Page 20 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
A.J. has a deeply ingrained fondness for ladies of the evening.
He says my name again, softer this time. His eyes caress mine. Under their warm golden glow, I melt. “Fine. But if you kill me on this thing, it’s up to you to explain to my parents what happened. Good luck with that. My father will most likely disembowel you.”
“She’s not a thing.” Defending the honor of his motorbike, A.J. ignores the threat to his bodily unity. Perhaps he isn’t as fond of his bowels as most people are.
With zero elegance, I clamber onto the back of the motorcycle, clutching his shoulders for balance. They feel like boulders beneath my hands.
“She’s a custom V-Rod with a titanium chassis and a top speed of two hundred and fifty miles per hour.”
It seems the alcohol has engaged my selective hearing because I glide right over that last piece of data as if it had never been spoken. No wonder they say ignorance is bliss. “How is a motorcycle a she?” I demand. “Wouldn’t they all be hes, if they’re supposed to be so macho and dangerous?”
“Helmet.”
I don my helmet, fumbling with the chin strap. When I’m finished and he appears satisfied with my efforts, A.J. asks, “You ever watch Jacques Cousteau?”
Hello, left field, I see the fly ball approaching. “That might be the strangest segue I’ve ever heard.”
“Answer the question.”
I do this thing that’s part belly-deep burp, part hiccup. I’m convinced it’s the single most unattractive noise to ever exit my body. Horrified, I clap my hands over my mouth. A.J. looks amused. It’s a relief, but it shouldn’t be, considering I don’t care about his opinion. I recover my composure quickly, and answer. “Yes. My mother loved him. She used to watch reruns of his show all the time when I was growing up.”
He nods. “Mine, too.”
Whoa. He has a mother. The thought has never occurred to me. My fuzzy brain launches into a stumbling frenzy of related questions about siblings, family life, his youth and hobbies and education, until it exhausts itself and falls flat on its face, and I just stare at him, waiting. The process takes all of five seconds.
“There’s this thing that Jacques Cousteau used to say that always stuck with me. Put your arms around me.”
“Jacques Cousteau used to say ‘put your arms around me’?”
“No, Chloe. Put your arms around me. You have to hold on for the ride.” He waits for me to follow this simple direction.
“Oh! Gotcha.” With gargantuan effort, I marshal every ounce of faux disinterest at my disposal, and slide my arms around his shoulders. My hands don’t touch on the other side. He’s bigger than my arm span.
This leaves me in an awkward predicament. I can lower my arms to his waist, which will allow me to grasp my hands together, but I run the risk of an embarrassing encounter with his crotch. Especially if, as he has said, and his shoe size and stature surely indicate, it’s huge.
He senses my hesitation. “What’s wrong?”
My voice comes out tiny. “I don’t think I’m doing it right.”
He takes my hands, and gently lowers them to his abdomen, locking my fingers together over a hard expanse of muscle that definitely isn’t his crotch. “Better?”
I sigh in relief. “Best.”
He revs the throttle. The bike rattles and hums beneath us, itching to leap into motion.
I prompt, “So—Jacques Cousteau?”
“Right. He used to say that the most beautiful creatures are always the most dangerous.”
I recognize this saying. It’s one of Mr. Cousteau’s most famous. “No, what he actually said was, ‘Zee most beeyooteefool creetoors are also zee most dangeroos.’”
Hearing my terrible French accent, A.J. laughs, a second miracle for the night. Loving the sound of it, I grin.
“That he did, Chloe, that he did. So I figured, following his logic, every dangerous creature therefore has to be female, because females are the only creatures who are really beautiful. Compared to them, us guys are just a bunch of slobbering idiots.”
He looks at me over his shoulder. His smile is devastating. My heart skips a beat, then stalls out altogether.
/> Holy mother of all craps.
