Page 91 of Shatter

He looks back at me over his shoulder, and his gray eyes crinkle at the corners.

Then he turns the key, and the engine roars to life under me.

It comes up through the seat, through my thighs, a deep, rolling growl I feel in my jaw.

I wrap my arms around his waist and lock my fingers together over his stomach.

We roll out through the gate.

Gorm lifts two fingers from the guardhouse and watches us go, his face unreadable.

Then the road opens up, and he twists the throttle.

The wind hits me like a wall.

It tears at my hoodie and pulls every breath straight out of my lungs, and I scream.

Not scared.

I'm laughing, screaming into the back of his cut, my arms locked around him while Tallahassee peels away behind us.

He takes us south.

Two-lane roads with no shoulders, pine forest crowding both sides, the trunks going by so fast they flicker like an old film.

The sun comes up over the trees on our left, orange and then gold.

We pass a gas station with a hand-painted sign for boiled peanuts and a church with a steeple no taller than a telephone pole.

Then nothing but trees.

Cypress, now, thick at the knees and hung with long gray beards of Spanish moss swaying as we pass.

The air changes.

It turns cool and green-smelling.

I press my cheek against his back and close my eyes and let the engine hum through me.

It's everywhere.

Up through the seat, between my legs, a steady, relentless vibration, and it won't let me forget where I'm pressed against him.

By the time we hit the one red light in Crawfordville, I'm squirming.

He puts his boots down.

The engine idles, low and thick.

I slide my hands under the hem of his T-shirt.

His skin is hot, and his stomach jumps under my palms.

I spread my fingers across the ridges of muscle and drag my nails up, slow, toward his chest.

He goes rigid, but he doesn't move my hands.

He sits there with his boots planted on the asphalt and lets me explore, and I feel him breathing faster under my fingertips.