Doc (The Kings of Mayhem MC Tennessee 2)

DOC

I pass on the grits and gravy. I’m a plant-based guy and haven’t touched meat in more than six years. And before you get all up in my face about plant-based diets and ask me where I get my goddamn protein from, let’s just agree to disagree before our argument gets out of hand. You leave me alone about my choices, and I won’t discuss the effects all those animal products have on your arteries.

Instead, I stick to the real coffee Max had brought over and eat an apple from the bag of groceries the strange yeti-looking man dumped on the counter.

I have no intention of sitting around a table with the Inferno to play happy families.

But Max has other ideas.

He insists I join them, and I reluctantly spend the next thirty minutes enduring the mindless and often explicit conversation roaming around the table.

I do my best to ignore the shit talk and focus on my coffee.

To my surprise, it’s good.

In fact, it’s like nectar on my tongue.

But just like everything in this godforsaken hotel, it’s all part of the game. And Max likes his games, especially when he has someone cornered. He is buttering me up. Kidnap the biker but show him I’m not a bad guy by bringing him real coffee as a token of my appeal.

I look across the table at Lily, who looks like she’s having about as much fun as me. Our eyes meet, and I feel that kick in my chest.

I want to know why I woke up with her in my arms.

She hates me.

I’m the enemy.

Yet, waking up to find her body pressed up against mine felt more right than wrong.

Hell, it felt more than right—it felt like everything.

That’s when it clicks…

… it was no mistake waking up in bed with her because her fucking father put her up to it.

I sit back in my chair and fold my arms across my chest, physically rocked by the sudden realization.

Well, fuck.

Isn’t that a giant kick in the balls?

I feel my body go tense and my jaw tighten.

It doesn’t make any sense that I feel hurt. I don’t like to be touched. I don’t want to wake up with a beautiful woman in my arms. And I sure as fuck don’t want to be drawn to a woman like she has some kind of mesmerizing magnetic pull on me.

But that is exactly what’s happening.

I think back to what Sunshine said. How Max isn’t going to let me go. How he’s going to offer me a place in the Inferno as their medic, and it all begins to make sense.

Get close to the Doc.

Keep him preoccupied.

Treat him good and butter him up.

I glance at Lily again, and anger sizzles at the base of my spine.

Nice try, lady. But my loyalty isn’t for sale, no matter how good it felt waking up with you in my arms.

When I look at Max, my teeth clench behind my poker face. If his plan is to tempt me with pussy so I’ll defect, then he’s chosen the wrong guy. I’ve spent six years resisting women and every carnal urge I’ve had in that time. Resisting the Inferno princess with the sea-green eyes and beautiful face is going to be a walk in the fucking park.

Feeling my mood darken, I make a mental note to keep as far away from her as possible. To enforce it, I escape the weird-as-fuck family breakfast by telling Max I need to check on Odin, then spend the rest of the morning at his bedside trying to formulate an escape plan. But with a patrol of Inferno sharpshooters lurking outside, I don’t like my chances of escaping with my legs intact.

Around lunchtime, Cherry Pie, Star, and Grunt leave. I watch from behind the dirty curtain in the window as their beat-up truck peels out of the driveway and disappears in a cloud of dirt and dust.

The noise wakes Odin from his morphine haze, and I quickly learn he’s not a nice person. It seems the Inferno’s hate for the Kings of Mayhem runs thick in his blood. And because the morphine is easing some of his pain, he can talk, and none of it is nice.

He also has little remorse for blowing up the courthouse. But he knows he’s dying and probably figures it’s too late for regrets now, so he might as well revel in them.

“Bastards deserve to be blown up.” He can barely talk, and I can see it’s painful when he does. Still, it doesn’t stop him. “Fucking dogs… ratting out the club.”

I learned what happened when I heard Max and Otto talking in the kitchen. Apparently, someone was due to testify against the Inferno in the courthouse, but you can’t testify when there isn’t a courthouse to testify in.

And the delay caused by the bombing has given the Inferno time to put pressure on the witness and anyone else who might be a threat to the club.