Damon wiped the blade of her knife clean on his jeans before he passed it back to her handle first, being that she was a lady.
“Now, sweetheart, hurry the fuck up. I’ll be in the car. You have exactly one minute. Don’t make me come the fuck back in here or I swear to you, you will pay.” He glanced down at the knife wound, still spurting blood. He’d bandage it in the car while he waited for her to get her things. I’m fucking crazy. This girl is going to cost me my life. “Believe me, you’ve pushed me enough for one day,” Damon growled as he stomped out and slammed the door hard behind him.
Chapter 4
KIRSTIN
I’ve lost my mind.
Sliding into the sleek black leather passenger seat of the silver fucking family sedan was probably going to mean her death. She had no reason to trust the bastard to her left.
Even as he slid easily out of the parking space and roared down the street, he could be taking her to her death.
Why bother saving me? He could have just killed me back there and got it over with. Maybe it was too much blood. It would have been too messy. He would have had to carry me out. It would be so much easier to dispose of her body now that she’d done him a favor and walked herself right into his car.
“Stop.” Damon’s rough voice filled up the car. Streetlights and headlights flashed by as they clipped along at a fast pace, probably faster than the speed limit on the residential streets.
Kirstin’s eyes swept to the man who was virtually her captor. She wouldn’t think of him as her aid. Not until she was somewhere far away from Detroit, safe and sound, still alive and kicking. Ultimately he was right, she had little choice but to trust him. She should have been gone hours ago, but she wasn’t, and this was her penance.
If Damon’s clenched jaw and the vein throbbing in his forehead was any indication, he didn’t like it any more than she did.
“You patched your shoulder up.” She noticed the bulge under his t-shirt.
“Of course. We always carry supplies with us. I threw my pack in before I left. You should know. Your father carried the same shit.”
“My mom packed for him. I never went through his things.”
Damon’s knuckles tightened on the wheel. He didn’t look at her as he blew through an amber light and took a hard left onto a side street. He pushed the car harder and the engine roared throatily as they headed out down the freeway.
“You know that we carry shit like this. Even if you won’t admit it. Even if you’re going to sit there and be stubborn.” He let out a hard exhale. “When we stop, you’re going to fix the damage you did to my shoulder. I might have bandaged it and taped it, but that isn’t going to hold. I need you to sew it up.”
“I’m not sewing you up,” Kirstin snorted. “You can bleed out for all I care.”
Damon responded by flooring the accelerator and the car clipped along at a dangerous pace. The scenery changed, flashing by in the dark. There were far fewer streetlights and the buildings thinned out as they left the city behind.
The tension in the car was so thick it could be sliced. Kirstin wanted to ask where he was taking her, but she figured he wouldn’t tell her anyway. Maybe he didn’t even know. She did notice the way his eyes kept flicking to the rear-view mirror, as if someone was following behind. She looked in the side mirror a couple times, anxious, but there was nothing back there, but the dark of the night.
“You could show some gratitude instead of acting like a spoiled brat. I saved you when I could have killed you.”
“You saved me?” Kirstin rolled her eyes. She dared a glance at Damon, but he stayed focused on the road. His jaw ticked, the only tell other than the anger in his voice that he was pissed. “Please. I could have taken care of myself.”
“Why were you at the house still, when I got there? Any one of us could have shown up and found you there and if it was anyone but me, you’d be on the wrong side of the dirt right now.” Damon stayed calm and controlled. He gave nothing away and his chilly façade sent a shiver down Kirstin’s spine.
“I doubt it. It takes longer than that to dispose of a body.” Kirstin wished her chest didn’t close up. She wished the pinpricks at the corners of her eyes would fuck off. She had to stay strong. She had to see herself through this. There was plenty of time for falling apart… later. At the moment, if she wanted to stay alive, she had to keep her wits strong and her head clear, not muddied with grief and sadness.
Damon gave his head a shake. “I want to know what your father was thinking. He should have known he wouldn’t get away. No one gets out of this. We take a pledge when we patch in. Our word is our honor and those men are our brothers. It’s for life. If he didn’t want to be in it forever, he should never have given Bone his loyalty.”
“That was a long time ago.” Anger rose up, choking off good sense. She knew Damon was probably baiting her, but she couldn’t help but defend her father. “It was before I was even born. How can you promise someone your entire life? How can you promise that you’ll never change your mind? It’s like marriage without the prospect of ever getting a divorce.”
“Hate it or not, that’s our life. He knew what he was getting into. He should have been smarter about how he made his exit. Instead he ran like a dog with its tail tucked between his legs and Bone put him to ground the exact same fucking way.”
Damon’s eyes swept to her face. She met his cold blue gaze. There was nothing there. No feeling, no emotion. Just cold, hard steel.
“Stop the car,” Kirstin commanded.
“What?” Damon’s eyes widened.
“Stop the fucking car!” She screamed. “Or I swear to Christ I’ll open the door and throw myself out.”
Surprisingly, Damon did as she asked. He pulled the car over with a screech of tires and a crunch of gravel on the shoulder. The sedan slammed to a hard stop, jolting Kirstin forward hard against her seatbelt. The thing locked up and sucked her back. Damon slammed the car into park.
Kirstin struggled with her seatbelt and finally got the damn thing unbuckled. Her hand scrabbled at the door handle until she was able to free herself. She burst out into the night, gasping for air.
Her lungs burned, like she was suffocating, like she was drowning in blood. She imagined her parent’s lifeless bodies, their sightless eyes, their blood soaking into the dirt that covered them. She felt like she’d been buried already, when she was still alive. Like the dirt was in her mouth, in her nose, choking her, cutting off her air, filling up her lungs.
The panic rose up and choked her. She doubled over, trying to catch her breath. The harder she gulped, the less air she was able to pull into her lungs. I have to keep going. I have to fucking make it. For them. She struggled for air, but nothing found its way into her lungs.
A heavy hand landed at the small of her back, another at her shoulder. “Breathe.” The deep voice was thick and gentle in her ear. Damon’s breath was hot against her earlobe. She didn’t want to react to him, but her body warmed and something unwanted, shameful, and dark stirred in the most basic, primal part of her soul.
His voice cut through the panic, through the gory images in her mind, through the sorrow flooding and stopping her heart. She opened her mouth and finally a small trickle of oxygen made its way to her lungs. She gasped like a fucking dying fish. She imagined those gills going up and down, up and down, floundering, slowing.
That was not her. She breathed in again, harder, and filled up her lungs. The black receded from the edges of her vision and as she took another, steadier breath, she was slammed up against the hard wall of Damon’s chest. She tried to brace herself, to push away, but she wasn’t fast enough to get her hands up between them.
“It’s going to be okay. I promise, I’ll get you out of here. You can trust me. I know you have no reason to believe me, but you have to. It’s going to be okay. Soon all of this will feel like a bad memory and you’ll go on with your life. They won’t find you. You’ll make it.”
Damon released
her and she staggered back. She wanted to hurtle at him, to beat at his chest, to blame him for her parent’s deaths, to tell him that he was wrong. She was never going to be okay again. The only family she had left in the entire world was gone. Her life might as well be fucking over. She might be alive, but she doubted she’d ever truly be able to live again.
When her eyes flashed to his face, Kirstin was struck by the softness there. It wasn’t pity in those ice blue eyes. It was something else. Compassion? Worry? Pain? He blinked and his eyes were so raw, so wounded, so strangely vulnerable, that she had no doubt that sometime in his life, he’d gone through the same kind of pain she was living. He blinked again and it was gone. His face shuttered off, shut down, hardened.
“We have to get back in the car and keep going. I haven’t seen a tail, but that doesn’t mean that we’re safe.”
Tendrils of defeat snaked through her body and her shoulders bowed in as she lowered her head. “Where are you taking me?”
Damon sighed. He ran a hand over his short cropped hair. It was chestnut, she seemed to recall, from the times she’d seen him before, but the inky black darkness swallowing them up, colored it midnight black. There was no moon, no lights. They were alone on the road. Somehow Damon’s eyes glowed, the pale blue coming eerily alive.
That dark part of herself responded with a pang of hunger that both startled and shamed her. She gave herself a shake, stalked past Damon, and threw open the car door. She slid back into her seat, wrapped her arms around herself, and waited until Damon slid in and got the car back on the road.
“I don’t know,” Damon ground out. He floored the accelerator again and the car’s engine screamed. “I don’t know where I’m going. I just- I just have to get there.”
Kirstin turned and glanced at the back duffel on the backseat next to the bag she’d thrown when she’d made what was probably the worst decision of her life. She should have run out the back door and left Damon sitting in front of her house, waiting like a fool for her to come out. She’d thought about starting the blaze. She’d poured gas throughout the house, but since she hadn’t left on her own, she didn’t need the distraction. The blaze would just draw unwanted attention.
“What do you have in that bag? Do you really have something to fix you up with?” It was a concession- for the time being.
Everyone said that the quickest way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. Her mother said different. She’d told Kirstin, when she was ten years old, that one day she’d be a woman and that came with the ability to rule the world. She just needed to know how to use the power she wielded.
She didn’t fully know what that meant. She’d been with a few guys, but never for long, since her dad went on the fucking warpath when he found out she was seeing someone and they didn’t last more than ten seconds after that. He chased them off. It wasn’t like he’d ever murdered them, though he no doubt threatened.
“I- yeah. I have a pack in there. It has everything I need.”
“What else?”
Damon’s eyes flicked away from the road. The night whizzed by in a blanket of indistinguishable blackness. The headlights did little to split the blackness. “What do you mean what else?”
“Weapons?”
“Of course.”
“What?”
Damon bristled. “None of your business. You won’t have to use any of it.”
“I’m capable of taking care of myself.”
“I know. My shoulder is an aching reminder,” he said dryly. “Doesn’t mean I’ll let you use my guns.”
“How exactly were you planning on getting me into the car if I didn’t agree to go with you?”
Damon’s brow creased into a frown. His lips thinned out and even glowering, he was so ruggedly beautiful, her lungs deflated for a second time. “You don’t want me to answer that.”
“Were you going to drug me? Tie me up? Hit me over the head? What?”
“Let’s just say, as the daughter of our former VP, I thought you’d be rational.”
“This from a man who just reminded me that my father was a fucking idiot for running out on his own club. You practically said he deserved to die.”
Damon’s head whipped around so fast his neck actually cracked. “I never said that. I would never, ever imply that.”
Kirstin scowled back. He’d said it and meant it and it had thrown her into a panic attack. She’d never forgive him for those words. If he thought he was some kind of hero or savior, he had another thing coming.
She was no one’s toy. Despite the panic attack she’d had ten minutes ago, she was strong. She was capable of looking after herself. She was no weak, pathetic woman. She was her father’s daughter. She was her mother’s daughter.
They’d both been fierce as fucking lions.
No matter how they’d died, no matter why they tried to get away, no matter that they didn’t tell her what they were doing, she knew they weren’t cowards. They weren’t… running. Not away from something. Towards something, maybe.
It wasn’t right. Something about it didn’t make sense.
She’d been so shocked it was the first time she’d stopped to think about it. Her father loved that club. He never would have turned his back on it.
Kirstin cast a sidelong glance at Damon again, but he was staring back at the road again jaw clenched, that vein bulging in his forehead.
He didn’t look up for any further conversation. Even if he was, she sure as hell wouldn’t get answers from him. Not by talking.
Women are powerful. Women are goddesses. They have the capacity to bring a man to his knees, however powerful he may seem. Her mother’s words played through her head.
Kirstin turned her head to stare out the window, into the black of night. She’d get her answers and she’d gain her freedom. One day, she’d avenge her parent’s in whatever way she could. She’d do anything, anything it took.
Anything and everything.
Chapter 5
DAMON
Silence.
There were times in his life when he enjoyed it, craved it, needed it, sought solace in it.
Then there was silence and there was Kirstin. She didn’t make a sound until he decided, after five hours of open road and nothing but darkness, that they were far enough out of Detroit that they could chance stopping for the night.
She didn’t break her silence when he came back to the car with a key to room number seven in the run-down motel. She unfolded herself out of the car, grabbed her bag, and followed him to the door. He shouldered his own bag, on the shoulder that wasn’t currently killing him with its throbbing ache and more literally with the blood seeping through the bandage he’d applied hours earlier.
He unlocked the door and swung the thing open. Kirstin strode in ahead, fearlessly. She flicked on a lamp and it illuminated a queen-sized bed with a faded, dubious comforter that looked anything but comforting. The thing was probably crawling with bugs. The brown carpet had once been high pile, but was trodden down with age and stained in just about every single spot. An ancient TV and VCR combo sat on top of a battered stand. There was a single night stand beside the bed, as battered as the rest of the room, with the lamp that looked like it had been dug out of a dumpster. The pink shade was worn and faded and had several cigarette burns.
Kirstin set her bag down with a thump on the bed. He slammed the door and did up both locks, the deadbolt and the chain.
“Nice place.” She glanced around. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “I hope you like sleeping on the floor because I’m sure as hell not sharing the bed.”
“There’s room enough for both of us.”
She laughed, like she found that funny, but she didn’t protest. It worried, him, the way her beautiful green eyes swept over him. She was cold and almost calculating, like she was in on a plan he knew nothing about. The hairs on the backs of his arms stood on end.
“Let me see your shoulder,” she commanded. “I need to disinfect it and sew it up.”<
br />
Damon paused. She was so matter of fact, so different than she was earlier. He liked it less and less with each passing second. He already felt uneasy. No, that wasn’t the right word. Neither was paranoid, but it got a little closer. He expected someone to bust down their door and try to murder them in their sleep. Yeah, that about came close. He bristled as he set his black bag down. He produced the first aid kit he’d assembled.
Kirstin walked over to stand beside him. Her presence was large, looming. It filled up the room and commanded his attention. He found her attractive, but there was something else about her in that moment, something… he couldn’t figure out what it was, but shamefully, he reacted to it. His cock hardened and his blood quickened.
“You put a fucking needle and thread in there? That’s not what a real doctor would use. That’s what you sew jeans with.”
“It’s all I have,” he said thickly. “That and the whiskey.” He slammed his ass down onto the bed, grabbed the bottle, uncapped it, and took a long swig. The acrid fire burned down his throat. He slowly maneuvered his shirt off, groaning when he jostled the bandage. A fresh stain of red bloomed on the already sodden surface. He ripped off the bandage and the tape, closed his eyes, and doused the wound. He let out a hiss of pain and his body spasmed from the burning intrusion.
Kirstin eyed the needle and thread. She was right. It was from some fucking sewing kit, but it would have to do. It was better than leaving the damn gash open. She’d stuck that knife into him good. Not far enough to shred anything, but enough to sting, and fuck, the bleeding was annoying.
“All I have is the whiskey to sterilize it.”
He glanced around and waved a hand at the hotel room. “Does this look sterile to you? Just pour some on and get it done. I don’t care if it’s neat or clean, but do it. If I lose any more blood, I’m going to be useless if someone comes after us.”
Kirstin ducked her head. Tendrils of blonde hair escaped that tight knot at the base of her neck and framed her beautiful face. He watched her lips purse as she poured a little whiskey over the needle. Her hands shook and her bottom teeth sunk into her lush lower lip. It shouldn’t be so sexy, watching her bite down, as she was about to stab him, but his groin thought otherwise. He was overcome with the urge to take her, thrust her back on that bed, and sink his own teeth into her lip. He wanted to draw blood. He wanted to taste the metallic copper for himself.
Lonely Rider - The Box Set: A Motorcycle Club Romance - The Complete Series Page 42
