stick my neck out for some pipsqueak with Diesel when I knew full well he wouldn’t last a second in the trials. Besides, Dies didn’t take on kids. You had to be a legal adult to be initiated into the ranks.

Bri sneered something at Ava Jade, and I took in how her body shifted, the miniscule movements seeming second nature, putting her in a fighting stance whether she was aware of it or not.

Her file had been missing from the office when I went to have a look through it the other night after Randy’s send off, but that didn’t stop me. It took me a couple of days, but I now knew all there was to know about Ava Jade Mason.

She lived in a trailer park with her dad before he was killed. His very brief police report alluded to gang involvement, but it didn’t look like they were doing anything about it. I doubted they ever would.

Her mom was a mystery. It was noted in her files at Lennox High that she was no longer a point of contact, so I assumed she split.

Ava Jade wasn’t pictured in any of the yearbooks aside from the obligatory class photo each year which led me to believe she was a loner.

A loner who seemed to know how to handle herself, and who carried a blade. I wondered if she knew how to use it. Why she felt the need to carry it in class?

Bri turned her venom on Becca, but it was Ava I couldn’t peel my eyes away from. I’d already noticed her curves, despite the fact she liked to hide them beneath baggy sweaters and ripped jeans, but tonight…

Tonight she wasn’t hiding. In that dress, with everything she had on display, she was fucking taunting giants. She knew it, too. I saw the way her face changed when she noticed us watching. Flustered at first, but then rife with defiance as she began to dance.

My brow furrowed as she stiffened now, her body going rigid as she watched over her new roommate. When Bri launched herself at Becca, Ava Jade was primed and ready.

When her fist flew, sending Bri staggering back, my cock throbbed in my jeans.

Grey moved to stand, but I signaled him to stay put. I wanted to see how this played out. She had an audience now, even Rook was sitting up and taking notice, a gleam of appreciation in his dark stare. His cigarette forgotten, left to burn out between his fingers.

There would be no taking this back. Ava Jade was royally fucked.

Bye-bye, little sparrow.

In a move not even I could’ve anticipated, she fucking hit her again. As if once wasn’t enough to seal her fate. You didn’t mess up Gregory Moore’s daughter’s face and get away with it.

Bri’s nose shattered under Ava Jade’s fist on the second hit, spraying blood in an arc over her face. Somehow, the red warpaint suited her, and I ground my teeth to keep my body in check at her savage beauty.

“Jesus fuck,” Rook groaned, and I caught him pawing at the front of his jeans, practically salivating, his shoulders shaking with a shiver of rabid desire.

A hollow chasm gaped open in my stomach. That wasn’t good.

Ava Jade wasn’t what I thought, and I didn’t know if I should be as turned on as Rook, or even more wary of her than I already was. I hadn’t wanted something, someone, in a long time. Dolls broke too easily under pressure and the ones here were made of porcelain.

Ava Jade was made of something much stronger. Maybe not even a doll at all.

Would she break under my fingers? Would she shatter?

I’d been worried about what a girl like her could do to us, from that very first moment my brothers and I saw her. Their interest had me on guard, eager to get rid of her as soon as possible. My primal nature viewed her as a threat and my job had always been to eliminate those. To eliminate any possibility of distraction, but...

Bri fell to her knees, choking and spluttering. Ava Jade was on top of her in a second, ripping her head back to whisper something in her ear, and the fear on Bri’s face. If that wasn’t the most beautiful fucking thing I’d seen today…

What did she say to her?

For a second, I had to wonder if she’d use her blade. I knew she carried. I clocked it the very first day. Not because I saw it, or even its outline through her jeans. It was the way her fingers twitched low, toward her means of protection. The way her ankle hitched up when I stood to use the bathroom, just to get a better look at her. If she drew, I’d have no choice but to stop her.

My own hand inched to my gun, jaw tightening. Maybe we should stop this before it got any worse.

Bri’s tear-stained gaze lifted to us, pleading without the need for words. Hurt and anger brightening her dull brown eyes.

A sneer curled my upper lip, and she let her head hang, defeated.

“Should we do something?” Grey asked, hollering over the music.

I shook my head. “I’ll do it. You stay here, keep an eye.”

Becca pulled Ava away, and the pair weaved their way out. I let out a breath as they shouldered past awed onlookers as Bri did her best to look not like the bag of shit she clearly was. Batting away helping hands left and right with a scowl.

“Corvus,” Grey warned before I could leave. “Let me do it?”

I didn’t like the look on his face. The way his eyes darted to her and away, or how his brows were drawn, jaw clamped tight. He was...worried...about what I was going to do. To her.

The beast inside me stiffened, making my blood sizzle in my veins, but I didn’t let that show. Instead, I fixed Grey with an impassive stare.

Not for the first time, I questioned the truth of his excuse for vanishing last night. And for the too-perfect slicein his arm. He was keeping something from me. I had a feeling I knew exactly who it was.

“Nah,” I replied easily, searching his eyes for any betrayal of emotion. “Why don’t you shovel Bri off the floor? Looks like she might need a hand.”

It was easy enough to find them. The partygoers scattered like roaches from an exterminator as I passed, letting me catch up to them without needing to hurry a single step.

When I stepped onto the dock, any lingering people outside fled too, except for the two girls who hadn’t yet noticed I was trailing behind them.

Ava Jade tipped her head back and howled a laugh at the moon halfway down the dock while Becca continued trying to tug her along.

“Fuck,” I heard her curse, her body shuddering on a long sigh. “That felt good.”

Becca stopped short, yanked to a stop with Ava Jade. “Look, crazypants, that shit might fly in Lennox for keeping the wolves at bay, but it won’t here. You just started a war.”

Ava Jade leveled her stare on Becca and smirked, giving a one-shoulder shrug. “Worth it,” she said, and Becca shared in her next laugh.

“We’ll see how worth it you think it is on Monday. Come on, let’s get back.”

“Rebecca,” I growled and her back stiffened. “A word with your new friend, if you don’t mind.”

Her throat bobbed as she glanced at Ava Jade, whose full attention was squarely on me. Where it should be.

“Uh…” Becca started, her discomfort evident in the tension between her eyes. In her stilted movements.

“No thanks,” she answered, her icy stare narrowing to slits that would cut a lesser man down to the quick.

My lips twitched. “I wasn’t asking.”

“Corvus,” Becca started, “Bri was—”

“I don’t give two shits about Bri.”

Ava Jade looped her arm back through Becca’s, lifting her chin with a false smile. “We have somewhere to be.”

I shook my head. “You’re making a mistake.”

“Am I?”

Becca tugged her close and whispered something in her ear, prompting her to roll her eyes before pulling her arm back from her friend.

“Fine,” she gritted out through clenched teeth. “But I’m not going anywhere with you while you’re armed.”

Smart girl.

I stared at her, trying to read the truth in her pinched expression, but for once, came up empty handed. She was a wild card, this Ava Jade. I didn’t like that. Not one fucking bit.

“I’m not—”

“Don’t fucking patronize me,” she said, interrupting me. Heat licked up my neck, making my shoulders strain with the sudden urge to hit something. An urge I never let get the better of me, no matter how hard it tried to.

I closed the gap between us, sensing more than seeing the group gathering at the entrance to the pier at my back. She didn’t balk at my approach, even though I stood almost a full head taller than her in heels, and she wasn’t even that short to begin with. Maybe five-six.

I drew my gun from the back of my waistband and watched as her keen stare alighted on it, while her fingers jerked toward the hem of her dress.

Becca flinched when I passed the gun to her. “Go on,” I told her. “Take it. If there’s even a single scratch on it when you give it back…”

I left the punishment up to her imagination, keeping back a laugh as she grabbed it out of my grasp with two fingers, holding it as though it might explode if she weren’t careful. “Safety’s on, sweetheart,” I told her. “Maybe best to keep it out of sight, yeah?”

She swallowed hard before carefully setting it into her purse and stepping out of my way. She mouthed sorry to Ava Jade, and I swept an arm out for her to take the lead.

“You first,” she insisted, not budging an inch until I took the first step, guiding us down the dock and through the parked cars along the water’s edge. She kept up, only a few steps behind me. I could feel her tension like a rubber band stretched as far as it could go, waiting for its opening to snap.

We rounded the last car and stepped off the gravel and onto the dirt where a sheer rock face jutted up out of the earth, curving like a hand cupped around the edge of the lake. You could climb it from just down the trail. Jump in from the forty-foot height if you were brave enough.

It wasn’t exactly a thrill I was seeking tonight though as much as the silence and privacy the dark shadow of the cliffside would provide.

“Well, you got me out here, all alone. Congratulations. Now what the hell do you want?”

I cocked my head at her, not used to being spoken to that way by anyone, never mind a girl. I didn’t know whether I wanted to sew her lips shut for the offense or lick away the blood still staining a corner of her frowning mouth.

“Do you have any idea what you just did in there?”

“Thought you didn’t care?”

“I don’t.”

“You have a funny way of showing it.”

“Where were you last night?” I asked, changing tactics. Needing to clear my head.

A flicker of recognition danced over her eyes before they settled back to a glare.

“What?”

“Don’t patronize me,” I said, using her own words against her, but she didn’t squirm under the pressure of my accusation. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to Grey, would you? Seems he had a run-in with a particularly feisty tree branch.”

She crossed her arms, making her tits swell above the cut of her dress. They, too, were freckled with crimson, and I locked my jaw, grinding my teeth at the sight.

“I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe he needs glasses if he’s running into trees.”

A laugh got stuck in my throat, held back by the dam of my lips.

“Bri’s right, you know,” I uttered, side stepping her, forcing her to mirror my movements to keep the distance she was so set on maintaining between us. “You don’t belong at Briar Hall.”

“I don’t think you do either,” she muttered, seeming to regret the words once they’d vacated her lips.

I lifted a brow, my body hardening as I began to cage her in, making her back up toward the rough rockface. Not knowing if I wanted to see how those lips tasted or toss her over the bank and into the lake. Would she cut me, too, if I tried?

I might like that.

I couldn’t remember the last time I wasn’t able to make a decision. The uncertainty was foreign. Yet another thing I was quickly growing to hate.

Once I had her boxed against the cliff side, I decided. I’d see exactly what I was dealing with here. Either she’d fight, or she’d crumple.

Which would it be?

Ava gauged my move a moment before I made it, her hand reaching for the blade she had concealed beneath the hem of her dress as I rushed in. My fist closed around her wrist, trapping it to her thigh while I blocked a hit from the other, pinning it to the stone at her back.

She panted through a snarling mouth, trying to get her hand free. I squeezed, forcing her to drop the blade with a little grunt. I kicked it away and it ricocheted off the rock before sailing like a glimmering arrow over the edge of the bank and into the lake.

If I thought she was pissed before, she was furious now. She tried harder to get free of my grip. Her relentless struggle made me have to use my hips to pin her. My thickening cock pressing against the cool bite of metal zipper.

“You’re a monster,” she spat, her harsh tone and curled upper lip disguising the truth her body couldn’t hide from me. She was fighting the same indecision I was. Unsure if she wanted to fuck me or bite my head off.

She shivered as I leaned in, putting my mouth at her ear.

“You’re damn right I am.”

A bitter grin pulled at my lips. Fuck. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled.

“You should run, little sparrow. While you still can,” I warned, unsure I’d even give her the chance to if she tried.

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll swallow you whole.”

Her resistance waned and for the briefest second, her blistering cold stare settled on my mouth—before she heaved her hips forward, knocking me off balance.

I staggered back a step, licking my lips at the ache in my hip bone.

“If I can’t find it,” she hissed. “You owe me a new blade.”

She stalked past me like a panther, dark hair wild and blowing in a sudden gust of wind. She stopped for a second to tear the heels from her feet, tossing them to the side. Completely unbothered that her back was now to me. That if I wanted to, I could get my hands around that pretty neck and…

“Oh, and Corvus,” she added as she unfurled back to her full height. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She tossed me a wink over her shoulder before she dove, dress and all, into the lazy waves below, pushing herself deep into the black water to hunt for what she’d lost.