Dirty Ties

by Pam Godwin

  He leaned closer, hooked a finger under my chin strap, and dragged my helmet toward his. “Show me your face.”

  I shivered at the demand in his deep, electronic voice. “You first.”

  As a hunted man, he had a lot more riding on the safety of incognito than I did. If he was willing to trust me with his identity—a big desperate if here—I’d return the favor. He didn’t know where I lived and probably wouldn’t recognize my face.

  But what if he did recognize me? Seeing how he avoided the media and how my family owned the largest multimedia conglomerate in the world…yeah, those technicalities wouldn’t win me a hard ride on his cock.

  He released my chin strap, and for a dizzying second, I thought he would reach for his helmet. But his head jerked toward the street, and his back straightened. In the span of several heartbeats, the warning chirp of a police siren pierced the quiet.

  Fuck my life. I clutched the grips, ready to jet, but he grabbed my thigh and squeezed. He stared straight ahead—at the tree line?—the heat from his hand seeping through two layers of leather. What were we waiting for?

  When he let go of my leg, he rattled off detailed directions, which streets to take, which ones to avoid, an ass-backward way to return to the interstate. “Do not deviate. Do not slow.” He smacked the back of my helmet. “Go.”

  “What about you?” Jesus, did I sound desperate or what?

  “Right behind you.” Promise silkened his tone.

  I took off, veering between two squad cars, and followed his directions. His headlights bobbed in my side mirrors, but after several blocks, he fell behind. My heart thudded dully in my chest, disappointment creeping around my throat. He stayed with me until the freeway, but after a few miles, I lost him to the flow of traffic.

  The achy weight of rejection sank in my stomach. I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Just because I couldn’t see him, didn’t mean he’d slipped away.

  Patrol cars filled the freeway, zipping by in both directions, sirens blaring. Dammit, I’d forgotten to put my license plate back on. I hunched my shoulders and maintained the speed limit.

  With every mile I put behind me, I glanced less and less at the side mirrors. The hard knot in my gut told me he wasn’t back there and hadn’t been for a while.

  It was better this way. I could go home, hide in my room, and figure out how I was going to explain the cuts on my neck to Collin. I needed to confront the could’ve’s and would’ve’s surrounding the attack in the alley. I needed to face the possibility that tonight was my last race.

  But not because Evader had spanked me and issued that order.

  A wave of heat tingled through my thighs. Okay, that was totally why.

  I inhaled deeply. I was not going to go home and obsess about him. He’d asked me what I wanted, and I would’ve said him. But for one night? What about tomorrow? And the night after that?

  A twinge pinched my chest. What I wanted I couldn’t have. The wife of a well-known commentator shacking up with a well-known felon? That had scandal written all over it.

  Fifteen minutes and several laps around Trump Tower later, I was certain he hadn’t followed me. I swiped my security badge at the garage entrance and parked in my designated spot two floors down.

  Shuffling toward the elevator, I removed my gloves, tucked them in my pockets, and reached for the buckle on my chin strap.

  A hum vibrated the air, growing closer, louder. Reverberations crackled over the concrete and shook my legs. I knew that sound, could feel its familiar growl liquefy every cell in my body.

  The world slowed down as the glossy black fairings of a S1000RR emerged at the top of the ramp and stopped. Engine idling, my pulse skipping, his black boot lowered to the ground.

  Crouched low, shoulders forward, he rolled gloved hands on the grips. An electric charge gathered around him, galvanizing with expectation, as his dark helmet locked in my direction.

  My breaths rushed out, thrilled and delirious. He’d followed me.

  I stopped breathing. Oh fuck, he’d followed me.

  How? Shit, how had he raised the secured garage door? A shiver tore up my spine. Now he knew where I lived.

  Oh God, what have I done?

  The rev of his motorcycle split the air, the throaty growl rendering me immobile. Its echo ripped through the cavernous space of the garage, muddling the indecision gripping my muscles. The thrilling prospect of him being here tingled my face even as fear thundered through my veins.

  Run? Wise choice. He didn’t know my identity, didn’t know which floor I lived on. About a dozen running steps and I could slip into the elevator before he made it down the ramp.

  But my boots stuck to the concrete as the glare of his helmet bore into me, drowning me in his intention to chase. I stood in the cross-hairs, grateful to be standing really, considering how badly my legs trembled.

  Of all the gorgeous women in Chicago, why me? Why would he pursue one faceless woman? I mean, sure I kept my body in shape and I knew how to tear up a street on the Ducati, but for a guy as secretive as he was…what was he here for? Maybe it was the chase that got him off?

  Widening my stance, I raised my chin and met his stare head on. I wanted him to see I could handle him. Wanted him to lean on the throttle and burn away the distance between us. I wanted him to pursue me for all the irrational, menacing reasons that should’ve had me drawing the gun from my back.

  The gun he’d placed there with bold, seductive fingers.

  What kind of man follows an armed woman home and breaks into her secured garage?

  The kind who fucked as dangerously as he lived.

  I shuddered, and a warm pulse awoke between my legs. Evidently, my self-preservation had reached an unrecoverable level of failage.

  Another rev of his engine, and he zoomed down the ramp. The sudden bolt of the bike unlocked my feet. I shuffled backward, toward the elevator.

  He parked beside the Ducati and killed the engine as my back hit the elevator doors. My hand crept over the wall, half-heartedly seeking the up button.

  Guards monitored the security cameras. Any moment, a resident could motor by. Maybe they’d recognize him all decked out in his racing leathers. Maybe they wouldn’t. He didn’t seem to care.

  With silent steps, he stalked toward me. I might’ve given up my search for that button. I was kind of distracted by the way his leathers stretched over his thighs and cupped the very masculine bulge between his legs. The way he slid off his gloves, finger by finger, and tucked them into the pocket of his jacket. The way his helmet never shifted its focus from me.

  His casual gait radiated control, the kind of effortless power that breathed around confident men. His aura was potent and far-reaching, apparently, because I had a heck of a time breathing through its effects.

  A few strides away, his altered voice reached my ears. “—not having this conversation. Three feet now. Do you have her RFID?”

  What did RFID mean? I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”

  Reducing the final steps between us, he spoke so low I had to concentrate to hear him. “Cameras down?”

  My gaze flew over the garage ceiling. Yeah, there were cameras, but what the hell? He wasn’t holding a cell phone. Was he talking to himself?

  He slid a thin flashlight into his pocket. Where had that come from?

  I deserted my search for the button. Going up was no longer an option, not if he planned to join me. “Who are you talking to?” I asked, more like a command.

  His approach didn’t stop until his chest bumped my helmet and my back pressed against the elevator doors. “Good. Hang tight.” He reached up and pushed a thumb against the underside of his helmet.

  I narrowed my eyes. Was his gear James Bondified with a comm device? Did that kind of technology even exist? “What did you just touch under there?” I reached for his helmet.

  His hand caught mine, skin-on-skin, and guided it to the button on the wall. No amount of tugging could deter him. On the
heels of the attack in the alley, I should’ve been screaming and kicking, but this man had protected me. He was a law breaker, but I didn’t think he’d shove a blade against my throat.

  When our fingers pressed the beveled edge, I let my helmet rest against the doors. “What are you doing?”

  “Going up.”

  “No, you’re not.” For so many reasons. One, he was a criminal. Two, he’d recognize Collin. If my association with the media didn’t make him run, my marriage status would. Three…well, I forgot what three was, but four, he was a criminal.

  I inhaled a steady breath to clear my flustered head. He could step into the elevator, but he didn’t have a key card to make it move. Mine was zipped inside the pocket of my jacket, next to my phone.

  Leather creaked as he shifted closer, and holy shit, he was hard all over. Like carbon-fiber-muscles hard. Electricity thrummed where the pillars of his thighs bracketed my legs, where his huge hand enclosed my fingers, and where his granite chest pinned my helmet to the doors.

  Damn, Collin had been on to something. The strength surrounding me felt superhuman.

  Those charged points of connection glued us together in a way that went beyond physical contact. They reached deep, stirring a feeling I’d always hoped existed but had never experienced.

  The lub-dub lub-dub slam of my heart pulled me beneath the tide of reason where I floated, for just a moment, in whatever this was. Maybe his heart was as disoriented as mine? I wanted to remove the helmet, lay my cheek against his chest, and find out.

  This was attraction. That was all. Long, pent-up, sexual attraction.

  Ding.

  The doors opened, but before I fell through, he hooked an arm around my waist and backed me in. I didn’t fight him, way too curious about what he’d do next. And stupid. I should have my head checked.

  The garage elevator never had an attendant, and the lift was empty. The doors shut, the walls closed in, and my pulse spiked. Christ, it was a small space, and he was so very not small, crowding the tiny enclosure and hijacking the air.

  He hadn’t looked this big on his bike. Not that he was body-builder big, but his shoulders mantled mine, and his torso curtained my vision. Strong, too, given the unmovable arm around my waist. Time to flip out.

  I’d rather climb his tall, dark, and deadly frame and hump it like an animal. I bit my lip. Real classy, Kaci. My mother would be so proud.

  He released my waist and removed a metal card from his pocket. Without the arm lock, I still felt restrained, pressed into the corner of the lift by his mere presence. Probably a good time for a reality check.

  I closed my eyes, envisioning my usual elevator rides. Cold, empty, unfulfilled journeys to nowhere. When I glanced up, the man I’d mentally fucked for nine months was still there, in the flesh, staring down at me.

  Dark and motionless. Goddamned unnerving.

  Hard to breathe.

  Still staring.

  My chest constricted.

  Tighter.

  No air.

  Shit.

  “Why did you follow me?” Good lord, that came out breathy.

  “We weren’t done.” He pivoted to face the panel of buttons.

  Wow. Okay, that sounded delectably elusive, full of promise while telling me absolutely nothing. And what was he doing with that metal card? Wait. Important questions first. “Are you gay?” Because really, the odds had not been kind to me.

  He lowered his hand and glanced back at me. “Are you?” He returned to the panel. “I can work with that if your girlfriend has an ass like yours.”

  Such a pervy, straight-guy response. My reckless heart rejoiced. “Married?”

  His body froze from shoulders to shit-kickers. Uh oh. “If I were married,” he bit out without turning around, “I would be at home, fucking my wife.”

  I frowned. My God, he was offended. The way he’d said it—fucking my wife—shoved a familiar ache against my ribs, the one that starved for his brand of aggressive, protective, fierce devotion. And sexual attraction. Damn him.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Married?”

  “No.” Not in the intimate way, which was the only way that concerned him. It wasn’t like this encounter would lead to dates at the opera and Christmas dinner with the family.

  A rasp billowed through his helmet. “What’s your deal with the races? You get off on bikers attacking you in dark alleys?”

  I didn’t like his accusing tone and didn’t hide the snark in mine. “Nah. It’s just a complicated farce to explain my choice of evening wear.” I gestured to my helmet and leathers, not that he was looking at me.

  His head dipped toward the panel, revealing the tanned skin of his nape. My gaze followed the strong column of his neck to the shock of hair peeking out of his helmet. It was longer than a buzz cut but didn’t reach his hairline. A shade between light brown and blond, the ends glinted with copper hues. Stunning.

  Soundlessly, I stretched out a hand to brush my fingers against the strands, but before I made contact, his visor swiveled to look at me. Interesting.

  Leaning around his broad frame, I watched him shove the metal card in and out of the card slot. “I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but this building has top-notch security.”

  Could he lock down the elevator with that thing? To keep us from being interrupted? Or was he trying to go up? He’d need my card to do that.

  A foolish flutter took flight in my stomach. He’d followed me. He was clearly doing something to the elevator. Why wasn’t I freaking out about this?

  His hips shifted, and leather creased around the flex of his butt, outlining hard handfuls of muscle. I shouldn’t have stared, it was rude, but I was spellbound. I loved the way his pants contoured his ass, embodying every fantasy I’d ever had. He only had to stand there, all tall and muscular and arrogant enough to keep his back to me, knowing I had a gun.

  I liked the view so much I couldn’t tear my eyes away. My fingers tingled.

  “Are you staring at my ass?”

  Jesus, did he have eyes in the back of his head? “What else am I going to look at?”

  Abandoning the card slot, he turned and leaned his back against the wall. His wide stance and the lounge of his upper body tilted his pelvis just right. Leather molded around the raised ridge of his cock and strained to contain the brawn of his thighs.

  My brain screamed look away while my body melted into a gawking blob of liquid heat.

  He reached out and hooked a finger under the collar of my jacket, tugging me right up against the focus of my attention. He was so hard and thick I didn’t just feel his length against my thigh. I felt his arousal everywhere.

  His legs were long but so were mine, and our hips met in a grind of mutual need, verbalized by our simultaneous exhales. There wasn't a cell in my body that didn’t shudder with thrilling pleasure.

  The elevator had yet to move, but it grew smaller, the walls pushing me closer to this mysterious, tempting man. My breath rushed out in sharp bursts then quickened as his hands came down on my ass. The hard smack became a painful squeeze, one he used to force my body impossibly close to his.

  His grip was neither gentle nor tentative. He held me against the steel trap of his body as if I had no say in what happened next. With a hand clenched against the crease of my butt and thigh, his other caught the back of my neck. His hold on my body was dominating, the aggressive stab of his length against my clit so damned erotic. Confident. Unapologetic. Perfect.

  “Tell me, Miss Ducati”—the drag of his voice vibrated deep inside me—“will I find your pussy as tight as I’ve imagined it?”

  I closed my fingers around his shoulders, struggling to control myself, the clenching between my legs unbearable. And he wanted to know how tight my pussy was?

  Caged in the V of his thighs, his back to the wall, a hand on my neck, the other clutching my ass, I was restrained by muscle. His rock-solid grip wasn’t letting me go anywhere, not that I wanted to.


  The top of my helmet tapped his chin guard as we moved in a slide of leather. The sensual roll of his hips and the grind of mine built into the most torrid dry hump I’d ever experienced.

  The fluorescent lights reflected off his black helmet, making his visor even more opaque. I had no idea who he was under there. Maybe that was part of the allure. A seductive mystery.

  I slid my hands to his chest, the leather of his jacket surprisingly soft and thin, like velvet over brick. I traced the carved dips around his pecs, each muscle etched from stone, my fingertips buzzing with sensory-overload.

  “If you’re going to feel me up”—the hand on my neck slid to the snap at my collar and tugged roughly—“take off your jacket. It’s only fair.”

  So fucking tempting. I wore only a thin shelf-bra cami underneath. I glanced at the panel of buttons, wondering if someone would call the elevator, hoping they wouldn’t.

  “Elevator’s not going anywhere.”

  So he’d done something to it. Would the guards notice it was jammed and come to investigate? “How—”

  “Invite me up.” He yanked the zipper from my throat to waist, and his hips froze.

  The sudden chill peaked my nipples against the fabric, his visor reflecting the curves of my cleavage. His hands clenched around my ribs, and his eyes… Good thing I couldn’t see them because if they were smoldering, I might’ve internally combusted.

  As it was, my skin inflamed, and my hand twitched to punch floor 88. Invite him up? If he recognized Collin, discovered I was married, how would he react? Would he understand or use it against me?

  Or I could text Collin, tell him to disappear, then sneak Evader into my room.

  Ha! I dropped my helmet on his chest. How had I gone from responsible adult to slutty teenager in the blink of a few minutes? “I can’t.”

  His hands wandered from my ribs to the gun at my back. I stiffened, breath caught in my throat, until he moved the gun to the pocket of my jacket. “You won’t invite me up. Won’t give me your name. Won’t remove your helmet. What are you hiding?”