“Are you kidding? We are ride-or-die.” He climbs on the back of the bike, squeaking as the cold leather hits his butt. “Let’s hope not literally!”
With Luca’s arms tight around his waist, Nix can feel his hard dick wiggling against his butt.
Nix wonders if he shouldn’t make him go put on some pants, but decides it’ll take too long, and they have a felin-ious catnapping to foil.
Need for Speed
I am one with the bike.I am one with the bikeslips through Nix’s mind as he squeezes the throttle and lets out the clutch slowly. The bike surges like a tiger on a leash, and the back end swings out to the side before Nix can back it off.
“Holy mother of Chuck!” Luca squeaks, the words coming through the in-helmet mic barely audible over Nix’s pounding heart. His twittering mate squeezes the remaining breath from Nix’s lungs.
He should be surprised at how easily he gets control of the bike, testing the speed in short bursts down the driveway. When he finally has the brake-throttle combination settled, he presses the gate remote, and they sail through as he shifts into second gear.
He turns left out onto the quiet residential street, toward the city.
“You’re doing it! You’re fucking doing it!” Luca gives in to several fist pumps and wiggles that make the bike swerve.
“Just move with me, okay?” Nix mutters after righting the wobbling vehicle. It’s the advice Jamie had given him, and it had seemed to work then.
“Yeah, yeah, okay.Fruit of the Moonis by the river. You remember where we went for a walk with Finn?”
“Just tell me where I’m going, and hang on! Here we go!”
Nix slips it into third gear and accelerates down a straightaway. Usually, he’d avoid downtown, but Lupine Park is on the other side of the city center, and time is a luxury that he can’t afford. Especially since he really has no idea what the hell he’s doing.
But it turns out it’s as if he were born to drive this vehicle. He takes the corners by instinct, passing slower-moving cars at high speeds and weaving in and out of traffic as if he were a ghost. Miraculously, every light is green and they fly through intersections like part of a well-timed ballet. That is, until they reach the busiest road and finally get a red light.
Gearing down, Nix rolls to a stop next to a low-slung purple Subaru with neon lights glowing from the undercarriage. The young woman in the driver’s seat does a double-take before grinning and nodding at the light. Revving the engine, she raises her eyebrows.
“Did that tuner just rev at us?” Luca mutters, affronted.
A tingle of excitement stirs in Nix’s belly, and not for the first time, he checks that his bonds are turned down to a simmer.
There’s nothing but a straightaway in front of them, clear of traffic and no pedestrians, but it narrows to a single lane shortly afterward.
“No, Nix Rhodes. Don’t you dare.”
Oh, but Nixwoulddare.
He would so—very,verymuch—dare.
In a big way.
Responding with a rev of his own, he spins the back tire, sending the scent of hot, melted rubber smoking around the bike. “Baby, I have a need. A need for speed.”
“Oh, fuck,” Luca moans.
The woman throws back her head and laughs, and in the next blink, the light goes from red to green. She must be a Were, too, as her foot is on the accelerator a nanosecond after Nix shoots away from the light.
Shifting lightning-quick, Nix anticipates the exact moment to shift through second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth gear right after each other, the bike screaming with power. When he finally hits sixty miles an hour, he’s flying through the intersection, flowing into the space in front of the purple car just in the nick of time.
She lays on her weird techno horn in defeat, no louder than Luca’s shriek of victory in his ear.
He swerves into the opposite lane to avoid a parked truck,narrowly missing a yellow taxi that honks its horn. It’s music to his ears as the pure power of the Ducati sings in his veins, humming a new mantra that sounds a lot like freedom.
In no time at all, they’re rolling into the parking lot of a strip mall, where theFruit of the Moonsign glows above a surprisingly busy storefront.
Pulling to a stop, Nix pops the kickstand down and turns the bike off. He hopes the sudden stillness will calm his racing pulse.
