Page 10 of Intrepid

Rearing back, I frowned, folding my arms as I followed after him. “Um. How?”

“Bea! Simone! It’s Sera! Wait for me!” His hands waved dramatically in the air, mocking me.

Biting the inside of my cheek stifled the urge to laugh. “Right.”

“So, Serafina. Named after the angels.” He came to a stop in front of a sleek black motorcycle hidden in the brush, and handed me a helmet he pulled from somewhere on the other side of it.

“What are you, a religion major?”

He smirked and looked past me for a moment, as if checking to make sure no one had followed us.

Paranoid, I checked, too, before shifting my attention back to the impressive machinery standing before me. “I’ve never been on a bike before.”

Lips screwed to a wry smile, he mounted the bike and jerked his head for me to get on behind him. “Well, this night just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it, Sera?”

2

Sera

My mother used to say that to get the best fruit, you had to go out on a limb sometimes.

Clearly, she was the complete opposite of my father, which explained why their marriage didn’t last beyond the first year I was born. My father had tried to create order in my mother’s chaotic world, and she’d fought to add color to his bland existence. In the end, I guessed she’d decided the money wasn’t worth his monochromatic lifestyle, and took off with me before he could sap her vibrancy.

It wouldn’t have taken a gunman for my mother to hop on the back of a motorcycle with a complete stranger. She’d have called it an adventure, whereas I sat clutching the mid-section of the man I’d just met, wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into for the second time that night. About the only thing that brought me some comfort was recognizing the buildings we passed on the roads.

The bike roared and hummed along Jefferson, while the wind lashed across the helmet that’d begun to suffocate me. Part of me felt exhilarated, the other half terrified, holding on for dear life, as he wheeled through the streets, at well over the speed limit, judging by the way we zipped around the other cars. Beneath his black sweatshirt, I could feel the solid muscles of his body, could tell that he worked hard to maintain them, by the rock-hard thickness between my arms.

It confirmed what I’d already suspected—if the guy got a wild hair up his ass to take me somewhere and hurt me, he wouldn’t break a sweat doing so.

The angle of the bike that he referred to as a Ducati had me pressed against his back tighter than I’d have liked, though that could’ve been the death grip I kept on him, too.

Within minutes, the bike slowed to a rolling stop in front of my apartment building.

“This the one?” he asked over his shoulder, giving a nod toward the outdated building sat on the corner of Harmonie Park.

My muffled yes hardly carried through the thick helmet, as I pushed my breasts from his spine and righted myself on the seat, relieved he’d actually taken me home, instead of some remote abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere.

I unfastened and removed the helmet, stealing an easy breath for the first time in hours, and climbed off the bike. When my feet hit the pavement, I could’ve kissed it.

He sat up on the bike and ran his hands over his brown hair, which was just long enough to grab. Behind me, the moon shone bright, casting a dazzling brilliance to the blue in his eyes.

I handed him the helmet and shrank at his attractive face, tucking my chin into my shirt. “Thanks for … the save, the climb, the ride.” I lifted my hands, which still carried the soot from the chimney. “The need to take a shower.”

No sooner had the words come out than my cheeks flared with embarrassment.

His cheek dimpled with a cocky smile, giving a natural sort of deviance to his eyes. “I’m going to need a shower, too, after that.”

I didn’t know what else to say, so I stepped back onto the curb behind me. “I’m sorry I freaked out back there like a …”

“Like a what?”

“Like a frightened little girl.”

“We’ve all freaked out like a frightened little girl at one time, or another.”

“You? I doubt that. You’re like … I don’t know.” I rubbed the back of my neck, falling into something foreign, something my mother would’ve chuckled about and called cute. I’d always had a certain confidence about me, scar or no scar, but the guy stirred excitement in my stomach like a hurricane in a butterfly house. “Crazy.”

“I’ve heard that once, or twice.”