Page 36 of Dozer

“I’ll bring her up.”

Chapter 29

Dozer

She was pacing when I rounded the corner, and she stopped and looked at my feet when I approached her cell. We’d work on that. What did I want her to do while she waited for me? Go to her knees and wait, or bend into her inspection pose, maybe? Standing on the other side of the locked door didn’t work for me, but I hadn’t told her what to do, so I couldn’t punish her for not doing what I wanted.

“Brain wants to talk to you again before they go,” I told her. “Use respect and be honest, and I hope that means you’ll aim to convince him youwantto be mine, but I need you to tell the truth, whatever that is.”

She didn’t know Brain could hear us now, so I added, “Don’t speak now, little flower. Figure out what you want to say on the way up the steps.

I had her follow me up the steps, hoping to show my brothers I trusted her, but we all knew there wasn’t much she could do to physically harm me unless she had access to a weapon. She might cause me pain with a sharp kitchen knife, but she wasn’t likely to kill me since they weren’t silver.

I turned to her once I was in the kitchen and motioned towards a chair. She sat gingerly, because the dildo inside her was long, and the plug was fat.

Brain pulled a chair around so he’d face her, and he sat and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He was three feet away, and trying to look at her rather than down to her.

“My parents agreed to let me take a year off from college,” Brain told her. “The plan was for me to travel Europe and get some world experience on my own before I started the rest of my life. I bought a motorcycle in Spain, where I started, and stayed in hostels instead of hotels. Met real people, ate at the same restaurants they did, and wow, culture shock all around because while I was well-traveled, it’d always been in five-star hotels. I introduced myself as Alex since that’s the closest I could come to a normal-sounding name that’s actually mine.”

His legal name is Thurston Silas Alexander, so he’d picked the only normal name out of that, and he’d told them he was Alex Thurston. If he needed to show ID, it was backwards, but most people hadn’t batted an eye at that, apparently. I’ve heard the story a few times, but it made more sense now that I’d met Daisy and considered life through her eyes.

“I made it way all the way across Europe and into India before I had to return home,” Brain continued. “When I started Harvard the next fall, I took ethics, rhetoric, and philosophy classes instead of the law classes my parents intended. They refused to pay for my next semester, and they blocked all the accounts, so I didn’t have access to any money. I’d planned for that, and I’d squirreled away enough in accounts I’d set up without their knowledge to buy a small cabin in the North Georgia mountains, and a motorcycle. I’d known how to hack since I was twelve, so I started taking on paying jobs, hacking for people. I went into Atlanta to do it, at various places near…” He glanced at me and then back to Daisy. “Near an on-ramp onto the internet, so it was harder to find the activity and trace it back to me. The point is, while I was in Atlanta, I ran into the bikers while I was riding a Harley, and they took me in.”

“I don’t have marketable skills,” Daisy told him.

“Dozer will take care of you. He can be harsh, and crude, but when push comes to shove, I know he’ll do right by you. I haven’t spoken to my parents in years. I occasionally talk to my brother, but it’s about how I’m doing, and how he’s doing. I won’t tell anyone about you. Your secret is safe with me.” He went to touch her face, but pulled his hand back before he made contact. He sat up and told her, “I’m married to the love of my life. I have everything I ever wanted, and more — a family of choice, work that stimulates me in a million ways, and a homelife I never thought possible. It’s better than my wildest dreams. This life has been good for me, and I hope it can be for you.”

The grass is always greener, right? Poor kids grow up wanting material things, while rich kids apparently grow up wishing for the nonmaterial things outside their grasp.

Brain looked at me, back to Daisy, and stood so he was looking down at her. “I’d like to tell you I’m here if you need me, but you’re Dozer’s now, and that means he’s the one you go to for your needs. If you feel you need help that he can’t provide, Duke’s going to have to be your contact person, for now. He’s the president, and the buck stops with him in our family.”

“That’s absolutely right,” Duke agreed, and told my Daisy, “I’m your point of contact if you don’t feel you can talk to your Master about something.”

Duke hugged me, told me to let him know if I needed anything, and they left.

“You okay?” I asked, after the front door closed behind them.

She nodded, and I told her, “Then get off your ass and get to work. The potatoes aren’t going to peel themselves.”

I talked Daisy through de-skinning the boiled potatoes and cutting them into cubes, and then got her started mashing them while I got the ingredients out for the glaze.

Finally, I told her, “Permission to speak.”

“I don’t know what to say, Master. Thurston was a lot older than me, but he was kind to me. I remember him not being there one year, and wondering about him, and I never saw him again. Before that, I’d seen him a couple of times a year at the biggest social events, but he was always kind to me. It’s good to know where he landed. I’m happy for him. I look forward to meeting his wife.”

Harmony was from the same background, and she’d escaped, too. However, she was living under a different identity after getting plastic surgery, so I couldn’t let Daisy in on that. Harmony had been a rather famous hacker known as Ice, but she’d landed on the FBI and CIA’s most wanted list, not to mention wanted by one of the scariest mafia groups in Russia, and she’d been on the run when Brain found her. Harmony hadn’t run in the same social circles, so it wasn’t likely my Daisy knew her, but I was certain Brain would ask Harmony if she knew Daisy within the hour, and we’d know if it was a problem soon enough.

“If they’re your family and you trust them above everything, why’d they send you away, Master?”

“I’ll tell you while we eat.” I couldn’t and wouldn’t tell her all of it, but enough to answer honestly. An indentured servant couldn’t be told about supernaturals. She’d have to be mine permanently before I could tell her I’m a werewolf.

We folded the sour cream and melted butter into the mashed potatoes, I showed her how to make bacon grease gravy to go on them, and we finally sat down to eat.

Chapter 30

Dozer

“A little background, first. The power structure in Chattanooga is based on kind of a survival-of-the-fittest model. You have us, a few gangs, a couple of drug cartels, and some other organizations, all vying for territory and power. There’s also a security company in town we have multiple connections with. Duke’s wife’s best friend is dating two men from the security company, for instance, plus the security company’s owner’s wife’s bodyguard. A poly group thing.”

---