Page 30 of Biker's Prisoner: Property of Bucky

How much do I need to hear? They're going to break down the door. That much I know. I rush over to my window and attempt to throw it open. It gets about a quarter of the way up before getting stuck. Fucking landlord special… He must have painted over the track of the window too many times. While looking around my room for something to help shove the window up the rest of the way, I hear rushed footsteps and then a shoulder slams into my bedroom door.

Oh God.They're doing it. They're going to break down the door.

I have a momentary regret that I live in Massachusetts and not some redneck ass state where I could legally have a loaded shotgun on my bed ready to rock.

Who the hell am I kidding? I'm a teacher. I'm not the shotgun type. But I'm so... panicked. I grab the only thing I can think of in self-defense. My paddle from the nerdy sorority I joined in college, decorated with Stardew Valley characters and pink bows.

I throw it over my shoulder like a baseball bat as the next elbow to fly into my door breaks a hole in it. Tears pierce my eyes. They're going to hurt me. They might even kill me and all I have is this fucking paddle..

The only thingI know for sure is that I'll go down fighting.

"Let me do it," Brooks grunts on the other side. I'm surprised they didn't send him first. At 330-lbs, he's the school's heaviest football player and on his way back to the South after he graduates prep school with a full ride scholarship with the Ole Miss team.

He applies minimal effort to my door and it practically crumbles around the hinges. I'm done thinking. I scream and lunge forward, swinging the paddle at all the heads I can see in front of me. I want to treat them like melons in fruit ninja but...

There are stillthree of them. I hit Reid hard enough that he stumbles backwards, but I lose sight of Brooks. Which is trouble. You lose sight of a 300+ pound man, your ass is in trouble. I scream and whirl around swinging the paddle, only to land against his enormous, soft belly.

"Get the paddle," Reid says once Brooks has me, his voice quiet, dark, and all business.

"I found her phone out there,"Grant says. I guess I had lost track of him too. "We should film this shit."

"Yeah,"Brooks says. I feel something disgusting and warm against my ass. I want to faint. I want to throw up. "Set up the camera. I'll get her clothes off."

Chapter Fourteen

Ruger

She freezes next to me beneath the comforter like a fucking corpse. I sleep on top of the covers with a cow hide blanket pulled over me. I can hear her breathing all nervous, preventing my ass from getting to sleep. I won’t be able to rest until she does. My eyes close and I start remembering the first plane ride we took when we got deployed to the Middle east.

I was scared out of my fucking mind from the stories I heard. Gideon made it sound like hell and it was worse. I thought I knew heat in Missouri or even in New Orleans, but fucking nothing compared to the desert.

I won’t lie that I hated every fucking second of it. Couldn’t wait to go home. Right now, sleeping next to her with my hands clasped over my chest, I feel an oddly similar unsettled feeling. Zayna trying to hide her tossing and turning in the bed rattles it around like the C-17 Globemaster III we all sat together on, smelling like sweat and fear.

If I give her time, I assume she’ll fall asleep but going on two hours, Zayna keeps lying there as wide awake as I am.

“Do you normally stay up all night?”

She gasps, startled that I spoke, but clearly not startled at all that I’m awake.

“I’m fine,” she responds dismissively, trying to make her voice sound extra sleepy, even if I know her ass is awake. I’m just surprised Eden hasn’t started crying to add on to my sleeplessness. I know all the reasons I can’t sleep. Darlene wasn’t the first person I killed, but her death and burial was certainly the most gruesome.

I can taste that rot on the back of my tongue when I close my eyes. It’ll take a long time and a whole lot of meth before I can push that image out of my head.

“Something happened to you. I can tell.”

She fakes a yawn. “I’m tired.”

I turnonto my side over the covers, giving Zayna the option to roll away from me onto the floor if she chooses, but trapping the rest of her blankets beneath my body. She opens one eye and then shuts it when she sees me staring at her. Crazy ass woman. I know I look good but… I also know most black women have complete negativity when I talk to them.

Maybe I shouldn’t talk.But the other things I want to do would only get her angrier. And I don’t want that. I’m too tired for that and I don’t want to fight.

“Did somebody hurt you?”

She opens her eyes again. I can see her weighing the odds of telling me. She bites her lower lip, then releases it.

“Yes.”

I could have guessed as much. She’s oddly skittish… but she has a strange aura of strength about her. Something that says… “Don’t fuck with me too much or I’ll cut your dick off.”

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