Page 40 of Dozer (Rolling Thunder MC #14)
Chapter 40
Daisy
When Master got home from work at three in the morning on Saturday morning, he woke me, fucked all my holes, and then was in the mood to talk.
“I’ve given you basic instructions about how you respond to law enforcement if an issue arises, but it’s time for a longer conversation. You have permission to ask questions, just stay on topic.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
Master spent five minutes telling me what I could tell them, and about an hour listing all the things I couldn’t. In a nutshell, there were a handful of things I could tell them, and everything else was off limits — even seemingly innocent questions might get Master or his friends in trouble, and Master explained how it could work so I’d understand. “Asking if we had dinner the night before sounds innocent enough, but maybe I’ve provided an alibi you don’t know about, or maybe you’re supposed to be my alibi. Saying I fed you chicken soup at our kitchen table creates credibility issues if I have twenty people saying they saw me at the Rolling Thunder restaurant at the same time, and telling them you ate leftovers alone because I was out would be a problem if I’ve told them we ate dinner together.”
I loved it when he said things like our kitchen table . It made me feel like it was truly our house. And yeah, I got the gist of the entire paragraph, but I still took a few seconds to let the warmth of those words create a little glow in my soul.
“I don’t expect there to be a problem,” he told me. “Many times we know ahead of time when LEO is planning something, but not all the time, so it’s good you know what to do and say up front.” He told me the attorney he hoped to send, but also two other names, in case his preferred attorney wasn’t available. I wasn’t to let anyone else help me. Just those three.
I’d assumed it would be best to not tell the police who I am until the attorney could figure things out, but Master shook his head and told me, “Your image is on the net, so you may as well tell them your name right off the bat. It won’t take their facial recognition programs long to tell them who you are. They jump all over anything they see as secretive, so be up front about your identity.”
My heart fell into my stomach, and Master touched my chin and lifted it, so I had to look at him. “It’s going to be fine, little flower. I have you.”
I awoke in my jail cell the next morning and worked out while Master slept in. The week before, he’d bound me to his bed while he slept, and he’d let me sleep with him a couple of times since, but most nights, I sleep in my cell. I much prefer being close to Master, but he says it isn’t good to be bound so strictly every night. He’s right, that I sleep better when I can move around more, but I still prefer his bed. I mean, he runs a rope from the bedrail, through my left cuff, through my collar, through my right cuff, and back to the bedrail. A loose rope also runs from my ankle cuffs to the bottom bedrail, but not so tight I ever feel it. I have to sleep on my left side, and I can’t touch myself with my hands at all, but it isn’t so bad, because Master touches me almost all night.
But since he was going to sleep in and I rarely do that, it also makes sense for him to put me in my cell once I’m asleep, so I can work out while he sleeps. Also, it means I don’t have to wake him so I can go pee.
When he woke, he told me we were going out to breakfast, and handed me designer jeans and a black t-shirt with a super-cool black belt. “Your choice of shoes, little flower. The closet in the spare bedroom is now yours. I need you to try all the shoes on and let me know which to keep and which to return.”
I went into the spare bedroom, opened the closet, and took a step back. There were a dozen pairs of black shoes in front of me, from flats to dressy heels, and three of each. I quickly realized he’d bought my size in each, as well as the half-size above and below. I tried the heels on first, while I was standing, and I put the ones that didn’t fit back into the box and put them on the bed. When I made it to the shoes I couldn’t just stick my feet into, I sat on the floor and tried the rest on, making a pile of the ones in the wrong sizes behind me. One pair, none of them fit, and I put those three in a stack by themselves.
And then debated between wearing the sky-high platform boots, or the sky-high stilettos. When Master came in, I had one on each foot, and he said, “I should probably mention, you’re going to be on your feet a lot today, and it’ll probably be two or three in the morning before you get to bed.”
“Then the boots, Master. Did you pick these? Or did you ask someone to help you? Because you picked perfectly .”
“Matty helped me, which leads into me telling you that you no longer have until Thursday to make that decision we talked about. It’s going to happen Monday now, and I apologize for that, but something unforeseen has moved my schedule up. You’ll be going out to lunch with a few of the ol’ladies today, and then a lot more than that tonight.”
“Would it be okay to wear the boots, take the stilettos, and maybe take these other heels, too, Master? Once I find out what I’m doing tonight, it might be that the boots won’t be exactly right.”
“Take the higher of the heels, in case you want to change.”
Crap, I hate having to correct him. I held one of each up, back-to-back. “Same heel height, Master. One’s just chunkier, so it’s an optical illusion that it isn’t as tall.”
“Choose one . You can’t take two shoe backups.”
I put one of each on and stood in front of the full-length mirror in this room. “I take that back,” Master said. “You’ll be on your feet a lot and I don’t want you breaking your ankle. The chunky one.”
“Thank you for deciding for me, Master.”
He turned and walked away without saying a word, and I looked at myself in the mirror again, wondering how I should do my makeup.
“Master?”
I didn’t say it loud. He doesn’t like me to yell, and has assured me multiple times he’ll hear me if it’s just the two of us in the house. So far, he always had.
I heard his footsteps returning, and he stood in the hallway and looked at me without approaching.
“I understand I’m not supposed to know what’s happening, but makeup can be pretty specific to whatever is going on. Lunch in a honky-tonk bar makeup is completely different from lunch in a five-star restaurant, and both of those aren’t the same as lunch in an ordinary restaurant. And then there’s whatever I’ll be doing tonight, which is—”
“You’re lucky I adore you. Anyone else, I’d turn them over and whale on their ass for asking me about makeup.” He sighed, looked at me another handful of seconds, and finally said, “Lunch should be confident and glamorous, but also casual. Tonight? Bring makeup to put on for one of those red-carpet things, I think. Too much. Exaggerated, but still gorgeous. Not clown makeup, right?”
“Yes, Master. Thank you. That helps.”
It didn’t really help all that much, but I understood it was all he was going to tell me, so I’d just have to wing it.
As it turned out, the boots and heels went into a bag with the makeup I was taking, and I had to wear motorcycle boots and a super-cool jacket he told me would keep all my skin where it’s supposed to be if we crashed. Apparently, the jeans were thick enough to protect me, so I didn’t have to change out of them.
He brought my laptop, and I spent the morning in his room at the clubhouse going over my pros-and-cons list, but really, I knew what I wanted.
I wanted to be his wife.
And not only that, I wanted to add his name onto the end of mine. I didn’t want to trash my family name. Not when it really came down to it. Marguerite Elizabeth Chanel-Hearst Stevens. It was a long-damned name, but it was who I wanted to be.
I looked at my first name again. Marguerite is the French name for the oxeye daisy, and apparently, when my parents decided to have another child, my father bought my mother a bouquet of this super-rare Whirligig African Daisy, both because it’s rare and mega-expensive, and also because the petals kind of look like sperm. Anyway, when they found out I was a girl, mom said I’d be nicknamed Daisy as a family name, but always Marguerite in public. I’d actually gotten into trouble for telling Thurston he could call me Daisy. Outsiders weren’t supposed to know the nickname.
But then I’d had everyone at school call me Daisy, and my parents had insisted the teachers continue to use my legal name, but the students called me Daisy because I told them to.
And I’d told my parents if they switched me to another school, I’d tell my friends there to call me Daisy, too.
I had no idea why keeping all of my original name was suddenly important, but it was, and I knew, deep down, this was something Master would probably want me to decide for myself.
He returned a few hours later and handed me a fistful of money, folded over. I opened it, planning to count it, and he said, “It’s three hundred in twenties. Put a hundred in your right pocket and the rest in your left. If you spend any in the right pocket, go to the restroom and move enough over so you have a hundred in the right pocket again, and know the totals in each pocket, so if you go into a shop, you’ll know which pocket to pull from, when you pay.”
I nodded. “Dray had me keep my cash separated. I understand the concept, and I know how pickpockets work, Master.”
He kissed the top of my head. “The truth is, those street-smarts combined with who you were before are a bizarre contradiction, and it’s possible that’s one of the things that made me fall for you. Or maybe it’s just that smart mouth.” Another kiss to the top of my head while I contemplated the fact Master had just told me he’d fallen for me, and my stomach and heart grew wings. “You’ll be drinking at lunch, but we know the restaurant owner so no one will ask for your ID. Gen might try to pay the tab. If she does, thank her and tell her you’ll pay the tip, and then put three twenties down, assuming the server did a good job — two if they did not, but I expect they’ll assign you their best, so three should do, but you can put four down if you think the server did an exceptional, above-and-beyond job. You’re allowed one drink before your meal and one during, but no more.”
“And I know what questions I can answer, Master.”
He swatted my ass once, hard, but didn’t say anything. My response was impertinent, and he hadn’t liked it. “I apologize, Master.”
He chuckled. “Part of me wants to tell you not to apologize when you don’t mean it, but I appreciate the lip service, so I won’t tell you that. Still, it wasn’t a full apology, but I’ll take the half one you offered.”
I looked up at him and grinned. I was skating on thin ice, but I wanted to cut up with him, so I did. “Part of me feels like I should apologize for not giving a full, heartfelt apology, but then we’d just be back in the same circumstance, so I suppose I should stop while I’m ahead, Sir.”
He touched the tip of my nose and gave me a stern look, though it looked like he was suppressing a grin. “You’ll be having lunch with Gen and Angelica, and they’ll explain what’ll happen tonight. I’ll have pictures of everyone who’ll be present for you to look at and memorize once you’re back in my room, along with a brief bio of them all. You’ll be quizzed on it before I turn you loose tonight, and you already know you’re going to want to know all the answers off the tip of your tongue.”
And then he reached in his pocket and pulled a phone from it. It was one of the new ones, the kind that folds in half. I accepted it and opened it, and he said, “It’s programmed so it’ll only call or text me, Duke, Brain, Gen, and Angelica right now. You can’t install programs, and there are no social media apps on it. You’ll see an app with the MC’s logo on it, and it’ll let us talk through encryption, so LEO can’t listen in, but that shouldn’t be necessary, so it’s doubtful we’ll use it, but you have it, just in case. You can contact the MC’s control room with it, but I’m telling you to only do that in an emergency, and only after you can’t contact me, Brain, or Duke. If you receive a call through it from anyone , you should accept the call.”
“Thank you, Master. This is like being part of the world again. It’s big.”
“It is. For now, this doesn’t connect you with the world, but it’s the first step towards making that happen. Now go, and have fun, but don’t forget your rules.”