DAMON: A Bad Boy MC Romance Novel by Meg Jackson

not exactly an answer, Damon.”
    “Ah – I know it’s not,” he said. “Listen, Tricia, you do whatever you need to. Tell whoever – tell them whatever you need to. I’m not going to leave you at a rest stop if you tell them. But just…it would, uh, it would mean a lot to me if you trusted me on this. What I’m doing in Miami, it has nothing to do with you. You won’t be in any danger. I promise.”
    She looked at him, then back down at her phone. Her fingers hovered over the buttons. The last sentence; we’re going to Miami . She moved her thumb over the backspace button and held it down until that last sentence disappeared. She pressed send.
    “Your secret’s safe with me,” she said, trying to sound cheery. His shoulders fell with visible relief, his jaw releasing tension.
    “Our secret,” he said, turning to her with the hint of a smile.
    “Our secret,” she agreed, looking out the window once more, letting the phrase settle in her mind. Our.
    She glanced at the phone one more time and noted that it was time for her pill, then turned it off. Digging through her bag, she found the container and popped her daily baby-preventative, sipping on some water to wash it down. She saw Damon looking and hoped, for no reason she would admit, that he knew what she’d just taken. It might come in handy if he ever decided to go through with that promise about seduction…

13
    H e would say :
    “Last time we were in North Carolina, Cristov nearly killed himself when he stuck his head out the car window and hit a beehive.”
    Or she would say:
    “So I got a lot of money out of it, but…well, it just felt confusing. Like I won the lottery, but the ticket nearly cost me my life, and it definitely cost me a big chunk of my sanity.”
    He would joke:
    “I’d like to start a restaurant called ‘Spaghett About It’…”
    Or maybe the joke would be more like:
    “What’s the difference between a garbanzo bean and a chick pea?”
    “What?”
    “Pervs wouldn’t pay $40 to have a garbanzo bean on their face.”
    “Ew!”
    And sometimes she would muse:
    “Oh, Kill Devil Hills – this guy, Greil Marcus, he wrote a book about Bob Dylan and some of the stories are set there. It’s also where the Wright brothers had their first successful flights. It’s also a song on Tyranny of Souls . I hate Iron Maiden, though.”
    “So how do you know it’s one of their songs?”
    “To be honest, I have no idea…”
    It hadn’t taken much for Damon and Tricia to open up to each other, and their second day of driving was all pillow talk – it just took place behind the wheel, and before they’d ever had sex. Damon’s bad jokes happened to be right up Tricia’s alley, while Tricia amazed Damon with her catalogue of odd facts, a occupational hazard of working as a librarian; it was amazing the sorts of questions people came into a library with, and even more amazing still that Tricia somehow always knew how to find the answers. That was her job, though, and she did it well.
    As they bore down on the Outer Banks, feeling sand under the tires and salt in the air, Tricia changed the playlist from old, classic country to surf rock, with Damon’s approval. They sang along to Pet Sounds while rolling down Route 158 to Kitty Hawk, where Damon parked and pulled Tricia out into the heat of the day.
    “This is worth a few extra hours of driving,” Tricia mused as they began to stroll along the beach. “Not that I’m doing any of the driving, but…”
    “Your job is more important,” Damon said. “You’ve got to look pretty and play good music.”
    “And laugh at your jokes,” Tricia teased, trying to fight the blush that threatened her cheeks at being called pretty. She was never such a schoolgirl with guys, but Damon had that effect on her.
    “Jockey’s Ridge is up that way,” Damon said, pointing along the curved shoreline. “But it’s tourist season. Probably crowded.”
    “This is fine,” Tricia sighed, kicking