Ransomed MC Princess #1 (6 page)

He gives me a grin like he’s never given me in his entire life. It slices through whatever shreds of confidence I have left like a knife. “Don’t make me fuckin’ come up there and get you. You’re not gonna like what I’ll do.”

Uh, if he thinks I’m not going to like it, why does it look so much like he’ll like it?!?!?!?

His grip on the bar tightens. He’s about to launch himself onto the bar.

Fuck!

There are only two options in a situation like this.

#1: Surrender completely to my arch nemesis’ vengeance. Beg for mercy. Tell him he really doesn’t stink like you told him he did back when the two of you were seven. Make a note to get him a really, really,
really
nice birthday present. Promise that the next time you bake cookies, you’ll give him lots and lots and do not, under any circumstance, torment him by eating them in front of him without sharing like you love to do.

#2: Run like hell.

So guess which choice I make?

Hint: it was the wrong choice.

I turn and leap into the air, over the heads of bikers who ooh and awe like my vajazzles are heralding the second coming. For a second I soar, my lower region shimmering like angel wings beneath the strobe lights, until my belly smashes into some poor dude’s head.

I shriek as he grabs onto my hips, I guess to steady me so I don’t barrel over, face-first, into the mosh pit behind him.

“Sorry!” I yell, kicking. I’ve gotta get off and then get out of here. The door is only about thirty feet away. I could make it…in my heels…in the middle of a crowd…

Shit, I’m so screwed. Especially since the handy guy who caught me isn’t letting go. Instead, he buries his scratchy beard in my tummy like he’s attempting to motorboat my belly.

I look over my shoulder just in time to see Damien stalking towards us. He’s glittering, too—his shimmering eyes promising hell.

I turn around and keep kicking while the weird drunk dude attempts to…blow a bubble? What the hell is he doing to my stomach? Alright, this guy has to let me go
now!

Not even a second later, a strong hand grabs my shoulder and yanks me off the weird dude who caught me.

“Thanks,” I yell, breathless. I don’t have time to say anything else. Damien is going to be here any second and I’ve got to…

The hand remains on my shoulder, holding me in place.

Oh fuck. I have a bad feeling about this.

Slowly I look up, already cringing, because I know what I’m going to see there.

It’s Damien. And, predictably, he’s pissed. What surprises me, though, is that he looks even angrier than he had a few seconds ago. A crowd starts to gather around us in a circle. They know shit is about to go down.

“Um, Damien. Hi. I was just, um…hi.” I babble. What else can I do? His chest is heaving. His eyes are either glowing red from the red beer sign near the bar or promise of murder, and taking into consideration what just happened I think
murder
is far more likely.

Instead of trying to run, I should have gotten down on all fours in the bar and begged for forgiveness in front of everyone. Then promptly made a batch of cookies and let him eat some of them. Instead, I’d unleashed a demon. Yes, I’d made the wrong choice…but it wasn’t nearly as wrong of a choice as the one the dude who caught me decides to make.

As Damien fumes and rages and growls, an arm pops out of nowhere to hit him on the shoulder.

“Hey boy, I was usin’ that,” the older man who caught me bellows.

I gasp as Damien’s blazing eyes flash towards him. “You were what?” he asks slowly.

Oh shit! I grab Damien’s shoulder, pulling him towards me and away from the creepy old dude with a death wish. “Uh…hey Damien….let’s um…”

The older man frowns. “I said I was usin’ that. Learn some respect, boy, and wait your turn.”

Oh my God.

Wrong thing to say.

No, not just wrong thing to say.
Worst
thing to say.

Damien grabs the guy’s shirt and yanks him up so they’re face to face. His muscles bulge as he holds the shaking older man off the ground. “Let me fucking tell you a little something about respect,
old man
. You don’t talk to her. You don’t even fucking
look at her
. Understand?”

The older man’s black shirt starts to rip at the armpits.

“Do you understand?” Damien continues. “I asked you a fuckin’ question!”

I hear knuckles cracking behind me. Oh fuck, I can’t hear music anymore. They must have turned it off. If I don’t do something quick, this entire party or friendship festival or orgy or whatever the hell they wanted to call it was going to turn into a massacre. Candy did say my body was a weapon; it was time to use it as an instrument of peace instead of war.

I throw myself at Damien. My chest smashes into his strong, tattooed arm as my fingers dig into his chest. When a jolt rushes through me, I’m sure it’s from fear, not from the feeling of his hard, muscular body pressed against mine.

“Take me home,” I plead. “Please, Damien, I just want to go home.”

Damien’s grip on the older biker relaxes. He looks at me and for a moment, his fierce façade melts. What’s left is something real and almost tender.

He drops the guy on the ground. “You’re fuckin’ lucky today, asshole. If she weren’t here, you wouldn’t have been able to walk.”

I’m not sure I agree with that. If I wasn’t here, the old man wouldn’t have almost gotten the shit beat out of him in the first place, but I decide not to explain this to Damien right now. Giving him a shaky smile I step back and pull on his arm, trying to draw him to me. As I do, the strobe light catches the shiningly brilliant part of my costume.

Shit. My smile stops being shaky and starts being desperate. “Uh…Damien…” I begin, but he isn’t looking at my face. He’s glaring at the bottom half of me like he wants to rip it off.

I squeeze my thighs together until my knees touch. He can’t rip off my vajazzle beads. There are way too many of them, it would take for-fucking-ever!

“You,” he growls, looking back into my eyes.

Me?
What did
I
do? I take a step back but I don’t get far. The crowd is still gathered around us.

No escape. Fuck!

With a demonic smile Damien launches forward and grabs my hips. I shriek as he hoists me into the air, stomach on his shoulder. He puts one hand on my ass—to shield it, maybe…but more likely he just wants to hold me in place and embarrass me even more. His hot, strong grip on my ass tightens as the drunk men in the room start to yell out cat-calls.

“Move!” Damien bellows, barreling forward as the crowd immediately parts.

Everyone seems intent on following his orders, which does
not
bode well for me. I kick and wave my arms, hitting his back and trying to hit his legs, feeling very much like a kid throwing a tantrum. “Let me down!”

“No chance in hell,” he turns his head, whispering down my back. “You know what your father would do if he found you like this? What the hell kind of stunt were you trying to pull?”

My face burns from shame. What the hell had I been thinking? And what would my father—oh God, I didn’t even want to contemplate what he would think!

The yells from the crowd are replaced by the sounds of moaning women as we make our way to the back of the barn. Oh God, is he going to take me into a stall to punish me?
Shit just got way too real way too fast!

There’s a loud crack as Damien kicks open the door. Cold, night air replaces the sweaty, steam from the barn. It feels like I’ve just been dropped in an ice bath. Shivering, I stop struggling as he puts me down near the back wall.

I rub my hands over my arms. Alright, he’s not gonna punish me in a nasty fuck-stall. Thank God for small favors. Just as I finish that thought, I look up at Damien’s face, illuminated by the spotlights that were placed around the barn and make-shift parking lot.

Actually, maybe a dark, nasty fuck-stall would have been better. At least then, I wouldn’t have been able to see his face! He doesn’t look like a demon out of hell, he looks like a demon that just materialized and brought all of hell with him. Hot white light splashes over the angular, bronzed skin of his face, turning his all-American bad boy looks into something truly dangerous. His green, serpentine eyes seem to glow from his barely-suppressed rage.

I have to think of something to say fast to diffuse this situation. “Um, so yeah, I…um…”

He yanks off his leather jacket.

Think faster, Annie!
“So, all that back in there, you know? It was just like, you know, stuff…” Fuck, what the hell am I even trying to say?

He throws the jacket at my feet and, I swear to fucking god, actually snarles as he grabs the hem of his shirt and yanks it over his head.

Oh fuck. I didn’t just break something inside him, I broke
him
. Okay. Mine and Candy’s harebrained revenge scheme. I need to explain it.

“You know what I mean? How girls are and it’s friendship,” I blather as his shirt comes all the way off.

And I can’t speak. His strong muscles glisten, as unrelenting as the harsh lights beaming down on him. The exquisitely detailed artwork in his tattoos seems etched into his raw masculine power. There’s something primal and so beautiful about it that it scares me.

He throws his shirt at me. “Put it on.” His eyes trail down, drinking in the curves of my body. “Now.”

I pull the soft, white cotton over my head. It smells like him—like oil and smoke and cedar wood. I’ve slightly above average height, but Damien is so much taller. The hem hits me mid-thigh.

Damien bends over and grabs his jacket off the ground and hands it to me. “This too. It’s cold.”

“What?”

He steps closer until we’re almost touching. “The jacket. Put it on.”

I shiver. “Could you maybe back up a bit? It’s a little hard to move around with you…enclosing me like this.”

His eyes darken. “No.”

So. I was dealing with Caveman Damien. I glare at him as I pull the jacket around me. It’s warm and nice, but before I can thank him he grabs my hands and hoists them above my head.

I yelp. He doesn’t react at all…at least verbally. He just stares at me all intense and scary like.

I gulp. “Um, hi Damien.”

He pushes his hips into mine, breathing heavily. My breathing starts to get a little heavy, too.

“You wanna start a war?” he whispers.

“No.”

“Then what
the fuck
were you doin’ comin’ in here like that?”

I wet my lips.
I wanted to show you I was confident and mature and ready to fight back!

Only I can’t say that. It’s too stupid. What kind of way was this to show him I was confident and mature, by strutting around in front of a group of drunk, horny men and making him all mad at me and…I was the biggest idiot on the planet. Why the fuck had I listened to Candy?

He lowers his eyes and takes in my body like I’m still baring everything to him. “I should march you right back to your bedroom, lock your door, and never let you out.”

Why did it sound like he wasn’t going to be the only one locked in my room? Like…that we would both be locked in…and he’d do horribly wonderful things to me?

“My dad would never stand for it,” I reply, indignant.

“Oh, you wanna bring your dad into this?”

I cringe. Actually, I don’t want that. I mean, I
really, really, really
don’t want that. “Just because I was a little bad doesn’t mean I should be a prisoner.”

“I’d lock us both in there, Princess. You and me, we got shit to sort out.”

There’s no way I can explain how bad that sounds. “Um, no I don’t think we have any shit to sort out. Really.”

Slowly he takes his lower lip between his teeth. His eyes unfocus as he drinks in my chest, my neck, and my face. Parts of me that should totally not be tingling right now tighten. My breath catches with anticipation.

But it’s not like that proves anything.

I shake my head. “I mean, I don’t want to talk about anything with you when you look kind of…um…”

He leans in closer. With moonlight shining in his eyes, his strong features looking sharper than they do in the garage with the dusty sunlight. I haven’t seen him outside at night for a long time. He looks like he belongs in the woods…like he’s a dangerous nocturnal creature.

“You didn’t finish,” he whispers.

“I didn’t finish what?” I squeak.

“What I look like.”

Would he be pissed if I said he looks like a werewolf? Would he be even more pissed if I told him it wasn’t like the sexy werewolves in romance novels, but like the kind in the B-horror movies that Candy likes to watch with vicious, bloody fangs and gnarled fur who’s only thought was to rip your entrails out of your body and wear them around their neck like a prize?

Yeah. I figured he’d be pissed if I said that. Which is why instead of that, I tactfully reply, “Let’s not talk about what you look like.”

“Why?”

Did his face just get even freakier? Oh screw being confident and fighting back. I want out of here now! “Because you’re freaking me out! You look all big and scary and like you’re gonna do bad things to me.”

The old Damien would always step back when I said things like that. If I told him I scared him, he might have laughed, but he’d also stop. This Damien doesn’t do that.

“I don’t think you can even imagine the things I want to do to you, Princess.”

“Um, yeah. I bet I can’t! I mean, I really don’t want to, and I can’t!”

He gives me that grin again. You know,
that grin
. The one that makes me afraid but also all tingly and warm and…goddamnit there is something really fucked up about my psychology!

And then, something even more fucked up happens.

One of the hands holding my hands above my head goes away. He brings his free hand to my face, tilting it up slowly, almost tenderly.

“I could kill you for what you did in there,” he whispers. Only when he says the word kill, it doesn’t sound like he’s talking about murder. His voice aches and is full of longing and…
what the fuck is going on here?