Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 74122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74122 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“Your vest?”
“An’ the tats on your back. Anything to do with the MC.”
“How do you get rid of that large tattoo if you leave?”
“Two ways...”
“Which are?” she prodded.
“Removin’ ‘em or coverin’ ‘em up.”
She winced. “Ouch.”
“Yeah. Ain’t pleasant either way. Coverin’ ‘em up is the better way, if you get to choose.”
“Would you ever leave?”
“Why you askin’?”
She lifted a shoulder in a half-assed shrug. “Just curious.”
“No. This is my family. Never leavin’.”
“What about your real family?”
“The DAMC is my real family, baby girl.”
“I meant your blood relatives. Father? Mother?”
Blood wasn’t always family. Family wasn’t always blood. That was something he discovered from very young.
“Father was a drunk, took off with some bitch when I was five. Mother found a new man, also a fuckin’ drunk, who thought I was his competition. Been on my own for a long time.”
“How long?”
Why did she need to know this shit? This wasn’t a conversation he liked to have. “Long time, baby girl.”
“How long?” she asked again. She wasn’t going to let it go until he answered. She had a little stubborn streak. And a head full of endless questions.
Dawg blew out a breath. “Since I was thirteen.”
She pushed up to her elbows and started down at him. “Thirteen?”
“Bounced ‘round for a while. A couple aunts. An uncle. A distant cousin. They all got the shits of me an’ put me out. Ran across a biker one day from an outlaw club, he bought me a beer even though I was sixteen. Talked up his club, the lifestyle. When I heard all that, I knew what I wanted. Ended up at his place.”
“So he was nice enough to take you in?”
Dawg closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. That biker had an ol’ lady that he hadn’t touched in ages since he was too busy sticking his dick in any snatch that had a pulse. So his ol’ lady had turned her eyes on Dawg. At first, losing his virginity to an older, more experienced woman seemed like a bonus. Until it wasn’t.
To remain living with them, he had to service her just about every night like a fucking stud dog. Her ol’ man encouraged it, since it got her nagging ass off his back. But after a while, Dawg couldn’t get it up because there was nothing about her that he found attractive and he ended up back on the street after being beaten to within an inch of his life by the biker himself. He still had a small scar from a cut on his temple made from a large ring while being backhanded.
He drifted from there. During his seventeenth year, he landed in one bed after another just to keep a roof over his head and food in his gut. But he kept moving.
Until the day he stumbled into Shadow Valley and ran into a club hang-around the same age as him named Crow, who didn’t look like he would fit into a typical MC, who also introduced him to Ace, Pierce, and Grizz. Then the second he turned eighteen, they handed him his prospect patches, assigned him a room above church, and put him to work. And his life got better from there.
The only other hiccup was finding out last year that he had a daughter named Caitlin.
Other than that, life was good. He studied the woman who could make his life even better if she gave him a shot.
“Gotta confess somethin’, baby girl.”
“What?”
“You’re a teacher, so it might make you look at me differently.”
Her blue eyes studied him. “Tell me. It can’t be that bad.”
“Don’t got my high school diploma.”
She shrugged and continued to mindlessly trace the tattoos on his back. “A GED is just as good.”
The motion was soothing, and he could lay there all night, enjoying her soft touch. “Don’t got that either.”
Her fingers stilled. “You didn’t finish school at all?”
He didn’t know why he felt the need to confess all his secrets to her. Things that no one else knew and might never know. Not even his club brothers. “Nope.”
“How far did you get?”
“Em... got kicked out of the house at thirteen,” he reminded her.
“Thirteen,” she repeated in a whisper, then her eyes widened. “Oh my God.”
“Right. Ain’t even a high school dropout.”
She lifted her head and stared at him. “But you run a successful business.”
“Which consists of naked women dancin’ on a pole.”
“But you have the smarts to run it well, keep it profitable.”
“Didn’t say I was dumb, just a dropout.”
“Baby,” she whispered, running her fingers through his beard.
His eyes narrowed. “You just call me baby?”
Her lips curved upward. “Yes, I did.”
“That a “poor baby” baby? Or “baby, I wanna fuck your brains out” baby?”
She tilted her head and her smile grew. “Which do you want it to be?”
“The fuckin’ second one.”
She bit her bottom lip and, with a growl, he tackled her.