A shot fired and the SUV skidded, before braking suddenly.
The bike stopped too, facing away from her towards the beast of a vehicle like it was a beast in itself.
The rider kept his arm raised, pointed at the vehicle, his dark helmet on. Morana looked at the white shirt stretched taut across his muscular back and tucked into dark trousers. She looked at the sleeves rolled up sinews and muscles of his forearms with the hints of tattoos peeking out, the other free hand on the handle on the big bike.
Her neck started aching from being turned around but she didn't remove her eyes, didn't even blink, her heart racing at the scene.
Everything was still. The SUV. The bike. The rider. Completely. Almost as though in a silent duel, a showdown she didn't understand a thing of. But she could feel the tension rolling in the air, thick and heavy and ready to explode at a moment's notice.
Everything was still. Except for her heaving chest. Whoever the rider was, she was rooting for him. There was something dangerous about the way he'd held himself in motion, something even more dangerous about the way he held himself in this stillness.
The SUV whirred. The rider didn't twitch.
The vehicle reversed. Quickly. His back muscles tensed.
And with a bad tire, Morana saw, in complete and utter disbelief, as the vehicle turned and drove away at a breakneck speed.
If she had a dollar for every time she'd thought 'what the hell?'
The rider stayed still for a moment, until the SUV disappeared from sight, before revving his bike and turning it back towards her. Morana turned her neck back as he drove forward, stalling beside the car.
She looked up at the intimidating size of the bike and the man riding it, being cautious and never rolling the windows down. He might have interceded in between her would-be creepy maybe-murderer but she didn't know him. And she'd had enough ‘what the hell’ moments for one night.
The man raised his hand up to his helmet, and Morana's eyes moved to the ropes of muscles and veins running under his exposed forearms, the tattoo swirls familiar, something fluttery happening inside her stomach as she watched it flex, her chest slightly heaving.
He pulled up his helmet with one hand, the palm of which was wrapped in white gauze that she'd missed at the distance, and all fluttery feeling came to a crashing halt before a storm raged through her entire body.
She knew that bandaged hand. She knew those forearms. Fuck.
The helmet came down before him. Those magnetic blue eyes watched her through the glass, locked on hers, as he leaned back slightly, in a seemingly casual stance atop his beast of a bike, straddling it with the same grace with which he'd scaled her house walls. His finger tapped the comm on his ear once and a sudden vibration in the car startled her.
Barely containing her surprised yelp, Morana picked up her phone and looked at the caller id, before swinging her eyes back to him.
He was calling her, from less than a foot away, with glass between them, with him out in the open and her safe in her car. He was calling her. And she was letting it ring, never breaking their locked gaze, her heart thudding wildly in her chest as a bead of sweat rolled down her spine, tingling her skin.
His hand never moved from his ear. The buzzing never stopped. The gaze never wavered. Blue on hazel. In the middle of an empty road.
He kept calling, sitting right beside her on his bike, and she kept ignoring it, gripping the steering wheel with her free hand, her knuckles white.
After long, long minutes of neither of them backing down, Morana touched the green button on her phone, bringing it to her ear.
She could hear him breathing on the line, and her own breaths quickened, her chest heaving as she looked at his expanding chest. He inhaled, stretching the shirt tight, and she watched the contractions as he exhaled, the sound clear over the phone. She'd never felt anyone's breaths before, never like this. It was almost distant. It was almost intimate. She wanted to break this, whatever this was. She could still feel that hatred for him fill her body, but she could not utter one word to break that heavy silence.
She had things to demand of him – so many questions. Why hadn't he stayed away from the meeting? Why had he done what he'd done just then? How had he known to come there? She had answers to find out. She had anger to unleash.
Yet, she could not break that gaze, could not remove her eyes from his, could not even hum.
Just breathe. Quick, shallow breaths slowly transforming to slow, deep breaths. Right in sync with his.
It disturbed her.
It disturbed her enough to blink and turn away.
It disturbed her enough to start the car and pull out.
It disturbed her enough to hit the red icon on her phone.
She didn't understand this. She didn't like this. So, she ran. Being alone with him, when he always pushed her off her game, made her vulnerable. She would never willingly expose her jugular to the man who'd made a name in going for it. Her brain had a habit of not functioning properly in his vicinity.