by Sophia Gray
He walked off to his motorcycle and put on his helmet. A moment later, the bike roared to life in my front yard. I jumped at the sound of the engine, but then it purred sweetly. He turned around in my yard and pulled back up my driveway.
I stood there after he rode off, staring at where he’d been. My chest still vibrated from the sound of the engine, and I felt a jolt of excitement run through my body like the humming of his motorcycle. My life was changing, and I was finally in control of it.
Then, the Smiths’ car pulled up, and Micah came running into the house. Cole had left just in time.
Chapter Four
Cole
“What’s the extra helmet for?” Lilah asked as I got off the bike with the spare in my hand. She’d heard me coming, I figured, and stepped outside just in time to greet me like I hadn’t just been in her house a couple of days before.
“That’s for you. You’re not riding without a helmet,” I told her with mine still on.
“We can just take my car if that’s okay with you?”
“Come on, you’ll be fine,” I urged her. “It’s not that bad. Just get on the back and hold on to me.” I held the helmet out for her.
“I don’t know.” She continued hesitating, but she reached out and touched the helmet. That was a start, at least.
“You said you wanted to try new things and make some changes in your life, right?”
“Right.” She sighed.
“Then, let’s go. I’ve got something special planned for us, but we have to take the motorcycle, or it won’t work.”
She took a deep breath, and I could see in her expressive face that she was trying to work up the nerves to take the helmet from me. She pulled it out of my hand and put it on slowly. Afterwards, once it was on, she struck a quick pose, moving her hips to the side and holding out her hands.
“How do I look?” she asked, laughing.
“Stunning,” I answered, looking right into her eyes. “Now, hop on.”
She struggled to lift her leg high enough to get on the bike, but after a few failed attempts, she was on. She adjusted her hips so that she sat comfortably behind me, and she slid her arms around my waist.
“Hold on,” I called out to her before cranking up the bike. The engine roared, and her arms instinctively tightened around my waist. I smiled inside my helmet as I revved up the engine a few times to get her used to the sound. I turned around in front of her house and pulled up to the road.
I hadn’t told her where we were going. We had simply agreed to get together on her day off. I wasn’t sure what she expected, but I had planned a picnic for us so that we could spend the afternoon talking more, away from everyone and everything else. She was the pure, sheltered perfection I had recently been describing to Mick, and I didn’t want her to get the wrong impression of me.
Covered in tattoos and riding in an MC, I knew what a lot of people thought of me automatically. For the most part, that was fine. It was sometimes fun to see the looks on their faces when they realized I wasn’t just some hooligan in leather, looking for a fight. Other times, it was okay to let them have their ideas. I didn’t always need to correct everyone.
I didn’t want Lilah to think that about me though. It was important to me for her to see that there was more to me than the rough exterior. I was going to do whatever it took to make sure she saw that.
We turned away from the city and drove further out of town. I knew the perfect place just a few miles up the road from her house. The area was mostly wooded, but there was a beautiful clearing just off the side of the road.
We pulled off the road, and I parked along the tree line. I pulled off my helmet, signaling to her that she could do the same. As she pulled her helmet off over her head, her beautiful red curls spilled out across her shoulders.
“What did you think about the ride?” I asked her.
“It was different. I’ve never felt that much power or freedom underneath me before,” she replied.
“That’s how I feel every time I get on it. It’s not as jarring after a while, but it never loses that sense of freedom,” I told her, passing up the perfect opportunity to make a comment about putting more power between her legs. I wasn’t there to simply put another notch on my bedpost with her.
“I think I could get used to that. So where are we going?”
“We’re already here,” I told her, holding out my arms and looking around.
“Where is here?” She looked around like she didn’t believe me.
“It’s just a clearing in the woods. I figured we could have a picnic. I brought some sandwiches and a tablecloth.” I gestured to the bags on the back of the bike. I had an insulated bag for the sandwiches to keep them cool and fresh in one bag. In the other, I had a couple of paper plates, a tablecloth, and a couple of bottles of soda for us.
“Are you serious?” Lilah asked as she stumbled off the bike.
I guess she needs a ride with me a few more times until she gets comfortable with the bike. I’ll just have to take her on more dates.
“Yeah, look.” I got off the bike and pulled the tablecloth out of one side. I unfolded it and placed it on the ground a few feet away from where we were standing. Then, I grabbed the rest and took it over to the cloth I’d placed on the ground.
Lilah walked over shaking her head. “You are not at all what I expected.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said with a wink. “Now, I hope you like turkey, and I hope you aren’t opposed to bacon because these are turkey BLTs. I also brought some potato chips to go with them. I mean, what good is a sandwich without chips, right?”
“It sounds great. Wow.” She sat down next to me as I pulled the food out and put everything on our plates.
It felt good to see her surprised. Her whole face lit up. Her eyes watched with something akin to wonder as I plated our food and poured out the drinks. I could tell that she wasn’t lying when she said she hadn’t expected anything like this, and I had never been on a date with someone so appreciative of my efforts before.
Dinner was always supposed to be at a restaurant that pushed my budget. As a Steel Devil, that usually meant a really nice joint that made me feel completely out of place. “Going out” usually meant a night at one of the exclusive clubs where we got in because we’d done business with the owners.
A picnic in a small clearing in the woods with a couple of homemade sandwiches had never been enough for any of the girls I’d dated before. They wanted to be part of some scene. Lilah was happy just to be.
“This sandwich is pretty good,” she said, covering her mouth with a napkin.
“You’re lucky I speak fluent full-mouth-ese,” I told her. “Otherwise that wouldn’t have made any sense.”
She smiled and laughed with her eyes while she finished chewing her food.
“Sorry, it was too good. I had to say something right away.”
“Well, thank you.”
“How did you know about this place?” she asked in between bites.
“I ride a lot, and I must have passed by here a few hundred times since I started riding. I can’t believe you didn’t know about this place. You live right up the road from it. I live downtown,” I teased her.
“That’s one of those things, I guess. We never really did anything like this.” She looked down at the plate sitting in front of her. I knew that “we” meant her and her ex-husband.
“There’s no reason why you can’t start doing the things you want to do, right? Isn’t that what you were talking about the other day? Taking control of your life so you can start doing what you want to do?” I asked her, trying to pick her spirits back up. “This would be something you could do with your son. There are parks in town that would be great picnic spots for you and your boy.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “I should start doing that.” She resumed eating.
I watched her, studying her skin. She’d worn a short-sleeve blouse and jeans. I had told her not to wear a
nything too formal or stuffy because I wasn’t planning on doing anything too formal or stuffy for our date. It would have been nice to be able to see more of her skin though. It was so perfect. My work would look amazing on her, I thought as I stared at her. The colors would look so vivid and bright, and the black would contrast starkly against her nearly white skin.
“Have you given any more thought to your tattoo?” I asked.
She took a sip of her drink and nodded. “Yeah, I’ve decided I want to maybe do something small at first. I don’t know about my tolerance for physical pain yet, not that kind of pain at least, so I figure something small will give me a chance to experience the pain and decide if I want another one.”
“So, you’re already thinking you want more than one?”
“That’s what everyone says, right? Once you get your first tattoo, it’s like an addiction. You find yourself wanting another one pretty much as soon as the first one is healed.”
“You’ve been doing some research. Do you have many friends with tattoos?”
“No, I don’t have many friends,” she replied with a humorless laugh. “Really, the only person I’ve talked to about it in real life is Jenna. I work with her, and she has a tattoo. She’s always talking about how she wants another one. No, I’ve been talking to people online about it, people in chat groups and on Facebook pages.”
“That’s pretty accurate, I’d say.”
“You must really want to put that first one on me.” She flashed those green eyes my way.
I smiled. I didn’t want to tell her what I was really thinking about when it came to her tattoo – covering most of her body in beautiful lines and colors. I didn’t want to scare her away from it.
“I guess I’m eager, because I have so many, and I know what they can do for people, you know? I mean, as you can see,” I said, holding my arms out so she could see the pieces on both, “I’m well aware of how the ‘addiction’ works.” I made the quotation marks in the air with my fingers.
“I see that.”
“I like the idea of starting out with something small if you aren’t sure about the pain. Different people have different thresholds, and different parts of your body hurt differently,” I explained.
“Yeah, I heard that right over bone or places that are naturally a little tender, to begin with, it can be even more sensitive when it comes to getting a tattoo. So, placement is going to be important, too.”
“Exactly. You’ve been busy since the last time we talked about this,” I observed. “Last time we talked, all you really knew was that you wanted one. Sounds like you’ve been asking your online friends the right questions.”
“Really, it’s more like telling them I want to get my first tattoo and asking them what I need to know. I don’t really have to ask too many questions. The people I’ve met have all been very helpful.”
“A lot of folks with tattoos are. It kind of becomes a community.” I finished my food and leaned back on my elbows.
“I love that,” she said, taking the last bite of her sandwich.
She took another sip of her drink and lay back next to me, putting her hands behind her head. She sighed and closed her eyes. A smile spread across her face. I sat on my elbows and stared at the smiling beauty next to me. Again, I wondered how I got so lucky.
She was a good bit shorter than I was, thin, and petite. Her red curls seemed to grow even redder in the sunlight looking like a halo of flames. Her blouse rested on her body, showing off the subtle lines and curves of her tiny frame.
“You didn’t come here just to talk about my tattoo, did you?” she asked suddenly, after lying there quietly for a few minutes.
“Well, that’s part of it,” I admitted, omitting anything else I might have said to her about what I was thinking. I figured it was obvious that I was attracted to her. I wouldn’t have asked her out if I hadn’t been.
“Whatever your reasons, this is nice,” she said. She cracked an eye open and looked at me.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, and I’d like to see you again sometime,” I told her.
“Oh, you definitely will. You’re doing my tattoo, remember?”
“It’s been decided that I am, then?” I cocked an eyebrow.
“I mean, why not? I feel like I can trust you as an artist. I’ve seen some of your work, and I like your attitude towards it.”
“Well, if that’s the case, why don’t I Saw something specifically for you?” I sat up and reached into an inside pocket of my vest. “I can Saw anything you want. That’s how I got the nickname Saw from the MC,” I told her as I pulled out a small notepad and started drawing.
Chapter Five
Lilah
I sat up and watched Cole as he drew something on a sheet of paper in his notepad. His pencil moved quickly, drawing bold lines and adding in the shading. It was definitely small. I watched as the lines formed a lotus flower, and then what looked like flames came out of it. Out of the flames, he drew a rising phoenix.
He was good. There was no doubt about it. The amount of detail was unexpected. I always thought of tattoos as being pretty simple, and a lot of the ones I had seen at the shop had been simple. Bold lines and colors, mostly, with some detail, but they had been nothing like what he’d drawn for me. The dimensions were clear. The shading was appropriate and different for each part. He had even sketched the shadows from where the flames in the middle were casting off shadows from the flower.
“What do you think?” he asked, holding it out for me to see.
“It’s beautiful, and I imagine it would look even better as a tattoo,” I said, admiring it even more. I reached up and took the notepad from him to look at it closer.
“But,” he said in anticipation of my objection.
“But I don’t think it’s right for me. I don’t feel like I want something that detailed.” I tried to be careful so that I didn’t upset him or offend him while I was letting him down, but I felt like he wasn’t too thrilled to be told no.
“That’s fine.” He flipped the page over in his notepad. “I can Saw you something a little less detailed if that’s what you’d like.” He started working on something else.
I didn’t get a chance to see what it was because my phone went off while he was getting started. I pulled out my phone, thinking it was probably nothing – probably somebody at the library or my ex calling to harass me. It was the school. Something was wrong.
“Hang on,” I told Cole. “I need to take this.”
I got up from the tablecloth and answered as I walked away across the patch of grass.
“Hello?”
“Miss Romero?” the voice said on the other end of the line. I hated how people from the school always sounded so serious. It made me feel like I was in trouble every time I answered the phone.
“Yes, this is she.” I stopped and stood still, waiting for her to tell me who she was and what was going on.
“This is Abilene Turner, the school nurse. Micah is in my office, complaining that he doesn’t feel well. He seems fine, but he’s complaining about a stomach ache and really wants to go home. I’ve already cleared it with the administration if you could come pick him up,” she said, her voice softening as she talked.
“It’ll be a few minutes. I’m all the way across town right now, but I’ll be on my way in just a few,” I told her.
“No problem. I’ve got him up at the office with me. He’ll be fine until you get here,” she assured me.
“Thank you so much,” I told her and hung up the phone.
I slid it into my pocket and hurried back over to where Cole was working on the new drawing for me. I hated to have to cut our date short. I was enjoying his company. It was nice to have someone who actually enjoyed being around me.
“Who was that?” Cole asked as I walked back up. His tone told me he was asking out of genuine concern. He could probably tell by my face or how I was walking that something wasn’t right after the call.
“Tha
t was the school. I need to go pick up my son. He’s sick. I’m really sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” he said as he flipped his notepad closed and put it away. He got up and started cleaning up our picnic.
I helped as much as I could. While he grabbed the plates, napkins, and other trash, I picked up the tablecloth and shook it out. While he put everything else away, I folded the cloth so that it would be small enough to fit in one of the saddlebags on his motorcycle.
“Thanks. You didn’t have to do anything,” he said as I handed it over to him.
