WAYLON (Ruthless MC 1)

Okay, I belong to you. Take me like you want. Teach me again. Teach me everything….the words vibrate in my throat, wanting to come out, just like another part of me wants to be filled up by him again…

But….

“No!” I remember myself and spit the word out. A desperate soldier throwing a hand grenade. “No! I don't belong to you—you’re a psycho. I'm not going into your trailer with you. I'm here under duress. You need to let me go. You need to let me get back to my life in Delaware. The one you blew up.”

Waylon stills.

His body becomes so tight and rigid against mine. I wonder if he'll listen. And I wonder how I’ll feel about that. If he was right about me, and I truly do want him to take me in there by force just so I don’t have to submit out loud.

But in the end, he slams his hand against the car. And as heavy and durable as the truck is, it reverberates under the hit.

“All right, guess we're doing this the hard way,” he bites out before grabbing my wrists. Again.

The next thing I know, I'm being pulled forward, but not toward his trailer this time.

“What are you doing?” I demand, trying to tug my wrist out of his grip. “Where are you taking me?”

He stops in front of a charming mobile home. One of the ones with a light on in front. It’s two stories with a set of concrete steps leading up to its front door, and it even has rose bushes lining its front. If the head nurse hadn't shown me pictures of the single-wide modular home she and her husband just got installed on Lake Erie for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, I might've mistaken it for a traditional house.

“Stay here,” Waylon commands, leaving me at the bottom of the steps.

I'm beginning to wonder if the somewhat charming devil of a patient I met back in the fall was an illusion. This version of Waylon only seems to know how to speak in hard commands.

No charm. All devil.

His back is turned, and I think about running. This is the first time I haven’t been either locked in a room or under the careful watch of Waylon or one of his minions. There's a chance, a tiny chance, that I could run and hide in the woods without him being able to find me.

But I’ve never been on so much as a camping trip. If I’m speaking the truth, the only thing that scares me more than the man who kidnapped me is all this country dark full of I-don’t-know-what in its woods.

In the end, I do as commanded. I stay right there and watch Waylon bang his fist against the door on the well-lit porch.

Lights come on inside the house in an instant. But Waylon’s so tall, I can’t see who’s on the other side of the door when it opens.

He starts issuing commands before whoever it is has the chance to speak. “Got somebody here who needs to stay with you for a while. If you have anybody upstairs, you’re going to have to kick ‘em out.”

The other person must be asking questions I can’t hear because Waylon answers, “No, she's not staying with me…it's gotta be with you…she's making us do this the hard way…no, she doesn't have anything for me to bring in…. Yeah, call Lucinda…you can take it from here. I just needed to make sure the room was empty for her.”

With that, he steps back and waves me forward. “C’mon.”

I widen my eyes when I see the person he's been talking to—not another biker like back at the roadhouse or even a topless groupie.

It’s an old lady. But not the biker slang kind.

A real, certified senior citizen waves at me from the door. She has stark white hair pulled into a long braid, and she’s wearing a thin housecoat.

Her face crumples with pity when she sees me like Waylon’s brought her a starved puppy he found at the side of the road.

“Oh, look at you. Aren’t you a sight? Poor thing!” she says as I walk up the steps. “That must’ve been quite some trip. Now you come right on inside with me, and I'm going to heat you up some of the casserole I made tonight.”

“She already ate. We went through a drive-through a couple of hours ago,” Waylon informs her from where he’s now standing behind me.

She waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, that fast food doesn't have anything on my casserole. Are you sure you’re full, honey? Crazytown—that was my old man—he couldn’t get enough of my potato chip and tuna fish casserole—Lord rest his soul.”

I've heard about it but have never had a casserole. However, potato chips and tuna fish doesn’t sound remotely appetizing. So it’s easy to answer, “I’m sorry, but I'm full.”