Diesel
Theroaduptomy cabin is dirt and gravel, a thin vein cut through pine and shadow. Night wraps tight around the trees, the kind of dark that swallows headlights and sound, and I’ve always liked it that way.
Except tonight I’ve got a woman on the back of my bike, her hands hovering like she’s afraid to touch me.
Her hesitation sits on my nerves like a spark.
“Hold on,” I say, low, not looking back.
A beat. Then her fingers land on my sides, careful, barely there.
The moment she touches me, my whole body reacts like it’s been waiting. Heat hits fast, sharp and stupid. Possession, too, rough around the edges, instinctive and unwanted.
Mine.
I’ve never been that guy. Not really. I don’t do soft fantasies. I don’t do romance. I don’t do anything that can leave.
But her hands, light on my ribs, and the tremor running through them,flipsomething primitive in me. Something that doesn’t care what I want.
I ease the bike forward, slow, because she’s tense enough to shatter. I can feel it in the way she holds her breath, in the way her knees press in like she’s trying to make herself smaller.
She smells like cold air and soap, with a smear of engine grease underneath. She’s wearing my jacket now. It hangs on her, swallowing her up.
It makes me want to wrap her up tighter. Lock her away.Keep her.
The rational part of my brain clears its throat.
This is a setup.
One look under the hood and it was obvious. A connector missing, pulled clean, small enough to disappear in a fist.
You don’t “break down” like that by accident.
She knew what she was doing. Which meant someone taught her. Which meant someone told her to do it.
I snapped a picture of her and the license plate when she wasn’t looking and sent it to Ghost. Told her I’d texted for a tow. I hadn’t, but Ghost would already have a prospect rolling.
Ghost’s reply is still lit up in my head like a warning sign.
Grace Henley. Wolves. Malice. Meatgrinder. Hospital “falls.” Mistreated.
And then I looked at her face.
Wide eyes. Too bright. Fear written all over her, not performed, not staged. Real enough that it sat in her throat and made her voice shake when she lied to me.
That’s the thing. A girl can set a trap and still be terrified of the trap she’s forced to carry.
I’ve seen that kind of fear before. In people following orders with their stomach turning inside out.
I didn’t call her out. I could have. I could have asked her what she pulled, where she put it, who sent her.
Instead, I said my name and offered her my cabin.
I’m not an idiot. I’m just not leaving a scared woman alone out here in the dark.
She shifts behind me, and her grip tightens. I feel her cheek press against my back, light through the jacket, and my jaw clenches so hard it aches.
She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
