Page 9 of Things We Burn

But safety was more important. I’d always muttered curses about the motorcyclists I saw on the highway doing ninety without helmets.

Safety.

A good thing.

“Hop on,” he said, once he was situated on the bike.

It occurred to me then that I didn’t know this man. I knew that he was some kind of famous daredevil and people seemed to be impressed with him. I knew he was a great kisser. I knew he possessed the ability to make my pussy pulse.

Other than that? Nothing.

He could be a serial killer.

Or just a really big douche.

I didn’t hesitate.

I hopped on the bike.

Two

I did not havea misspent youth.

My youth was uneventful and full of semi-normal things. Well, not so ‘normal’ since my father died when I was thirteen, but I did my best not to think about that. Even then, I shoved my grief away. I studied a whole lot. Had a few friends. A part-time job, a boyfriend or two because I thought I had to, though they never really excited me. I went to prom.

I did not go through a rebellious stage. There was no partying, no yelling at my mother, no bad boy boyfriend. Sure, I really liked Jess onGilmore Girlsand had my very first orgasm thinking about some leather-clad rebel on a motorcycle promising me a wild time.

But I did not bring those fantasies to life.

Mostly because we didn’t have leather-clad, motorcycle-riding bad boys in my small town in New Hampshire. And by the time I moved to the city and had access to a larger pool of men, I was already working in restaurants most of my waking hours. There simply wasn’t time to indulge in relationships.

Therefore, I had never been on the back of a motorcycle.

It turned out I liked it.

He drove fast. Too fast. Just like I’d requested.

We took turns at dizzying speeds.

The wind bit into my body, cold and fresh and hurtling through the clothing that wasn’t suitable for a bike.

Kane was warm, hot, an inferno against my front and my arms which were tight around him.

It was the most reckless thing I’d ever done, getting on the back of a bike with someone I barely knew. Holding them in such an intimate way. I could feel his rock-hard abs underneath my hands and felt the utterly wild urge to dip my hands lower, to the buckle of his belt. Lower even then.

I didn’t, of course. But I wanted to. My pussy, throbbing from the roaring vibration of the bike underneath me, wanted me to.

The city passed by in a whirl of lights. He wove through the New York traffic with ease, taking it at speeds that likely weren’t legal and definitely weren’t safe.

But I trusted him.

I’d gone insane.

I trusted a man I’d just met, a man who was nicknamed after Satan himself.

I did not have a death wish, and I hadn’t thought I had a wild side. But there I was, hurtling through the city on the back of Kane ‘The Devil’ Rhodes’s motorcycle.

We stopped in front of an old brownstone, Kane somehow finding street parking right away, which was near impossible, even for a motorcycle.

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