‘The car was big, strong, safe...but this bike is badass.’
‘If I’m so badass, why are you trusting me to take you back to my place?’
It’s a genuine question.
She shrugs and rests her head against my back. Doesn’t matter that she’s wearing a great big helmet. I feel the gesture like we’re skin-to-skin.
‘Jackson considers you a friend,’ she murmurs, ‘and that’s good enough for me.’
I shake my head in amusement, bewilderment and a sea of other emotions that I know starts with deception and ends in a twisted, tangled mess around my heart.
I kick the bike into life, pulling back on the throttle and letting its roar fill the garage as well as my head. But I can’t shift the weird warmth, the heat that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with her readily bestowed trust.
Coco would be the end of my life as I know it if I let her—of that I’m certain.
Just as well Philip Lauren’s timescale is short, because keeping a lid on this is proving harder by the second.
* * *
I’ve never understood the fascination with motorcycles. The idea of being so vulnerable on two wheels and at speed puts the fear of God in me. But with Ash between my thighs, and the engine reverberating through me, it wasn’t fear I felt—nothing close.
I clench him tighter and he calls back, ‘You okay?’
More than okay...
But it’s impossible to speak. Instead I nod against his shoulder and hold on as he takes us the short distance to his home. It’s the quickest few minutes of my life and I find myself wishing he lived a hundred miles away just so we could stay like this for longer.
We sit quietly, the engine idling, as we wait for the garage door to roll up. I’m so lost in the feel of him, of pressing him close, I don’t register the inside of the garage as he takes us in.
It’s the engine cutting off that wakes me up and I straighten, creating some distance between us and realising just how tightly I was holding him.
‘Sorry,’ I blurt.
‘What for?’ He kicks the stand down and I set one foot tentatively on the floor to steady myself.
‘For almost squeezing you to death.’ I slip off the bike and fumble over the helmet fastening. My fingers are shaking, my thighs buzzing with the lasting effect of the engine.
He climbs off and turns to me, his fingers nudging my own away as he stares through the visor. ‘I’d die a thousand times over if I got to go out like that each time.’
His v
oice is husky, his eyes wicked, and I swallow back the instant hit of lust.
He pulls the helmet up and over my head and I shake my hair out, feeling the air rush over my scalp, teasing at nerve endings already alert at his proximity, his words. I barely finish the move and he’s tossing the helmet to the ground, his fingers forking through my hair, bringing me up to the fierce onslaught of his mouth.
Fireworks erupt in my belly; heat uncoils through my every limb.
I’m vaguely aware of the garage door rolling down amidst the rush of blood in my ears, punctuated by our fierce grunts as we rip at each other’s clothing. He has his jacket off me, my bag has hit the deck, his fingers are undoing the buttons of my shirt as I tug his own from his jeans.
He rides my mouth, desperately deepening the kiss as he strides forward, taking me back against the hard wall of the garage, imprisoning me between brick and lean, hard muscle. He drops his hands to mine and lifts them above my head, lacing his fingers through mine, pinning them there before breaking the kiss.
I whimper, wriggling against him. I don’t want his mouth to leave; I don’t want my hands trapped. I want to feel him. All of him. But then his mouth is travelling down my neck, searing my skin with its dampened trail. My shirt hangs open and my body arches against the wall, offering my lace-covered breasts to the arrival of his mouth.
He breaks away long enough to stare down at me, to heat me with his look alone. His eyes are dark and hungry.
‘You are so beautiful...’
Sheer pleasure radiates out from my core—seeing him, hearing him so sincere, so choked, feeling his arousal pressing between us, hard, eager... Knowing it’s real, that he feels it as badly as I do, is exhilarating.