by Thalia Eames
Jules: Just do it. Walking around back now.
Jules mumbled a stream of curses about silly ass step-nephews and marched directly into the Averdeen Manor family having a backyard picnic. Daz, Garrett, Cash and Dillon sniffed the air. All four turned to stare at her in unison. Feeling exposed, Jules jumped at the chance to collect her thoughts when a notification buzzed on her phone.
Nox: We’re back here already.
She blinked at the screen. Then turned the same angry glare on Nox. Her thumbs flew over the keypad.
Jules: R U serious?!?
The men converged on her and the women followed. The noise and the bleach made her feel a bit lightheaded. Daz came to stand beside her and entwined his fingers with hers. His presence at her side made her feel a bit stronger and she answered the barrage of questions one at a time.
“What happened? You okay?” Lennox said.
“What direction did they run in?” Garrett asked.
“Is Stanley Hewett going to arrest those bitches?” Gran piped in. “Or am I going to have to break out an ass whipping?”
On and on, the questions kept coming. Jules wanted to assure everyone it’d all be fine but she didn’t feel up to it. And she couldn’t take the fumes wafting from her bleach-soaked dress much longer either.
Daz, who hadn’t gotten to speak a word, held up his first two fingers and the thumb of his right hand. His gesture demanded, and received, silence. Then he scooped Jules up and carried her upstairs to her room. Once he’d kicked her door closed with his foot he took her into the bathroom and stood her in the middle of it.
Kneeling in front of her, he placed her hands on his shoulders, and took off her shoes one at a time. She leaned on him while he did it. That done, he gently walked a small semi-circle around her to unzip her dress. Sliding it off her shoulders he let the bleached fabric fall to the floor. His big strong arms wrapped around her middle and pulled her tightly to his chest. He kissed her hair, and whispered comforting words to her for several minutes.
With a final kiss and squeeze, Daz walked over to the tub and filled it. In the cabinet under the sink he found her citrus and cinnamon bath salts and put them to good use. The salt dissolved into the bath water and filled the room with her favorite scent. It didn’t take Daz long to strip her, lift her and lower her into the tub. He filled his hands with her hair and kissed her forehead once more before he left the room, quietly closing the door behind him.
Jules sighed as she slid down into the water until it lapped her chin. The bathroom door opened again. This time Daz held her iPod. “Cowboy Bebop, Justice League Unlimited, or Naruto Shippuden?” he asked.
“Why are you so perfect?” she moaned, completely dunking her head underwater and coming back up. Daz didn’t say another word. He preferred not to answer when she asked rhetorical questions about his amazingness. He only waited for her response.
“Cowboy Bebop and another kiss?”
She got both. She spent the rest of the night as far away from her problems as Daz could take her. Jules began to realize that no distance was too far when he was taking here there. And she fell in love with him all over again.
The next day only one thing went right. And that was Daz. Jules and Lennox drove into the Peach Pit together and he walked in a few minutes later. He took a seat at a back booth and kept watch over her. Jules kept him fed and covered in kisses as he watched her back.
Out in front of the diner a bunch of DazDaze fans held an all-day protest against gold diggers. They were smart enough not to make threats but they made sure Jules knew they didn’t approve of her or her “money hungry ways”. And the theme song of the day, Kanye’s “Gold Digger”, played over and over from phones and wireless speakers.
For reasons she couldn’t explain, Jules kept leaving the office to see if her anti-fans had moved on. Stress began to form a ball of anxiety in her chest. The longer the protestors stayed, the more the anxiety expanded, and the more it hurt. Even Stan or his deputies stopping by once per hour didn’t ease Jules’s distress.
On one visit to the front she felt a tug on her hand. Daz tugged her onto a barstool. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks and then her mouth. “Lennox said I can take you home whether you want to go or not,” he said, his assessing gaze intense. “You going to argue with us?”
She shook her head emphatically. She’d had enough of this shit six years ago. This time around was overkill and Jules wanted the problem gone.
“Wait for me,” Daz said. Then he went outside and said hello to his fans. Jules hadn’t noticed Lennox had sat down on the barstool next to her until her best friend got up and went to the window. She immediately beckoned Jules over. Hesitant but trusting Lennox’s judgment, Jules walked over.
The fans, both female and male, crowded Daz into their center. They were careful not to touch him but if he’d been made of glass their breaths would’ve fogged him up. Funny how they could be so precious with their idol and so cruel to anyone who upset their crowd sensibilities.
Daz said hello to several of them, staring them each in the face for longer than necessary. They asked him questions and snapped selfies with him in frame while Daz took out his phone. “What’s your name?” he asked a slender brunette guy with a pouty mouth.
“Kennan. I’m KayKilla on your channel and stuff,” Pouty mouth said, shooting a smug look at his friends.
Daz scrolled on his phone. “I found you, KayKilla.” Pouty mouth squealed. Daz looked him in the eye, lifted his index finger high above his phone and let it descend like a detonator. “Blocked,” Daz said with a glittering coldness in his gaze. Pouty mouth gaped and Daz moved on.
“What’s your name?” The girl in question was so shocked she didn’t have the sense to lie.
“TrebleTrouble?” She seemed uncertain. Jules had to admit if Daz looked at her with such cold disdain she’d have broken too.
“Blocked.” Daz looked around. Every fan his eyes fell on found a reason to evacuate, some with apologies, others begging for forgiveness. Daz cleared the protesters so fast it made Lennox applaud and jump up and down in the window.
Lennox mimicked Yoda, her syntax going completely out of whack. “Well, you did, young Jedi. Pleased with your choice am I.”
Jules agreed. She’d chosen very well. Choice might not have been the correct word since she couldn’t stay away from Daz, not with a need that bordered on addiction, but she’d go with choice. But as happy as she was in this moment, one thing worried her. How long could Daz choose her before he had to give up the fans that made him so happy? She didn’t want to take away the things he enjoyed. Daz needed the spotlight. He needed to shine. Jules wouldn’t allow herself to become a black hole that swallowed his light.
Chapter Twenty-One
Daz watched Jules out of the corner of his eye as they rode back to the house in his Hellion. She hadn’t said much other than a thank you for getting rid of his so-called fans. The fact he’d brought those assholes down on her head messed with his mind. She shouldn’t have to deal with shit like this for the second time in her life. Or at all. Not his Jules, a woman who could be sweet while cussing a blue streak, and tough while crying. He adored her contradictions and the way kindness formed the foundation of everything she did.
This woman, his woman, didn’t deserve the mess he made of everything he touched. He hoped he could save her the pain of being attacked and had made a vlog asking his and Adam Cross’s fans to back off. It hadn’t worked. The fans decided he’d been brainwashed by “the snatch” and they insisted they had to save him.
Daz would’ve cursed if he didn’t think it would upset Jules. So he took her hand in his, shifted gears, and kept driving. When a souped-up orange muscle car roared past them Jules cursed under her breath. “Who was it?” Daz asked.
“Don’t worry about it.” She smiled and Daz knew she meant it to set him at ease, but the sad lit
tle quirk of her mouth sliced him to the bone. He had to do something to end this situation. It pissed him off that Jules could do so much good and get bullshit like those fans spraying her with bleach and vandalizing her car in return. When he thought about it, Daz supposed he should be glad she’d completely removed herself from the internet. Social media could be hell when it turned against you.
They pulled up to Averdeen Manor minutes later. Stan or someone from the sheriff’s office must’ve dropped Jules’s car off because it sat on the road in front of the house. All signs of the painted insult had been erased from her windshield, but it looked like Stan had left an envelope beneath one of the wipers.
Daz pulled up behind Jules’s car and they both got out. She got to her car first. After a quick perusal, Jules lifted the wiper and grabbed the envelope. The foul stench of snuff reached Daz’s nose a second too late. Larkin Grace, that bastard.
Jules had opened the envelope and read the contents. Tears filled her eyes, a single one spilling out over her cheek before she wiped it away.
“I guess I should’ve been prepared for this,” she said. “I know what the internet is like and I know Larkin Grace better than that. But it still hurts.”
Daz ran around to her side of the car. He took the trembling stack of paper out of her hand and read it while he held her close. Rage, the kind he hadn’t felt since his days in the ring, roared to life inside him. His anger was acid on his tongue, but he forced himself to read the tweets Larkin had compiled for Jules to read.
Kennan Speaks @KayKilla
#StarSlut can’t live thinking she can have @DazDaze she’s dumb AF. Kill yourself #StarSlut you’re zero.
LizzyXXX @LipDic
We shoulda stopped this bitch b4. Who wants to go bitch hunting in LuPines NC? Shoot that bitch in her stupid #starslut face.
Mazzie Kitts @Ahmazzie
@LipDic Shes too ugly too. #STARSLUT How did @DazDaze even stick his dick in? Bet her shit is kurrosive. Let’s get her. No survival.
Daz stopped reading. His fingers crushed the paper, then he dropped the wadded mass and ground it into the pavement with his boot toe. Drops of rain plopped on the hood of the car and Daz looked up. The storm overhead seemed a perfect match for the explosive cocktail of emotions brewing inside him.
But he smiled, forcing it into his eyes, so Jules wouldn’t have to worry about his feelings along with her own. “Wow, Blue, I have a lot of bad fans. Good thing we got the chance to weed them out.”
Jules wiped her red face with the knuckles of each thumb. “That’s true,” she said, taking the hand he held out for her. “What the hell is ‘kurrosive’? Is it the opposite of corrosive and means I’ve got the good stuff?”
God he loved this woman. Daz thought about how much as he escorted Jules into the house. He thought about it again when she fell asleep with him reading to her. And once more when he snuck out of the house with salt on his lips from kissing her goodnight. Her tears hadn’t dried on her face because she hadn’t stopped crying.
He remembered all the ways she’d made him happy as he drove through the rainy darkness parted only by his headlights. He counted the times she’d told him he was amazing or hot or simply a good man as he approached the chop shop. He whispered his love to her as he kicked open the metal garage doors and sauntered in to face eight Graces unannounced. But love wasn’t the reason he did what he did next. Pure rage was.
Larkin stood up with a smirk and probably would’ve said something to piss Daz off that much more, but the wolverine had already inked his eyes over in glittering liquid black. Its claws had torn through his fingers. The wolverine wanted this. It had to teach the pigs, there would be no challenges to its dominance and no threats to its mate. Not ever. Not without blood.
The wild boars were tough but they weren’t honed with the edge of a razor blade like Daz. They weren’t shifter mixed martial artists trained to block, and spin, and maneuver an opponent into breaking. Therefore they fell hard and fast at the wolverine’s feet. Their cries as bones broke or tendons were stretched to the point of popping formed a soundtrack to the destruction Daz brought down on their heads. It hurt him to hit them. The hurt reminded him of his mate. His mate’s pain fueled him on. One wild boar came at him with a pipe. He used that pipe to bash the shifter’s knee into oblivion. Another shifter lowered his head to gore Daz with sharpened tusks. Seconds later, he threw one tusk over his shoulder and buried the other in the arm of another Grace.
When the wolverine, now in half-man, half-animal form, reached the last Grace it bemoaned how quickly they’d fallen. It roared its anger into the face of the one called Larkin. How dare they disappoint it when the wolverine had waited so long to be free? The pigs were no challenge at all. How dare they talk so much and fight so little? The wolverine decided to savor the one called Larkin. This one wasn’t its opponent but its enemy. It had never had an enemy and it wanted to show the pig all the respect it deserved—none at all.
Its claws slashed again and again. Then it switched to fists, wanting to feel the give and resistance of violence done to flesh. But the one called Larkin didn’t resist for long and the wolverine got tired of the sickeningly wet smash of its fists descending over and over again. It wanted to be in bed, snuggled against its mate, sated in the knowledge it had ended the threat against her.
As the wolverine shifted fully into animal form and ran out into the night, the clock tower began to ring out 4:00 a.m. In the middle of the third ring the clockwork ground down to a stop, and the bell seemed to scream. Then silence.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The feeling of someone watching her woke Jules up. Daz wasn’t there but Nox stood beside the bed drinking ruby red grapefruit juice. Again.
“You’re getting creepy, kid,” Jules said.
Nox sat down beside her as she sat up to lean against her padded headboard. He handed her the remaining half glass of juice and she drank it dry.
“I like Uncle Cash,” Nox said, as though they’d been in the middle of a conversation that made that relevant.
Jules side-eyed him. She lifted her fists in a lackluster cheer and said, “Yay?”
Nox put his feet up on Daz’s pillow and lay down with his head at the bottom of the bed. Jules aimed more side-eye at his big wolfen feet but Nox just grinned at her. Why were teenagers so perverse? Was it coded into them?
The teen terror continued his mysterious train of thought. “But I like Uncle Daz too.” Jules gave him one of those what-the-hell expressions. Uncle Daz? Nox answered her. “I guess it’s okay if you feel like you have to marry him…or something.”
“Um, thanks,” Jules said. “Your approval is all I worry about.”
Nox nodded, doing his best arrogant ladies’ man impersonation. “I know this.”
Jules laughed. She sat up on her knees and made grabby hands. Nox groaned but let her hug him. “I needed that laugh, obNoxious.” She kissed him a couple of hundred times while yelling, “Thanks, puddin’!”
“If you don’t stop I won’t show you the thing,” Nox said, covering his head with arms almost as big as his dad’s. At just fourteen the kid would be patting Garrett on the head and calling him Junior in a few years.
“What thing?” Jules raised an eyebrow in suspicion.
Nox picked his tablet off the floor and flipped the cover so it became a stand. “The first one is on pause. I made you a playlist for the rest so they’ll stream in order.” He tapped the screen and a freeze frame of Daz in the middle of a DazDaze YouTube post came up.
“Nox,” Jules said, “I don’t want to—”
Her friend’s stepson, the boy who’d somehow known how to play matchmaker for his parents, the boy who she called nephew although they weren’t bound together by blood, held up two fingers and a thumb to stop her.
“You’ve got to,” he said. And then he left the room.
Jules
ignored the tablet for a few minutes. Then she nudged it over with her knee. Feeling a tiny bit curious she sat it back up. Then ignored it again. Finally she groaned, tapped the screen, and hit play.
Daz looked as good on camera as he did in real life, which made her miss him. She rubbed the spot he’d been in when she went to sleep and wondered where he’d gone, and what time he’d be back. Though Lennox had forced Jules to take time off, she’d wanted to spend every moment with Daz.
The version of him on screen, the one who she thought of as DazDaze, was talking about crashing into Averdeen Manor, although he didn’t identify the manor by name. Then he completely caught her attention with his next words.
“I met a woman, Dazzlers.” His face lit up in that unforgettable way of his. “Fuck, more than a woman. I met a goddess.” DazDaze signed off after that but Jules had already clutched her chest.
In the subsequent videos he talked about the way she’d tackle-kissed him, how much her geek girl status turned him on, their first date, and the abuse rescue program she worked with. His pride in her showed through in the videos. Jules watched some of them more than once, her pride in him immense too. The sincerity he showed his fans filled her up. He’d even told them that if any of them were being physically or verbally abused they should let him know and he’d try to get them help.
On the naughtier side he talked about not getting any sleep because he had an insatiable woman. He’d even created a meme called “How My Woman Keeps Me Panting For More. Try It On Your Guy/Girl”, which had earned him six million hits. The last video in the playlist was the best. Her favorite part was when Daz looked into the camera as though looking into each fan’s eyes and said, “Guys, some of you have decided to go after the woman I love. You’re wrong about her. Your words and actions have hurt her beyond anything I can describe. And it’s fucking breaking my heart. Stop.”
Daz had gone back to pick up his Hellion from the chop shop about an hour after his wolverine left. He didn’t remember causing the bloodshed he’d found but he knew his work. Several ambulances arrived for the eight wild boars not long after he’d called 911 and he’d ridden behind them, staying at the hospital until he knew Larkin would survive.