There’s no telling this woman anything, whether it’s to slow down or suck it up, so until she’s ready to own speed, all I can do is satisfy my own cravings. There’s also a fair chance it’ll make her jealous enough that tomorrow, she’ll steal back the keys to her Dabria while tossing over the ones for her older Sasebo—currently parked in the back with a cover draped over it.
Lorina flips down her face shield, and almost immediately, the rise of her chest goes triple the speed. She doesn’t move to grab her gloves.
I’m off the moto and in front of her in half a breath, and she never even glances my way. I don’t have to be able to see through her face shield to know her eyes are closed, completely frozen in panic.
She startles when the gloved fingertips of my left hand tease her right one. Not really slipping between them and not taking her hand, just lightly grazing mine against hers, tip to tip. The tightness in her shoulders relaxes, and I reach around her side and pick up her gloves, handing them to her. She has to ride. Today.
I head to her Atrani and swing a leg over. It takes a minute, but she takes the spot behind me. As soon as I sit, all the things about riding that turn me on get doused in lighter fluid as Lorina drops the match, and I have no idea how I’m going to be able to concentrate. Her inner thighs are hugging my hips, and I can feel every shift of her body against mine. Still, my left foot instinctually kicks up the stand, my right leg taking the weight to support us.
I want to touch her everywhere.
She’s not holding onto me.
I peek over my shoulder, and her hands are clinging to the passenger seat in a death grip. I pull her arm forward, wrapping it around my side. Heat pools in my spine as she gives up and lets her other arm join, and maybe this was a bad idea.
Somehow, I manage to keep the throttle easy as I pull out of the garage, determined to keep myself in check no matter how badly I want to open it—her back slammed into the wall, her legs draped over my arms, driving into her until I can’t do anything else. But I cruise slowly down her long driveway, and when we get to the end of it, I pause, waiting for nonexistent traffic.
My mouth is watering, every muscle in my body drawn tight at the promise of nothing to slow me down. My hand comes off the handlebar with a questioning thumbs-up, and fate smiles on me. Lorina returns it, her thumb hitched toward the sky.
I rev the engine once.
She hugs my back.
We peel out onto the highway, and her body ducks down with mine over the handlebars as I open the throttle and let her RPMs scream as I shift up through the gears. We’re zero to sixty in fewer than three seconds, and I tease the throttle like peaked nipples over the endless gray road and blue skies above, the heel and toe of my boot kissing her gears in front of trees lining the road, dotted with the occasional farmhouse.
Lorina never balks, and I drive harder, faster, mentally counting the minutes until I can get back to my Yaalon waiting for me in Brno, because I need more. Sharper turns and checkered flags, leaning deep and pushing the limits until the world is deliciously tilted.
I push it now, gambling with the promise of police over the crest of every hill but swearing to myself I could outrun them if I had to. I’ve done it plenty of times before, and I can’t get her arrested when I need to take her riding with me every day for the rest of my life. Nothing feels as good as the world blurring by with her on the seat behind me: leaning into turns, ducking for more speed, chuckling when I have to swerve for an errant chicken. She doesn’t even care when I take my hands off the handlebars and steer with nothing more than the strength in my legs. She hugs me a little tighter at first, but she’s with me every step of the way when I intertwine our gloved fingers and stretch them out toward the open air roaring past us, and I can’t believe I didn’t do this the first day I got here.
After an hour or maybe longer—the sun fully set and the world black except for the gleam of the headlight—Lorina points to the right at an intersection. I follow her directions away from the ranch lands until the highway bleeds into downtown traffic. It’s the best idea I wish I would’ve thought of on my own.
I take the first exit from the highway that looks promising. It doesn’t take much to sniff out the Memphis bar scene—blues music pouring from clubs as people dance and sway on the sidewalks, some in the street, and unlike the crowds I have to duck through in Europe, no one here has a clue who we are.
Lorina is quick to get off the moto once I pull into an open spot on Beale Street and walk it back, taking off her gloves and her white carbon fiber helmet. She shakes out her hair and tosses it, her face lit up with an easy smile, and I am a happy, happy guy. It nearly makes up for the fact that I’m starving to get her undressed and into a bed, right now.
Actually, screw the bed. Give me a wall. Give me a tree. Give me nothing but air, and I’m good to go.
Lorina chuckles, flicking my helmet at my stalling. I ditch my gloves, dumping them into the interior of her helmet before taking off mine. “It is not a bad moto, Lorina,” I tell her, grinning. Her hands aren’t even shaking. “Brakes maybe a little too tight, but it is not bad.”
“Apart from the clutch, yeah.”
Her clutch is a bitch, but the more she rides, the better it’ll get, and I know she knows that. She waits as I get off the moto, and I glance around at the neon lights, feeling the music, the tipsy laughter, the smell of beer and sweat and piss a little more boorish than I’d prefer, but it’ll do.
I look back to Lorina, and she smiles, shrugging. “Figured your inner club rat was probably going stir-crazy, cooped up at the house all the time.”
I was, but I wasn’t gonna say anything about it. At least she hasn’t tried to make me ride a horse again, because that did not go well, and we agreed to forget it ever happened and tell no one. “I could have made it another day before I started doing a striptease at breakfast.”
Lorina laughs. “Trust me, no one in my house wants to see that. Plus, my dad’s likely to join in.”
I grimace. “Then maybe I will be good.”
She laughs again as I grab her hand, bringing her along with me until without warning, Lorina swings us into a bar. I chuckle, happy to follow her through the cloud of smoke and the blaring country music, and when she spins toward me on the dance floor, smiling as she wraps her arms around my neck, I almost can’t trust it’s real.
We’re finally, finally free.
***
There are certain perks to knowing someone for ten years before trying to date them. For instance, I know Lorina gets off on crowds but doesn’t like them close enough to touch her. She’s a sucker for tulips, avoids chocolate like the plague, and her earbuds blare dubstep before she races, but the rest of the time, it’s country love songs all the way.
What I didn’t know is that Lorina can dance, and like everything else she does, she’s damn good at it when she finally lets herself have a little fun. She’s having a blast tonight. She hasn’t stopped smiling since we parked the moto well over three hours ago, and I haven’t either.
She’s so easy to be with, and I shouldn’t be surprised that this part works too. Everything else since I’ve been here…it’s like it just makes sense. Teasing her at breakfast. Lorina getting her revenge during our workouts in her warehouse gym. I’m still not sure why she’ll only kiss me good night, then ban me to my room, but I guess it could be worse.
She whistles and claps when the couple butchering a song on the karaoke stage finishes, Lorina leaning toward me to whisper over the scattered applause, “Oh my God, that was so awful!”
I chuckle as she sits back in her chair, taking another sip of her beer. A new guy on the stage starts uh-ing and snapping to a beat, and as she cracks up, my eyes trace my favorite scar on her forearm: the first one I ever watched bleed. It wasn’t big, but it was deep, and I couldn’t believe how furious she was that she had to stop for the day beca
use she needed stitches. She never cried, though. Just argued and yelled until she finished her teenaged fit with a kicked-over chair.
Lorina glances at me, a hint of a smile on her lips. “What?”
I lean forward to rest my temple against my fist, knowing there are so many more of those scars to be found on her body. I also know where every single one of them should be. Ten years’ worth of wrecks she always bounced back from, until she couldn’t anymore.
I am so in love with this woman, it’s embarrassing, and I’m buzzed just enough to let the words slip from my mouth. “Marry me, Tigrotta.”
She cracks up laughing before she points at me. “Not funny, and now, more than ever, you need to stop doing that.”
I let it slide—she’s reacted worse. “Perché?”
“That’s, like, the sixth time.”
“Undici. Eleven.” Lorina stares at me, and I clear my throat, the truth a little thicker than I expected. “I asked you twice this year. This is eleven.” Her cheeks darken under the dim lights, but there’s a smile brewing in her lips that spells nothing but trouble. I reach over and cover her hand with mine, my voice more serious than she’s ever heard when I take a breath, then look deep into her eyes. “Lorina…”
The blood drains from her face as her eyes widen. “Oh my God, I—”
“Lorina,” I interrupt, barely able to keep a straight face. “Braking markers are not suggestions.”
She blinks at me. And blinks at me. Then she groans, pulling her hand from mine and taking a deep pull from her beer. “I really hate you for that.”
My eyebrow twitches, but I do my best not to react any more than that. I probably deserve it. Actually, I know I do.
She toys with the label on her beer bottle, but she’s not paying attention to the singer on the stage anymore, and I probably need to get her home. She never stays up this late, and I doubt it’s going to stop her from knocking on my door at the crack of dawn to make me go running.
“You ready to go, cara?”
She shrugs. “Yeah.”
But we haven’t even started to move when a blur of blond hair appears from freaking nowhere, practically tackling Lorina in her seat. “Oh my God, what are you doing here? I saw your Instagram post. Do you know it’s a week night?”
Fight or flight? Fight or flight?
Lorina resembles a squished fish before the blond woman pulls back, and then Lorina is right there with her—squealing like all her dreams came true as she leaps up from her seat to better hug…whoever that is. “Holy crap! When did you get home?”
“Like two days ago! Billy told me about your hair, but I didn’t believe him. Now I gotta pay the jerk ten bucks!”
They pull apart, laughing, and start messing with what’s left of Lorina’s curls, a tall presence taking up the space to my left. I catch a whiff of Old Spice, and the pieces start clicking into place before I ever look up. When I do, sure as anything, there’s my Yaalon teammate and the reigning World Champion: Billy King.
I clear my throat and rise, my heart pounding in my chest and no idea what he’s going to say. We’ve been cool so far, but that’s all I’d call it: cool. He very much knows he’s on the way out, and I very much know it’s people like me threatening his career. But mostly, we’ve been fine. Guy’s a hell of a card player.
“Massimo,” he drawls, a twang to his voice that’s thankfully more smug than sinister. “Weren’t aware you were in town.”
Yeah, and I would’ve rather kept it that way. He reports to Angelo, same as I do.
“Hi, I’m Taryn Ledell,” the blond woman says, reaching her hand out toward me.
I shake it firmly, a little surprised once I get a better look at her. Would’ve considered her way out of Billy’s league, but good for him, I guess.
“Massimo Vitolo.”
“Oh yeah. I know.”
I flinch at the implication in her words, unsure who has been talking about me: Billy or Lorina. My eyes dart to Lorina. Who is completely avoiding my gaze.
“Anyway…have y’all been here long? How’s the karaoke been?”
“Awful,” Lorina says with a chuckle. “It’s been…yeah. Anyway, I think we were probably about to head out?” She looks at me with half a shrug, and I nod, not really in the mood to socialize more than this.
“Well, y’all will have to come have dinner at the house soon.” Taryn’s grin drifts from me to Lorina, the latter elbowing the former. “What?”
“Taryn’s right,” Billy says. “Y’all should come have dinner before we go back. Massimo.” He extends his hand to me with that same haughty smile. Until his grip tightens a little as he leans closer, breathing, “Be careful, buddy.”
The hell is that supposed to mean?
He lets me go and claps me on the back, then walks over to Taryn and gently steers her away from Lorina and toward the bar. “Let’s go, honey. I need a drink.”
“Lor, you really do gotta come to the house, though. I have to tell you something. Text me!” Taryn waves, Lorina waving back until Taryn whips around to Billy. “Wait, you need a what? Why?”
I blow out a breath for Billy’s sake, glad I’m not the one getting Taryn’s blue-eyed glare. She’s scary. But it makes perfect sense to me why Billy likes her. No woman on the planet scares me more than Lorina.
I drop some cash on the table before I look to her. “Now are you ready to go, cara?”
She chuckles, but it doesn’t last as long as it should, and I already know what’s happening. Where her head is. And it’s not in this karaoke bar with me. “Yeah.”
We’re not far from her parked moto—we bar crawled for a bit before stopping at the last place to eat. But it doesn’t matter that the rest of Memphis didn’t get the memo and is gearing up for the night: couples flirting down the sidewalks as the laughter from the bars grows louder with the music. Lorina’s steps start to drag the closer we get to her Dabria.
Once we’re finally beside it, she goes stiff, her heels dug into the ground and her arms crossed over her chest. I groan, pivoting toward her and turning my back on the moto she won’t look at. “Cosa, Lorina?” She shakes her head, looking down, and I tell myself that no matter what, I need to stay calm and patient. It’s what she needs. “This is how we get home, cara. We do not have another way.”
She nods, swiping at her cheek with the back of her hand before she looks up at me, shrugging a shoulder against the busy street like everything’s fine. “I know. Let’s go.”
Christ.
I need to get her on the moto. I need to break all the speed limits with her on the seat behind me until she’s smiling like she did earlier. But I don’t move. I can never seem to make myself do the right thing when she’s crying, and I’m sick and tired of her crying.
She’s not the only one who’s worried about what’s going to happen, but at least I’m trying to move forward, trying to stay positive. But I can’t do all this by myself, and I need some kind of sign from her that there’s at least a little bit of hope somewhere. That any part of this is going to get better.
It doesn’t have to be everything, but I’m starving on nothing, and I don’t know why she can’t seem to remember that just because I have a dick in my pants, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a heart in my chest too.
She’s not going through any of this alone. She never was.
“Lorina…” I scrub a hand over my face, downshifting past avoidance and steering right into the truth. “Why am I here?”
“I don’t know.” She sniffles. “You wanted to go for a ride?”
“No. Why am I in America, Lorina? Not at home, with my brother. Why?”
She bites her shaking lip, but she can’t even say it—the simplest answer to all the fucking questions.
I gesture absently in her direction. “Fantastico.”
She looks away, wiping at h
er eyes again, and this is probably all going to blow up in my face, but she has completely forgotten who she is, and she won’t speak up for what she wants.
I head over to her and take her face in my hands. A stunned breath pops from her lips, but it’s late and I’m tired, and I don’t care about pretending anymore. “Lorina, I am right here. Your moto is right here. You have always taken what you want, and you can take these things now. Take your win, Lorina. No one is going to stop you.”
She shakes her head at me, tears running down her cheeks. “I don’t feel like that person anymore, Massimo. I just… I can’t.”
The frustration bursts from me in a gritted yell. I walk away from her, tearing my hands through my hair when she sobs brokenly behind me.
I’m losing her. Everything we’ve worked for, the whole reason I put our careers ahead of what I felt for ten goddamn years, and she’s letting it all slip through her fingers instead of fighting for any of it. And that’s not the woman I fell in love with.
She sniffles behind me, her voice cracked and raw. “So what now? You leave? Go back to Italy? Give up on me like everyone else?”
I grit my teeth, looking up at the stars over her city, and I breathe in slow. Deep.
She still doesn’t get it, no matter how many times I’ve tried to tell her.
I look back at her, and it shatters me. How alone she looks, how small and scared, and that’s not my Tigrotta. But whether she’s in jeans or leathers, crying or smiling, in love with me or unrequited hate, she will always be my Lorina. And I will never, ever give up on her.
I walk over and pull her into me, hugging my arms around her. It takes her a second before she hugs me back, but she does: her hands settling tentatively on my back, then slowly sliding higher until she’s gripping the hell out of my shoulders, tucking her face into my neck.
Everything about her shivers and shakes as she quietly cries where no one but me knows the truth, and it’s ripping me apart with every single one of her tears that slips down my neck and dips below the collar of my shirt. But I hold her tighter instead of pulling back and yelling at her, and I bite back every piece of advice, every sliver of proof from wrecks past that says she’ll come back again.
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