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Zach clamps his jaw at my words.
I want to call him all the rude names in the history of the world for scaring me like that but he shuts me up before I can even open my mouth.
He bends down and heaves me up in his arms.
Somehow, I knew he’d do that. I knew it. Manhandling me is his favorite pastime. Not that I’m mad about it.
I guess I need to touch him just as much.
So I hike up my thighs around his hips, wrap my hands around his neck and fist his damp hair.
I hug him tightly and he hugs me back.
And then I can’t stop talking. Everything I’m feeling needs to come out. It’s the adrenaline, I think.
“What were you thinking? What’s wrong with you?” I grit out my words as I tuck my face in his neck and he walks toward something – I don’t even care what or where.
“You’re crazy, you know that? I can’t believe you put yourself through this. I mean, I know people with dyslexia have other things they’re wickedly good at; I’ve been reading up on the internet. But what the fuck? You could’ve died. You could’ve broken your neck. You could’ve paralyzed yourself. Did you see all those people? They couldn’t make the landing. They couldn’t…”
My breath hitches, thinking about all the botched-up attempts to land smoothly on the ground and I hold onto him tighter. I rub my lips on his pulse, tasting his skin, the salt of his sweat. It soothes me. It makes me believe that he’s alive and he’s taking me somewhere with him.
“Do you have any idea how scared I was? Any idea at all?” I continue, tugging on his hair, crossing my ankles at his back. “I was going out of my mind, watching you fly through the air. Newsflash, Zach: it’s a bike. Not a fucking plane. And is this even legal? I don’t think so. I don’t. Fucking. Think so.”
I bite his pulse slightly; his taste, his smell explodes on my tongue, and his hold on me goes even tighter.
“I can’t believe this is where you go almost every night. What if you get caught? What if the cops come and arrest you? You wanna go to jail, Zach? Is that your plan? Is that –”
I stop talking when my back thumps against something – the door of a rusted, white truck – as Zach deposits me against it, and we come apart.
We’re far away from the crowd and roars of flying bikes and all I can hear is our roughened breaths.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he growls, leaning into me.
His hands go down to my butt and squeeze the flesh over my skirt, and I bite my already-torn lip at the pressure.
“I followed you.”
“What?”
“After that dinner… I didn’t want you to be alone. I didn’t –”
Another squeeze of my ass. “Who said I wanted your company?”
God, he’s rude.
And big and bad.
He hasn’t changed. He’s still the same as he was back at St. Patrick’s.
I, however, have changed. I have changed the way I look at him. His rudeness doesn’t bother me. It just… fits. Fits him like armor.
He probably needed it for all the wars he has fought, living in that glass tower.
I tug at his hair with equal pressure. “Me. I said you wanted my company so here I am.”
His nostrils flare. “Is it going to take a restraining order for you to keep away from me?”
“Try me. I dare you.”
