When they returned from the ride, she told him she was ready to learn how to tune a bike. But he didn’t want to see that nicely clingy gray shirt tossed in a trash bin thanks to an oil stain. So he retrieved a thick black T-shirt from the barn, one of his extras, and offered it to her. “No reason for you to ruin a shirt when I have plenty. If you want, you can change in the barn. I also put some of that soda you like in the fridge I keep in there.”
She looked surprised and pleased by his consideration. When she removed her crossbody bag that held her phone, he realized she was going to change the shirt here. No neighbors around to see, so Tiger guessed it made sense. He sure as hell wasn’t objecting, even as he shifted his gaze to the bobber he’d parked on the concrete pad outside the barn. It was due for a tune up, so he’d use it to teach her how it was done.
She touched his arm. Pointed to his eyes, herself, question mark.
Would you like to look?
Was he breathing? “Yes Mistress, I would.”
She grasped the hem and, with a lithe move of her upper body, removed the shirt. It might have been designed for gettinga little dirty, but what was beneath it was not. The silver-gray satin bra with a darker ribbon border had cups split low and deep, giving her breasts plenty of exposure to his appreciative gaze.
He'd never done a bike tune up with a hard-on, but the experience was inevitable, especially with her standing before him in bra and jeans. The loose waistband made him want to slide his fingertips along smooth skin and the band of whatever panties she wore beneath. He cleared his throat before she donned his shirt. “I’d lose the bra.”
The imperious angle of her brow made him chuckle. “Yeah, I know how it sounds. I have coveralls for dirty work that don’t let anything soak through, but since it’s a typical humid New Orleans day, I don’t want to give you heat stroke. Plus they’re too big to be practical. Maryshka hasn’t left a set here, so I don’t have anything smaller.”
He was almost glad he couldn’t hear himself talk, because pinned by that Mistress look, he probably sounded like a stammering teen explaining how he “accidentally” ended up hiding in the girls’ locker room.
With a twist of her lips, she laid her shirt on his shoulder. She smoothed the fabric with her hand, a stroke that included him, before she pivoted and presented her back to him. She tilted her chin to her shoulder, a clear directive. Those strands of blond hair curved over her brow and caught on her lashes. Her sweet lips had a kissable quirk to them.
She had a single tattoo on her back, inside the left shoulder blade. He’d registered it before, but this was his first close look at it. A series of musical notes, tumbling down. Maybe from that song her dad had written about her?
His hands weren’t steady. What was up with that? He unhooked the bra, then, after a pause, he took the straps off her shoulders, absorbing soft skin and delicate bones throughhis palms. Her nearness, the intimacy of it, flooded him with contentment.
Between that and how well the bike riding had gone, he couldn’t ask for a better day. No other problems could touch him right now.
She took the bra the rest of the way off and turned in his arm span, laying it over his shoulder on top of her shirt. With that enigmatic smile, she put on his T-shirt.
Her braless in a tight T-shirt—wet from a sudden devil-blessed rainstorm—would have been a biker’s dream. However, her breasts moving beneath the loose fit of his shirt, giving him the hint of a nipple as she shifted and turned, was just as distracting. He'd always appreciated more subtle pleasures.
He’d set two footstools next to the bike. She perched on one, listening closely as he went over the basics of a tune-up—oil change, filter check, et cetera—and then he showed her the tools they’d need, explaining their uses. She was familiar with some of them, which confirmed his theory that she got into the guts of her hardware when needed and had probably even tinkered with her Mustang in the past. Mechanical stuff didn’t put her off. Even so…
“You surprised me,” he observed. “Asking how to tune the bike before learning to ride. That’s usually what people want to do first.”
She pursed her full lips. Typed. “I like to know how a powerful beast works, how to care for it, before I ride him.”
He grinned. “How long you work on that one?”
Her gaze twinkled. Tap, tap, tap. “That’s not the right question. How does it work on you?”
“Remember the skillet thing? Everything you do and say works for me.” He gave her a mock look of alarm. “Unless you want me to wear stilettos. Those scare me. Plus a man’s got todraw the line somewhere, or a woman will think he’ll jump off a bridge for her.”
She leaned forward and laid her lips on his, just a brush of contact. When she drew back and dipped her head to her phone, her response took a little longer. That was okay. He liked having the time to look at her.
“No stilettos. No bridge. Unless we’re jumping together, and there’s a cool, deep creek below with a nearby bank. One to make love on, getting coated with that soft, sticky clay we could rinse off when we’re done. Know a place like that?”
Yeah. A perfect one. He finished reading the provocative words and lifted his gaze to hers. It was a place he’d stayed on the way to the South Dakota rally. The creek had run by the motel, and he’d followed it up into the woods, finding where it was wide and deep enough for swimming. The motel had a porch built along its entire rear length, a wooden swing mounted outside the back door of every room. It had been a great place to enjoy a beer at the end of a good day’s ride. Order a pizza. Watch the sunset.
He went to several long distance rallies every year, depending on how busy the garage was. Rubbing elbows with other MC enthusiasts in that environment was his idea of a vacation. The semblance to the kinship he’d lost when he left the Fallen Angels helped him recharge his batteries and leveled him out.
That local rally in Kentucky was a reasonable option. He’d talked himself out of it, but today he’d proven he could ride again, at least for shorter distances. And a dark-eyed Mistress was talking about making love on creek banks. It made unwise things come out of his mouth.
“That rally I mentioned before. Would you be interested in going? It’s a long weekend kind of thing. I’d trailer my bike downwith my truck. Riding a bike for a few hours when you’re not used to it isn’t fun. Gotta build up to that.”
“Wouldn’t that make it less enjoyable for you?” she typed.
Any loss of enjoyment would be more than compensated by her presence. But he gave her the less pleasant truth. “With these headaches and the dizziness coming and going, I was going to play it safe and trailer it anyway. Once I get there, I’d use the bike to see the sights and do rally stuff.”
She considered that. Typed. “We’ll see. Let’s do the tune up. Then I’ll badger you into teaching me how to ride one solo.” She tossed him a challenging look.