Page 144 of Shade
“Did you get health insurance yet?” I’m teasing, kind of.
“Yes. I had to. That goddamn cactus from hell gave me an infection.”
I pat her head. “You’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But let’s at least show you what to do.” I hop on the back with her and put my hand over hers on the right side of the handlebar. I pull out the kick start and it starts on the first kick. “You want to have your elbows up for stability and sit forward on the bike on takeoff and then slide back a couple inches. This is your throttle.” I roll the bike forward with me, making sure it’s in neutral and then twist backward, revving the bike. “Twist to give it gas. Just a little at a time. You crank it too much and you’ll die.”
“Comforting. Where’s the brake?”
With my index finger, I squeeze the left side of the handlebars over hers. “This is your clutch.” I squeeze the right lever. “This is your front brake. Don’t squeeze this too hard. You’ll fly over the handle bars. When stopping, use a smooth transition of both.”
Scarlet’s body tenses when I scoot forward on the bike, not even realizing what I’ve done by bringing our bodies together. It’s been days since we nearly had sex on my Ducati. Miserably sexually frustrated days where I haven’t touched her.
Until now.
I go through everything from taking off and easing the clutch out to stopping. It takes us an hour.
I throw my leg over the bike and stand beside her. “Ready?”
She nods, but look at her face; she’s scared. I am too. When she takes off, she stalls the bike, twice, and then finally figures out the transition from neutral to first and easing out of the clutch and she’s riding.
“I’m doing it!” she yells.
And she is. For like fifty feet until she comes to a corner and just keeps going straight for a five-foot drop. “Turn left! Stop! Use your brakes!”
She listens to none of it and then disappears from my sight off the side of the hill.
My heart races, my stomach knotting, wondering if I just killed her. Running over to her, I hear my heart beating in my ears, pounding like a drum, so loud it almost blocks out her laughter. Yep. She’s laughing.
She’s there, in the dirt, the bike on top of her, laughing.
I get the bike off her and then sit next to her. “I shouldn’t have let you do that.”
“Nope, probably not.” In between laughter and tears of shock or the adrenaline wearing off, she smacks lightly at my shoulder. “But I wanted you to.”
I’m smiling now because she looks so un-fucking-believably cute when she yanks the helmet off and her curls fly around her face. I’ll probably always prefer wild curls over straight hair now.
Reaching over, I brush dirt from her nose and her hair from her eyes and mumble, “I wish you would want me to do other things, too.”
I don’t think she means to do it, but she moves her hand from her lap to my knee. It immediately sends a jolt to the one place that hasn’t had any action lately.
“It’s not that I don’t want you to. It’s that I want this job and I want to take it seriously.”
I nod. “With the risk of sounding pathetic, how long exactly is the job for? Willa had the baby. . . maybe you could quit.”
That was quite possibly the worst thing to say. Don’t believe me. Check out her face. The cold “fuck you” eyes. . . and you know, I can’t blame her at this point. Even I want to hit myself for that remark.
“Why?” she snaps. “So we can have sex and you can forget about your obsession and move onto your next trick?”
I deserve that, don’t I? Maybe.
I’ve never given her the impression I only wanted sex, have I?
Don’t answer that.
“Scarlet. . . .” I reach for her hand when she stands, but she flips her arm out of my reach. “I don’t just want sex from you. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“What do you want then?”
“I. . . don’t know.” I’m not lying. At this point, my mind is so fucked I have no idea what I want.
She swallows, sighs then shrugs. “I’m hot in this gear. I’m going to go change.” And then she reaches for my hand. “Want to go swimming?”
“Sure.” I flop back against the dirt, throwing my hands over my face. “I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”
When she’s gone, I just sit there thinking about smashing my head into the dirt. What the fuck? I can’t understand how I can feel completely weak around her.
