Bad Boy Criminal: The Novel

C
opyright © BAD BOY CRIMINAL
, The Novel 2016 by Olivia Long    

A
ll rights reserved
. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.    

O
RIGINALLY
published
as a seven part serial called Bad Boy Criminal by Olivia Hawthorne. This is the full serial plus over 6000 words of bonus material, so enjoy their dirty, beautiful story from front to back.    

C
ONTAINS
filthy talking
, some situational violence and dirty descriptions of sex that will most likely make you warm from your head to your toes and need to be alone with you and your favorite toy.

N
ever miss a thing
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S
he knew
she should stay away from him, but she couldn't say no to this bad boy. So what, he's a criminal? The heart wants what it wants...

I
sabelle Turner
lives
a quiet life now, having put her wild past behind. She's learned from her mistakes and is sure she won't repeat them. Until a mysterious stranger shows up in her life...ragged, wounded, and oh-so-handsome.

A
shton (Ash) Carter
is on a run. With the help of his brothers, he has managed to escape from prison, but now his future is up in the air. Having a bullet hole in his shoulder does not help things either. And now this hot, gorgeous, wild-at-heart beauty has entered his life.

L
ife
as a fugitive is no picnic, and Ash is determined to find the truth and exonerate his name. Isabelle is hell-bent on helping him, no matter the sacrifice. Will Ash and Isabelle manage to escape their past? Or will it bring them closer together?

Y
ou would think
with my past, with what I’d had to go through when I was a rebellious teenager, with multiple foster families and multiple stints in juvie, with all that…I should’ve known better. I could’ve seen through this mysterious (but oh-so-hot!) stranger. I would’ve told myself to stay far, far away.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda…

Maybe it was the way my life has become so routine as of late. Maybe deep down, I knew what I craved, what I missed. My true nature could not be hidden away. To think that I almost thought I was past it all.

How wrong I was…

Whatever had possessed me to do what I did, to listen to this stranger, to believe him—whatever it was, not that it mattered now—but I dove off that cliff with my eyes wide shut. Into the new chapter of my life, new adventure, new…love?

Who knows where I’ll end up with everything I know now. But I wouldn’t change it for a heartbeat.

No way.

“
S
hh
, shh, it’s okay,” I cooed to the panicked blue jay, who was cupped between my hands. I was unraveling the gauze that secured one wing to his side and could feel his tiny heart racing. We had changed this gauze more than a dozen times before now, but he never relaxed during one of them. As he waited for the new dressing to be applied, he hopped clumsily on my lap, attempting several times to take flight.

Each failed.

I grimaced, commiserating. Oh, well, Blue Jail (that was the teasing nickname I gave him).
These things took time. When I’d found him, he hadn’t been able to move his left wing at all. It had hung as if lopsided and he couldn’t have moved it, much less stretched or flapped it, even poorly. Blue jays can be aggressive, but Blue Jail was too scared to be mean. Having a broken wing had made him oddly sweet, calling up to me from where he was caught in a knot of tall grass.

It was only after untangling the weeds from his talons, and his lack of any attempt to take flight, that I recognized the awkward dangle to the left wing.

Now, with the afternoon sun spilling a soft haze of peach-colored sunlight over the fields and wood of Turner Dairyfarm, I had straddled the boulder outside of the rescue shed—it was good to give the animals some outside time, even if they were vulnerable here—and was rifling through my travel First Aid kit. I always kept the kit in my backpack—ever since the baby raccoon I couldn’t save in time.

You tell yourself, again and again, that death is a part of nature, and we all have to accept it…but it’s still bitter on the tongue.

Digging for the fresh gauze, I unraveled a small length and tore the flesh-colored, adhesive fabric with my teeth.

I tucked the roll of gauze beneath my own arm and wrapped it tightly around Blue Jail, securing his wounded wing against his body while leaving the uninjured wing free to move. He couldn’t fly yet. It would have to be back into the cage for him.

He hated the cage. He squawked and squawked in there. That was why I’d given him the name Blue Jail.

As I gently reinserted my blue jay into his cage, I couldn’t help but get a little introspective about it.

“Never know where we’ll end up, do we, Blue?” I wondered aloud, speaking more to myself than to him.

My own body was still covered in the marks of a harder and wilder past: a scar on my leg and a knee which clicked in the winter (I’d been running from the police, and vaulted over an unstable fence which had collapsed beneath my weight); the tattoo of the disintegrating particles of a wolf on my left shoulder, which funneled to form a full moon on my back (as a subtle nod to the summer I spent on peyote); and a lock of hair near my left temple which would never grow again (after the follicles had been singed in a fire at a house party—some drunken idiot had thrown their lighter into the bonfire).

And now here I was—Isabelle Turner, twenty-years-old—working with wounded animals on a fucking dairy farm, eighteen months sober this month.

As I was closing the cage over Blue Jail, the sound of pine needles crunching and a branch rustling roused me from my memories.

Shit.

On this expanse of land, it was almost impossible to gauge the culprit of any noises heard within the brush.

It was probably nothing…but our chicken coop had been ravaged by coyotes twice this summer, and Bill and Hope, my adopted parents, had instructed me to specifically be on the look-out for those bastards. Of course, it wasn’t coyotes’ fault—it was just in their nature—but that didn’t mean the dairy had to suffer.

I headed to the shed where my truck was parked and snatched my Winchester off of the shelving inside. I’d learned to shoot when I was fifteen—but I’d been taught on a stolen handgun, not on a hunting rifle like this.

Creeping into the woods, I stayed close to the trees and kept my thighs almost parallel to the earth. The dark green flora was so thick, it almost hung like a curtain between me and the source of that sound…but it was just as helpful as it was a hindrance. A beast which was unseen could also not see me—although it could certainly smell me, and hear me.

In truth, perhaps my addiction to excitement had been satisfied by the true wilderness after all.

The rustling came again, and I darted forward soundlessly, certain that the creature was directly in front of me. Even so, differentiating sounds and directions in the woods could be difficult. It was a skill I had not completely learned yet, being originally from the city, myself.

Taking my place at the base of a wide oak tree, I descended to one knee and framed my shot, searching for the offending coyote in my sights. I was certain it was just behind that bush, which seemed still to tremble—

But, before I caught the flash of sand-colored fur, I saw a length of…blue jean?

And a leather boot?

Oh, shit.

“It’s my sincere hope that you’ll put that rifle away, sweetheart,” a husky male voice instructed from within my sights.

My cross-hairs trailed up a muscular torso, creeping to shaggy, dark brown hair and a pair of deep, sparkling green eyes.

Shit.

W
ell
, well, well.

I thought I’d expected anything to happen next, anything at any moment—but I had not expected this.

A trim, finely muscled brunette, her skin burnished by the Colorado sunshine and her hair thick and wild down one right shoulder, had me firmly pinned at the receiving end of a slender Winchester barrel.

When I’d bailed on Dom’s warehouse, still bleeding from the shoulder, I hadn’t actually had what anyone would call a “plan.” But I’ve always had a kind of rogue charm with the ladies, and unless I was terribly mistaken, a woman’s heart beat beneath that soft, red plaid fabric.

However hesitant, the barrel of that hunting rifle lowered, revealing the face bowed behind the Winchester’s butt.

Soft, curvaceous cheeks, still plush and bright with youth. Sooty lashes, traces of make-up smeared beneath hazel eyes. No lipstick, no blush. Almost entirely natural—except for those flakes of yesterday’s mascara. Not that it mattered or anything, but I shifted slightly as a rush of blood traveled through my body. I hadn’t seen a woman more quintessentially my type in a long time—not that it mattered or anything.

And the last thing I really needed was to get close to anyone, much less any that increasing blood flow in my groin region…considering.

I stood from the tree trunk where I had been leaning for just a moment, shrugging off my jacket. The jig was up. I might as well have come out into the open with it.

The jacket fell to my forearm, revealing the blood-soaked shoulder of my brother’s white t-shirt. I suddenly wished I’d selected a different piece from the duffle bag of clothes he’d brought for me, but I hadn’t been thinking about the likelihood of someone seeing me before I’d gotten cleaned up.

I hadn’t realized I was going to run. It just—happened.

Story of my life.

The country girl laid her rifle down and stood, advancing toward me from around the trunk of that oak tree.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, her eyes flashing from my wound to my face and back to my wound. “What the hell—” She reached forward to touch me, but drew her hand back before making contact. “What
happened
to you?” she demanded, her eyes flashing up to my face.

They weren’t exactly the eyes of a concerned citizen. These eyes were wary, guarded. She’d already lost her tentative trust in me. Maybe she even wished that she had kept the Winchester at her side.

“Look, darlin’…I know what you’re thinking, and you’re all wrong.” I’d known her for, what, thirty seconds, and I’d already told my first lie.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
“I was tracking a white-tailed deer in this direction when a bullet caught me in the shoulder out of fucking nowhere.”

The girl’s eyes became increasingly cool toward me. “It’s illegal to be hunting right now,” she reminded me tersely. “This is the birthing season. You could—” She hesitated, a strange, bitter steel entering her tone. “You could have made orphans of her fawns.”

I winced—hopefully imperceptibly.

“I was tracking the deer to help it,” I lied, once again. “She’d already been pegged by a hunter. I’m pretty sure that was the same guy who got my shoulder. He came running up out of nowhere and told me he was going to go get help; I guess I was in shock, because I hardly remember anything about him. He was…tall-ish. Brown-ish hair. Somewhere in his thirties…or forties. Never came back. The fucker. I’ve been trying to find my way out of these damn woods ever since.”

At least that much was true. I was thoroughly lost.

The girl gazed at me thoughtfully, her lips tightly tucked at the corners. Her body language told me what was too rude to say outright. Deep down? Deep down, she didn’t believe me.

“Well, you’re just outside of Boulder,” she informed me tersely. Her limpid hazel eyes flashed over me like a cop’s Maglite. “You’re on our property.”

“Our?” Of course, a woman like her would be married up young. It was a study in self-control to not absorb the curvature of her figure. From my careful concentration on her eyes, the only other detail I could truly gauge was “nice.” Although…if someone was talking to you…was it considered rude to watch how their mouth moved? That wasn’t illegal, was it?

“Turner Dairyfarm,” the woman answered, not truly answering me. She took a measured step back and her eyes flashed over my body. Normally, this would be the perfect time for a cheeky opener:
See anything you like?
But this clearly wasn’t the right girl for that kind of talk. “I’m Isabelle Turner.” She stuck her hand out for me to take, but then thought better of it, examining my wound again. “And you are?”

I cleared my throat. That was a good question. I wondered how closely Isabelle Turner followed the news.

“Ashton,” I confessed. “But you can call me Ash.”

At least that much was true.

Kind of.

Not that it mattered, anyway.