Page 42 of The Tiger in the Sack

“I want to be sure you’re nice and safe with me.”

Oh. Oh my.

One of his hands was at my jaw and then briefly, steadily, at my throat while he adjusted the fit and I was not going to make a sound about that, I was absolutely not going to make a sound about that.

But oops, there went my knees again.

No, no. I was a professional woman with a plan and a theory and I was definitely not thinking about how warm his hands were through the leather or the fact that his hand at my throat had my girly bits doing their own cheer routine.

Whew, it’s hot in here. There must be some Clovers in the… place where dumb girls learn not to take rides from hot strangers.

He checked the fit with his thumb along the edge of the helmet.

“Good?” His voice came through his visor, low and warm.

My voice came out only at a slightly higher octave than normal. “Good.”

He stepped back.

I really, really wanted to be wrong.

He got on the bike and held out his hand to help me hop on behind him. I settled behind him, with my thighs essentially wrapped around his. Oh god. This was a mistake. The best kind of huge, huge, mistake.

We took off and left OTR behind us heading toward downtown Cincinnati. The Roebling Bridge at speed was something nobody had told me about.

The way the suspension cables flickered past like a metronome, the way the Ohio opened up on both sides all at once, the way Cincinnati sat on its hills behind us going gold in the early evening light while Kentucky rose to meet us and the whole world reorganized itself into something I hadn’t seen before from any angle I’d had access to until right now.

I tightened my arms around him. Not from fear. From the opposite actually. From the feeling of something opening up that I hadn’t known was closed.

“You good back there?” His voice came through the Bluetooth system in my helmet, close and clear, like he was right next to me instead of the only thing between me and the road.

“I’m extremely good back here,” I said.

I felt him laugh. Not heard, felt, through the jacket, through the slight shift of his shoulders.

“Cincinnati looks different from here,” I said.

“Always does.” A pause. “It’s really great going the other direction. When you come back over the bridge and the whole skyline is in front of you. That’s the money shot.”

“Is that why you’re going this way first? So the good part is the return trip?”

“I’m a man of strategy.”

“I thought you were a man of mystery.”

“A man can be both.”

He could, actually. I was finding that out.

The bike moved through Covington with the ease of someone who knew these streets, and I let myself have it. The warm weight of him, the engine vibrating through everything, the city sliding past in the last of the golden hour. The Bluetooth system meant I could hear him breathe when neither of us was talking. It meant there was nowhere to hide from the quality of a pause.

I’d noticed that about him. The pauses. In texts there were the three dots appearing and disappearing, which told you someone was typing and reconsidering. In this, it was just — silence, and the sound of the road, and the city going by.

He had a lot to say tonight. I could feel it.

He just hadn’t said it yet.

We found our rhythm somewhere on the way up the hill, the way we’d found it every night this week. Not looking for it, just falling into it, the conversation going wherever it wanted and neither of us trying to steer.