Dirty Ties (10 page)

I didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, afraid I’d miss the black helmet, black boots, and lightning-fast fist that was now pounding the ever-loving shit out of Baldy’s face. I was dreaming, and oh sweet Jesus, what an exquisite dream.

Wake up.

I shook myself from the paralyzed stupor and drew the .40 cal from my back, flicked off the safety, and strode toward the wrestling bodies.

Sirens screamed past the alley, the roar of motorcycles vibrating the ground and bellowing in my ears. Baldy lay on his back, swinging his fists and nailing shots on Evader’s stomach, ribs, and throat.

My pulse rushed past my ears, and the gun shook in my hands. I lined up the sights and aimed the barrel at Baldy’s bloody face. “Hands above your head.”

I cringed at my quivering voice, but I
did
know how to use a gun. Collin and I shot targets at the range a few times a year. And fuck, I
wanted
to apply what I’d practiced.

Baldy raised his arms and interlaced his fingers on his head. Yeah, he’d done this before.

Evader knelt over him, his strength visible in the stretch of the jacket over his back and shoulders. His helmet cocked, angled in my direction. “I had this.”

Oh my God, his voice. Okay, it was definitely synthesized, his timbre humming with an electronic overlay, but it was deep and gravelly and so goddamned sexy.

Pull yourself together, Kaci.
He was far more dangerous than the man who just attacked me.

“Get out of here.” I nodded to the street behind me, and as if on cue, another squad car zoomed by. “I’ll hold him until you’re gone.”

What was I saying? I didn’t want him to leave.

I thought I heard a chuckle, but couldn’t be sure with the whine of sirens and exhaust pipes. He looked back at Baldy, swung an arm, and knocked him out. Damn. Okay, that worked too.

I lowered the gun. “You won the race?”

“Of course.” He rose and erased the distance between us in three strides.

My nerves shivered, overloaded and amped up, and oh God, he was just standing there, heating the air around me, staring at me. What did he want? I opened my mouth to spew a gushing
thank you
.

He snatched the gun from my hand.

What the?
“Give that ba—”

He lifted my chin and stroked a gloved finger over the nicks on my throat. Each caress irritated the cuts, but I didn’t want him to stop. He raised the finger in front of my visor, blood soaking the leather tip. “Have you learned your lesson?”

His voice reverberated through me, and my knees weakened. Even with the electronic distortion, he sounded pissed.

My heart panted, and a throb swelled, hot and needy, between my legs. All because of a pissed-off synthesized voice? I might’ve just swallowed my self-respect, but I couldn't help it. My body had one mission, and that mission vibrated against me like he wanted to tear me in half. Damn me to hell, but my inner muscles clenched at the thought.

I touched my throat and flinched at the bite of pain. “It’s just a scratch.”

The reflection of my helmet in his visor wavered as he shook his head. He gazed down on me as if he were…considering something? God, I wished I could see his face, his eyes.

His finger returned to my throat, trailed a path beneath my chin, lifting it and catching on the edge of the helmet. He tugged it, like he wanted to rip off the shield and see my eyes, too. “Get on your bike, sweetheart.”

He flicked the safety on the gun and gripped my shoulders, turning my body to face the bike. Both bikes. His and mine side-by-side. Oh, how I loved the sight of that.

His fingers touched my hip, slipping beneath my jacket to stroke my bare skin. I trembled against the brush of his glove, until he opened his mouth. “This is your last race.”

The temperature in my helmet rose by ten degrees, and my cheeks inflamed. I glared at him over my shoulder. “Excuse me?”

Smack.
A stinging jolt of fire rippled over my ass, and I shuffled forward. He fucking hit me! I placed my hands on the bike’s seat, and unbidden, a grin took hold of my face. He fucking
spanked
me.

His hands returned to my hips, lifting the hem of the jacket. Then he wriggled the gun beneath my waistband. “Go.”

More sirens filled the street. Shit. I hurried onto the bike and started the engine. Beside me, he straddled his BMW S1000RR and fired it up.

I rolled forward to the mouth of the alley and looked back. He hadn’t moved, his helmet pointed toward me, his body upright and still.

My chest tightened. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye. What if this was the only encounter we ever had?

“You coming?” I shouted over the pipes. The image of him
coming
curled my lips into an immature, hopeful, and probably goofy-as-hell smile. Good thing he couldn’t see it.

He studied me for a heated moment then lowered into a tuck against his bike and yelled, “After you. You can count on it.”

My smile stretched so far across my face, it hurt. I mirrored his lean, opened the gas, and squealed into the street.

Blue and red lights filled my vision on all sides. Most of the cops were in the process of detaining bikers, but several cruised up and down the perimeter. Like the one that just pulled in behind us.

I gave it more gas and tore away, Evader right on my tail. The Ducati had a faster top-speed than his BMW, but I didn’t have the balls to push it over 200 mph. Even now, our 160 mph speed scared the bejesus out of me. I half-expected him to pass me, but as the flashing lights faded behind us, we fell into a steady clip with me in the lead.

Adrenaline surged through my bloodstream as we blew through red lights and zipped the wrong way on one-way streets, weaving around traffic and narrowly missing oncoming cars. Breaking all these laws might’ve exploded my heart if I were alone, but having him with me, trusting he had my back, it was crazy liberating.

In fact, I kind of hoped he would try to pass me so I could show him the top speed of my bike.

A few minutes later, I veered onto the freeway. Figured it was the best way to escape the traps of downtown streets.

But where to now? Would he follow? Hope fluttered in my belly, and my limbs tingled. I didn’t know what I was hoping for exactly. To see his face? Fat chance. To hear his voice again? Yes, please. To fuck with our helmets on? Awkward, but I’d take it.

Watching his headlights in my side mirrors, I stayed on 290 until Ashland Ave and turned north toward Union Park. Plenty of baseball diamonds, tennis courts, unlit corners in the playground…yeah, unlit corners.

I swear, I hadn’t smiled this much since that time Collin secretly filmed Donny McKnight, my high school crush, taking a shower in the locker room. Damn, that boy had a tight ass.

When I reached Union Park, I slowed to a stop in an empty parking lot beside the basketball courts. Evader slid in beside me, and I struggled to keep my breathing at a normal tempo.

His long legs braced on either side of his bike, and his gloved hands rested on his knees. He didn’t speak, simply watched me from an arm’s length away. It was surreal to be this close to him. How many people saw him outside of the races? Who was he when he wasn’t shrouded in black and straddling a bike? And the question every woman in the city wanted answered? Was his face as viciously sexy as his body?

He rolled his neck on his shoulders and flexed his fingers. “Got a name?”

God, that voice. I bit the tip of my tongue as heat bloomed between my legs. “Yeah. You?”

“I’ve got a couple.” He lifted a boot, resting it on his frame slider, and perched a forearm on his knee. The movement brought his helmet so, so close to mine. “Why are you here, rich girl? All alone with a known felon? What do you want?”

The better question was, why would he follow someone like me? What did
he
want? I should feel him out, play the brazen hussy I was sure he was used to dealing with.

I leaned over my bike and propped my elbows on the gas tank, stretching out my body for his eyes. “I pegged you for a fuck-first, ask-questions-later kind of guy.”

His low, digitized chuckle sizzled my pleasure centers as he leaned his head back, revealing a shadow of stubble beneath the strong lines of his jaw. When his helmet lowered, he reached out and trailed gloved fingers along the back of my thigh, around my ass, my hip, then repeated the caress, slowly, torturously.

The angle of his helmet followed the shape of my body and the movement of his hand, the exploration lighting up my insides with an electric buzz. Did he like what he saw? My breath quickened. Did he want to see more?

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.