Her Bad Boy (Chapter 2)

How does a girl cope when her twin flame is the definitive bad boy? (18+ Erotica)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2: The Pad Brat

Stephen Granger watched Sally’s face intently. He could practically hear the thoughts churning around inside her head. Her eyes closed, she dropped her chin to her chest, as though willing him to disappear.

He felt that like a punch to the gut, which surprised him.

What was the big deal? He’d wanted her to hate him, hadn’t he? Since leaving the army his mind was a mess, and he seemed to ruin it for every one that came into his life. He thought that at least this way he could protect her from himself.

But it hadn’t worked out exactly as he’d planned. He hadn’t figured on missing her so damn much. So now, here he was, trying hard not to stare at her like some lovesick dog, unable to leave this town where he’d found her, and wondering if there was some way to manoeuvre through the chasm he had purposefully dug between them.

He’d have to end it again anyway, when he went back home to face his father over his desertion, but he didn’t care about that for now. All he could think about was wanting her, so he’d take her. His father had taught him you had to take the world by the throat, and make it give you what you want - friends, money, freedom, someone to talk to, someone to love. It was the only way he knew how to live in a world that was tough on quitters.

Growing up in the army as a pad brat, the military way of life was the only sort of family life he knew. Living with his top ranking father, moving from army base to army base meant he’d followed his father about ever since he could remember. So, it’d been the obvious choice to walk in his footsteps, too. And Stephen had worked hard to be a good soldier, jumping ranks in half the time to make team leader at the age of twenty-five. Field Marshal Nathaniel Granger was a man everyone looked up to, and his son was going to make sure he never let down the man everyone called a hero.

That was until six months ago, when Stephen had let him down very badly. The war he’d left behind was the only time he’d ever quit in his life. Backing out this time was not an option.

Stephen locked his sights on Sally, and resisted the rising urge to simply grab her and run. There must be some place they could go to, he thought, anywhere that took him away from the memories in his head. There had to be... but he could almost hear his father's voice chide him. Don’t run and don’t quit. It was the motto of his barracks: Don’t run, don’t quit and pray for the luck of the angels. He planned to do all do that with Sally, and more, but he wouldn’t go on his knees to do it, either. Not if he could help it.

He wasn’t even sure what it was about Sally that drew him. She wasn’t the type he usually went for - that would be her friend Daisy, blonde and busty with legs that seemed to open up as the wind blew. Although Sally certainly wasn’t homely, either. You just had to work harder to get at the woman she was underneath. Once you knew which buttons to press, her curvaceous body was a fire that lit up the man who touched her.

And as a typical tits and ass man, it’d been unusual for him that the first thing which attracted his attention to Sally had been her eyes. But on his first night out on the town, up in Scotland from his native England to visit an old barracks buddy, all he could focus on was the blue of her eyes. Large, trusting, coloured in a deep shade he’d never seen before, but closed to him now.

Her gaze had often been unfathomable, filled with a hint of sadness - particularly when she’d look at him when she thought he wasn’t watching. And in the short few days that followed, after his chat up lines had worked well enough to score a second date, what puzzled him even more was what he’d done right to have those eyes view him with such trust. He hadn’t been used to it from a civilian.

It had been easy to destroy all that in a nano-second, though. She wouldn’t even look at him now. He was more used to that. People looking away. Few dared to make eye contact with him. But one way or another, he’d get that look back - even if it killed him. And if his tour of duty in Afghanistan and the things he had witnessed there had taught him one thing, it was that Stephen Granger was hard to kill.

He wanted to walk over, but he shoved his hands in his pockets and waited for her to open her eyes instead, even if only through the wavy strands of her jet black hair. He wanted to see the colour of her eyes again, but he would wait. In the army patience wasn’t a virtue, it was an art of war. He was used to silence of this kind.

Five days. He recalled five days when no one talked on his last tour. There'd been no need. The army was all about knowing when to keep your mouth shut, and how to be a regular guy. Those who weren’t one of the boys, or who failed to live by the rules of the barracks, had to go it alone.

And you didn’t want to go it alone - not in a place where road grit stuck to you like gum between your teeth, and mountains clawed the sky to press down on your back. The sky was the same the world over, so he couldn’t figure out why it looked so different to him depending on where he was. Back home, he couldn’t get enough sky. Yet over there, even out in the wilderness, the feeling of claustrophobia followed you about everywhere.

Locked down with a small band of brothers, the war had quickly narrowed down to one of self-preservation. If you stayed alive, it meant you could help your team stay alive. They’d forgotten all the fancy slogans chanted at training camp, except that they had to kill or be killed. And you learnt things in the heat of action that cold training couldn’t teach you. Like getting shot at only looked cool in the movies. In reality, when bullets flew and bombs exploded, everyone looked for cover just to be able to stand their ground.

Don’t run and don’t quit. Easier said than done, but their first tour of duty had shown them they were army kids with more sand in them than the desert, so somehow they’d managed it. Military brats made men. But once you lost yourself in the storm of war for too long, anything could happen.

And after the storm lifts, he thought, it’s like having the light suddenly switched back on in a dark room. It’d felt like that when he’d come across a close army buddy acting outside the line of duty- Stephen’s refusal to think about it automatically kicked in. But the image of fear on the team soldier’s face at having been caught out, stuck in his mind like a trapped animal.

It had shaken him more than he would admit. A man he had known all his life, and trusted implicitly, had put their team into danger - and paid for it with his life. The official line for Stephen’s resignation was the death of his friend, but there was more to it than that. Darker reasons he had pushed into the deeper recesses of his mind.

Stephen had known then, that for the famous Field Marshal's son at least, the war was over. He’d lasted five days more. Five days of silence. Of embarrassment and shame.

One of the commandments of the pads was that you didn’t squeal on your buddies, especially not to the chain of command you swore about on a daily basis. So his only option had been to quit. But quitting had tasted as bitter as putting a gun to his mouth. His old barracks chum up here sympathised, but he, too, had told him it’d been the right thing to do. He could never tell anyone else the truth, which meant having to face his father as a quitter. But, if he had to, he could live with all that. It’d be easy compared to living with what he’d seen - and hushed up for the sake of his old team left behind in Afghanistan.

Sally had asked him on their first night why he’d quit. To fight for peace, he’d said. Had she guessed that was just bullshit? A part of the chat up routine? He wasn’t sure. He’d quit because he couldn’t face the truth over what had been done under the guise of war. And though he’d found the guts to stay alive out there, he hadn’t mustered the courage to squeal on a fellow soldier. He’d been ashamed to admit that to her. He’d been afraid to stand alone, so now he didn’t know what he stood for.

He continued to stare at Sally, and somewhere inside he felt the tiniest hope she might be his salvation. Could these new feelings she’d awakened in him mean she was the anchorage he’d been looking for, to keep the memories away? He re-focused on the present. He was out of the war, he was here in Scotland, standing in a travelling fairground looking at a girl who had come to mean more to him in the shortest space of time than any other he had ever known.

Stephen hardened his determination as Sally finally began to open her eyes. He wouldn’t quit this time, but he had no idea how he was going to make her understand what a fool he’d been, without looking - or feeling - like one.


Sally kept her eyes tightly shut. All she could hear were the sounds of the fairground, and she tried to imagine looking up to see the huge Ferris wheel, spinning slowly around. Anything but the image of Stephen that was facing her - staring at her as if she were some military target.

She heard the excited voices of teenagers walk past, and wondered if they were the same kids she had seen lining up for the rides minutes before. She heard them saying they wanted to go on another ride, while two more talked about the food they wanted to buy. The small details of their lives passed her by, wrapped up in the music of the rides, slightly discordant, as the different tunes from different rides buzzed in her head. And still she couldn’t forget that Stephen was standing a few feet away from her.

Or had he gone? She opened her eyes slightly, and glanced at him through her lashes. Sally felt cowardly, and foolish, and warm all the way through - as only the sight of him could make her feel.

He wasn’t very tall, or very large, in fact he had, what they called up here, a Scouser’s frame - small, thin and wiry, but hard and strong as stone. His size belied his strength, which had caught her by surprise the first time he had held her tightly in his arms.

And those arms... Her spine was a constant train track for the excitement he elicited in her. She remembered his right arm, and its scar that curved like a snake just inside the wrist. She could make it out faintly now, as he pushed his hands in his pockets, and the fairground lights spun around him, bringing him out of the dark and then back in again. For a moment she thought he was going to walk over to her, but he just stood there, his snug khaki coloured T-shirt pulling across his well-defined chest muscles.

In the short space of time she’d known him, she’d noticed there were times Stephen could stand as still as a statue, and you’d never really know what he was thinking just from his body language. She supposed that was down to his army training, and had wondered if his bad boy image hadn’t been some sort of cover, too. She couldn’t guess what he’d been through out there - how could she when he wouldn’t open up to her? But she’d sometimes get the feeling that he walked about in camouflage even at his most naked.

If only she could see his eyes now, she knew they didn’t lie as easily as his body did. They lightened to honey-brown when he gave a rare laugh, or darkened to black tar when he was angry. It was too far, and too dark for her to make out their colour. He would have to come up close for that. There’d been times when he lay close to her that she’d given him a side glance just for a glimpse of his eyes, when she thought he wasn’t looking. And she’d suddenly feel so much love and fear at the same time, that she couldn’t work out where one emotion began and the other ended.

She opened her eyes fully and stared at him. It wasn’t an invitation for him to start walking over to her, but she’d have been lying to herself if she didn’t admit to feeling the tiniest bit happy when she saw that he did.

“Hello, Sally.” Such a deep timbre to his voice.

They were inches apart now.

She swallowed hard, unable to bring herself to respond. His showing up out of the blue posed a serious dilemma for her. She couldn’t forget that he’d tried to sleep with Daisy. She couldn’t trust him any more. He was bad for her, and she needed to let him go, but if she did she’d be walking away from everything she’d ever wanted.

Deep down, Sally knew she wasn’t the kind of woman men like Stephen went for. She was average at best - bordering on boring. Prim and bookish. Not at all the kind of woman she assumed he typically dated. Daisy was more his type. But looking at him now, he seemed completely sincere. Her stomach fluttered nervously as his gaze dropped to her mouth before travelling leisurely back to her eyes.

“Not going to speak to me? Can’t we still be friends at least?” His firm lips had turned down and his eyes had taken on a solemn cast. She checked their colour. Darkened honey. She had no idea what to say. Could women really be friends with someone as masculine as Stephen? She tried to remember how she’d felt the day she had caught him in her bed with Daisy, but even those emotions had deserted her.

He shrugged at her unresponsiveness. “I didn’t think a fairground would be your kind of thing.”

She forced a smile, finally managing to find her voice. “I didn’t think it would be yours, either.”

His eyes lit up with understanding. “Maybe I’m here stalking you.”

Sally felt her cheeks flush. “You don’t need to resort to stalking to get a girl.”

Those honey eyes held on to hers fast. “Maybe I don’t just want any girl. Maybe I just want you.”

“You had me.”

“Maybe I want you back.”

Her heart dropped to her knees. He was playing games with her. “I know I’m a fool, but even I’m not that stupid. Remember Daisy?”

“It looks like you forgave her quick enough. I saw you coming out of there with her.” Stephen pointed towards Madame Rosario's tent.

Had he been telling the truth about following her after all? But why waste time with her now? “I wasn’t in a committed relationship with Daisy.”

“Isn’t a friendship a committed relationship?” He quoted her words back to her in a mocking tone. “Didn’t she betray years of trust by jumping into bed with me?”

“My bed, you bastard,” she said quietly, feeling her heart abruptly wake up from the sting of the memory. “I love Daisy, but I wasn’t in love with her. There’s a difference.” There was more to it then that, but she wasn’t going to tell him the reason she was lenient with Daisy. She’d let down enough of her defences with him already.

“Was in love with me? Was, and not is, meaning not any more? And we knew each other for exactly how long? That’s too quick even to be corny.”

She nodded, and let out a stifled sigh. “Exactly Stephen. We had no beginning, we started in the middle, so it was bound to end. I was a fool for thinking we could be anything more. The fiction I’d concocted in my own head was corny. I’ll admit that.”

He casually raked his fingers through his short brown hair, riding his T-shirt up and baring his tight abdominal muscles. Her mouth went dry at the sight. She tried to look away before he noticed, but she caught him staring at her, knowingly.

“We could start again. Maybe you gave up too quickly,” he said, almost under his breath.

She remembered Madame Rosario saying something similar back in the tent. “I give up when something isn’t worth it.” Her stomach muscles tensed as the words came out of her mouth. It was safer to let him think she didn’t want him any more.

He gave a sardonic smile. “Don’t pull any punches. I can take it. I’m tough.”

“Tough? Thick skinned more like.” His flippant manner made her mad. And shutting her eyes to him wouldn’t make the feelings go away. Her hands tightened into fists. This was the only language he would understand. “You don’t give a shit about anything. But you’re a fool. You’re a blind, conceited fool. And you use your cock like I bet you use your gun. Shoot to kill!”

She hadn’t meant to say those things, but she was hurting badly. And she wanted to hurt him back. To dent that tough tank-like veneer, before he bulldozed her with it.

His eyes darkened a degree in colour, and he took a step closer, until their bodies were almost touching. “Come on now, don't be so naive. You got just as much out of it as I did. You lived it instead of reading about it for a change.”

“I hate you!” She tried to pummel his chest, but he deftly caught her wrists and held them firm. With a quick tug, she found herself in his arms, and before she knew what was happening, they were kissing each other.

“I hate you...” she tried to say again, but the words and the world quickly melted away at his touch. It felt so right. Her arms wrapped around him instinctively.

“I’m going to take you here Sally,” he whispered his hot breath into her open, yielding mouth. “I’m going to take you right here in public.”

Sally knew he would be true to his word. And she kissed him back, even harder.

End of Chapter 2 | Read Chapter 3

Yours in love,