Biker Daddy (The Grimm Tales of Smoky Vale Book 1)

by Gianni Holmes

  “Oh, Jamie,” his compassionate voice came over the phone. “You knew this when you insisted you were going to be with him.”

  “I just didn’t expect it to be so hard,” I confessed.

  “You mean you want to get out? I think that can be arranged. You just get on a flight and head back here. It’s not so difficult.”

  Except it was.

  I loved Grimm so much it hurt. Leaving was the sensible thing to do. My heart ached something terrible at the reason Grimm wanted me to learn how to protect myself. Some day he might not be around to do it, and that scared me more than not becoming a doctor.

  The bedroom door creaked open, and I reluctantly faced Grimm, who filled the doorway with his impressive presence. He didn’t say anything. Neither did he move farther into the bedroom. He just stood there looking at me, waiting.

  Seeing him at least put one thing to rest. “I can’t,” I told Joel. “No matter how bad it gets, no matter how scary, I’m in this for life because I love him, and-and—” I swiped at tears I hadn’t realized before then had started falling. “I’d rather have him for a day or two than never.”

  “Look, I’m getting some time off soon,” Joel stated. “I’m going to pay you and Dad a visit. If you’re freaking out this much over the phone, I can imagine how you are in person.”

  “Maybe overreacting as usual,” I admitted aware of Grimm taking in everything I said. “I hope your classes are going well?”

  “Excellent. I’m going to ace the freakin’ bar.”

  “You will. I’ve got to go, J, but I’ll call you soon.”

  “Sure, talk later, and, Jamie?”

  “Yes?”

  “I may never fully understand my father,” he said, “but for whatever reason and despite who he is, thank you for loving him the way you do. He might have done bad things, but we both know he’s a good man at heart, and he’d go through hell for us both.”

  Joel hung up, and I stared at the phone in my hand, dreading having to face Grimm.

  “I’m sorry,” I said before he could speak. “I got scared, and I know I shouldn’t be, but you were talking about death and stuff. I just couldn’t.”

  “Nothing wrong with being scared,” he replied but didn’t move from where he was. “Being afraid can keep us alive.” Silence stretched between us for uncountable minutes. Then he asked, “Do you want to leave?”

  Do I?

  I felt like I’d come back to Smoky Vale expecting things to be easier. I had been a fool to have a fairy-tale ending in my head when I returned, but it was more of a fucked-up version that was dangerous. When reading a book, I could always skip to the last pages and check out the ending, but there was no skipping ahead to peek at the future between Grimm and me.

  “I should,” I answered, putting the phone back onto its hook. “It would be so much better for everyone.” I finally braved looking at him, and his expression was that unreadable mask he had worn all the time around me when I was a kid. If he only knew that face always just made me more curious about the man behind the façade.

  “I can have you on the next flight to Boston,” he remarked. “I’ll have Zak drop you off at the airport.”

  “You won’t take me yourself?”

  He gave a bitter laugh, the sound resonating deep within me. He closed the distance between us, stopping at the bed. His fingers dug into my hair, and he clutched a clump in his fist. He was surprisingly gentle for the menacing way he held me. Raw energy was radiating from him, manifesting in the slightly shaking of his hand.

  “I can’t take you because I can’t watch you walk away again,” he answered. “I’m not sure I could ever let you get on that plane. This is all your fucking fault, you know that? I knew better than to touch someone like you. I knew to stay the fuck away, but then you crashed right back into my life after I thought I had gotten rid of you. You are all grown up, and I don’t have a reason not to look your way anymore. Joel, I have to love. He’s my flesh and blood. You? You, my heart fucking chose, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it, Jamie. I’m being fucking selfish right now, but I don’t want you to go. Fuck.”

  He looked miserable, but I grinned at him. He’d all but told me he loved me in his own roundabout way, and it was exactly what I needed. If he loved me back, there was the penultimate reason for sticking around.

  “What are you grinning about?” he growled at me. “You like the idea of having me so completely twisted around your finger?”

  “Just counting the number of times you just dropped the f-bomb,” I told him sweetly. “Yet you want to punish me every time I do.”

  “Because you’re a better man than me. I don’t want you to be me, Jamie. That’s one of my biggest worries. I don’t want you to become jaded like the rest of us. For our lifestyle to change who you are and make you into a grumpy old fuckwad perving on his son’s best friend.”

  I bopped him in the gut gently. “Hey, watch who you’re calling a grumpy old fuckwad. Yeah, you may be that, but you’re my grumpy semi-old fuckwad. People change, and I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that. How about we just take this one day at a time, Grimm, and deal with our problems as they come? I know for damn sure that I’d rather face a thousand demons by your side than have a million angels without you.”

  He released his grip in my hair and stroked the curly strands. “And what about your father?”

  I shook my head, not knowing how to respond to that. As long as my father opposed our relationship we would be at loggerheads. But that was his call. Only he could reach out and fix the damage he had done to our relationship. I wasn’t asking him to love Grimm. Just to love me enough to be there for me regardless.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Grimm

  “Rise and shine, Jamie.” I gently patted the cheek of the sleeping beauty in my bed, nestled beneath the comforter, face pressed into the pillow. I was prepared for it to take some time to wake him up. Jamie wasn’t a morning person at all, and he would bitch and complain about getting up at the ass crack of dawn as he had for the past three days.

  I was dead serious, though, about him learning to take care of himself if he planned to stick around, so there was no compromise.

  He blinked sleepy eyes awake, took one look at my grin, and with a groan, ducked beneath the covers. He was so fucking cute, looking at him made my heart ache. I was tempted to let him get some more sleep. Just half an hour more.

  I pushed away the thought before I could give in. Cuteness wouldn’t save his ass if he ever came face-to-face with someone who wanted to do him bodily harm.

  “The alarm didn’t even go off,” he wailed under the sheet.

  “You kidding me? You snoozed the alarm four times already. Now get up.”

  “Just five more minutes,” he begged.

  “We don’t have five more minutes. Zak’s waiting for us, and you still need to get to the bathroom.”

  “But I’m so tired. You shouldn’t have kept me up last night.”

  “You insisted on staying for the party at the clubhouse,” I reminded the lump in my bed. “I had to pry you away when you started dancing on the tabletop, remember?”

  The sheet lowered a fraction, and he peered at me. “Zak challenged me.”

  I grunted at him. “Jeez, to think a medical student can’t avoid dumb dares. What will the rest of us lesser educated men do?”

  “But I’m no longer a medical student, so I can shake my ass from any tabletop.”

  I quirked an eyebrow at him “No, you can’t. That’s the last party you’ll ever go to if you don’t get out of that bed.”

  The sheet went back over his head. “I’ll sleep some more, thank you.”

  When it became clear he wasn’t getting out of bed, I was left with no choice. I scooped him up in my arms, bedsheets and all. He squealed like a stuck pig and squirmed, but I didn’t let him loose. I marched him into the bathroom, then stripped away the covers, leaving him standing in the bathroom with a pillow
in his arms, his face registering shock.

  “Come on.” I pulled the pillow out of his arms and threw it back through the door into the bedroom. “You have to be disciplined about this. Your safety’s important to me.”

  When his lips turned down in a pout, I gave him another inch. “You play nice, and I’ll suck your dick in the shower.”

  His eyes widened, and he smiled. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

  Jamie’s response wasn’t a surprise. There was little that was surprising about him, which I found good. It meant I knew what to expect from him, and a blow job was enough to get him out of bed. His sex drive was high, which worked out in my favor.

  “I want to pee,” he murmured, and I glanced between him and the toilet.

  Without a word, I raised an eyebrow at him, and he gave me that cute shit he did with his face, lips turned down, eyes getting all big like he was the human virgin of Puss in Boots. “Help me, please.”

  With a sigh, I helped him out of the bottoms of the cute teddy he had on. The guy wore the sexiest lingerie. Not that I had any complaints about them. I’d buy him a whole new drawer full if that was what he wanted.

  I held his semi while he peed, aiming for his lazy bones. He leaned on me, and I jostled him with my shoulder to keep him from going back to sleep. I could have found another time to get him lessons, but the earlier, the better for me. Most people weren’t around then, and I felt much more comfortable transporting him to the indoor gun range before the facilities were officially opened.

  A cold shower and a sloppy blow job later, he was revived. We took turns plowing each other in the shower, me finally coming inside his ass with his legs wrapped around my waist. After I got off, I allowed him to do the same, hands braced against the wet shower tiles while he swelled deep inside me. At the last minute, he pulled out, and I sucked him to the finish line.

  When we finally emerged, Zak was waiting for us at the clubhouse. He grinned at us good-naturedly as if he had had an ear pressed to my bathroom door, listening to me growling at Jamie to fuck my ass harder just minutes before.

  Beside him, Booker, who was on the mend, sat brooding into whatever he was stirring in a mug. The moody bastard. Since Jamie and I were together, I was rooting for Zak and Booker to wake up, smell their goddamn bullshit, and be happy already.

  One fool in love needed buddies in the same boat.

  “Zak, Booker,” I greeted them before taking a seat. Jamie gave them both a wave and decided to perch in my lap. “Booker, everything good?” I still felt crappy about him getting shot, but he was mending okay.

  “Never felt better,” he replied. “Zak says you guys are going to the shooting range again.”

  “Yup,” I answered, jostling Jamie on my knee. “This little one is showing promise.”

  At my words, Jamie leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Little? In the shower, didn’t you say ‘stick that monster cock in me’?”

  He giggled while I ignored his words and listened to what Booker was saying.

  “—didn’t need Zak to teach him how to shoot. You’re pretty decent with a gun.”

  “But Zak’s got something special when it comes to guns,” I said. “He might be a goofball around here, but put a gun in his hands and what he does with it is so beautifully destructive you just gotta respect that.”

  “Yeah, where did you learn to shoot like that, Zak?” Jamie asked.

  He shrugged. “I grew up around guns. You could say my dad was a gun enthusiast, and I spent a couple of years in the army as a sniper.”

  I already knew all that about Zak’s past. He was exactly what we needed in new members. He didn’t just come to the club with expectations, but he brought something valuable to us.

  “You were in the army?” Jamie asked. “You don’t look old enough.”

  Zak laughed. “Good try. You ain’t gonna know my age, buddy. Nobody does.”

  Jamie glanced up at me. “Not even you?”

  I shook my head. “It’s the one thing we couldn’t pry out of him.”

  “Yup,” Booker agreed absentmindedly. “When it comes to his age, his lips are as tight as his ass.”

  Silence fell around the table. Jamie had called it! Booker and Zak had hooked up together, but when?

  “What?” Booker asked, staring at us when he realized nobody was saying anything. “Fuck.”

  “Fuck is right, dipshit,” Zak said, but despite his tone, he was oddly cheery. “Now everyone’s gonna know I’ve been nailing your ass.”

  Booker scowled and got to his feet. “Nobody fucks with my ass. You better believe they’ll know whose ass got ruined, Zak.”

  He mumbled something about going back to his rooms, and we all watched him until he disappeared. None of the other club members had stirred yet. It was early, and they had been up late partying.

  “You guys gonna give me a hard time about this?” Zak asked, rising to his feet.

  “Not any of our business,” I remarked, getting up as well and setting Jamie on his feet. “In fact, congrats.”

  He pulled a face, grabbed his cut from the back of the chair, and shrugged into it. “It’s not like that between us, man. We aren’t all in love like you two. Just two guys who like to have a fun time. Besides, that’s all over now.”

  And pigs fly.

  “Sure thing. We should go.”

  We arrived at the shooting range an hour before it officially opened at seven. The owner and I knew each other well, and I slipped him a couple of hundreds for allowing us to use the range without logging us into the facility. I preferred that very few people knew what we were up to and were able to trace us by their logs.

  Despite his reluctance to get out of bed, Jamie became a whole new person at the gun range. He wasn’t his usual fun self either. He concentrated, and he was safe, taking everything that Zak taught him to heart. Once he had that gun weighing in his hands, all goofing off stopped.

  Click. Click. The sounds of a gun being handled filled the lane where we were. Zak had Jamie practice how to dismantle his gun and put it all together again before he began every session.

  The fucking bastard was so good it was scary. I’d watched him break it all down without once losing his concentration as he talked to my boy. All the while Jamie’s eyes had followed his movements in wide fascination.

  Usually, a range safety officer hung around whenever people used the facilities, but this early, when the place was technically not operational, only the three of us were together.

  I could have left Jamie with Zak and taken care of some business. I had the twins checking out everything they could about the two men who I had allegedly killed. I needed to know who they were and who they were connected to. Maybe that would get me some answers to find out who wanted Jamie dead.

  Every day my doubts rose that it was Gunner. It just didn’t fit his MO. Gunner and his men were more one-percenters who thought they could piss on the law regardless of who knew or who witnessed their deeds. They wouldn’t have popped off rounds, then disappeared without bragging about what they had done. We hadn’t been in any serious conflict, except for the usual scuffle between our men. Sure, we’d lost a man or two along the way, but those occasions had been different. Like a blow during a brawl.

  Besides, like us, the Bloodlets preferred using blades to commit their felonies, not guns.

  The loud explosion of the gun jerked me out of my thoughts, and I fixed my attention to the back of Jamie’s head. His stance was a bit stiff. After three days, he still wasn’t as comfortable being around a gun, but he was getting better, given the holes in the target ahead of him.

  The barrage of gunfire continued as Jamie popped off rounds in rapid succession. The day after I’d gotten out of jail and we’d had our little conversation, I’d gotten him his own gun. While it remained the focus of his training since he needed to master the Glock, Zak had him practicing with different types of machines. He had explained he didn’t want Jamie to be familiar w
ith only one piece but to have enough knowledge of the various kinds of metal so he could operate any he got his hands on.

  Half an hour into the practice, Jamie hit his target dead center. Everything went still for a couple of seconds. Then he cried out triumphantly and danced around in circles while Zak ducked.

  “Jesus Christ, watch where you’re pointing that thing!” he scolded. “Is that how I taught you to treat the damn thing? Put the safety on.”

  “Oops!” Jamie immediately righted the gun and followed instructions. He gave Zak an apologetic smile.

  “Oops won’t cut it if you accidentally shoot someone. This is a serious responsibility to own and use a gun, Jamie. You just don’t forget everything I’ve taught you because you shoot someone.” He pointed down the lane at the target. “That’s just a fucking piece of plastic that doesn’t mean shit, but the moment you use this gun to snuff a life out, it changes you forever. Don’t forget that.”

  I’d never seen Zak so serious before. A part of me wanted to interfere and tell him to knock it off. From his slightly opened mouth, Jamie was also surprised Zak had come down hard on him. I refrained from saying anything. Jamie needed to hear all this.

  He needed to know that this wasn’t fun and games.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jamie

  A change of plan, I thought, sitting up straighter in the passenger seat of Grimm’s truck when he drove up to the entrance of a restaurant I hadn’t noticed before. It used to be a burger joint with mismatched tables, bad food, and a menu on a whiteboard on the wall.

  Joel and I often hung out there when we were teens. We didn’t really like the ambiance, but it was expected, and sometimes we just wanted to fit in. It was hard being a couple of misfits with a father making strides in the police department and a father who was notorious.

  Our last year of high school, the owner had closed its door and moved out of town after it had been vandalized one time too many by neighborhood kids. The place had remained unoccupied, and if there had been signs of renovations taking place before, I had clearly missed them when I visited town. Someone had invested quite a penny in the place, though, given the new upscale exterior.