Damon:A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel(5)

Somewhat amused by the resilience of his lust, but mostly frustrated by  it, he hung his washcloth across his stiff member while cleaning himself  off. When it still refused to recede as he stepped from the shower and  into his bedroom, he hung a clothes hanger from it and swiveled his hips  back and forth to make it swing. Finally, he felt his blood begin to  rush back, and he watched patiently as the clothes hanger slid off,  clattering to the floor.

Dressing for his morning run, Damon opted against a shirt. It was  proving to be an unusually hot early summer, and at his size, Damon  would easily sweat through even the lightest fabric. Before leaving, he  checked himself in the mirror. He'd need to trim his black, bushy beard.  His hair needed a trim, too; the same midnight black as his beard, he  kept it short. A shadow of sideburns completed the dark frame around his  face.

He cocked his head as he flexed slightly. Until he'd gotten the call  about the fight, he'd been more lax than usual in his workout, and it  showed. He was still considerably massive; far bigger than his brothers,  and big enough to make kids on the street look at him wide-eyed. But he  had some catching up to do, it was true.

He turned and eyed his newest ink, reminding himself that Cristov still  needed to finish it up. The bold-lined, bright-colored lighthouse  reached down his ribcage, the tattoo a recent addition to a body full to  bursting with traditional American designs. Eagles and dice and pin-up  girls lounging in martini glasses, Felix the Cat drawn as a skeleton, a  devil eating a melty slice of pizza, a bow-legged cowboy. He liked the  strong lines, the bravado and the humor.

Outside, just as he'd known, it was already muggy and warm despite not  yet being 7am. He started his run at an even pace, taking a few laps  around the trailer park before hitting the road. He waved to Dago  Tenniss, who was standing guard at the trailer park entrance. It was 3  miles to the start of town, 3 miles back. He usually spent his morning  run going through the salient details of his upcoming day. What was  happening at his cheese shop, what was happening in the kumpania, when  he would go to the gym and what he would eat for dinner.

He had plenty to think about that day. He was expecting a shipment of  very unique, very expensive brunost, Norwegian brown cheese, at his  store, Let it Brie. He'd promised to help Ana set up for a tasting event  at her store, meant to capitalize on the early-season tourism. A trip  to the barber shop was in order, and there was a workout to fit in  somewhere, too. And, the arts theater a few towns over was doing a  one-night screening of "Wild Strawberries" with an accompanying lecture  from a film studies professor down from Delaware State.         

     



 

But, with all those things he could have been thinking about, he  couldn't stop thinking about Tricia. She would be back any day now.  Would she come to see him? Should he go to see her? She would be  different. She had to be different. Would she be so different that what  he saw in her, all those months ago, would be gone? Or would it be even  better? Would she even want to see him  –  or would he be just a reminder  of all she'd been through?

She'd covered for him when the police arrived to investigate the  kidnapping. Damon had shot a man who wasn't posing an immediate threat  to either of them. Rig, the man he'd killed, barely even had time to  pull his gun before Damon's bullet met his chest. Tricia had told the  police that Damon saved her life, that the man had a gun to her head.  She could hate him for that.

She could hate him for being part of the reason she was kidnapped in the  first place. She could hate him for knowing more about her than any  human should know about someone they'd met twice. Damon had seen her the  night Cristov brought her home, bruises like a necklace from what her  boyfriend had done to her. And then he'd seen her tied up and shivering,  had carried her through the woods as she clung to him like a child.  He'd seen her at her worst. If the roles were reversed, he didn't think  he'd be too eager to see himself. Not if he wanted to move on.

Six miles went by quickly, and Damon found himself back at the empty  trailer, guzzling water. His phone was buzzing in the bedroom, but he  took his time checking it. Cristov had texted him, presumably from  Ricky's bed.

Tricia coming back next Tues, R. planning a dinner for everyone at diner on Wednesday. You in?

Who was everyone? Was it Tricia's idea, or Ricky's? He sucked in a  breath. He wanted to say yes. He wanted to see her. Soon. It had felt  like long enough since the last time, at the trial, when she'd been  ushered in and then away so quickly that they'd barely made eye contact.  But Wednesday … that was the night he planned to leave for Miami. Fate  had decided for him this time.

Can't that night, he typed back. Cheese stuff.

He threw the phone on the bed and went back into the bathroom to take  his second shower of the morning. He made it quick, washing off the  sweat and stink. He still had an hour before he needed to be at the  store, and he spent it at the kitchen counter with another cup of  coffee.

He listened to the clock tick, uneven. That clock had been slightly off  for as long as he could remember. It was at the half-hour; the seconds  slowed just slightly, almost imperceptibly. It was only through years  and years of listening that Damon could recognize it.

He'd mentioned it to Cristov, once, and been surprised when his younger  brother had no idea what Damon was talking about. Kennick said he'd  noticed, and always wanted to get a new clock, because it drove him  crazy. But Kennick never remembered that when he was at the store. Damon  urged Kennick not to replace it. He liked the inconsistency. It helped  him meditate.

He supposed that was a testament to the difference between them all.  Cristov couldn't sit still long enough to pay attention to minutia.  Kennick paid attention to everything, wanted to fix everything, but his  priorities made some things more memorable than others. Damon didn't  just pay attention to the minutia, he focused on it so deeply that he  accepted every flaw, every little detail, as purposeful, useful.

And then, of course, there was Mina, who had grown up in that trailer  but moved out to live with her girlfriends in another trailer when she  hit 16. He'd asked her about the clock, curious. She'd laughed, told him  that she did notice the fact that it was a little off. And then she'd  leaned in, winked, and told him that the reason it was a little off was  because she'd knocked it off the wall one day when she was sneaking some  cookies from the cabinet. It had never worked quite the same after she  put it back up.

So Damon sat and listened to the broken clock and thought about other  things that were a little off. Like dreams and women and hearts and  histories. It was plenty to think about to fill an hour.





5





The sigh Tricia released as the storage unit door rolled up could have  sent a dandelion's seeds scattering. Her eyes travelled over the stacked  boxes, the familiar furniture, the pictures that had once lined her  walls. So much stuff. So much damn stuff.

"Don't worry," Ricky said, sensing Tricia's falling mood. "I'll help you  with everything. And you don't have to deal with it anytime soon. Mi  casa is su casa for as long as you need."

"Thanks," Tricia said, turning to her friend with a wan smile. "I  appreciate it, really. But I'm going to have to get my life back  together eventually … "         

     



 

"No rush, though," Kim said from Tricia's other side. "I mean, the  library will definitely take you back, but no one expects you to jump  right back into things."

Tricia nodded, only half-listening to her friends' comforting words.  She'd arrived back in Kingdom the previous afternoon, after spending a  few nights at her parents' house in Dover. She'd gone straight to  Ricky's, where she'd be crashing while she looked for a new place to  live and got back on her feet.

She had enough in her savings, including a generous amount that she'd  won in her civil suit against the Steel Dragons, that getting back to  work wasn't a huge priority. She'd only gotten the job in Massachusetts  because it gave her day structure and routine, and a good chunk of time  where she could focus on something other than herself. She expected the  same benefits from getting her job back at the Kingdom Public Library.

But the thought of walking back into that little building, where  everyone already knew everything, was daunting. She'd known her  coworkers there for years, and she didn't imagine they'd be any better  at making her feel normal than her coworkers in Massachusetts had been.  She never liked most of those women in the first place, and they'd had  plenty of time to twist and turn her story while she was gone. She  expected plenty of faux-sympathetic smiles and careful questions. She  wasn't looking forward to it.

Seeing all her things in storage, gathering dust, only made her more  aware of how long she'd been gone, how different things were now. Even  things that were exactly the same were different. Everything seemed  bathed in a new light. All the old streets and stores  –  they were  intimately familiar and yet wholly alien. The only thing that still felt  real were her friends, Ricky and Kim, and even they seemed to be  handling her with care.