Her arms tighten instantly.
Someone starts the countdown—drunk, off-beat. “Three! Two! One?—!”
I twist. The bike lurches forward like it wants to throw me off its back. The rear tire skids on loose gravel, fishtailing and Sisk’s arms lock around me like a vise. I wrestle the handlebars, overcorrect, feel the bike buck—and then it catches. We’re moving. Barely.
I can hear Whistle ahead of me, his engine snarling like it knows it’s faster. I don’t think, I react: lean, correct, throttle, brake. Sisk’s weight shifts behind me instinctively. She moves with the bike, trusting me even when I don’t.
The turn comes up fast. A hard ninety-degree bend near the old water tower. Whistle takes it wide. I don’t have speed. I don’t have experience. So I do something stupid: I cut inside. Straight toward the service ramp—an old dock plate sloping down. It’s a shortcut.A terrible idea.
The bike rattles violently as we hit it. For a split second, I’m sure we’re going down. Sisk gasps behind me, tensing and turning her grip into a death-clench around my ribs. I’m fighting the handlebars, trying to wrestle the bike back from the edge of control. I can’t see Whistle anymore, can’t hear anything over the sound of my own heart and the bike’s angry screams. We’re sliding sideways, momentum carrying us.
Then Sisk shifts. It’s not a big movement. She leans, just a few inches, into the slide. Her weight, her trust, it’s enough. It’s just enough to break the physics of it, to pull the bike back from the brink. The tires bite, the screaming stops, and we rocket out of the dip, back onto the main path.
We’re back on asphalt, and we’re ahead. I don’t know how. I don’t care. I just twist the throttle and hold on. The finish line comes into view—spray-painted trash cans knocked over into a row. Whistle guns it, pulling ahead by half a bike length.
I can feel the engine straining. Feel the bike begging me not to push it harder. I close my eyes and I push.Not the throttle. Not the bike. Myself.
The bikes cross the line side by side.
Thirty-Six
NOW | SISK
I’m debating how to approach the man across the room when Jax grabs my hand and pulls me away from the railing, away from the blood and the noise.
“Where are you going?”
He shoves me into the gap between two shipping containers. My back hits the corrugated metal. He pins my wrist to the wall with one hand and then his mouth is on mine, hard and sudden. No room to breathe, no time to think.
One hand slides down my side, over my hip, gripping my thigh and hoisting my leg up around his waist. The move is fast and confident. He presses against me, hard and insistent, the layers of our clothes no match for the raw heat between us. His hips pin me to the metal wall, a delicious grind that makes my head spin and my pussy clench with a desperate, empty ache.
I should stop him. We’re in public, but in this dark corner, we might as well be on another planet. Nobody cares. Nobody’s looking. And I don’t want him to stop. I want him to erase the weight of being Sisk. I want him to make me forget everything but the feel of his hands on my skin, the taste of his tongue in my mouth.
He breaks the kiss, his lips trailing down my jaw, his teeth scraping against my neck. Suddenly, his whole body tenses, the hand on my thigh gripping almost too tightly. He pulls back and squeezes his eyes shut.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can’t,” he grits out, his voice strained. “I can’t… lose control.”
I need to do something.“I know Jax can’t control whatever fucked up curse he has to carry, and he punishes himself for it. Can you believe he would even deny… this? A bit of fun? A moment of release?” A slow, wicked smile curves my lips.
I move my hands slowly from his chest down to his stomach, feeling the muscles jump under my touch. “But Riot? Oh… Riot welcomes the mess. He doesn’t hold himself back, does he?”
Jax doesn’t answer, but his eyes flutter open, and I see it. The flicker of red, the untamed power that lives there.
“Riot wants to be played with,” I continue, my fingers tracing the waistband of his jeans. “Toyed with. Riot likes chaos. And you know who likes to deliver chaos by the truckload?” I smile.
I reach down, my fingers brushing his away, and I pop the button on his jeans. He lets out a searing hiss of breath as my hand slides inside, my fingers tracing the hard length of him through the fabric of his boxers.
“Lola?” he asks, a last-ditch effort to hold on to his control.
I nod with a smile, my hand moving on him, my touch slow and precise. “This isn’t for Jax. This is for Riot.”
The lights in the warehouse flicker, a frantic, stuttering pulse. His hand leaves my wrist, and I think he’s going to push me away. Instead, his long fingers wrap around my throat, and I watch as he lets go, his eyes burning brighter with every move of my hand.
“Take a seat,” he orders.
Somehow, a stack of crates move on their own. They scrape across the concrete floor, stopping right behind me. At first, I think he’s moving them to give us privacy. But no, it’s for me to sit, aligning my mouth to his cock perfectly.
