Page 19 of Dozer (Rolling Thunder MC #14)

Chapter 19

Daisy

He sat me on the counter, released my wrist cuffs from my collar, and set the chain to the side. “Your identity is wrapped up in being tiny, isn’t it? You haven’t balked at any of the food I’ve given you, so I don’t think you do the low-carb thing, but you don’t eat much. I’ve let you determine how much you want to eat until I get a handle on it, though. You weigh, what, around seventy pounds? Toy poodles don’t eat as much as standard poodles, so it makes sense you don’t eat much — both because there can’t be much room in your stomach, and because your caloric needs aren’t as great.”

“My grandmother, my mother’s mom, is four-foot-six; but my grandfather played pro-football and has a couple of Superbowl rings. My mom is tall and majestic, but I guess my grandmother’s genes came through to me, so I’m short and skinny. Yet another reason not to be a lawyer or politician, right? Both of my parents work in a human lion’s den, where it’s eat or be eaten, and size matters when it’s survival of the fittest.”

“It does, and it doesn’t,” he told me. “Smarts are important, and sometimes the small people aren’t taken seriously when they should be. One of the worst beatings I ever took was from a scrawny little guy who couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and thirty pounds. The asshole barely came up to my nipples, and he beat the fuck out of me. He wouldn’t be able to now because I learned enough about…” He stopped abruptly, and I had the feeling he was about to overshare.

He was still keeping me out of his life enough, I wouldn’t be able to sound knowledgeable about him if I had to sit in court and testify about the man who’d kidnapped me and held me captive while he trained me to be his sex slave.

The thought sobered me a little, and neither of us spoke while he removed ingredients from the refrigerator and cabinets — eggs, onions, mushrooms, shredded cheese, several pounds of bacon, and frozen waffles.

“I don’t do so well with omelets,” he told me, “but I make a mean scrambled egg with all the shit most people put into their omelets.”

He turned the oven on to preheat, and began cutting the onions and mushrooms, dumping the onions into the butter in the pan as he cut.

“Low heat for this. We want to caramelize the onions, and we don’t want to burn the mushrooms once they go in. Also, butter cooks better at low and medium heats. It won’t happen in the next couple of weeks, probably, but at some point, you’ll have scales and a spreadsheet, and you’ll be required to weigh once a week, or maybe twice a week, but I don’t think doing so daily is healthy. I’ll double-check that, and if I’m wrong, you’ll be able to, but I don’t think I am.”

He wasn’t wrong. I’d lied to my therapist and told her I weighed every Sunday morning, because she didn’t like that I weighed myself every day.

“Since I’m supposed to be honest, Master, I’ll tell you that I’ll err on the side of not eating enough, if I can’t be sure I’m not gaining weight. I weigh every day so I can keep my weight from fluctuating. You’ll find out that the experts say the way I do it is wrong, but it works for me. I’m not bulimic, and not anorexic. I focus on eating healthy, Master, but once a week, I splurge on a favorite. Maybe a small milkshake, or a piece of cheesecake with chocolate on it or in it, or maybe a handful of Reese’s Cups. I eat a lot of salads in between, sure, but also hamburgers, and steaks, and I’m a big fan of barbecue with baked beans.”

He already knew what I liked to eat, but it seemed I should repeat it, for this conversation.

“I appreciate the double-honorific for a long paragraph.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. He was quick to punish me for answering a question without using Master, and it had seemed that, even though the rule was to use it once every time I spoke, when I spoke a long time, maybe it was safer to stick it in there twice.

“You asked about hobbies, Master, and you already know I enjoy drawing and painting. I’d love a set of good pencils, a sketch pad with heavy paper, and maybe some acrylics? The pens I like are expensive, but I’ve found some less expensive ones I don’t hate, Sir.”

He didn’t mention the Sir , though I’d also had a Master in there, so maybe that’s what made it okay alongside the stronger term of respect. He hadn’t punished me for getting it wrong, so far, but a few times, he’d told me Sir would be fine, rather than Master , and I was beginning to understand it was about the energy in the room as well as the subject being discussed.

He moved the pans off the burner and turned to me, his face completely blank. He stared at me a good ten seconds before he walked into another room and returned with a sheet of paper out of the printer, and a pencil.

“Sketch my face.”

“Can I sit at the table please, Master?”

He lifted me down from the island and motioned me towards the table. I walked to it and began sketching his face from memory, since his back was to me while he worked at the stove.

I’m good with faces, and the beard made it easier, so within five minutes, I had his likeness rough-sketched, and I tilted the pencil sideways to work on shading.

He’d put the waffles in the oven by then, and had the eggs in the pan with the mushrooms and onions. It smelled like the bacon was coming along, too.

But he turned when I started shading, almost as if he could hear the change in the way I was working.

“Let me see.”

I held the paper up, and he sighed.