Page 17 of Damron (Bloody Scythes MC #1)
After forty minutes of nothing but asphalt and fear and the taste of panic on my tongue, we peeled off onto a side road so narrow I thought he’d missed the turn.
The bike fishtailed on loose gravel. I gasped, probably louder than I meant, but he just corrected and kept riding.
The road climbed, twisting into mountains I’d only seen from airplane windows.
There were trees now, thickening with every mile, the darkness between them so total I wondered if we’d crossed into another country, or maybe just another set of rules.
He cut the engine at the end of a dirt track.
Silence crashed down, absolute and holy.
For a second, I couldn’t hear anything but my own blood in my ears.
Then: a faint ticking as the engine cooled, the shriek of some coyote off in the brush, and the whisper of wind in the pines.
The cabin was just there, a black outline crouched beneath the trees.
No lights, no movement, nothing to say a human had lived here in a decade.
Damron dismounted, boots hitting the ground with a crunch.
He peeled the helmet off my head and tossed it into the dirt, then caught me under the armpits as I tried to slide off.
My legs went to jelly as soon as I hit earth, but I didn’t let him see me stumble.
He didn’t waste time on pleasantries. Just grabbed the keys from his pocket, stomped up the porch, and shouldered the door open with a sound like a gunshot.
I followed, knees shaking so hard I thought they’d rattle right off.
Inside, it was colder than outside. The air stank of dust, old wood, and something metallic.
There was a single room: a bed against one wall, a wood stove with a pile of gray logs beside it, a table and two chairs, and nothing else.
No pictures, no curtains, no hint that anyone had ever called this place home.
It looked like a hideout from a shitty horror movie.
Damron lit a match, then a kerosene lamp on the table.
The room glowed a dirty yellow. He yanked off his cut and slung it over a chair, then went to work on the stove, stacking logs and crumpling newspaper until a blaze caught.
The heat was instant and almost painful against my numb skin.
I stood in the doorway, trying to unpeel my fingers from the death grip they’d welded to my phone.
I looked around for cell bars, knowing I wouldn’t find any, then finally powered the fucking thing down.
My mind buzzed with all the reasons I shouldn’t be here, but my body disagreed.
It wanted warmth, quiet, and the illusion of safety, even if it was temporary.
He finished with the stove, then turned and stared. Not at me—at the blood seeping through my blouse. “Sit,” he said, and pointed to the table.
I obeyed. He rooted around in a drawer by the bed, came back with a first-aid kit and a bottle of something clear and unlabeled. He poured a splash onto a clean rag and handed it to me.
“For the pain,” he said, then grinned. “Or just pour it on your arm if you’re feeling brave.”
I took the bottle and slugged it. Moonshine, probably.
It burned like napalm but got the job done.
He set to work peeling back the bandage, hands gentler than they had any right to be.
I winced as he checked the wound, then let myself look at his face.
It was softer in the lamplight, but there was nothing soft in his eyes.
Just focus, and maybe—maybe—a flicker of something old and dangerous.
It was the look that made me swoon back in the day.
For a moment, he was the man I fell in love with long ago.
He dressed the wound, wrapped it tight, and when he finished, he put his hands flat on the table and leaned in until we were close enough to share a single breath. “No one knows about this place,” he said. His voice was low, barely above a whisper. “Not even Nitro.”
I believed him. And in that moment, I knew exactly how fucked I was.
###
For the next twenty minutes, we circled each other in the cabin like two drunks at a knife fight—never getting closer than we had to, never letting the other out of sight.
Damron built the fire up with military precision, hands moving so steady and quiet you’d never guess he’d killed a man with those same fingers.
I paced the floor, arms tight across my chest, sweat drying sticky on my skin.
Every time I looked at the bandage, I got mad all over again—at the shooter, at the campaign, at myself for coming here in the first place.
The first words hung in the air so long I thought they’d freeze solid.
“You should’ve let me handle this my way,” he said, without turning from the stove.
“Yeah,” I snapped, “because the biker solution to everything is so fucking elegant.”
He grunted. “Worked for a while.”
I drifted to the window, peering out into the black. Nothing but trees and the faint gleam of chrome where the Harley crouched by the porch. “I still don’t get why you brought me here. Why not just keep me at the clubhouse with your army?”
“Because that’s the first place they’d look,” he said, voice flat. “And because the clubhouse is full of idiots who can’t keep their dicks in their pants or a secret past breakfast.”
“You trust them with your life, but not mine?” I spun on him, letting the old fire out.
He shrugged. “I know what they’ll die for. But you? You already left once.”
There it was. The thing we’d spent three years not saying.
I laughed, sharp and mean. “You never change, Damron. Still acting like you’re the only one who ever bled.”
He tossed another log on the fire, sparks climbing like angry bees. “Don’t talk to me about bleeding. I watched you walk out my front gate and not even look back. All that shit about wanting something better? You meant something cleaner.”
I closed the distance in two steps, jabbing a finger at his chest. “You think this is about fucking dirt? I left because I couldn’t keep patching you up and pretending it wasn’t killing us both. I didn’t want to see you die in a gutter with a club tattoo and a rap sheet for a headstone.”
He grabbed my wrist—gentle, but unyielding. “You didn’t care enough to stay.”
I wrenched away, voice cracking. “I cared too much, you asshole. I wanted you to want out. I wanted you to fight for something besides war.”
We were inches apart now, both breathing hard. The heat from the stove had nothing on what was happening in the room.
He spoke soft, but the words landed like buckshot. “You wanted the man, but not the life.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out all wrong. “You think you’re so noble? You think risking prison every day is romantic? You never gave a shit about how many people you pulled down with you. If I’d stayed, I’d be in a box or a witness stand by now.”
He advanced, slow and deliberate, until my back hit the wall. He braced one arm above my head and leaned in, eyes locked on mine. “Then why are you here now, Senator?” The word stung, but not as much as the way he said it: like he was spitting out a curse.
I tried to say something—anything—but the words got lost somewhere between my brain and my mouth. So I did the only thing that made sense in the moment. I grabbed the collar of his cut and yanked him down, slamming my mouth onto his.
For half a second he was all teeth and resistance, biting my lower lip until I tasted blood.
Then he groaned, deep in his chest, and pushed me harder into the wall.
I clawed at the buttons on his shirt, tearing two clean off, then raked my hands up under the hem until I found bare skin, hot and alive and scarred from all the years I’d missed.
He kissed the way he fought: desperate, bruising, determined to win even if he had to break the game.
His hands roamed rough and urgent, one on my throat, the other already working the zipper of my ruined slacks.
I made a fist in his hair and pulled, hard, loving the way he hissed against my mouth.
We crashed sideways, knocking over a chair, then stumbled together toward the bed like we might actually kill each other before we got there.
“Shut up,” I gasped, tearing at his belt. “Just shut up and—”
He cut me off with a hand over my mouth and a knee between my legs. “You don’t get to give orders here,” he growled.
But I could see it in his eyes—the same hunger, the same pain, the same fucked-up hope that maybe this time, the wounds would heal instead of rot.
I bit his hand and shoved him back, hard enough that he fell onto the bed.
I straddled him, hands braced on his chest, feeling the thunder of his heart under my palms.
“You gonna throw me out again?” he said, breathless.
“Only if you don’t make it worth it,” I said, and reached down for what I really needed.
His hands were everywhere, nails digging in, teeth at my shoulder, voice low and dirty in my ear.
This wasn’t love. It was war. And for once, I was ready to fight.
We tore into each other like the last two animals left on earth.
I got his belt off first, dragging it out with a snarl, then went after his jeans with both hands, ignoring the buttons that wouldn’t pop.
He ripped my blouse straight down the front, buttons skittering across the floor like buckshot, then grabbed both my tits in his hands and squeezed until I almost screamed.
I didn’t. He liked it when I made noise, but I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, not yet.