Page 151 of Under an Endless Moon

Here…here was where I found peace.

Freedom.

A feeling of completion.

The open road and this woman tacked to me on the back of my bike.

Which shouldn’t give me so much satisfactionconsidering she didn’t belong to me, but I was having a harder and harder time thinking of her as anything but that.

Mine.

Her arms tightened around my waist as I took an especially sharp curve, though I could feel the exhilaration roll through her body.

Raven loved it.

Being on the back of my motorcycle like she was cut from the cloth. Hewn from the metals.

I was sure it was here that she felt all of those freedoms, too. In sync with me on the open road.

I slowed when I finally approached the turn-off to my place, and I made the right onto the dirt drive. My attention remained keen, searching through the forest that grew up tight along the path, searching for any sign that the motherfucker had returned.

It was quiet. Exuding that peace, and I relaxed a bit, sure that Raven and I were alone.

We wound down the hill and back up the other side to where my cabin was tucked in the woods. The metal and glass glinted with the rays of sunlight that pierced through the tops of the trees.

Coming to a stop, I stretched my boots out to balance us as I grabbed my phone from my pocket and tapped into the app to turn off the alarm and lift the garage door. The metal rolled up, and I pulled my bike into its spot and killed the engine.

In that one passing second, silence wrapped us whole.

Dense and deep.

An awareness so thick that I could taste it on my tongue.

“Off you go, darlin’.” I went for normal. Same way as I would have talked to her a month ago, except that was fool’s thinkin’ since there wasn’t one goddamned thing that remained the same.

Raven swung off. There was no reason for me to warn her to be careful since she knew the drill. She had already removed her helmet, and she took a couple steps back, facing me, wearing those heels and that dress.

God, she was a vision.

An innocent temptress.

A dark angel.

I didn’t know.

Just knew that I couldn’t breathe when I looked at her like that. Those ink-stained eyes doing dangerous things, watching me like they knew me. Like they had me pegged.

I swung off my bike, and the second I did, Raven turned and started up the stairs.

I followed, keeping three steps back like that would offer enough distance that I wouldn’t want to reach out and touch.

Only thing it accomplished was every time she stepped up, the skirt of her dress would shift and give me the barest glimpse of the perfect round globes of her ass.

Lust clutched me in a vise. Took everything I had not to stretch out a traitorous hand and glide my palm up the outside of her thigh so I could take a good fistful of that ripe, juicy bottom like I’d done at her shop.

Maybe sink my teeth straight into the flesh.

A quiver rocked through her like she had a tap to my brain, and she inhaled an unsteady breath as she pushed open the door into the house. I stalled out at the doorway, watching her stride into my place like she belonged there.

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