Damon:A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel(10)

He'd done it all because he wanted to be rom baro, the leader. Now, he couldn't even take a piss without asking someone first.

But he did have one thing. One little thing that kept him tethered to  sanity. It lay under his pillow, and when he felt particularly  frustrated or hopeless, he would reach beneath it and hold it in his  hands.

He'd taken a huge risk in getting it. One night, a young recruit had  stumbled into a bathroom while Jenner was cleaning it, drunk as a lord  and sick to his stomach. The kid had barely made it to the toilet before  he started throwing up, mumbling incoherently all the while. Rock,  who'd been supervising Jenner that day, cursed in frustration.

"Fuckin' wimpy ass little shit," he said. "This kid's supposed to be on fuckin' watch right now. Goddammit … "

Rock glared at Jenner.

"Don't fuckin' move, punk," he warned. "I'll be back in two fuckin'  seconds, and if you've moved a single muscle, I'll make you lick that  toilet bowl clean."

Jenner nodded, putting his hands up to show he'd obey. Rock glared at  him for one long moment, then stepped out of the bathroom. His voice  echoed back through the door as he went down the hall, calling for  anyone in charge.

Jenner looked at the kid, who was glassy-eyed and staring into the dirty  bowl, breathing heavy. A phone, a little grey flip-phone, was sticking  out of his back pocket. Jenner's heart skipped a beat. If he took it and  someone found it, he'd be screwed. It'd be more of the first month.  More beatings. More hunger. More thirst.

But if he didn't take it, he'd never get out of there alive.

Quick as he could, he grabbed the phone and shoved it down the front of  his pants, into his briefs. Thinking quickly, palms sweating, one eye on  the door, he pulled it out again and turned it off; if it went off  before he could get back to the safety of his room, he didn't know what  would happen to him. Just as he was shoving it back down where the sun  don't shine, the bathroom door began to open. Jenner's skin went cold,  his heart racing like a sprinter.

"Ah, fuck," Four-Story scowled, walking into the room with Rock at his  heels. Both men gave Jenner a quick glance, but he wasn't their  priority. "These stupid kids. I swear, we would never have let a little  shit like this try out before we got screwed. Roper's so damn desperate  for numbers, boots on the ground … "

"Well, someone's gotta take his shift," Rock said. "I'm on shitstain duty."

"Shitstain duty can wait," Four-Story said, giving Jenner a dirty look.  "Take him back to the room and get on watch. We'll have to live with  dirty bathrooms for another day."

"Lucky you," Rock grumbled as he grabbed hold of Jenner's arm and  started walking him back to his private suite. "You get a day off."

Jenner had hid the phone under his pillow and never turned it on. That  day he got it, he had held it in his hands, staring at it for a long  time, trying to figure out what to do with it. He didn't have any  friends left. He had no idea what had happened at the kumpania after  he'd left, but he knew he wouldn't be welcome back. The kid who'd  squealed on the club would have squealed on him, too. Even his own  mother wouldn't want him back, knowing that he'd intentionally put the  kumpania in harm's way.

Of course, he could always try. But he wasn't dumb; the sort of phone  he'd lifted was a burner, the sort of thing that only had a certain  number of minutes on it. He didn't know how many, but if he wasted the  last of them on a call to the kumpania, his one chance to escape would  be null.

He could call the police  –  but that was just as bad. For one thing, it  would be embarrassing as hell to admit that he, a grown-ass man, was  being held captive by a biker gang. For another, he'd be looking at jail  time for his involvement with the club before they'd taken him in as  their own personal slave. He'd killed a dog for them, had acted as an  informant, had been intimately involved in getting the girl kidnapped.  He'd be trading one jail cell for another. And at least the Steel  Dragons weren't interested in taking his man-on-man virginity.         

     



 

So the phone stayed in its place under his pillow until he could figure  something out. If he could think up something to tell his cousins that  would give him some leverage … if he could find out something that he  could use against Kennick … if he could figure out some other way to  escape the Steel Dragons, some other club that would help him in return  for his services as an inside man …

Until then, he would keep playing his part. He'd do his chores, feeling  like Cinderella. But he wouldn't be waiting for a fairy godmother. He'd  be his own damn hero. No matter what it took.





9





Damon had wanted to get a little further that first night, but waiting  for Tricia to get her things together delayed them. Once they were on  the road, the tires spinning miles between them and everyone they cared  about, a comfortable discomfort settled between them. Tricia put on a  Townes Van Zandt album she'd scrounged, with a full-to-bursting case of  other CDs, from her storage unit. Damon approved. They drove in, mostly,  silence, both letting their minds adjust to the situation, their bodies  adjust to each other.

Tricia half-wished that they'd been able to leave in the daytime. At  night, the highway was amorphous, the trees creating a mockery of  landscape against a blue-black sky. She would have liked to see Kingdom  receding. She would have liked to see the land pass by, to confirm what  her mind knew but her heart hadn't yet totally accepted. She was leaving  home behind to spend an unknown amount of time with a basically unknown  man. She was doing the craziest thing she'd done since college. And she  was okay with it. She was excited about it. She felt … ready for it.

Damon, in the driver's seat, focused on the zig-zag ballet of the  highway, and thought about his future. It seemed to stretch out before  him as dark and unknown as the road his headlights didn't reach. But  there was something there, looming and beckoning, pulling him forward.  When he glanced over at Tricia, her profile angled towards the window,  he felt a satisfied humming inside him. He was probably doing the wrong  thing, bringing her along. But it couldn't be so wrong, when she smiled  back at him, her eyes calm and open wide; it couldn't be the worst  decision he'd ever made.

"Hey, don't you, like, have a shop to run? That cheese place with the pun for a name?" Tricia asked an hour into the drive.

"Let it Brie," Damon clarified with a smile. "I closed up, just until we get back. I don't really trust anyone else to run it."

"Won't the cheese go bad?" Tricia asked.

"I heard a rumor once that cheese gets better with age," he answered with a wink.

"You know, you're not exactly the sort of guy that I'd imagine being a  connoisseur of cheeses," Tricia mused, looking out the window again.

"There's an art to it," he said. "Subtlety. It takes concentration, being able to pick out different notes and flavors … "

Tricia turned to him with an eyebrow cocked.

"I'm serious," he said, amused by her disbelief. "The difference between  a Fontina and a Berner Alpkäse is a matter of molecules, and time, and  diet. All little things that make a big difference. And one Fontina is  different than another. You can tell what the cows ate, and when, and at  what elevation. It's a science, an artful science."

Tricia smiled at him then, but didn't respond.

"What?" he asked, laughing lightly. "Think that's not very manly?"

"No," she said. "It's just not something I ever thought about. All I  know about cheese is that if you hand me a block of it, there's a good  chance you won't get it back."

"Well, cheese also has opioid properties," he said. "I guess that could contribute to my interest in it."

Tricia hummed, looking away. Damon noticed how her hands shifted slightly, moving against each other, in her lap.

"Fighting's a science too, isn't it? An artful science," Tricia said,  voice low. Damon's knuckles tightened around the steering wheel, which  only made the old scars and new wounds stand out more. She sighed.  "Sorry. I don't know why I said that. I guess I just...it's hard to  imagine you discussing flavor notes one day and entering a ring the  next."

He didn't need to ask how she knew about his fighting career. Even if  she wasn't best friends with Ricky and Kim, who probably mentioned it,  his body contained the story for anyone who wanted to read it.

"Yes," he finally said. "It's another art. A more physical one.  Fighting's about attention, focus. You have to see everything in a few  moments. Where his hips are, which hand he favors, whether he shifts on  his left or his right foot. And you have to train your body to react in  kind, no matter what his strength is, no matter what your weakness is."