“What brought you to Detroit, then?”
“I came for a visit and fell in love.” She shrugged. “Everywhere has its problems, but it just felt like my place. You know?”
Tom nodded.
He liked that she took bites between sentences, didn’t leave the food on her plate to make him think she was a lightweight. Dancing burned a lot of calories, Tom mused, because her body was tight, athletic, and she still plowed through the meal like a pro. The few times he’d bothered to eat dinner with a woman, she nibbled and fluttered and poked into his head instead of actually chewing and swallowing.
Not Dakota, though. She took another piece of bread, ripped it in half and added butter to the steaming surface. He wondered what her real name was.
“So do I get to ask whether Dakota is the name you’re born with?” Tom asked, reaching for his beer and raising his eyebrows. Her eyes met the table and then swung up, focusing on his while he took a long sip from the cold bottle.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Maybe one day.” Since his father had died…since Butch…he’d had enough people trying to cram their fingers into his brain and root around. He was content to let Dakota keep her secrets as long as she didn’t go away.
She waited for him to turn red or stammer his protest as her lack of transparency, but he didn’t react like so many of the men who felt entitled to her name after less contact than she’d had with him. Instead he grinned, a lazy flash of white teeth, and asked whether she wanted something for dessert when the lasagna was gone.
Picking up the dessert menu from the center of the table, she ran her gaze down it and stopped when she reached tiramisu.
“Tiramisu sounds good.”
_____
“Do you want to split it?” Grace assumed the right answer was yes, but between working out and dancing, she was hungry all the time lately. Crawling up and down the pole had taken her already lean body and added a new dimension. One she liked. After the case was closed, she was thinking about adding a pole to her home gym.
“No,” she said finally. “Let’s also get some of the gelato and split both of them between us.” If he thought she was greedy, all the better. Getting involved with someone who spent his nights at strip clubs and wanted her real name was a path she couldn’t go down.
“Great. I’ve never had the amaretto gelato before. Let’s get a scoop of that and one of chocolate too.”
“Sounds good. So your mom made good lasagna. What about you? Do you cook?”
“She didn’t teach me,” he said. “I was too busy playing with engines and shooting hoops. My sister was into the hoops, but not the engines. She can make anything mom could.”
“She cooks for you? Or…”
“She left a few years ago. Moved out west somewhere. The women at the club cook a few nights per week. One of my buddies has a long term lady who manages to make broccoli taste good. Between them and microwave meals, I don’t get very hungry.”
Grace wanted to pry about the sister, but restrained herself again. Getting too deep would be a mistake she couldn’t afford to make, she reminded herself. But talking to Tom was so easy that she just wanted to keep it going. To know more.
To feel real for once.
She finished her food and took another sip of her wine. The day was fading and soon night would fall. This far out of the city, stars would dust the sky like diamonds tossed casually across velvet. A gentle breeze that would have been too cool if it wasn’t for the large heaters blew through the windows and carried in the scent of dying leaves.
“This is my favorite time of year,” she said. “Something about the trees changing colors and the way the wind lifts my hair away from my neck.”
“I love it too.”
“What do you like about it?”
“I remember raking up piles of leaves in our backyard and jumping into them. Plus I had my first beer in the fall, sitting on the back deck with Dad.” She saw the way his lips froze for the merest second at the mention of his father, and knew he was surprised he’d brought the man up.
“It’s always struck me as funny how a strong scent can bring back a memory,” she said, hoping to chase away the hollow look in his eyes. “You mention jumping into leaves and I can almost smell them, like I’m a kid again and we’re visiting New Hampshire. It was like the entire woods was soaked with the scent of those fallen leaves.”
“What were you doing in New Hampshire?”
“Visiting family. Have you been?”
“Never.”
“You might like it,” she said, worried her voice was too bright, the change of topic too obvious. “The roads are almost empty compared to Detroit. You could drive up toward Canada and take in the changing seasons some year, as long as you don’t mind the cold.”
“Maybe I will,” he said. The hand sitting balled up on the table relaxed as he took another sip of his beer. “But Detroit has more to recommend it than it used to.” A tingle shot through her and she shifted in her seat before smiling at him.
“Does it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It does.”
“So about dessert…”
She finished the last spoonful of the tiramisu at his insistence. The malaise that had plagued him earlier in the meal had disappeared and left only charm and wit. She couldn’t remember the last date that had made her feel this warm and relaxed.
Of course, that could be because she could barely remember her last date at all. The man had been a coworker who’d spent the entire night talking about his chances for promotion and complaining that people who didn’t belong in the station were getting all the perks. People like her, he’d implied by speaking ill of another officer because she’d committed the crime of being a female. The irony that he was complaining about it to another woman officer was lost on him.
His hands were thick and clumsy when they’d said goodnight. The kiss she’d been too polite to refuse had left saliva on her lips that she’d wiped off on the back of her arm before getting in the shower.
A kiss with Tom, though, wouldn’t be something she’d dodge or wipe away. Halfway through the dessert, her leg had brushed against his. Whether by accident or design, she wasn’t sure. But she left her legs extended so she could feel the warmth of his jeans and the muscled strength of his limb against hers.
He was all man, she mused. Right down to the stubble on his jaw and the extremely long eyelashes she coveted. Handsome man.
The spark that had jumped in her when she’d first met him had blossomed into something larger and more powerful when they’d shared the sweets in front of them. His rough fingers had brushed against hers and started a fire in her belly that wouldn’t go out. As they sipped their coffee and shared stories about bad coworkers, he’d made her smile. She’d made his lips curve up, too, and somehow that felt like a victory.
Strange that a person with so many amusing anecdotes about the colorful people in his life wouldn’t smile more. The picture he’d painted was all happy days tempered with minor difficulties—at least until his father was killed. She’d seen the shock that victims experienced when a family member was taken in a violent incident, but it was strange to see the symptoms so fresh in him so long after losing his father.
It wasn’t something she was going to pursue, though.
He paid the check over her objections, only saying, “When I ask a woman out for food, I’m not going to let her pay the bill.”
“I ate my fair share,” she said, pulling her wallet out of her purse.
“Not happening,” he said. He slid some bills in with the receipt—and she approved of the tip. He’d told her about owning and working at his own bar, so she guessed he knew the struggles of the waiters and waitresses who depended on tips to get through the month.
“Come on,” he said, reaching out his hands for hers. “Let’s get out of here.” She let his large, warm hand engulf hers and Tom led her to the parking lot, then handed her a helmet. “Do you need to get straight home? Are y
ou working tonight?”
“I have some time,” she said. She’d promised Anderson that she’d write up the latest rumors and observations swimming around the club, but there was time for that. Her next shift at the Ladies Night wasn’t until the following evening, so even if she stayed out late, Grace figured she could cut her daily run in half and still have plenty of time to run errands and get ready for another night of dancing.
“I’d like to show you something,” he said. “Do you trust me?”
She cocked her head to the side and studied him, trying not to focus on the patches that covered his leather jacket. Maybe she was prejudiced, but motorcycle clubs always spelled out guns and drugs and the kind of men she should be staying far away from. At the same time, though, Tom was handsome and compelling as he swung a leg over the bike to mount it, and so warm when her body was pressed tight against his. The broad, muscled back made her close her eyes and bite back a moan when her breasts made contact.
Grace drew in a deep breath of cold air to clear her mind. It worked. Mostly.
“I trust you enough to let you show me something, as long as you honestly think I’ll like it.” It occurred to her that he could be like most of the slime she’d wallowed in at the strip club, on a mission to take her to dinner and then to his place to show her his subpar skills in the sack.
No, she corrected herself. I don’t think they’d be subpar at all.
“It’s not far from here,” he said. “I’ll have you home before midnight.”
Nestling closer to him and wrapping her arms around his body, Grace nodded. Tom let one hand fall to stroke her knee, then put it back on the handlebar, revved the engine and shot out of the parking lot.
The cool air whipped over her body while he steered onto the highway, and the rumble of the engine made the hot, melting feelings that had bubbled up in her center even more intense than when they’d first appeared. If it wasn’t for the night breeze around her, Grace thought she might just melt into a puddle against him. She snuggled in even closer and sighed at the feeling of his strong thighs against the inside of her legs.
_____
Tom smiled automatically when the woman behind him moved her body closer to his, her motions slow and deliberate so that they didn’t upset the balance of the bike. Dakota leaned gently into the turns and curves with him, a good passenger. God knew he’d had more than his share of morons on the bike who wanted to jerk around and tried to talk when it was obvious that the motor and the motion of the air prevented any real conversation.
The more time he spent around her, the more he liked her. Dinner was going to be a one-off that ended in his bed, he’d thought, but now he was driving out toward the lake instead of asking her if she wanted to see Thunder and the bed he kept above it.
But like the first night he’d met her, something about her smile or the way her eyes narrowed when she was thinking made him hesitate to go down that path. He’d told himself that he didn’t pursue getting her naked body wrapped around his because it would distract him from finding Butch, but that wasn’t the truth. Something about her pushed back the hate that swelled in him whenever he thought of the man. It made him soften and that made him hesitate to steer her toward his home.
She was the first woman he’d met who didn’t pry into things he obviously didn’t want to discuss, though he saw the interest flare in her eyes. Maybe that was the trade off, though. Her secrets for his. Dakota—and he knew that wasn’t her name—didn’t want this to be real any more than he wanted it to be real.
But maybe neither of them had a choice.
For the first time in a year, he felt awake. Her small hands were clasped around his torso and he imagined them sliding lower, slipping into his jeans. Then he smiled to himself when he felt the hair that snuck out from under her helmet tease his neck.
This was already getting too deep for him, but he wasn’t looking to back out now. The man he’d been before Butch had betrayed him had never backed down from a challenge. His life plan didn’t involve getting sweaty and mixed up with a dancer from downtown Detroit, but Tom always considered himself a flexible man. So they’d have a few laughs, eat a few meals and then end things wound up together in a more conventional way, for a bit.
Most of the time, he was ready to see a woman leave after they’d finished, right when she wanted to snuggle up and talk about the future he’d never promised her, never even mentioned. But something the way Dakota smelled, the way she seemed to soak in everything around her…it made him think that one night—even two—might not be enough.
She was a distraction, but he’d had no luck on finding Butch for months. Spending a few days with her was hardly going to throw them off a trail already gone cold.
He pulled into the parking lot of the lake, cut the engine and let her climb off the bike before he did. “You liked that, didn’t you?” he asked when she removed the helmet and handed it to him. Her cheeks were flushed and those generous lips that made his cock tighten in his pants were curved up in a smile.
“Loved it,” she said, looking around at the dock and the tree line. “I finally understand why Mom told me to stay off the back of motorcycles. It’s way too much fun. Way too sexy. I’d love to learn to drive one some day.”
“I can teach you,” he said, surprising himself when he heard the words spill out of his mouth.
“Maybe sometime.” Dakota grinned and walked down to the dock, her hips swaying gently as she moved. The light from the moon and the street lights nearby together were just bright enough to illuminate her body as she moved to look at the water. When she bent down at the edge of the lake to touch the sand, he lost his breath.
Her ass was beyond perfection. Surprised that he hadn’t noticed when she’d been wearing far less on the pole at the club, Tom moved forward for a closer look, then stopped in his tracks when she turned and grinned.
“There are fish in here,” she said. “Small ones. I can kind of see them moving around at the edge of the water. I bet the school would be beautiful in the right light.”
“You like fish?”
“I used to fish with my dad at a lake near our house. A lot of catch and release, because honestly I could go the rest of my life with never eating another fish. But I loved sitting on the dock with him and dangling my line in the water while we ate warm peanut butter sandwiches.”
“What kind of jelly did you have?”
“Grape. What kind did you like?”
“Strawberry.”
“We’re obviously incompatible. It was nice knowing you.” Her grin when she reached out her hand, ostensibly for a goodbye shake, charmed him. Taking her hand and pulling her close, he looked down at her as her amusement fled and something wary took its place.
“Shame to end things so soon over fruit spread,” he said. He would have kissed her then—was a heartbeat away from lowering his mouth to hers and finally knowing what she tasted like—but then the loud boom erupted and the sky was lit with colored fire.
“What is—?” Dakota stepped back in shock and tilted her head up. “Fireworks!” She smiled at him quickly before turning her eyes skyward.
“The country club sets them off a few times every week. Some big show for the diners, but I think you get the best view out here.”
“It’s wonderful,” she said, keeping her eyes trained on the light show taking place above them. “So beautiful.” The boom and sparkle of the fireworks couldn’t keep Tom from watching the only thing more interesting—her. Dakota’s face was open for the first time since they’d met, alight with excitement as the reds gave way to blues, yellows and a purple pinwheel.
She was close enough that he was able to step forward and wrap his arms around her from behind, pulling her chilled body back against his. “I’m glad you like it,” he whispered in her ear. She relaxed against him and he felt almost content.
“Thank you,” she said when the show ended, turning in his arms to look at him. Reaching up, she laid one soft hand on his
face and directed his gaze to hers. “Really, thank you. This was magical.”
“It’s getting late,” he said, “and the drive isn’t short. I’ll get you home like I promised.”
Damning himself for not kissing her, he led her to the bike and got her helmet adjusted. He’d been ready to make a move when the fireworks ended, but had been unable to when she’d touched his face. Her hand had frozen him in his position while he looked into her eyes.
“This was the best night I’ve had since I moved here,” she said to him just before he started the engine. Tom felt ten feet taller at her words, but shook his head and started the bike.
_____
He couldn’t find parking right in front of her place, so he parked a few blocks down, left the bike and walked her through the almost-empty streets. Detroit was safer than it had been ten years before, but it still wasn’t the kind of place where a person should walk alone at night. The weight of his gun at his back was comforting.
“I’m right over there,” she said, pointing to a building across the street and over a block. “I can get there alone if you want to head back to your bike.”
“I’ll see you to your door,” he said, grinning at the nerves that infused her words. He wasn’t planning to push for an invite into her living space. There was no rush.
“Well, I—.” Whatever she would have said was lost in a rush as a man ran up beside them, jabbed his fist into her side and grabbed her purse. Dakota fell against Tom and then straightened, trying to move forward but putting a hand to her ribs.
Tom bolted forward, grabbed the wiry, dirty man by the collar and ripped him backwards. One hand lashed out and Tom caught it, snapping the wrist. Two short punches to the face and the assailant was on the ground, whimpering. Dakota caught her breath behind them and moved forward, taking her purse from Tom and staring at the man.
“We should call the police,” she said.
“What for?” He turned to her and shrugged. “They aren’t going to come out for an attempted mugging. Detroit’s finest are useless.”
“I think they do the best they can,” she said, her face muleish. “I’ve read that they’re understaffed.”
STRIKE: Storm Runners Motorcycle Club 2 (SRMC) Page 4
