by Megan Crane
“To be clear,” she said, in a very, very prissy voice that he was starting to understand meant Chelsea at her most nervous, “this is you propositioning me?” Her voice squeaked slightly on propositioning, and his grin widened. “At five-fifteen on a Monday evening two tables away from my dentist?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s definitely what this is,” he agreed, and thought he might lose it when her eyes went molten. “All you have to do is decide.”
She licked her lips, he felt it like she’d kicked him, and then she blew out a breath like her lungs hurt.
“Well,” she said, softly. “That’s not really much of a decision, is it?”
And he experienced a stabbing moment of perfect fear that he knew he’d have to face later, when his mind worked again the way it was supposed to, when he was free of this spell she’d cast without him even noticing—
But then she leaned in close and slipped her hand into his.
4.
Out on Main Street again, Jasper climbed on his bike and started it up with a big growl of its powerful engine, then looked over his shoulder at Chelsea with his clever eyebrows raised, daring her.
He didn’t think she’d do it, she realized.
And if she was honest, neither did she.
His eyes were that curious shade of hazel that made her think of sunshine and toffee, caramel and whiskey, sweetness and sin all at once, and they were fixed on her with so much heat. So much intent. And she knew he was right. This was her moment, here and now. She could seize it or she could hide from it, but he’d laid out the consequences of both of those choices on the table between them in the saloon in that stark, matter-of-fact way of his that his grin softened but didn’t sweep away. Like he was her own, personal prophet, straddling a silver motorcycle on a gleaming fall evening, tempting her toward the kind of wickedness she’d only ever dreamed about before.
She’d dreamed about so many things, and done none of them, because she’d spent her whole life taking the safe route, the expected path, the dutiful road. She’d pretended that being a coward deep down where it counted was a virtue. She’d let the fact she was afraid keep her from, well, everything. She’d never explored the world. She hadn’t applied anywhere but Bozeman for college, even though she kept a private journal filled with dreams about magical, far-off cities: New York. Paris. London. Hell, even Seattle, the nearest big city, had seemed too big and too far for her. She’d only dated boys and then men she’d known would ask nothing of her, who she’d thought she could slot right into the life she already knew so well and help her keep herself safe in the role she’d been handed so long ago. Hadn’t Tod simply been more of the same?
She’d been hiding all her life.
But somehow this man—this architect of her mother’s latest despair and she knew she should heed that, or at least care about it more than she did in this moment—saw her. Straight through her, inside of her, to all those things she’d packed away years ago and told herself were for someone else. Those crazy dreams. That wildness she’d thought she couldn’t have. The secret Chelsea Collier no one had ever known existed except her.
It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying, flashing through her like an electrical storm.
Chelsea took a deep, shaky breath. Then another. She knew there were eyes on her, approving and judgmental in equal measure, from every part of Main Street. She didn’t look around to confirm it; she knew. She could feel them, just as she was sure she could feel her own mother’s glare from as far away as Crawford House way up in the foothills, trying to bend Chelsea back into obedient shape from all those miles away.
But instead, Chelsea met Jasper’s 100-proof gaze and told herself it didn’t make her feel the least bit drunk.
“I’m not getting on that thing without a helmet,” she told him.
Prim and proper, as if she was discussing a ladies luncheon instead of… all the things that swirled between her and this man—this stranger—and made her feel wild and unmanageable and alive.
Alive, like she’d been faking it all this time. Every day of her life, until this one.
Jasper grinned, then reached down into one of the side compartments on his sleek and sexy machine and pulled out a little leather thing that she supposed was a helmet. Technically. Though she couldn’t imagine what good leather would do if they—
But she wasn’t going to think about consequences. Not tonight.
“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “But you’re going to have to let your hair down, Rapunzel.”
Chelsea’s throat was too dry. Her fingers shook. But she reached up and released the clip that held her chignon in place, then let her hair tumble down, aware as she did it that she was trespassing into the kind of feminine territory she’d always thought she was too boring, too responsible, to take part in. She’d watched girls do this all her life, and so, somehow, she couldn’t help herself tonight, given the opportunity to act like someone else. Like the Chelsea he seemed to see, instead of the Chelsea all the other men she’d dated had known perfectly well would never do anything like this.
As her thick, blonde hair fell down to her shoulders, she shook her head to make it swirl around her, then ran her fingers through it in an age-old gesture she’d never understood the full power of until now.
Until Jasper Flint sat on a gorgeous bike and watched her with the narrow, hungry focus of a predator, that hard grin of his a threat and a promise, reverberating in her like a chord struck long and deep.
She buckled the leather helmet beneath her chin, then leaned in when he beckoned and let him check its tightness. Her knees felt wobbly and there was a hunger carving out an empty space in her belly. Lower. She felt his breath on her face, his strong fingers brushing against her skin, and shook, deep inside.
“Get on,” he said, his voice gravelly, and she didn’t have to be an expert on men to know that meant he was as affected by this as she was. That made her feel small and powerful at once. Almost dizzy. “There’s a lot of carousing yet to do before we lose the light.”
“I’m not much of a carouser,” she told him, very seriously, because she thought he ought to know the truth before this went too far. “In the sense that I’ve never caroused in my entire life, by any definition of the word. You might want to adjust your expectations.”
“That’s not how I roll, Triple C.” His grin went wolfish. “I’ve never seen a boundary yet I didn’t like to push. You might want to let go of your expectations altogether.”
He made that sound like the most delicious, most dangerous prospect imaginable. And Chelsea decided she wanted nothing more than to let him push every single boundary he discovered in her. No matter what happened. No matter what it cost.
She climbed up behind him on the bike, carefully, feeling ungainly and graceless, like a single wrong move might topple the whole thing over, crushing them beneath—
“You’re not going to break it,” he said over his shoulder as she slid into place, feeling off-balance and unsafe, and not in a fun way. “But you’ll fall right off if you don’t hold on.”
“I am holding on.”
She had a death grip on the back of her seat, and she felt foolish sitting there, splayed open behind him and red with uncertainty, for everyone to see.
“You’re missing the point,” he said, and did she imagine there was something gentler in his voice then, winding through her and making it easier to breathe? “Why do you think a man rides a bike?”
“A death wish, presumably,” she snapped back at him, too overwhelmed to be anything but snappish, and maybe slightly hysterical while she was at it. “Also, they’re loud.”
“Sure,” he said, shrugging, and she had the impression of his laughter, though when he shifted in his seat, all she saw was the firm line of his distracting mouth and perfect jaw, and no laughter at all. “But there are other, better reasons.”
He reached back and tugged her arms around his chest, then yanked her close, so she lost her rigid place comp
letely and just… slid into him, the most tender part of her crushed against his behind and her breasts flat against the perfect, smooth wall of his back.
She made a shocked, small little noise, and felt the rumble of his laughter then, radiating through his strong back, his wide shoulders, the smoothly-muscled torso where her hands rested. This is too intimate, she thought, scandalized and vulnerable at once. The powerful machine beneath her, this equally powerful man in front of her, sitting right there between her legs—
“This is one of the best reasons,” he rumbled at her, low and hot, and she could feel his voice almost as well as she could hear it, moving in him and then in her, shaking her apart in an entirely new way. “Hold on tight.”
Then he kicked the bike into gear, and took off, the motorcycle like a gleaming, muscular bullet into the coming dusk, headed out of town in a low, sleek growl.
And Chelsea simply held on tight, the way he’d told her to, and surrendered.
They rode for a long time.
The world narrowed down to the roar of the bike and the wind against her face. The man she clung to, and the heat of his broad, muscled back. As the light started to sneak toward the far off hills, he stopped, high up on one of the Copper Mountain overlooks.
It took Chelsea a moment to come back to earth. To remember herself and peel herself away from him, then climb off the motorcycle so he could, too. She unbuckled her leather helmet and placed it carefully—too carefully—on the seat she’d just abandoned.
She felt exposed and scared—though it was a different kind of scared, she recognized. Not her usual head in the sand version. This was more the I might explode kind, and she didn’t know what to do about it, so she turned away from him and looked out over the familiar stretch of land before her instead, turning red and gold in the light of the setting sun.
“Legend has it that the first settlers here believed there was copper in these mountains because of sunsets like this one,” she heard herself say, though she hardly recognized her own voice, small and reverent, scared and soft. “They thought it was a sign.”
Jasper moved to stand behind her, and she could feel that intense blast of his heat she’d come to depend on during the long ride, looping around and around through the fields and into the hills. It emanated from him, like he was his own furnace, and she felt cold without it.
She thought she might die if he touched her. She knew she’d die if he didn’t. She felt restless, shivery—and the feel of him was still pressed into her, like he’d branded her, all that smooth, male muscle, that heft and power.
Chelsea wished they were still riding. That she was still touching him. That they could have gone on like that forever.
“I stopped here when I was riding through,” he said, his own voice different, like he felt it too. “Almost a year ago. We’d decided to sell the company, and I was trying to figure out what came next.”
“I think a lot of men in your position figure that out on private Caribbean islands,” she said dryly. “Not in rural Montana.”
“If I liked men in my position, I’d probably still be one of them.”
She wanted to look back at him, to gauge the expression on his face, but she was afraid to move. To break this spell, whatever it was.
“Chelsea.” Not Triple C. Not now. Like it meant something, the way he said her name. The way it cut into the twilight that settled around them.
And then he waited.
She knew that’s what he was doing. Just standing there, waiting for her to make the choice. The way he had three times already now. Outside the saloon. At the table. And before she got on his bike.
My choice, she thought fiercely. This is mine.
And so she turned around to look at him, standing there like something she might have conjured up in her head, so impossibly beautiful in the last of the day’s light it made her pulse pound. The reds and golds teased over him, making him that much more compelling, like he was truly that bronze she’d imagined him.
She didn’t care who she was or who she was supposed to be, Chelsea thought then. She simply wanted him, and nothing else mattered.
So she moved closer, stretching up to loop her arms around his neck as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He traced lazy shapes over her upper arms, and the smile he gave her then seemed carved from stone, sharp and hot.
“Is this where the carousing starts?” she asked, amazed that her voice was so husky. Amazed that the sound of it didn’t embarrass her.
She felt like she was alone in the world with this man, and she loved it. She wanted it. Him. Nothing but him—whatever that meant.
“If you think you can handle it.”
“I know I can’t,” she murmured, his mouth so close now, his head bent to hers, his hands moving over her shoulders to sink into her hair and tug her head back. “But I’m a quick learner.”
“Hallelujah,” he muttered, and then he kissed her.
Chelsea had been kissed before, even well, she would have said.
But Jasper was a revelation.
He kissed her the way he’d driven them on his bike, with an ease and a skill that combined into something liquid and powerful, driving her straight out of her head. He took her mouth like it was his, like she was his and always had been, and he tasted like fire and whiskey.
And she wanted. She yearned.
His hands sunk deep in her hair, holding her head right where he wanted it, while he bent her back and commanded her mouth with his own. And she couldn’t seem to get close enough. She couldn’t seem to think. She simply exploded into his hands, pressed herself against his body as close as she could get, lost herself in the wildfire he kicked up so easily, the sweet, hot burn.
He pulled back and muttered something under his breath, then smoothed a hand over her hair, his breath ragged as he studied her face. He frowned at her.
“What the hell was that?”
She didn’t know how she could stand there with his hands on her, kicking up so many brushfires she didn’t think she’d ever put them all out again. She wasn’t sure her legs worked any longer, and it felt like there was champagne in her veins, bubbling everywhere, thick and sweet and enough to make her head spin.
And he was looking at her like she’d stunned him.
Chelsea thought this might be what it felt like to fly like the eagles that had soared overhead on their ride up here, so bold and free.
“I thought I wasn’t your type,” she said.
That wolfish crook of his lips. “You most definitely are not.”
He traced the ruffled placket of her shirt as if it fascinated him, and her heart hit so hard against her chest she thought it might cripple her, but he only swept that damned finger up and down and back again, as if he didn’t notice how close he was to her breasts or how desperately she wanted his touch—so desperately she felt bright red and bursting with it.
“Well,” she said huffily, as if none of that was happening and he was simply another surly teen slinking into her classroom for detention. “You’re certainly not my type. I prefer the gainfully employed, for one thing. Safe, steady, and sturdy.”
That grin widened. “Sounds like you’re talking about support beams. I think someone needs to mess you up a bit, darlin’, if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for in bed. You’re missing all the fun.”
“I hate mess.”
“Then you shouldn’t kiss like that. It’s distracting.”
“I don’t kiss like anything!” She blinked, considering that. “Do I?”
“You kiss like a very loose woman with a very long night ahead of her,” he told her, and his finger crooked between two of the buttons of her shirt, which she only registered for a scant moment before he yanked her close to him again, plastering her against him, making her moan like the loose woman he’d just described.
Making her wish she was, because maybe then they’d already be naked.
“That’s me,” she lied breathlessly. “I danc
e on tables and engage in very long, very loose nights at least three times a week. I’m bad to the bone.”
“I like that about you.”
And this time, when he took her mouth, he lifted her up, wrapping her around him and holding her there as if she weighed nothing at all. He pressed her against the unmistakable jut of his arousal, and she shivered, then moved restlessly against him, trying to get closer—trying to do something with that terrible, all-consuming ache that she thought might eat her alive.
Her legs were locked around his waist and his arms were around her, and she felt like she was flying again, like they were still on his bike and this was more noise, more speed, more of that intense rush, ruining her for anything else. She knew it.
She couldn’t seem to care. Or stop.
So it almost hurt her when he did. When he put her back on the ground, very carefully, and then stepped away from her.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he gritted out. “Or I swear to god, I’ll take you right here.”
She couldn’t think of a single reason why he shouldn’t do exactly that, which must have shown on her face, and he cursed. Then let out a laugh.
“Come on,” he said, gruff and needy. “I’m either taking you home, or I’m taking you to my bed, where I might not let you go for a long time. Your choice, Chelsea. But I’m not doing this on the side of a mountain where anyone could drive by and see us. I’m not an animal.”
“What if I want you to be?” she asked. She didn’t know where it came from. His gaze took on that narrow, hungry gleam, and she felt it turn molten inside of her, promising all manner of dark, delectable things. “What if you make me feel like one?”
“Careful what you wish for,” he rasped out. “Your home or mine, Triple C. Decide.”
But of course, she already had.
5.
The last time Jasper had brought a woman home, that home had been his absurdly ostentatious mansion in Dallas’s Preston Hollow neighborhood, an enclave of the very rich that he’d aspired to ever since his daddy had driven him through it when he was a kid and told him Flints would never be good enough to live in a place like it.
