I’m not sure what to think of Big Daddy. On the one hand, he’s kept me safe. On the other hand, he’s caged me like a bird. And I told myself a long time ago I would never let that happen again. I have to be free. I just have to. But I know patience is key here. I can’t rush my escape. Big Daddy isn’t just brawn. He’s got brains, too, and I won’t be able to wiggle out from his grasp so easily. So I wait. And wait. And wait. I feel like I might lose my mind waiting. And then finally, I hear the distinct sounds of Breaker revving his motorcycle, coinciding with the footsteps of my captor coming up the hall. I freeze up, expecting him to come in and check on me. But he doesn’t. I wait for it-- but the check-in never comes. At long last, I start to think the coast might actually be clear.
I have a plan. Not the best plan I’ve ever hatched, but the best I can think of. It will be an adventure and definitely a risk. Oh well. My freedom is worth it to me, I assure myself. It’s worth it. I can do this. I wait for the right moment to arrive, and when I hear his heavy footsteps come into the room, I pretend to be asleep. I’m pretty good at that. Used to fake my mom into thinking I was asleep when she checked on me as a kid growing up, just so I could then flick on the lamp and keep reading late into the night. I utilize that superpower right now, and I’m pleased to find it effective. With one eye just ever so slightly parted to let shadows pass over, I watch Big Daddy stalk through the bedroom to the en suite bathroom. He hovers in the doorway for a few moments just watching me. His eyes chart the soft, rhythmic rise and fall of my chest. I stay as still as possible, indicating a deep sleep. Once he’s satisfied that I’m not going to jump up and run away, he closes the bathroom door behind him.
My heart is pounding. I know I only have a limited window in which to enact my plan. No room for mistakes. No time for hesitation, either.
I softly creep out of bed and sneak to the door. Listening closely, I start to open the bedroom door in tiny fractions, bit by bit until finally it was just barely open enough for my lithe body to slip through. Once I’m standing in the hallway, I listen again. Nothing. My dark hair whips out behind me as I dart down the hall to the front door. Every muscle in my body is tensed, every thought in my mind is screaming, pointing toward the door, toward freedom. But I stop at the door for a moment to do the thing I’ve been meaning to do, the thing I have been fixated on since I first caught a glimmer of the gold-tinted metal on the end table by the door.
The keys to the motorcycle. I grab them and hurriedly fumble to open the front door, struggling with my hands as they shake uncontrollably. I beg my body to calm down just enough to let me out. I take a deep breath, not daring to look back as I disengage three separate locks and burst out the door. I all but stumble down the driveway, my feet aching because I hit the ground so hard. I see the motorcycle. It’s almost within grasp.
I scramble up to it, hoping my adrenaline will be enough to guide my shaking hands. Have I ever driven a motorcycle before? Nope. Do I have any clue where I am right now and which way to go? Not the foggiest. But will any of those negative little factoids change my mind now that it’s made up?
Not at all. I’m fully committed.
Except maybe I’m not, I realize as I finally cast a glance back toward the house. I feel my heart lurch toward it, like it’s longing to get back inside. Like I’ve left something totally vital behind and I need to go back for it. Guilt, I recognize, rearing its ugly head. Why do I get the sense that I’m not escaping Big Daddy, but betraying him? Abandoning him? Maybe it’s the deep instinct within me that says he isn’t a threat, that he’s just trying to help. That he’s got a heart of gold and the brightest intentions. Under normal circumstances, I would love to meet a guy like him. Smart, powerful, protective, thoughtful-- the strong, silent type I adore so much.
I try to shake off these feelings as I jam the key into the ignition. Or rather, try to. It seems like the adrenaline is too intense, because I can’t aim the key into the hole properly. I try again and manage to catch it, but just before I can turn the engine, I feel a heavy hand weighing on my shoulder, and then a low growling voice in my ear.
“Nice try,” Big Daddy grumbles, his hands grabbing me in mid-mount.
“Shit!” I yelp. For a moment I try to fight back, but I realize immediately that resistance is futile when it comes to Big Daddy. He’s got a vice grip on me and I’m not going anywhere. So instead, I fix him with the most withering glare I can manage.
“Alright. Okay,” he sighs, and promptly scoops me up into his arms.
“Hey! What are you-- put me down!” I retort indignantly.
“Chill out,” he growls, carrying me up the drive and into the house. So much for my escape plan. He caught me like it was nothing, like he expected it.
“Just let me go,” I protest.
“Tell me, where did you plan on driving that bike?” he asks.
“Away from here,” I snap.
He chuckles. “In which direction?”
“Does it matter?” I splutter.
“If you want to continue being alive, yes. It matters a lot,” Daddy answers.
“And you’re telling me I’m safer here? With you?” I ask.
“Yes, I’m telling you that,” he says emphatically. “The question is whether or not you’ll listen to me.”
“That depends what your intentions are,” I groan.
He pauses for a moment as he carries me back into the bedroom, confiscating the keys from me and tossing them on the dresser.
“Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me you see bad intentions there?” he murmurs to me softly.
I try to meet his gaze, but it’s too much. I avert my eyes.
“That’s what I thought,” he says, carrying me to the bed.
“So what are you going to do with me now?” I ask, afraid of the answer.
He cradles me back onto the bed and I hardly have a second to register what’s going on before there are cuffs coming out and being pinned over my wrists, binding me to the bed.
“Wait. Wait! What are you doing?” I blurt out.
“Clearly, you’re a high-risk prisoner,” he says as he straps me in.
“Hey! I thought you said I wasn’t a prisoner!” I whimper.
“And you said you are,” he replies. “Just using your own terminology, little girl. Anyway, you’ve proven you can’t be trusted. You require extra security. You’re a flight risk.”
“Extra security?” I squeak.
“Yes,” he says. He steps back, folding his muscular arms over his chest. “I’m going to watch you all night.”
I swallow hard. Nervousness swells up inside of me. I don’t like being watched. Or at least… I thought I didn’t. But the strangest thing happens as Big Daddy stands guard in the room. Slowly but surely, my body starts to relax. Those tense muscles loosen up. My heart stops racing. My eyelids start drooping. I feel… safe. Of course, it takes a little wiggling to get comfortable being cuffed to a bed, but there’s a quiet, insistent part of me that kind of loves it. And gets off on it. As I drift off to sleep, I can’t resist the delicious fantasies that dance and whirl through my mind. My dreams are comfortable and blissful. Somehow, I get the best night of sleep I have had in what feels like forever.
* * *
When I wake up in the morning, it’s to the tempting aroma of bacon sizzling through the chill air. I shiver a little as I come to life, my eyes taking in my strange surroundings. Although I’m slightly confused when I first wake up, it doesn’t take me long to adjust. All the wild events of the past couple days come rushing back to me. I lie there totally still, staring up at the ceiling. Although my wrists ache a little, I feel totally rested. I don’t even feel the need to struggle, and before long I’m joined by Big Daddy. He comes walking into the room with a tray of breakfast. My stomach growls loudly, betraying how ravenous I am.
“Morning,” he said.
“Breakfast in bed? That’s an odd choice to follow being handcuffed to the bed,” I remark.
He sets the tray down on the bedside table and promptly unlocks my cuffs, to my surprise. He watches me quietly while I go through a truncated morning routine. He lets me go to the bathroom, wash my hands, even take a brief shower after I scarf down my breakfast. All the while, Big Daddy stands guard nearby.
“Tell me, do I need to keep you cuffed during the day or will you stay put?” he asks.
“I guess that depends,” I admit slowly.
“On what?” he asks.
“On what I overheard between you and Breaker last night,” I pipe up.
He looks amused, but not angry. Not even that surprised.
“I’m impressed. But if it makes you feel any better, I’m not comfortable with Breaker’s… plot either,” he tells me. “I’ll explain it to you just the same.”
“Please do. But first, do you have coffee?” I ask.
He smiles. “Yes. But you’ll have to drink it black.”
I nod. “Fine by me. I like it that way.”
We sit and sip coffee out of oddly adorable mugs while he explains the plan. We are to set up a fake relationship in a big hurry, be seen together and witnessed in public, get married in a public place, and thereby halt the war before it can come to a head. Big Daddy reveals that my brother Diesel isn’t willing to negotiate with them.
“But if his own sister is tied to the Heartbreakers, it might be enough to draw a truce. Save a few collateral lives, at least,” he says.
I’m stunned. “That’s not at all what I was expecting to hear,” I confess.
“I know. It’s a lot to take in,” he concedes.
“It’s just that he’s my brother, you know? It’s hard for me to picture him being that evil. But I can see him being involved in some violent stuff. He doesn’t have the best group of friends these days. Maybe a peace agreement would help my family, too,” I give in.
And maybe the way Big Daddy looks dazzling in the soft morning light is affecting my ability to make that call. Maybe the way my heart skips a beat every time he looks at me is obscuring my vision a little. But the plan sounds considerably less insane to me. I can see the potential benefits. Most importantly, I can feel that his intentions are clear. He wants peace. So do I.
“Don’t worry,” he says suddenly. “I told Breaker no.”
“Oh,” I mumble. “Okay.”
“I’m still going to keep you here with me, but I’m not going to force you into anything formal. Not without your ready consent,” Big Daddy assures me.
I’m oddly flattered that he would even take my feelings into consideration.
“I’ve been assigned to guard you, either way. It’s technically personal rather than business, but it is what it is,” he says.
“Okay,” I mumble, nodding. “But I have something to ask of you.”
He looks wary. “What is it?”
“Can you take me into town?” I ask.
Big Daddy frowns at me. “What?”
“I need to see my mom,” I insist.
“No. Absolutely not,” he replies. “Hell no. I’m sorry.”
“Please, Daddy,” I beg fervently. “She means the world to me, alright? My mom is the whole reason I moved back home to this dumb beautiful state and I need to know she’s okay.”
“Juliette…” he sighs.
“Come on,” I insist. “Plus, you said yourself Breaker wants us to be seen together if we’re going to set up our fake marriage, right?”
He looks at me hard, and I can tell he’s thinking of how to answer me.
Big Daddy
“That’s your condition, I’m guessing,” she says not even an hour later, when I’m standing in front of her holding up a simple, fresh black bandana, one that I’ve worn over my face more times than I can remember over the years.
“Yeah,” I grunt. “I’m taking a risk letting you out of that room, much less the house. But knowing what I know about you, you’re so liable to run anyway you’re probably safest at my side anyway. Either way, you can’t know where we are, so we’re using the blindfold. Be lucky I’m not making you keep your hands bound.”
She watches me suspiciously as I approach, but she at least doesn’t stop me as I raise the blindfold to her eyes. Before the fabric can reach them, she snatches it from my hands and puts it on herself. I raise an eyebrow, smiling gruffly at her as I watch her tie it, and I give a single chuckle.
I take her by the hands and hold them up to her, not letting myself dwell too long on how warm and soft she feels under my rough grasp. “These are staying with me as long as we ride. You’re not getting that thing off you until I’m ready to let you have it off, understand?”
“So,” she says as I let go of her hands and step around her to the other side of the room to rummage through one of my bags. “You don’t think the state troopers are going to think it’s a little weird that you’re riding around with a blindfolded woman on the back of your-”
Before she could finish her question, I gently slid a sleek black helmet over the top of her head and the blindfold. I opened the visor briefly to make sure the blindfold was still on, and I smiled at my handiwork when I shut it.
“Fair enough,” she says. “But if you bust your head open and we die in a bike accident, I’ll kill you.”
“Deal,” I grunt, and I take her by the hands and lead her out the door.
I have to admit, the circumstances are way too nice for me to be leading my kidnappee out the front door. The sky is clear and deep blue, the crisp October air outside makes me want to ride aimlessly for miles, and the girl I’m leading by the hands...well, it isn’t a conventional first date, it’s going to have to do.
I have no idea what the hell Breaker was thinking last night, tossing the marriage proposal into my court so casually like that. He must have known I’d be so stunned by that idea I could barely respond at the time. Marrying Juliette? Fuck me, I’d be a liar if I said the thought of how she might look in a black bridal dress didn’t make my blood run hot, but I don’t think I exactly tick the boxes for husband material.
I’m the enforcer for a motorcycle club. We’ve got a job to do. I’ve got a job to do, and faking a romance isn’t in my job description.
But damned if Breaker doesn’t have a point, too. The girl I help into her seat after we cross the yard and reach the glistening black behemoth of a motorcycle I ride is the sister of someone very important. She’s valuable to the club. That’s hard to argue. But shit, I hate thinking of her that way. She’s a human being, not a pawn in a gang war.
I took her to keep her safe, not to use her against our enemy. But then again, that just makes Breaker’s plan seem to make all the more sense. If it looked like Juliette and I were really together and had something going, and we happened to get hitched to seal the deal, it might stop the war before it even gets off the ground. If the war stops before it starts, that’s as safe as it can possibly be for her, right?
Hell, maybe even she can sense that. I know she was joking earlier, but is it me, or does she not hate the idea as much as I’d expect? Maybe she’s even more pragmatic than I am about all this, but marriage isn’t something I’ve ever taken lightly. I don’t know if I ever plan to tie the knot, but I wouldn’t consider something like this unless...well shit, this is about as “do or die” of a situation as you can get, isn’t it?
Once we’re both on the bike, I hold her hands around my torso and against my stomach, where I hold them fast to me. “Alright, listen,” I say. “We’re going straight down to your mom’s place, and when I say we can’t be there more than a few minutes, I mean it.”
She nods, and I feel the helmet bump against the back of my shoulders. I pause.
“Can you breathe okay?” I ask.
Another bump.
“Good. Might not be our only stop, either, so hang tight,” I say as I fire up the engine, and the motorcycle roars to life under us.
I feel her hands tighten, then relax as the rumble makes its way through our bodies, and I smile down at
her hands briefly before I pull off. She must not have ridden much, which is surprising, considering who she is. I kind of like that about her. She’s new to this, and at the very least, that means I get to give her that first experience.
To my surprise, she’s not as tense as I thought she’d be as I weave my way out the driveway and down the winding dirt path to the main road, where we empty out onto a broad, empty highway the likes of which keep me going more than anything else in the world. The road means freedom, and I get my strength there.
The softly rolling forested green hills all around us are overgrown with vibrant colors and tall, healthy trees that loom around us as I ride through the hills, smelling the fresh water in the air and the rich earth all around. I wonder if she’s smart enough to figure out where we are based on senses alone, when we get back to the drier air and more open spaces back in Wyoming. I don’t doubt she can, if she tries. She’s impressing me at every turn, and I hate that I can’t let her know that.
I don’t pull over onto the side of the road until we’re well into Wyoming, heading directly south toward Juliette’s hometown. My eyes are watchful for any signs of other riders, but the roads seem to be quiet today, which I’m grateful for. Juliette deserves a breather. She’s been through a lot in the...how long has she known me? Not even a week.
It’s been a hell of a reunion.
The dark brown locks shake free from the helmet, and I pull the blindfold off her swiftly. Her eyes spring open immediately, then shut tight again and turn with her whole head as the sun stings her.
“Ow,” she says plaintively.
“Yeah, welcome back to big sky country,” I chuckle. “Feeling alright? Need to stretch your legs a little?”
“Nah, I’m good,” she says, shaking her head and rolling her shoulders back, though she doesn’t sound especially convincing. “Let’s keep going.”
“You’ve got a lot of energy,” I point out as she gets back onto the bike with my help. “Sure you’ve never ridden before?”
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