I grabbed an end and helped. "It's not weird at all, Dakota. I'd like that. I’d like that a lot."
"Cool. I went to the market yesterday and have a couple of steaks in the fridge we could grill. Does that sound okay to you?"
I thought about the last time I'd had a quiet, home-cooked meal. Tina had made it. I pushed the thought back with a silent apology to my dead girlfriend. "Just what I need."
Chapter Four
Dakota
Dinner was finished, and Jake was clearing the table while I loaded up the dishwasher. It had been really nice, cooking for someone again. Cooking for him. Cooking with him, really. He'd grilled the steaks while I made some fettuccine and tossed a fresh salad from my garden.
We'd eaten on the patio and shared a bottle of good-tasting red wine while we conversed. After the intensity of my family photo wall and the garage, we stayed to easier topics: Movies, motorcycles, and other interests.
He asked me quite a bit about the house and my garden, which I adored discussing. In return, I asked him about his life, but it became quickly evident that he wasn't going to share much there. All things considered, after today, I thought that was a little unfair. But fine. No intrusion. No use stepping on any more landmines today, anyway.
I myself hadn’t planned on revealing all my skeletons. But I hadn’t expected the exchange in my front hall. I’d been too involved in planning out my fantasy that it didn’t dawn on me that he would notice the photos and have questions.
They were so much a part of this house, so much a part of me that I didn't even think of them as something other people could or would see. And I ended up talking way more about my life than I ever did. I disliked people having that kind of knowledge about me. It gave them too much power. It made me weak.
I did it again, in the garage. And, God… I had cried. Shit. I didn't understand it. And for a second there at the end, I thought he was going to kiss me, and I freaked out. Which annoyed me, because I really wanted to kiss him.
But if almost kissing Jake Rider could be so mind-blowing, I was fairly sure I’d spontaneously combust if he actually did it.
Spending more time with him tonight, only made me want him more. I still wanted to fulfil my desire of sleeping with a bad boy biker. Nothing tonight had dampened my infatuation. But it just felt wrong, standing in front of Jon's bike, after that whole emotional scene.
That was why I had offered dinner. A key to a man’s heart is food, after all. But it was nearing 8:30 PM, and he was probably starting to feel like a hostage.
I came out of my reverie and realized that Jake was standing just inside the patio door, looking at me with a slightly odd, hesitant expression. I turned off the faucet and asked, "Everything okay?"
He started to talk, stopped, and started again. "I was, uh, wondering if," he stopped again and cleared his throat. "Would you like to take a ride with me. A real ride, before we head back to the garage? I know a place a little ways out of town that's really beautiful at night."
I just looked at him for a few seconds, letting the implications of his invitation sort themselves out in my head. I knew I wanted him. Even if it was just one night, and one fuck–I knew he would give me what I needed at this moment in my life. I knew he would blow my mind. I supposed it was colossally stupid to take a ride into the country, at night, with a guy I just met. A guy who was probably a complete badass. It wasn't going to stop me, though; the vibe he gave was the opposite of threatening. Still, I told myself to be alert.
I smiled. "I'd like that very much. Let me get my jacket and boots."
He watched me walk across to my bedroom, but he didn't follow. Thank goodness. Not ready for that. Not quite yet. I took a pair of socks out of the drawer and pulled them on with a pair of low-heeled black boots, and picked up my suede jacket off the back of the armchair next to my closet.
When I came back out, he was standing exactly in the same place, looking a little stuck. A little troubled. I leaned around him and threw the lock on the patio door. "Ready?" I asked. I hoped he hadn’t changed his mind.
"Let's do it." We went out through the front, and I locked the door. Jake headed to his bike and pulled a leather jacket out of a saddlebag, and slid it on.
When I reached the bike, he handed me his extra helmet. His hand hung in midair for a second, as if he were deciding something, and then he reached up to my head. I flinched slightly and he stopped, hand still hovering. He raised his eyebrows a little, asking for permission. I drew a small intake of breath telling myself to calm down. I gave him a small, embarrassed smile as he reached back and gently pulled the clip from my hair. As my hair fell in soft waves over and past my shoulders, he said, "I don't think this would feel very comfortable under the helmet." He handed me the clip and swung his leg over the saddle. His mannerisms were so goddamn sexy.
I laughed sheepishly. "You're right. Thanks." I slid the clip into my pocket, then leaned back slightly to shake my hair back out of my face and strapped the helmet on. When I looked up again, I met his eyes. What I saw in them sent a hundred shivers up my spine. Even in the twilight, I could see fire in them. Eyes of a dragon, indeed… Then he slid his night-riding glasses on and strapped on his own helmet while I climbed on behind him.
I settled myself and put my hands on my knees. I wasn't ready to presume anything yet, despite the signals I was picking up. Despite wanting nothing more than to have him as close to my body as possible. But he reached down with a now-gloved hand and pulled my right arm around his waist, holding it close and squeezing my hand for a moment.
I gladly took the hint and wrapped my other arm around him, too, linking my hands. Oh my God. It felt so sensual. It felt so sexy. But it was more than that. I felt connected to him. There was something in the way his eyes had entered mine. They made me feel like he understood me. It frightened me a little, actually, but I decided to think about that later. Right now, this felt like something I needed. I was living in the moment.
He sat there for a second or two, his head tipped down slightly. He seemed to keep hesitating about something. I wasn’t sure why. I mean, his conceited disposition had me thinking he frequently rode with lots of girls. Why was I any different?
He finally kicked the engine to life and turned the throttle. I closed my eyes as the vibrations traveled up through my body and hit every sexual nerve ending in my body.
One of the things about riding a Harley with someone is there's not a lot of conversation you can partake in. So I just enjoyed the ride. I wanted to relish every part of this rebellious night.
As for riding on a sweet bike, I'd missed it even more than I'd realized. It was a typically chilly, early fall, California night, and the wind was crisp on my face. I welcomed it as I’d spent most of the night trying to not sweat in front of Jake. He seemed to have a remote control that worked my body-heat levels.
Jake's broad shoulders blocked most of the wind, so it was refreshing instead of cold. I loved the feeling of being spread wide behind a strong man. I relished the thrum and rumble of the engine. I loved the feel of his hard abdomen under my hands. I loved it all.
Without thinking about the intimacy implied by the gesture, I turned my head sideways and laid my cheek on his back. After a second, I felt his hand briefly grip both of mine and squeeze. It felt like we’d been doing this together for years.
We rode for about forty minutes, but it felt like half that time. We'd traveled well into the countryside. He pulled off the road and drove the bike a short ways up a neat, dirt path, slowing down. As he stopped and cut the engine, he said, "Here you go. This is it, babe."
I released him and climbed off. He kicked the stand down and followed. We took off our helmets, and Jake hung them on the handlebars. He tucked his riding glasses into an interior pocket in his jacket. He held my hand and the touch sent little sparks trickling down my back as he led me up a low hill. My heart was racing. My blood cells were simmering slightly at the thought of what I was about to do.
At the top, he gestured outward and smiled. I glanced up. "Wow…" I whispered. I hadn't noticed that we'd been climbing as we rode, but we must have been, because from here I thought I could see all the way to the Pacific. The lights of hundreds of sleepy houses twinkled below us on all sides. The lights of billions of stars twinkled above us.
He'd brought me to heaven.
"Wow…" I whispered again.
I sensed him coming close to me. He was behind me. My blood cells were beyond simmering. I closed my eyes when he wrapped his arms around me. I wanted to lose myself within him.
I leaned back against him, giving in to the sensation of being supported by a strong man. He smelled of fresh air and vigor. He smelled of sex. "Dakota," he whispered in his deep, quiet voice.
"Shhh," I responded. I didn’t want to talk. I’d talked for most of my life. I talked when my stepmother died. I talked when my dad died. I talked when I got pregnant. I talked about getting married to give my baby security. I talked myself to death in therapy. I talked when I went back to education. I’ve done nothing but talk. It was time to just… do.
He kissed the side of my neck, just behind my right ear. Shooting stars of pleasure pierced every inch of my body, as I shuddered from the touch of his moist lips. This was it. This was the night I would have wild sex with the sexiest bad boy I had ever seen.
We stood like that for several minutes. I wondered why he was hesitating. I wanted him to bend me over, already. Instead, Jake stepped back and turned me towards him. With his hands holding my upper arms, he looked at me intently. His eyes were so gentle. I knew then there was something more to him. "I need to tell you some things about me. Real things." He pulled me gently down to sit on the ground with him. We were surrounded on all sides by the heavens.
And he told me some things.
He told me that being a Fire Bird meant violence and lots of it. He told me that he'd been arrested several times and had been in prison. He told me he had a kid who lived with his grandmother away from him and that he intended for his daughter to stay away.
And he told me about his girlfriend, Tina, who'd been kidnapped by a rival gang. She’d been raped, beaten to death and then thrown out of a van just outside Jake’s compound. He told me about holding Tina's bloody, broken body in the middle of the street.
When he was done, he looked at me steadily. "Violence follows me everywhere, Dakota. It follows me fucking everywhere. The only way I can keep anyone I care about safe is to send them away from me. You need to know that. I feel… Fuck, you’re so mesmerizing… I feel something happening here"–he gestured between us–"and you need to know that. You deserve nothing less."
I stood up and walked a few feet away, looking out over the twinkling lights below. For a long time, I said nothing, and Jake just sat where he was and let me be quiet.
I was overwhelmed. He had confided in me. He had been… honest. He was nothing like I thought he would be: A simple bad boy biker looking for a fast fuck.
I was shocked. I was frightened. I was sad. We had both suffered loss at such a young age. He wasn’t just a bad boy. He was like me.
I was already falling fast into him.
So I stood there and let all those emotions have their way while I tried to understand what I wanted–what I needed–to do. Reason–my mind–insisted that I get him to take me to pick up Indie immediately, never see him again, and return to the quiet, simple, mundane life I had yesterday. This desire to have a sexual encounter with a bad boy was just a moment of madness that had built up over the difficult and challenging years.
However, my heart was telling me to be profoundly moved by his confession. It showed his genuine care for my well-being. Our connection to harrowing pain urged me to embrace him and love him and bring our broken souls together and be whole again.
Desire wanted him more than ever. He was deeper and more real to me, now he'd given me something important of himself, the way I'd given him something to know about me. What had been an infatuation was shaping into something extraordinary. An intense feeling of intimacy took over my body.
I had wasted enough time playing the good widow. Powerful women didn’t lock away their hearts. They carried them to the battlefield.
Once I figured out what I wanted to do, I took another few minutes and worked out how to say it. Then I cleared my throat and turned back to him. He stood up and walked to me, his expression questioning, anxious. It was refreshing to see he wasn’t arrogant. His vulnerability made him even more attractive.
I met his eyes and began to talk. "I believe everything you've said. I take none of it lightly. And it scares the fuck out of me." He looked away from me then, but I caught his square jaw to make him face me again. "I don't care what you do with the Fire Birds. I didn't think you were having teddy bear tea parties. I really don't care about what's legal and what's not. People do horrible shit to each other that's perfectly legal, so most law just seems like arbitrary nonsense to me, anyway.
“But I do care that you could get hurt, and I care that you could go away. I guess I care that I could get hurt, too." He tried to turn away again, but I still had hold of his stubbly, kissable chin. "Here's the thing, Bad Boy. I am completely alone in this world. No siblings. Parents dead. Child dead. Husband dead. I mostly dislike the people I work with. I think most people are selfish, untrustworthy douchebags, so I don’t have any real friends. I. Am. Alone.
“And I've been okay with that… I've been good with it, in fact, for years. Until yesterday. I met you and all of a sudden I don't want to be alone. That's maybe the scariest part of all this. But if you want to not be alone with me, I'd like that very much. If violence follows you and something happens to either or both of us, at least it stops with us. And by the way, I'm a lot tougher than you might think of a twenty-one-year-old Heights girl."
My body trembled as we held each other's eyes. Then Jake framed my face in both of his strong and muscular hands and pulled me to him. At first I pushed a little against him, against the very edge of the sensation I was feeling, finding a stuttering rhythm that had little enough to do with friction and far more with the way he was looking at me, with the way his eyes were shot through with darkness and light within the realm of blue.
At last, he kissed me. His lips were firm and warm, and his skin was so hot against my face. The kiss was tender and lingered. I leaned into him and slid my hands under his jacket and around his hard waist.
I could feel he was on the edge as much as I was, dying to make me bend, dying to make me bend backwards and break into him.
I could smell it. I could taste it when I tasted his mouth, when he pushed his lips against me in a ferocious, breathtaking kiss.
I opened my mouth and lightly brushed my tongue against his lower lip. Jake groaned and clutched my face tighter as he intensified the kiss, pushing his tongue into my mouth to tangle with mine.
I pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans. Without breaking our kiss, he unzipped his jacket to give me better access, and then returned his hands to cradle my face. I slid my hands up underneath his shirt and pressed them against the warm skin of his firm, muscled back. He growled against my mouth, and his hands slid down my neck, catching at my collar and pulling my jacket off my shoulders.
His mouth left mine and I whimpered at the loss. I felt his lips feathering kisses along my jawline and down to the base of my throat. He stopped when he got to the rounded end of my left collarbone and pressed his lips against it firmly, sucking.
The gesture was intensely erotic, and I heard myself make a gasping little cry. I needed to be closer to him. I pressed my whole body against his and slid my hands up his back to hook over his shoulders. Jake growled again and canted his hips to press his erection tight against my abdomen.
The forces of lust for this breathtaking man, made my head swim overtime.
"Dakota. Christ…" he whispered with his lips against my skin. He slowly slid his tongue along my collarbone, all the way to my shoulder, a
nd then worked his way back, taking small, gentle nips as he went. Breathless and shaking, I clutched at his shoulders and arched my back.
"Jake." The word was barely a gasp. He kissed me on the mouth, hard, his tongue deep and demanding, and his hands moved down to grab my butt and squeezed, lifting me almost off my feet and pressing me so tight against his cock I could feel it throb under his jeans. I pulled my head back a little and tried to force my brain to work. He leaned in to suckle at my neck again, and I couldn't stop a moan pass my lips.
We were about to get down and dirty right here on this hill. It had been what I wanted before this night started. But things were different now. He was different to me now. I didn't want to start this thing between us off with a rut in the weeds. That had its charms too, but not now. Not for our first time. We both deserved something better.
"Jake." I grabbed his head with both hands and forced him to stop and look at me. The intensity in his expression was almost violent. He was panting. So was I. "Jake."
I saw it when he caught hold of himself again and the animal urgency left his eyes. Now I saw worry and disappointment lurking along the edges. I realised he was afraid I’d changed my mind. And he was right. More or less.
"Can we go back to my house, and pick up Indie tomorrow morning?"
For a second, he seemed confused. Then he grinned and slid a hand under my hair and around the nape of my neck. He leaned in and kissed me soundly. "Let's get the hell out of here, babe." He took my hand and led me down the hill, retreating to his bike.
We headed back to Shadowbeach and left heaven behind.
When he pulled into me driveway, I leaned up as close as I could to his ear and said over the low hum of the engine, "Take it all the way down; we'll put it in the garage for the night." He nodded and stopped at the door so I could get off and open it for him.
Beauty and the Bad Boy Page 4
