Harper recognized the purr of a motorcycle just as the second nut loosened. As she bent to fit the wrench over the third, she realized the bike was stopping. She peered down the length of the car just as a man in motorcycle dark brown leathers stepped around it.
He was tall, with ropes of muscles over his spare frame and a three-day scruff of a beard. His face was heartstoppingly handsome—young but tanned and already slightly weathered, just the way she liked them. His grin when he saw her was distinctly predatory, and he pulled off his sunglasses to reveal delicious amber eyes and shoved them into the pocket of his jacket. Big, rawboned, and as hot as sin on a three-day bender.
Hel-lo.
“Nice view,” he said, his gaze resting on her rear, which was still pointed skyward as she bent to push the lug wrench into place.
No kidding.
“You going to help?” She cocked her head at the tire. “Or are you just here to admire?”
He leaned against the side of the car. “Looks like you’re doing fine.”
She snorted and stood, folding her arms and cocking a hip. His eyes flickered down to her cleavage. She knew full well that her posture drew attention to it, and she smirked back at him.
“You could at least pretend to be a gentleman. You’re more likely to get what you want that way.”
His gaze raked across her, taking in her dangling earrings and small nose stud, then coming to rest briefly on the small butterfly tattoo on her inner arm. The tattoo covered up another mistake—the initials of her high school boyfriend she’d gotten on her eighteenth birthday, the boyfriend who had already been cheating on her with her so-called friend. Even then, she’d known in her heart of hearts that guys always leave. She’d just been naïve enough to think that maybe if she pretended they didn’t, it would make a difference.
“I doubt it,” he said.
But he stepped forward, taking her place and loosening the last few lug nuts with quick, efficient motions. Harper planted her rear against the hood, quite deliberately in his peripheral vision.
Harper might have a habit of jumping in too quickly, but this was fast even for her. She wasn’t often quite so interested so soon.
She gauged him again, taking in the rugged jaw and chiseled nose and cheekbones.
Okay, never ever.
All things considered, though, maybe the day wasn’t going to turn out so bad, after all.
He looked up at her. She could break her heart on that hard jaw. “Jack.”
“Harper,” she said.
His smile was slow and lopsided. “Get me the jack.”
Damn. She scrambled for the jack to hide her blush and handed it over to him.
“So, what’s actually your name, then?” she said, raising her chin. “Unless you want me to call you Jack. ’Cause that works just fine for me.”
He scratched his nose, regarding her with amusement still glittering in his eyes. “Levi,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows at him. It fit in a kind of cowboy-country-boy sort of way. “Nice.”
He slid the jack under the front of the car, and she pushed away as he raised it. He spun the lug nuts and slid the bolts out one at a time, handing them to Harper without a comment. The wind ruffled his short hair, medium brown with just a touch of auburn where the sunlight glinted off it. He pulled the wheel off, not appearing to notice the weight as it came free of the axle, then slid the new one on just as easily.
He held out a hand without even looking at her, and Harper put a bolt in it, then the nut.
“Where’re you from?” Harper asked, handing him another.
Again, that wolfish look, the gaze that saw too much. “Around.”
Wouldn’t he like to eat me up.
“And where are you going?”
“North.” He held out his hand, and she put the last nut and bolt in it.
Damn. She was heading the other way, back to Baltimore. She wouldn’t mind taking a detour for him, though. He was way too interesting to just let him buzz out of her life as quickly as he came in.
Now that she was standing, she could see his motorcycle, a dozen or so feet behind Baby. Some exotic model—it was probably worth twice her car’s value, maybe more. Her heart sped up at the mere thought of the kind of speed that machine could muster. Maybe she could get him to take her for a spin. She loved motorcycles. Not as much as her Baby, but she didn’t love anything as much as her Baby.
He tightened the last lug by hand before lowering the jack.
“That’s a pretty hot bike. Think you could take me for a ride?” she asked.
He raked her with his gaze, still spinning the jack to lower it. “Tempting. But no.”
“Going to be late?” she prompted.
“Late.” He seemed to find the word amusing. “Yeah, something like that.”
He slid the jack out. Harper hauled the wheel back to the trunk and heaved it in, sad scraps of rubber dangling from the wheel. Scowling, she stuck the jack in after it. She wasn’t used to getting shot down, not by a man who was so clearly attracted to her.
She leaned against the car again as he used the lug wrench to give each nut a final tightening, then slapped the hubcap on.
Dammit. She knew that she interested him, and he sure as hell interested her. Why was he giving her the brush-off?
“I could drive along with you. You could get to where you were going, then maybe we could hang out,” she said.
He grunted as he stood, the wrench dangling from his hand. He flashed his white teeth at her. “You won’t be able to do that.” He turned away and walked to the back of her car.
“Why not?” Harper pushed off the side of the Skylark and trailed after him, bristling at his easy assurance.
He tossed the wrench into the trunk and closed it, continuing up the left side of the car. Standing near the driver’s door, he turned to her, treating her to the full effect of his smile.
“Because, Harper, I’m taking your car.”
Chapter Three
Harper’s stomach dropped, and she bolted for the driver’s door. But the man was already inside, slamming the door in her face and hitting the lock.
“You can have my bike,” he shouted through the glass, shifting into drive. “It’s worth more, anyway.”
He meant it. He was really going, and he was taking her Baby with him. Harper ran for the front of the car, whether to throw herself in front of it or to try to reach the open passenger’s window, she didn’t know, but he was already pulling away, and the car peeled out before she could take more than a couple of steps, narrowly missing her toes and making a wide U-turn before heading north along the road.
She stood frozen in the dust of the tires for half a second, her heart hammering a frantic beat.
Damn. Damn, damn, damn.
There was no way in hell she was going to let anyone take her Baby. Her brother Cory had had it towed home for her sixteenth birthday, and she’d spent hundreds of hours restoring it in the old barn with her brothers. It was the thing she cared about most in the world.
She ran back to the bike, the heels of her boots digging into the ground. A Ducati, she saw, and she was sure that her original estimate of its value wasn’t wrong. If the bike wasn’t hot—and seeing as she’d just gotten it from a car thief, how likely was that?—she’d come off better from the swap.
But she didn’t want to come off better. She wanted Baby.
Of course he hadn’t left the keys. That would make it too easy. And the steering column was locked in place by the pin that kept people like her from just hotwiring the bike and riding off on it.
But steering locks were easy enough to defeat. And she knew how, having driven Summer’s brother over to the old Martin place to get his bike back when Mason Martin had taken it. The only thing that kept the steering wheel from moving was a small metal pin, and she had the handlebars to use as a lever against it, plus all the strength in her legs....
She flung herself onto the seat of the motorcycle,
grabbing the seat with both hands, and pulled her legs up against her belly, balancing her feet against the very end of the handle that was turned closest to her. And she pushed, hard, the muscles in her legs and butt and stomach straining.
It gave with a snap so sudden that the tire jerked the other direction, and Harper was nearly flung from the seat. She caught her balance just in time to keep from going over—and maybe even pulling the motorcycle down on top of her.
The front wheel turned freely. Now it was just a matter of getting the motorcycle started. That was simplicity itself, but every second she took meant that Baby was getting farther and farther away.
Harper groped under the carbon fiber cover near the ignition, finding where the wires of the electrical system ended in plugs that slotted into each other. She pulled apart the one that went to the ignition. All she needed now was a wire to short it out.
She separated a single wire from its bundle and flicked her pocket knife open with her thumb. In a few seconds, she had a short length of wire, the plastic housing stripped from the ends, and the motorcycle’s left turn signal was toast. She slid the wire securely into the slots on the ignition plug, and several symbols on the dash lit up.
Bingo.
She raised the kickstand with the back of her ankle boot and checked the kill switch. Shifting to neutral, she pulled the clutch and hit the starter. The engine roared to life.
She gave the empty road in front of her a grim smile as she eased up on the clutch and shifted into first.
Hold on, Baby. I’m coming for you.
And that bastard Levi was going to learn a lesson. Bad boy or not, no one messed with Baby.
The motorcycle leaped forward.
Chapter Four
Levi unzipped his jacket and relaxed against the vinyl of the bench seat, twiddling the radio over to a country station as the wind whipped through the passenger window.
Finally, something had gone right. He regretted leaving the girl behind. She was pretty much everything he liked in a woman—curvy, sassy, competent, and with a very good idea of what she wanted. She would have gone with him, too. Some women were more affected by shifter pheromones than others, and if he’d ever seen one hit with a case of were-lust, well, it was her. And a little company was always welcome. Especially when the company came in a knockout package like that....
But hooking up with a woman, however hot, wasn’t exactly on the list of Smart Things To Do When On The Run From A Vampire, especially when the vampire in question happened to manage half the organized crime in Baltimore. He’d done the right thing for her sake, he thought virtuously, leaning back against the seat of the car he’d stolen from her.
A glint in the rearview mirror made him glance up. It was the sun, shining off the plastic headlight of a motorcycle.
Of his motorcycle.
And it was coming up fast.
Damn.
How had she managed to start the thing?
He considered flooring the Skylark, but there really wasn’t much of a point to it. Most cars, this one included, would be no match for even an average street bike, and his Superbike was no average street bike.
So he kept his needle pointed at eighty-five as the motorcycle roared up behind him, the woman hunched over the handlebars with her bottle-red hair snapping in the breeze.
He watched her approach in the rearview mirror. There was no way she could see anything, going at that speed without sunglasses or a helmet. Her eyes had to be streaming. She was crazy. She’d kill herself if she kept going like that.
Levi dropped his eyes back to his dashboard and realized that he was slowing—fifty-five miles an hour and falling.
Stupid, he told himself. Speed wasn’t the only thing that mattered, but it was important to put as much road between himself and Mortensen as possible. Even as he thought that, the needle fell further. Fifty. Forty-five.
She was just behind him now. Harper, that was her name. She crossed the yellow line so that she was going the wrong way down the opposing lane of traffic—not that it mattered with the road as empty as it was—and pulled even with him.
She reached out and banged on the window with a clenched first.
Yep. Crazy.
Levi decided that he liked her even more. He dropped to forty as she pounded a second time and rolled down the window.
“Give me back my car, you bastard!” she yelled. Even with her hair whipping across her face, he could see the fury in it.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he pointed out.
“You took my car,” she shouted back as the wind snatched her words away. “Give it back!”
Not gonna happen. Why the hell was he talking to her? “Did you hotwire that yourself?”
“No, the Tooth Fairy did. Stop the car!”
He pointed to the fuel gauge. “I can keep going like this for hours. I know that you can’t.”
She snarled a curse and dropped back as an oncoming car appeared over the horizon. For a moment, he thought she was going to give up, but as it passed, she steered to the other side of his car and edged up along the narrow strip of asphalt that passed for a shoulder.
“What are you doing?” he shouted at her.
“Coming in,” she yelled back. And, in fact, she was reaching through the open window for the door frame.
“You’re really going to kill yourself.”
The woman was seriously going to try to drag herself in through the open window from the back of his motorcycle. He was only going thirty-five miles an hour now, but that was plenty to have a fatal outcome if she misjudged even a little bit.
“I don’t even care!”
Dammit. He didn’t want to be responsible for what passed for brains in that pretty head being spilled out all over the asphalt. He lifted his foot off the gas.
“Okay, okay. Bat-shit crazy wins.”
The car slowed, the motorcycle keeping pace. He pressed the brake and downshifted, knowing he was making a mistake.
Levi didn’t want her to get hurt, yet the sane part of his brain knew that her chances of getting in serious trouble were probably even higher if she was with him. If he really wanted what was best for her, he’d disable the motorcycle or tie her up or knock her out or something, just as long as she didn’t come with him.
He was certain that talking her out of chasing him wasn’t going to work. And, he thought, taking in the magnificent view that her position hunched over the handlebars afforded him, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.
Maybe he wasn’t so great at decision-making. He’d managed to get out of all sorts of tight spots in the past. And he probably would in the future, too, right up into the moment that he didn’t.
He stopped the car, and her hand came down on the edge of the open window as the bike stopped next to it. She kicked the stand down and killed the engine. Before he could react, her head and shoulders were through the window, spilling into the passenger side.
So much for keeping her out of the car. That sent half a dozen semi-formed plans flying to the wind.
“I had stopped, you know,” he said mildly.
She gave another kick and wiggle, and her ample hips came through, too, her tempting backside up in the air.
“Yeah, and you stole my freaking car, too. I don’t exactly trust you.” She struggled upright.
That did interesting things to her anatomy, too, and Levi didn’t bother to hide his admiration as he shifted back into first and pulled out, leaving his motorcycle behind for a second time that day.
He pretended he didn’t feel a twinge.
“I really do need the car,” he said. “I’m not exactly in the habit of stealing them. In case you were wondering.”
“You need another hole in your head,” Harper muttered, buckling in with short, angry movements. The belt made her breasts stand out quite nicely under her shirt, too. “Did you steal the bike, too?”
“No. It’s mine,” he said.
She looked at him narrowly, and
he could tell she was trying to decide whether to believe him. “Then why ditch it? And even if you needed to get rid of it, why not just ask for a ride? I would have taken you where you wanted to go.”
“I caught that,” he said dryly. “But I didn’t want you along.”
“You wanted to ditch me enough to steal my car? Even though you had the hots for me? Really?” She scraped the red tangle of hair out of her face with a disgusted look, then rummaged at her feet, retrieving a bright pink purse. She pulled it open and dug around in it for a moment before coming up with a wide paddle brush with which she battled her hair.
“I didn’t say I had the hots for you,” Levi said mildly.
Harper snorted. “Since when has a guy ever had to say anything?”
“I’ll give you that one,” he granted. “I didn’t want you along because it’s dangerous.”
“More dangerous than stealing my car from me?” Her look was a challenge.
God, but she had a kissable mouth, full and expressive and, right now, still quite angry with him. Anger looked good on her.
He knew better than to tell her that, though.
“Yeah, I stopped because I’m nice. Or maybe because I’m stupid,” he said. “I didn’t stop because I thought you were dangerous.”
She smiled sweetly, putting the brush back in the purse. “Well, I wasn’t, then. Because I didn’t have my gun.”
Chapter Five
“What the actual hell, lady!” Levi’s eyes went wide when he saw her pull the blunt end of the double-action-only .38 special from her purse and level it at him.
“Pull over,” Harper said, permitting herself a small thrill of satisfaction at his reaction. The bastard had tried to take her Baby. He deserved anything that happened to that pretty face.
“You were headed into Maryland,” he sputtered. “That’s not even legal, there!”
“I used my mom’s address,” she said, shrugging. “I live alone in Baltimore. The cops there don’t even care if you’re raped, as long as they can convince you not to report it. So I got a gun. And I’m from the sticks in Pennsylvania, so I’ve been shooting tin cans off a fence since I was five years old and I got my brother’s hand-me-down BB gun. You better believe that I’m not going to miss you from two feet away.”
Voracious Vixens, 13 Novels of Sexy Horror and Hot Paranormal Romance Page 120
