“Like,theBattle?” he asked, his eyes wide in amazement. He couldn’t have been younger than sixteen, but right then the kid looked like a twelve-year-old boy, his cheeks flushed and his eyes wide.
Battle chuckled and dropped his cigarette to the ground before stomping on it with his heavy boot. I did the same with mine even though I hadn’t even smoked any of it.
The kid turned to look at his friends, who had all stopped skating and were waiting with expectant gazes. “See, I told you it was him.” The kid looked back at Battle with a huge grin on his face. “Do you still skate?”
Battle chuckled again. “Not for a real long time, kid.”
The kid’s face fell.
A biker that skates? Now that is a first,I thought, unable to control my smile.
“Could you for us?” the kid asked, holding his board out to Battle.
Battle looked back around at me, looking me up and down, and I felt a shiver run through me, like he was caressing my skin with those beautiful starlit eyes of his, and I couldn’t hold back the smile that crept up my cheeks.
“Whaddya think?” he asked.
I smiled wider; I couldn’t help myself. When he smiled it was contagious, and I was infected by him.
“Should I show them a trick or two?”
I glanced at the kid, who was waiting expectantly, looking at me with pleading eyes like Battle was his superhero or something. It was cute, and Battle clearly loved the attention he was getting.
“I don’t know, I mean, do you think your body still has the stamina for something like this?” I joked. “You’re pretty old compared to these kids.”
Battle surprised me by throwing back his head and laughing. It was the sexiest laugh I had ever heard. I wanted to capture it with my mouth and swallow it down.
“I got the stamina.” He winked and I swooned like a sixteen-year-old girl. “Don’t you worry ’bout that, woman. I got all the stamina I need.”
Warmth pooled in my core at his words, because we both knew what he was talking about, and it had nothing to do with riding skateboards. I swallowed, knowing I was crossing a line and I needed to go right then. He was a biker and there was no way he didn’t know my old man. Fuck, I should have told him that I belonged to another man right away.
Battle reached over and plucked the skateboard from the kid’s hands, and all the kids started cheering and whooping. I couldn’t help but laugh and join in. He smirked and shook his head, his hands testing the skateboard’s strength. I couldn’t blame him. He was a wall of hard muscle, layer upon layer of it, and that much strength on top of a flimsy bit of wood didn’t seem safe.
Battle placed the skateboard on the ground and stepped onto it with one foot before pushing off with the other. As he started to move, his cut flapped open, revealing a hard, bare chest and tribal tattoos. He had a silver ring in his right nipple, and I would have given anything to suck it into my mouth. I clenched my thighs together again, and even though I’d tried to be discreet, Battle must have seen because his gaze dropped to my thighs, and I swear I heard a low rumble come from somewhere in his chest.
I needed to sit down before I fell down.
No, I needed to go. I was forgetting my place. Forgetting who I belonged to. Battle wouldn’t be looking at me with that look in his eye once he found out who I was, that was for certain. Yet I found that I wanted more of it. More of him looking at me like I was something special.
The kids had started chanting Battle’s name and he let his gaze roam back up my body, a cocky, delicious smirk on his face as he finally turned away and started to skate faster. He started with some small flips and tricks, like he was only just warming up, before taking a huge ramp with such speed that I worried he’d go off the end, but at the last minute he bent down low and caught the end of the skateboard, twisting his body and the board as one as he left the ramp and flew through the air before landing again.
His muscles bent and arced with every twist of his lean body, and I stood mesmerized, watching his every movement. Battle skated faster and faster, bending low on the board as the kids continued to cheer his name and clap, and he gripped the bottom of the board and suddenly he was airborne again, his body moving at lightning speed before landing with a loud bang and skidding to a halt.
The kids rushed him, charging full speed to high-five him. One of the kids handed him a marker and he flipped over the board and scrawled his name across the bottom, loving the attention. And if I could have been anyone or anything at that moment in time, I would have been that board as his hand glided across it, branding it with his name like I wanted him to brand my body with his touch.
I blushed at my own thoughts and was mumbling to myself when the sound of Gracie’s music filtered down to me. You couldn’t miss the old-school jazz she liked to play loudly, and I looked back up the hill, seeing her truck slow to a crawl as she looked out the window. With one last longing look at Battle, I jogged up to her. Gracie’s truck came to a stop and I flung open the door and climbed into it quickly.
“Where did you go?” she asked, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. Gracie was my best friend, had been since we were in high school, but we led very different lives, our roads pointing in different directions and sending us away from one another. Yet somehow we always found our way back to one another.
Her truck was clean, barring the baby toys and food crumbs over the back seat. And the little bundle of joy that had caused the mess was sleeping soundly in her car seat. “I thought we said we’d meet by O’Keefe’s?” she said.
“Sorry,” I replied, leaning in to give her a hug. She smelled like clean linen, good living, and babies. It was amazing and I took a great lungful of her in, feeling instantly at peace. “I was looking for somewhere I could buy a lighter. I didn’t realize Troy’s Groceries had closed down.”
“Yeah, a year or so back now,” she said, fixing her lip gloss in the rearview mirror. “So you thought the skate park would be a good idea to get a light?” she asked, finally pulling away from the curb.
“Well yeah,” I laughed. “It’s where we used to go to smoke pot after school, remember? And pot smoking means there’s a lighter.” I shrugged and she shook her head.
“Oh god, yeah. Do you remember when I stole that bag of weed from Rory Callister? He had a shit fit until I let him see my boobs to compensate him.” She laughed loudly, recalling our past. Her gaze fell over my shoulder and she laughed louder. “Oh, I see, looking for a lighter, huh?” She jerked her head toward the beautiful biker who was looking around with concern, his tanned face turning left and right as he searched for me.
