Page 66 of Hidden

Luke didn’t answer.

He just stepped back slowly, never taking his eyes off me.

“You done?” Dante asked casually as Luke approached us. The entire time, he had been stood with his arms folded across his chest, watching the whole thing unfold with the sort of bored patience that suggested he had seen this exact scenario play out a hundred times before.

Luke didn’t look away from me. “Yeah.”

“I’ll deal with the Rider. Good luck, princess,” Dante said, inclining his head at me before walking over to Darren and holding his hand out, helping him get off the floor.

“You don’t hit a man when he’s on the deck,”my dad’s voice whispered in my mind.

These bikers had a weird code of conduct.

“This isn’t over,” Darren called over to Luke.

“It is for tonight, lover boy,” Dante laughed.

Darren hesitated, clearly weighing up his chances. Then he turned and stalked out of the alley with Dante following him to make sure he wasn’t coming back.

Only when he disappeared around the corner did Luke finally speak to me. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head, and his shoulders relaxed slightly.

“Good.” Then his expression darkened again. “Get on the bike.”

The tension was so thick I could taste it.

After snapping at me to get on the bike, Luke had all but thrown his helmet at me, having not brought a spare, and started the engine without another word.

The set of his shoulders and the tightness of his lips left me in no doubt that there was no room for negotiation. I either got on his bike, or he was putting me on it himself.

As mad as he was, though, not for a single second did I ever feel a flicker of fear in his presence. The minute he felt my weight behind him, he had shrugged out of his leather cut and handed it to me without a word. And though he drove like a maniac to get me back home, I felt safe in his gear. I felt safe with his driving skills. He had me protected.

The smell of him, the familiarity of the leather jacket, the same scent I had grown up with, mixed with the warmth that was Luke, had me leaning closer, breathing him in. The angerwas radiating off him, and all I wanted to do was drown in his scent.

Darren hadn’t been wrong when he said sixteen-year-olds had raging hormones. He just wasn’t the target of my affections.

Luke was.

The big, stupid, goofy brute who had just taken on his rival for me—in enemy territory, no less.

The idiotic, loveable comedian who had been pulling away from me more and more for months.

The handsome, scary, almost a man that I was certain I was falling in love with.

I never wanted this bike ride to end.

But all too soon, we were pulling up on the outskirts of my property, the same place we had shared a night together only a year or so ago, and yet things couldn’t have felt more different.

Luke brought the bike to a stop and silently held his hand out for his stuff back.

“Luke…”

“Get in the fucking house, Gabby.”

“Luke, we need to talk about this,” I said, swinging my leg off the bike and coming to stand next to him. He kept his gaze focused ahead, refusing to meet my eyes.

“No, we don’t,” he replied through gritted teeth. “What you need to do is get into that house before I say something I’ll regret.”