Crooked Crows by Elena Lawson

I tookanother swallow of my whiskey, rolling my neck as the warm burn of it forced my muscles to relax even with the thud of the music rattling my bones. I was still a bit hard from the new girl’s spectacle. She was fucking brilliant.

A goddess.

I’d admit it, I was intrigued by her coarse nature from the start, but now…

Fuck.

My cock twitched in my jeans, re-hardening at the mental image of her covered in blood. The pattern of it splattered over her sharp cheeks. How she didn’t even fucking flinch as it sprayed over her. The way her eyes went hyper focused, and also blank as she hit Brianna for the second time. Like she didn’t even realize she’d done it until it was too late for her to stop herself.

I shivered, my fist clenching and unclenching until I curled it around the arm of the weathered sofa to stop the habit, my teeth twisting my lip ring instead.

I wanted her.

My jaw twitched, resisting the admission.

Another swig of whiskey and the flask was empty. Damn.

Grey knocked his knuckles on my shin, and I followed his line of sight to the door, where Corvus was making his way back inside.

That was quick.

Corvus’ brows were pulled tightly together, shadowing his deep-set eyes as he stormed through the crowd. He cast a curious stare at Brianna as her friends tried to help her clean the blood from her face near the punch bowl, before he jumped up onto the dais.

He gave Grey a look before running his tongue over his teeth, clearly still inside his own head. I knew that look. It was the one he got when he was trying to plan out a particularly difficult job. His mechanical mind going over every option. Every possibility. Finding ways to control the situation in our favor.

Exhausting.

I’d rather have one of them shoot me in the head than have my every move planned out to within an inch of error. That wasn’t living. Where was the thrill in that? Where was the fire?

But Corvus needed that control. It was why Grey and I didn’t often challenge the fucker. If he didn’t have his control, he got so goddamned nasty that neither of us could stand to be around him.

So he made plans. And we mostly followed them. Sometimes ruined them. It was a tossup on any given day.

“You scare her away?” I called to him over the music, not really giving a shit if he had, but curious all the same. She’d only just sunk her fangs in, gotten my interest. I didn’t really want her gone, I realized. She was too interesting.

A spec of vivid color on the otherwise dull canvas of my life.

“Not fucking likely,” Grey replied, securing himself another scowl from Corv.

Corvus said something I didn’t catch over the music, and I gestured that it was too loud. “Can’t hear you, Brother,” I hollered, lifting a hand to signal the pledge standing down at the end of the dais to get me more whiskey.

He rushed over, catching the flask when I tossed it to him. “Fill it,” I ordered and he vanished, lost in the crowd on his way to the tiny, locked office where we kept some personals.

“She’s going to be fucking trouble,” Corvus said, and I was left piecing together his grumbled words through the music.

A vein in his temple throbbed, and he tightened his jaw as he turned away from us, signaling the two chaps by the door to keep an eye out. They were seniors at Briar Hall. Two in a small group of five that wanted an in with Diesel.

They knew the best way to do that was through Corvus. They did what we wanted, when we wanted, on a fucking prayer that we’d give them the in they so desperately wanted.

One of them might even be worthy of the opportunity. The others were not.

Corvus jerked his head toward the Red Room for us to follow.

My buzz intensified as I stood from the sofa and I reveled in the staticky numbness, following my brothers through the double doors.

Red tinted light played over naked bodies as people fucked on every available surface. The sounds of their ecstasy and pain blotted out the music as the doors shut behind us, mingling with the wet slap of bodies on bodies and lips wrapped around cocks and tongues toying with clits.

My feet unconsciously drew me toward the girl three guys had strapped to the spinning table. One of them pounded mercilessly between her legs while the other choked her with his cock at the opposite end. Her throat visibly swelling with each of his thrusts.

A third guy leaned over her tits, snorting a line of blow from the tops of each mound. I bristled, my eye twitching at the sight.

I was stopped short when Grey pulled at the back of my shirt. “Focus,” he said.

“Out,” Corvus thundered, his hulking frame seeming to grow in the red lights like a shadow come to life.

I drew out a cigarette, lighting it and inhaling deeply as the fucking stopped all at once and heads swiveled to the door.

Fun ruined.

“I said get the fuck out!” Corvus bellowed and the nude statues frozen mid-fuck burst into action, gathering up clothes and shoes, rushing to remove strap-on dicks and unstrap people from the various devices stationed down the hall-like room.

I watched the cocaine slip from the woman’s tits as she was unstrapped and ground my teeth as the phantom taste of it burned at the back of my throat. I finished my cigarette in the second inhale, dragging it all the way down to the butt before dropping it to stomp on its carcass. The need mellowed, at least for the moment.

The few red lights affixed to the low ceiling made the naked bodies look like cattle being prodded through a narrow corridor as we stepped out of the way for them to leave like they were told.

My fingers found a pretty throat, locking around it before the girl who’d been strapped to the table could escape. She gasped, her baby blue eyes going wide as she took me in, her body going rigid.

“Rook,” Corvus warned as I leaned in, inhaling the sweet aroma of fear and arousal on her still mostly naked body. I bent, dragging my tongue over the remains of the blow on her tits with a groan.

“Wait outside,” I told her, licking my lips. “This won’t take long.”

Someone needed to take care of the ache in my jeans.

She managed a nod and tried to swallow past the dam of my palm pressing against her windpipe. A taste of what she was in for. She gasped as I released her, and she scrambled out the door, uncaring that she dropped her panties.

The doors sealed out enough of the loud music and raucous shouts from the crowd outside that we could speak without shouting or being heard in here. I sighed, leaning against the black-painted wall to cross my arms.

“What’s up, Brother?” I asked him, my attention briefly pulled out the window, checking to see if that little rat was back with my whiskey yet.

“That girl is going to be a problem,” he repeated, huffing as he tipped his head up to the ceiling. The red lights deepened the shadows beneath his eyes, exposing the exhaustion he was trying hard to hide.

Even half drunk, it was easy to tell. He was my brother. I didn’t have to cut him open to know what I’d find inside. We were made of the same stuff, just different flavors.

Grey’s gaze roved over our brother, a knot forming between his brows. “Man, I think you just need to get some sleep. You know how you get when—”

“I don’t need fucking sleep,” he snapped, stepping up to Grey in a way that would’ve made him reel back a year ago. “I’m fine.”

Corvus began to pace, his eyes shifting over the floor at his feet like it might hold an answer he was looking for. “She’s got to be part of a gang,” he muttered. “Maybe the Aces? Kings maybe since she’s from Lennox? Planted here to keep an eye on us? I’ve looked into her and there’s no evidence to support the theory but she’s...it would just make the most sense.”

Not surprising that he’d already dug into her past. I should’ve guessed he would.

I considered what he was saying, casting her in a rival’s role in my head, but the image wouldn’t stick. It wasn’t impossible for her to be a member of a gang. Rare for a woman, definitely, especially one so young, but not impossible.

Diesel’s wife had been a full member of the Saints. And apparently, she was the most brutal of them all. Quietly deadly. A snake in the grass. How I wished I could’ve met her.

There was a woman in the Lodi chapter, too, but she was nearing thirty and had earned her in when she put herself between a bullet and Damien St. Vincent. One of the original three Saints.

“She isn’t part of a gang,” Grey said, making Corvus stop pacing to glare up at him.

“How would you know that?” he demanded.

Grey shrugged. “I just do.”

He was growing some balls. Fuck. Didn’t think he had it in him.

“And she won’t be a problem,” Grey continued. “Not if we can get her on our side.”

“You’re fucking serious?” Corvus scoffed, scrubbing a palm over his chin. When Grey didn’t budge, staring down our brother with a give-me-one-reason-why-not look, Corvus ground his teeth. “Even if we wanted that, her dad was killed by the Kings. She’s not interested in having anything to do with us. Or any other gang.”

Hmmm.

Maybe Grey was onto something.

We didn’t need to bring her in, and judging by the look on Corvus’ face that wasn’t an option, but maybe…

“Leverage then,” I said, kicking off the wall to join Corvus and Grey at the middle of the floor. Thinking through the problem as best I could with my brain swimming in whiskey. If we could control her then whatever threat Corvus insisted she posed would be neutralized. We could go back to business as usual. And maybe get a little something extra in the deal.

“We don’t need to bring her in, we just need some leverage.”

Corvus’ brows furrowed.

“Control,” I added, speaking his language. “Give the dog a bone.”

Grey’s lips pressed into a tight line, but Corvus was intrigued.

“What the fuck are you saying Rook?”

“I’m saying we help her out. She just made a huge mistake with Brianna Moore. What if we cleaned it up for her? And in exchange, we get her docile obedience. You get to keep your reign of terror at Bitch Hall, and we get a new pet.”

I let my proposition sink in, picturing Ava Jade’s face contorted with pain and pleasure as I tore her sweet cunt to shreds, as I made her scream…

I swallowed, leveling my stare on Corvus. “I might even share her,” I joked, smirking now. I liked this idea.

“If there’s anything left when you’re done with her,” Grey muttered, seeming wholly uninterested in this plan. I thought he’d be all for it. He was clearly into her. He spent the entire hour of homeroom staring at her back like he could will her to want him as much as he so obviously craved her.

I may not have been as attentive as Corvus, but people were easy to read. And Grey had always been an open book.

Corvus brooded silently as he considered my idea, shifting from foot to foot.

They wouldn’t blackmail her for sex, which really was a shame, but then again any of us could get that whenever and wherever we wanted. We hadn’t had a drudge in a while, though, and I was willing to bet the idea of controlling the uncontrollable was right up my brother’s alley.

“Awe come on, Brother,” I pushed. “You can’t tell me you aren’t at all interested. I see the way you’ve been watching her. I bet you’d like to have her play fetch for you.”

Corvus was more difficult to read than Grey, but his obsession was clear from the start, and it’d only gotten worse in the week that she’d been here.

His jaw tightened.

It seemed I’d misread him, too.

“Or maybe I’ve read you wrong,” I baited him. “If you aren’t interested at all then at least don’t spoil the fun for the rest of us.”

“She won’t go for it,” Grey warned, and I knew he was probably right. I had to admit, I’d be disappointed if she did.

I shrugged. “Didn’t know we were planning on giving her a choice.”

After another few seconds of thought, Corvus lifted his chin, fixing Grey with one of his rare expressions of support. “You good with this?” he asked. “Bri will shit a fucking brick.”

I grinned darkly to myself, knowing damn well she would. But she wouldn’t deny us if we told her not to breathe a word of what Ava did here tonight. If we told her to lie about what happened. Keep it hush. Grey would bear the burden of this call, though.

No more heiress pussy.

And he would be the one who had to deal with her hysterical ass when she realized that we’d chosen to protect this new girl over her. No matter the reason. Unlikely that he’d give her one anyway.

Grey nodded solemnly. “Bri was just a decent lay who happened to have connections we needed last summer. It should’ve ended a long time ago.”

He wasn’t fucking wrong there.

Corv and I had been telling him as much for months.

I bristled with anticipation, waiting for Corvus to give the word.

His gaze slid back to me, calculating, trying to read my intent.

I gave him nothing.

“We’ll try it your way,” he decided, and I let a fresh smile slither over my lips. It was the closest thing to an admission we would get from Corv that he wanted the girl, too. At his beck and call. Submitting to his every whim. That’s how he liked them.

“Don’t look so smug,” he growled at me before turning to face Grey again. “Go find Bri before she calls the fucking cops.”