by J. C. Allen
Well, I kind of do know why, but…
“Here we go.”
He turned towards me and strapped it on for me, his thumb brushing against my chin. My skin prickles at the contact, giving me goosebumps and a very… yes, a very intense, sexual feeling.
For a short moment, his eyes caught mine. I swallowed from the intensity. I had a strong feeling about this already, and…
He looked away, turning his attention to the bike. But the gaze was unmistakable. There was little doubt what both of us were thinking in that moment.
“Hold on tight.”
He jumped on and I followed suit, carefully wrapping my arms around his muscular torso. He started the engine up and looked back at me. I didn’t have as good a view as before, but his profile was as sexy as his front, his angular nose and chiseled jaw making it so.
“You have to scoot closer than that, unless you want to fly right off.”
He had to shout over the engine. I was trying my hardest not to make it obvious that I had never ridden a motorcycle before, but I think that my efforts were only making it even more obvious.
“Come on, I don’t bite. Unless you’re into that.”
I gasped, as I didn’t think he meant for me to hear the last part. Too late now, though.
And with you… maybe.
I scooted closer as he had requested. My thighs came around his, my inner thighs hit his hips, and I aligned with his legs. I laced my arms around his waist even tighter, and boy, was it as hard as I had imagined from his abs to the muscles at his side. I felt him breathing against me when I lay my chest against his. My body thrummed to life along with the engine.
Suffice to say… if every bike ride was going to be like this, I was not going to be able to resist more bike rides.
The more we moved forward, the closer I got to him, the more my body molded to his with an almost natural ease. He made me feel soft against his hard body. I struggled to keep my hands in a respectable place, on his lower stomach. I just chalked it up to the bumps of the road.
But the dirty, naughty, unfortunately sex-deprived part of me wondered what would happen if I just reached a little lower… put my hands where my hands shouldn’t go… let myself reach that forbidden space.
We would probably wipe out. Maybe save it for later.
The fact that I’m even thinking about later…
Such thoughts typically came at red lights. As soon as the light turned green and Jaxson gunned the chopper, I lost all thought and got lost in the whiplash of the wind, the high speeds, and the loud noise of the engine. Though it was slightly erring on the side of too intense for me, I could see why guys liked it—it was fast, it was furious, and it was fascinating.
Jaxson had told the truth about one thing—the ride was short. So short, I even wished it were longer. In any case, Jaxson parked the bike then helped me off the bike as my legs wobbled a bit.
“It’s like a leg workout,” I said, trying to make a funny comment as I rubbed at my sides.
His lips twitched with a smile as we started off for the door.
“You get used to it.”
Are you suggesting I will get used to it, Jaxson?
Because I don’t think I would mind that.
“Well, you must have powerful legs and thighs then.”
I bit my bottom lip and scowled at myself as soon as I said it. I kept saying the wrong things to him… but he seemed completely at ease with it, as all he did in response was his odd half chuckle. Bastard got me acting in ways I can’t even understand.
And school hasn’t even started yet.
Well, let’s just make this a Sunday Funday of sorts—the normal kind, not that kind—and then I’ll go back to normal life at the school.
When we walked in, Jaxson greeted about five different people, none of whom looked like bikers. I was beginning to think that Jaxson was more well-known in this town than the mayor or any sports star who was from here.
“You’re pretty popular,” I quipped as the hostess led us to our seats.
We got seated in a nice booth. The place was old fashioned; the tables were old wood, and the booths faded red. The table also had old fashioned ketchup and mustard on it.
“Not really.”
Jaxson looked at me from across the table. He didn’t look uncomfortable, but he looked out of place almost. Then again, how many places would there be where a motorcycle club president would look in place?
His body was imposing, taking up half the booth. His knees brushed mine from how tall he was, and I knew immediately this was going to be a… “problem.”
“People just know about the club,” he said casually.
“What is that like?”
But the server came, and Jaxson seemed glad for the interruption. So much so, in fact, that he engaged the hostess in brief conversation about how her day was. It was sort of obvious that he was dodging the question, which seemed strange to me—I hadn’t asked him his darkest secret. Eventually, though, the waitress left, and Jaxson couldn’t hide from the question.
“So?” I prompted him.
He gave me a funny look but didn’t do anything else.
“I don’t talk about it much.”
Oh good grief.
“Really?” I said, but he didn’t respond to me.
I couldn’t even hide my disappointment. It didn’t help matters that a long, awkward silence settled in until the waitress came back. And that was not an immediate return.
“Motorcycle clubs aren’t what they’re made out to be. Most of the time.”
I sipped my water, trying to test if this was Jaxson opening up or just giving a cliche answer.
“Okay…”
He sighed and rubbed at the slight stubble growing on his jaw. He looked like two sides of him were fighting it out to decide if he wanted to tell me more.
I just hoped he realized by now, I wasn’t some stalker or some crazy girl. I had just gotten caught up in a whirlwind of a weekend and wanted to know more about said hurricane before it hurt me too much.
“Fuck it,” Jaxson said with a laugh. “My dad started Kinsmen. We’re one of the few clubs that are private. Meaning someone else can’t tell us what to do.”
Ah, finally, I thought with a small smile. Jaxson didn’t look overly thrilled to be talking about it, so I did my best to respect his efforts.
“So there is only one?” I asked.
“Two. Here and in Ireland, where he’s from.”
Interesting.
“That explains a lot.” I murmured.
I mostly just said that as a default statement, but I didn’t realize it would have the impact that it did on Jaxson. He didn’t seem very keen on me having said that.
“What?” he said, his words not accompanied by a smile or a laugh.
“Nothing,” I said, desperately looking for a way to answer him with a justified answer. “You’re just brutish.”
He shook his head at me, a crooked smile marring his face. I guess I gave him what he wanted.
“Fair enough.”
Another silence fell as some bread came out that we munched on. It was a little bit disconcerting how easily Jaxson felt at ease with silence—if this had happened with any of my other friends, I would have wondered if I had pissed them off.
With Jaxson, it felt like he was in an eternal state of being pissed off.
“So… have you ever been to jail?”
Once again, I had just blurted out the question that came to mind without contemplating it.
“What? No,” he said with a laugh.
“I was only asking because I thought people in motorcycle gangs were all criminals.”
I knew that wasn’t true from what Riley had said, and yet…
I guess the best I could say was there was something about Jaxson that just dropped all of my filters and made me speak to him so brashly.
“It’s a club, not a gang,” he said with much more seriousness than before. “And no, I have not be
en to jail. Well, for more than a night. And most of us haven’t. We aren’t criminals either, we don’t do illegal shit.”
He thrummed his fingers over the table, the long, slender extension of his hands distracting me. He had the most visible veins I have ever seen on a man, and it was beyond sexy.
But it was also obvious that for as sexy as he was, he had severe boundaries, and if I failed to respect them, I’d be in a world of hurt. To push them further would only cause him to erupt and storm out, cementing my reputation as the woman who pissed off Jaxson Kinsmen in this small town.
“Okay. Sorry.”
“I get it,” he said with a shrug before guzzling down half his water.
It felt like his way of extending a sort of olive branch to me, an acceptance of my apology. It was nice, but things still just felt… there was undeniable sexual tension between us, but before we could even consider that, we had to break free of the actual, personal tension between us.
And then, Jaxson seemed to try to do just that.
“Have you ever been to jail?” he said with a smirk.
It was a ludicrous question, but it had the desired effect, because I started laughing too.
“No. I live a very boring, simple life.”
“In grad school?”
“Yes, that’s why I came here.”
He nodded once, holding my gaze before he looked away. I took the chance to survey the restaurant, half of them looking at us. The other half were just regular people, home from work or on vacation. Still, that was about forty-nine percent more people looking at me than I was used to.
“I don’t know much about school, but do people your age still use pink notebooks?”
I felt my cheeks turn as red as possible. If I had been paying more attention, I wouldn’t have bought my favorite color in notebooks. Geez, I must seem like a little girl to him. No wonder he didn’t want me in the club. Act your age, Isabelle.
“Um, no. I just… like the color. Besides, it was more like… never mind.”
He finally chuckled fully at that. I felt the blush spread to my neck. With that, I felt his eyes follow it too.
Jaxson definitely seemed like trouble, that I didn’t have time for and that I didn’t come here for. I tried my best to shove my overreacting aside and decide to just get through this dinner with him and never see him again…
But if it hadn’t worked out to that point, there was really no reason for me to believe that it would suddenly start working out. I was in it for at least the immediate duration with Jaxson.
And, admittedly, there were worse things to be a part of.
7
Jaxson
I kept staring at her.
Subtly, of course, or at least what I think is subtly.
But I haven’t figured out whether or not she noticed how my eyes kept drifting right to her. I wanted her to see it, to pick up on it, but she seemed guarded against that, as if she feared going deeper with me. As for myself… I really needed to relax. I knew that, but with the woman in front of me, I just couldn’t.
Isabelle was so fucking beautiful to me. She had a cute little crooked tooth on her left side, even cuter freckles, and some real nice curves to her. I loved the way her thighs stretched around mine on my bike, how her soft midsection hit the hard muscles of my back. I hadn’t seen anyone around here with real impurities, real human features.
At least, no woman in the club was like that.
But Isabelle was perfectly different. I wanted to find out by how much more.
I needed to find out by how much more.
“Pink is okay. I think.”
I rolled back my shoulders and ignored how awkward that must have sounded to the food runner dropping off our food. I was just trying to engage her and build her up to the right moment.
“I know,” Isabelle said while smirking.
She had a pretty half smile that way.
“You know,” she said as our food came out. “You seem like a hard ass.”
I’d heard that comment before, and while it wasn’t one that I really agreed with, it was one that I understood, at least. While I never understood the perception of us as criminals, my face and my demeanor definitely gave off the appearance of being a hard ass.
But from Isabelle, I was quite curious to see what she meant by that.
“What?”
She giggled softly.
“A hard ass. Like you never relax.”
“I relax,” I said sharply, although I realized after the fact that I probably was proving her right.
She stopped eating entirely and gave me a funny look. I arched my eyebrow at her, very curious to hear what she said next.
“By doing what?”
One answer immediately came to mind, and it was perhaps too soon to say it. But with my reputation, with what she thought of me, and with how things were going, I decided to make a little fun of it. The worst that would happen anyways was that she’d get up and leave—and in that case, it was an odd sort of “mission accomplished” since I wouldn’t ever have to see her again, just as I’d asked her.
So, I took the bait.
“Fucking.”
With a straight face, I stared back at her and watched her blink rapidly and her cheeks flush a little too. I waited to see how she’d react—the fact that she hadn’t immediately stood up in anger kept me believing it might yet go somewhere.
“Oh.”
It was extraordinarily difficult to gauge how she felt about what I said. I almost felt like telling her “I’m only kidding,” but something told me I shouldn’t, that she almost liked the answer. And besides, I wasn’t lying.
But she didn’t say anything else. I knew her mind was racing, but I also knew pressing my luck would come across way too strong, so I decided to give her a pass out.
“What do you do?”
“What, during sex?”
I nearly choked. That was not where I meant to take it—but if it was where it went…
“No. To relax.”
“Oh. I read plays.”
Still, while that answer might have been true, it was painfully obvious that she wanted to talk sex but didn’t feel like doing so in front of me. That was fine—the time would come when she’d open up.
I just wondered, given how Isabelle had me under her spell, how I’d react to it in comparison to the other girls. Would it be more… emotional? Touching?
Or would the luster lose its shine?
Stay focused, man. If you want to get there. She reads plays. Go on that.
“I thought you watched plays.”
“No, well, yes, you can, but you can also read them, kind of like a transcript, I guess.”
Interesting. It’s a world I’ve never been a part of, that’s for sure.
“Hm. That’s interesting. Is that what you’re in school for? To read plays.”
She released the same soft giggle. It was constantly dawning on me that I was sounding stupid. I mostly talked about prospects, semi-illegal shit, and bikes.
This was not just a different topic—it was a different world entirely. I did not know how to operate in this, this… normal world.
“Sort of. To write them, produce them, edit them. Just playwriting in general.”
“Gotcha.”
I gave up on asking anymore questions so I didn’t look like a total dumbass who barely finished high school. I finished my plate and guzzled down the rest of my water, wishing I had a beer to wash away the embarrassment.
Isabelle, on the other hand, looked comfortable as can be, probably because we had actually shifted to a more intellectual topic.
Or, at least, she was better at hiding her discomfort.
“How long have you been in your…club?”
I guess we’re back to this, huh? But, then again, you gave her the chance to turn to a more favorable topic, so…
“Since I was born.”
I really didn’t know anything else. I suppose in some other circumstance,
I could have been something else, but since I was born a Kinsmen, there wasn’t anything to do but be a part of the MC.
“Is that possible?” she said with a laugh.
“Yep,” I said, not laughing. “I was baptized on my Dad’s bike.”
Seriously.
“That’s cool.”
I still wasn’t sure if she was being serious or just polite, but it at least was not as judgmental as before.
“I’d like to think so.”
“Is it just you in the club?” she asks.
“No, my three brothers and I. And my dad was in it.”
“Oh… was?”
Welp, here we go.
“He died a little over a year ago. He started the club here in the states, but he’s from Ireland.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said sincerely and with empathy.
I tried to shake it off, because I was not used to people looking at me like that. Most women either just wanted to fuck me or wanted a literal thrill ride. Few… if any, really, ever looked at me like a person as Isabelle was.
“Were you two close?” she said before shaking her head. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that. It’s a little personal.”
It was cute how sweet and apologetic she looked. A little too cute.
“We were. Most of what we talked about had to do with the club. My mom tried to keep us out of the club as much as possible, besides learning how to ride a motorcycle before we learned how to drive. Obviously, though, she wasn’t very successful, but that’s OK, because I love my mom for different reasons. And my dad was a good dad, and that’s all that matters to me now.”
“That’s very insightful.”
Her fingers twitched, as if she was about to reach out and touch me. I think she was, but she stopped herself.
I wished she hadn’t though. I had been itching to touch her again all day. I could never get enough of her supple, soft skin.
“You say that like you’re surprised.”
“No, no I didn’t mean it that way. I meant it in a good way. And I’m sorry that you lost your father.”
Something about how she spoke, though, went a little bit beyond empathic. It almost seemed…
“Thank you. That sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”
