Page 51 of Honeyfires

"You want to learn?"

"I want to learn everything about you." She picked up the rag I'd set down. "Even the greasy part."

I grinned and moved behind her, my hands covering hers, guiding them over the engine. "This is the oil cap. You check it regularly. Especially before long rides."

"How do I know if it's low?"

"Dipstick. Like this." I guided her through the motion. "See? Right in the middle. Good."

"And if it's not?"

"You add more." My mouth was near her ear. "Simple."

She leaned back into me, very slightly. "You know a lot about this."

"Couldn't afford a mechanic when I first got the Harley."

"Practical and hot," she said. "My favorite combination."

I laughed, pressing a kiss to her neck. She turned in my arms, her oil-smudged hands resting on my chest.

"You planning on me riding Cinder alone someday?" she asked.

The thought of it—her on Cinder, without me, completely unprotected—scared the shit out of me. "No," I said. "But I'm planning on you being with me for as long as you'll have me."

The words hung in the warm evening air, heavier than I'd intended.

Vera looked at me for a long moment. Then she stepped up onto her toes and kissed me in the parking lot, in the fading Arizona light, her oil-smudged hands on my jaw, and the future was somewhere out in the desert beyond us, enormous and uncertain and completely full of possibility.

"Good," she said against my mouth. "Because I'm not going anywhere."

She left oil smudges on my shirt. Neither of us mentioned it.

"Shower?" she said, with that specific look.

"Race you upstairs."

We barely made it through the door.

I had her against the wall before she'd finished laughing, my hands at her hips, her sundress bunching in my fingers, and she made the sound I'd been cataloging for five weeks—the small helpless one, the one that meant she'd stopped thinking—and I pressed closer and felt her melt into me.

"Hi," she managed.

"Hi yourself." I kissed her throat. "You were incredible today."

"I just asked questions—"

"You asked Miller about his grandmother." I found the spot below her ear. "He doesn't talk about his grandmother."

She inhaled sharply as I moved lower. "I think he wanted to. He just needed someone to—" Her train of thought departed. "Oh."

"You do that," I said against her skin. "You make people want to be known."

She pulled back and looked at me, and whatever was in my face made something in hers go soft and open and entirely unguarded.

"Petra," she said.

"I know." I kissed her. "Come on. Shower."