by Zoe Chant
"I said east!" Saffron shouted into his ear.
"I know," he called back. "We'll take the next exit, turn around, and head back."
"Oh!" she said. "To throw them off."
"That's right."
He had to concentrate on driving after that. He'd made an effort to sound confident for Saffron's sake, but he was woozy from the pain and blood loss.
They didn't even care if they hit Saffron, he thought. That bullet could just as easily have gone into her back, and his bear surged up in a burst of protective rage at the thought.
However, he guessed the reason why the Black Wings hadn't continued shooting was because they'd realized the odds of accidentally killing Saffron were too high. Their boss wanted her back alive.
Not if Remy could help it. He and his bear agreed: they weren't getting their hands on her.
Chapter Six
Saffron hoped she hadn't oversold her ability to find the cabin. But she didn't want to admit how unsure she was. Remy was hurt, and she'd seen by the way he moved that he was in pain. They needed to find somewhere safe enough to get some rest and take a look at his injury. And the Black Wings had already proved that they were going to check motels.
As Remy had said, he turned around at the next exit and went east. It was full dark now, and Saffron hoped that, from the air, they were just another anonymous headlight in a stream of traffic. Every time another motorcycle approached in the oncoming lanes, recognizable by its single headlight instead of a pair, she flinched and turned her head away, even with the helmet and the darkness hiding her face.
After an hour or so, she asked Remy to pull off so she could look at the map. He stopped the bike in the lighted plaza of a gas station and refueled, warily watching the traffic pulling off the freeway. With his helmet off, she could see how pale and drawn he looked.
"I think we should take a look at your leg."
"It's healing," he said.
Even so, she knew from the way her own shifter healing worked that he would be tired and hungry. Their accelerated healing took a toll on the body. He couldn't keep driving forever.
"Do you want me to take a turn?"
"Take a turn?" he repeated.
"On the bike. Let me drive for awhile."
"Do you know how?"
She hesitated, tempted to exaggerate her experience, but decided it would be smarter to go for truth instead. Besides, she didn't like the idea of lying to him. "Not really. Just those little moped-type dirt bikes, a long time ago. Some of my friends in high school had them, but my parents would never buy me one." That was about the time she'd started dyeing her hair and begging for a tattoo. Rebellion, small-town-kid style.
And anyway, even if she'd ridden before, she fully expected Remy to refuse. If he was like most of the bikers she knew, his motorcycle was his baby. He wouldn't want anyone else to touch it.
But, as always, he surprised her. "Get on. I'll walk you through it."
He took her through the controls twice, showing her where everything was and what it all did. Then he had her start the motorcycle and take it for a slow spin around the gas station parking lot by herself, while he waited by the pumps so she wouldn't have to deal with a passenger too.
At first she had trouble controlling it. The heavy touring bike was a big change from the little dirt bikes she'd ridden as a teenager. Her shoulders ached from trying to wrestle it around, and it wobbled so badly she felt like she was constantly falling over, with overcorrections making her nearly fall the other way.
And then, just like riding a bicycle, she suddenly got a feel for it. She gave it a little more gas and found that it was much easier to balance at higher speeds. A delighted grin broke across her face. She circled the parking lot in a faster loop, and as she sped past Remy, he pointed and called, "Take it down the road a bit. Get the hang of it."
This freeway exit had led them into a small town. She drove past a handful of freeway chain businesses, tentatively and then more confidently feeding the machine gas, and thrilling to its responsiveness underneath her. After all those years of daydreaming about it, she was finally on a motorcycle, a real one, big and powerful beneath her.
Would Creed have ever let her do this with his bike? She couldn't even imagine it. Creed had never been interested in her as a person at all. He just wanted her to be arm candy and to look pretty on the back of his bike. He would never have let her actually operate the bike itself.
As she turned the bike around in the parking lot of a chain restaurant, she daydreamed about getting a bike of her own and going out on the road side by side with Remy. As much as she loved riding behind him, riding alongside him would be every bit as good—or better. Handling the controls of the machine made her feel like she was riding a great beast harnessed to her every whim. It was a good bike, responsive and smooth as she changed speed, quick to brake and easy to turn now that she was leaning into it rather than fighting it.
When she rode back into the gas station parking lot, she didn't see Remy at first. Then she spotted him sitting on the curb outside the gas station. She rode to a smooth stop in front of him, swung the kickstand down, and pulled off her helmet.
Remy struggled to his feet. "How was it?"
Saffron broke into delighted laughter. She swung off the bike and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him hard. "Amazing," she said when they broke apart. "Simply amazing. Thank you."
He grinned back. "You're an absolute natural. I've never seen anybody pick it up so fast. I think it'd be a good idea if you don't drive it on the highway yet, since you don't have a license. At least, I assume not." She shook her head. "So let's not take the risk unless we have to. But now you can, just in case you need to. And you can take her over whenever we're riding on back roads. Get some practice."
She hugged him again. "You're the best. No, really, Remy, you are."
"Look who's talking. I love how you were just willing to get up there and go for it." He kissed her, pulling her lower lip lightly through his teeth. "You don't let anything stop you."
***
Back on the road, they cruised through the night. Saffron had found the nearest town to the hunting cabin on the map; she'd been worried that she wouldn't remember it, but it came back to her once she saw it written down—Newgrange Falls.
Remy seemed to be holding up okay, although he was still visibly tired and less cheerful than seemed to be his usual operating mode. At Saffron's urging, they stopped to pick up a sack of burgers from a White Castle before businesses started to close for the night. She ate one and Remy wolfed down two of them in the parking lot. Then he tucked the remainder into the saddlebags and they got back on the road.
It was around midnight when they took the Newgrange Falls exit. Saffron was half-dozing, leaning on Remy's back. She stirred herself back to full wakefulness when he pulled the bike to a stop on the side of the road. There was nothing around them but trees, and the glimmers of a few house lights back in the woods.
"I think you'd better take over from here," Remy said, resting his uninjured leg on the ground to prop up the bike. "If you feel up to it, that is. Easier than trying to give me directions."
"I'm not entirely sure I can find it," she confessed. "It's been a long time, and it's hard to see landmarks in the dark."
"If you can't, we'll find a place to spend the night and go on in the morning."
They switched places, and Saffron settled into the still-unfamiliar driver's seat. It was warm from Remy's body heat. His arms came to rest around her waist, circling her loosely.
"Please don't hate me if I accidentally drive your bike into a tree," she said, starting the engine.
"You won't."
I'm glad one of us is confident of that.
She drove slowly along the dark road, seeking echoes of those long-ago memories. The road took them through a small town, the handful of businesses shuttered and dark. That Dairy Queen on the corner ... hadn't her dad bought her an ice cream there, all those years ago?
After that they crossed a bridge, and she stopped in the middle of it, not concerned about traffic; they hadn't passed a single other vehicle since turning off the freeway.
"What?" Remy asked.
"I think I remember this creek. We used to fish here." She peered over the edge of the bridge. There was a bright moon, and water flashed beneath them. "If it's the same creek, there will be a bait and tackle shop on the other side, and the turnoff to the cabin is right after that."
There was a bait and tackle shop right where she thought it should be, although it was obvious in the beam of the motorcycle's headlight that it had been closed for years—the sign was weathered and faded, and long weeds grew in what had once been a gravel parking lot. Saffron proceeded down the road by stops and starts, peering intently at the rutted driveways to the right. The cabin didn't have a mailbox, but the turn had been marked with a rusty 55-gallon drum that someone had placed there. And—yes, it was still there, a lot rustier than she remembered, and with a few bullet holes where someone had decided to use it for target practice.
"I think this is it."
She let Remy take over the driving, since she wasn't confident enough to navigate the motorcycle up the cabin's narrow, switchbacking access road in the dark. Trees appeared and vanished in the headlight beam, some of their branches hanging so low they both had to duck. At one point they were stopped by a tree that had fallen across the road. They worked together to drag the motorcycle over it.
"Nobody's been up here in a while," Remy said.
"No, I don't think my dad's friend gets up here much anymore. I know Dad hasn't been back for a couple years at least."
Thinking about her parents made her worried all over again. Please be okay. Maybe in the morning, she'd borrow Remy's cell phone and call them, assuming he got reception at the cabin. They were probably as worried about her as she was about them. She could at least let them know that she was okay and with someone who could help her.
There were no more fallen trees, and in another hundred yards or so, they reached the cabin. It looked smaller than Saffron remembered it. Her childhood memories had made it seem like a fantastic hunting lodge, but now she saw it was just a tiny one-room cabin, with a sagging porch and moss growing on its shake roof. It was still solidly built, however. There were no lights in the windows and no sign of recent habitation.
Remy pulled off his helmet and sniffed the air. "No woodsmoke," he explained. "No engine exhaust either, except for ours. I can't pick up human smells so well when I'm not a bear, but I don't think anyone's here."
He parked the motorcycle out of sight behind the cabin, sheltered by a pine tree from aerial view, and they went around to the front. The door was locked. "I don't suppose you have a key," Remy said.
"Sorry, no."
"Well, I guess we're just gonna have to apologize to your dad's friend for breaking and entering." He grasped the doorknob and gave it a powerful twist. There was a snap somewhere in the locking mechanism, and the door swung open on a dark, musty-smelling room.
Remy took a small flashlight out of his pocket and snapped it on. He played the beam across a small room with a bare wooden floor. There was a bunk bed made out of poles, a table, and four chairs. An old sofa sat near the door, and there was a wood stove with a neat stack of wood beside it.
"Don't suppose you remember where the light switch is?" Remy asked, feeling along the inside of the wall.
"There isn't one," Saffron said. "There's no electricity up here. I remember us using hurricane lanterns and candles when I was here before."
They found a box of candles on a shelf, along with a book of matches. A couple of old soup cans with candle drippings in the bottom indicated what the cabin's residents had used for candle holders. Remy closed the door, propping it shut with a piece of wood, while Saffron lit a few of the candles and set them around the place, on the table and on top of the stove. They filled the room with a flickering, homey light.
The bunk beds had nothing on them except bare mattresses, but the blankets and sheets turned out to be in a couple of large Rubbermaid totes stacked in a corner, sealed tightly to keep out mice and insects. They were musty-smelling, but clean as far as Saffron could tell. She brushed off the mattress to make sure there weren't any little squirmy surprises, and then made up the bed.
"No running water either, I'm guessing," Remy said. He fished in his saddlebags and set the squashed bag of leftover White Castle burgers on the table.
"There's a well with a hand pump in back of the cabin, and an outhouse. That's it, I'm afraid."
"Hell, I grew up on a ranch. I like a girl who doesn't mind roughing it." He kissed her cheek, then limped outside with a bucket he found beside the door.
Saffron continued her inventory of the cabin. She found some metal cups and plates on a shelf, along with a coffeepot, a battered tin cookpot, and a slightly mouse-nibbled box of plastic tableware. There were a few other odds and ends, such as a half-empty can of somewhat stale-smelling coffee and a few cans of soup, all past their expiration date, that she eyed dubiously.
Remy came back in with the bucket of water. "It's nice out there," he said. "I forgot how good it is to be in the woods, away from electricity and city lights. My bear loves the night smells."
"My fox is the same way." Now that he'd mentioned it, she became aware of her animal's contentment. Her fox felt no danger here.
Remy set down the water bucket and sat heavily in a chair, stretching out his leg. The sight of his blood-stiff jeans leg startled Saffron out of her relaxed mood. "Can we take care of your leg now?" she asked.
"It's probably healed by now." But he unzipped his jeans and lifted his hips enough to pull them down.
Blood was crusted all down his thigh. Saffron dipped the cookpot full of water and knelt beside his chair. "We should have picked up first-aid supplies in one of the towns we passed through," she said, dabbing at his leg with the dampened edge of a clean pillowcase.
"It wouldn't help much. Stitches would just need to be taken out a few hours after they were put in. All I need is rest and food."
"Hey, I'm a shifter too, remember? I know how fast we heal. But I also know we heal better if things are cleaned up." She held up her hand, fingers spread and palm out. "See this?"
Remy caught her hand gently in his. "You have pretty little fingers."
"It's not the fingers, smartass." She wiggled the digits in question, then turned her hand over, palm up. "Feel that hard thing at the base of my thumb?"
Remy stroked the ball of his own thumb over the area she'd indicated. "Feels nice and soft to me," he said, and raised her hand to kiss the palm.
Saffron struggled for composure as a flush rose to her cheeks ... and other areas. The soft warmth lingered where his lips had touched her palm. "There's a little lump under the skin," she said, trying to keep her voice even. "I fell off my bike on gravel when I was a little kid and got some embedded in my palm. Mom picked most of it out, but the skin grew over it before she got that one. So unless you want scabs and dirt and crusty jeans being part of your permanent skin surface, buddy ..."
"Oh, hey, I can do you one better." He was still holding her hand; now he placed her palm against his uninjured thigh, on the outside, and brushed it across his skin. "Feel that?"
"I do." The skin felt rough and pebbly in that area, like it was very dry.
"Road rash. Wiped out on my bike—the big-kid kind." He smiled lopsidedly. "That's probably a bit of the road you're feeling."
She touched her fingertips to the area again, feeling the tiny hard pinpricks under the skin.
"The funny thing is, it seems to work its way out of my skin eventually," Remy said. "For a couple of years I had a ton of small gravel embedded under there, all up and down my thigh. Then it just started showing up at the surface. No pain or anything. Mostly I'd wake up with my sheets feeling gritty, with bits of sand in them. Now it's just down to that little patch there."
"I wonder why mine never did?"
"Maybe it's too deep," he suggested. "Or maybe it's not causing your body any irritation, so it doesn't feel like it has to. Mine used to itch a lot, and my bear would complain about it."
He kept holding her hand, and Saffron realized that she was now lying across his lap, with her chest brushing the tops of his thighs and the side of her arm very nearly touching his crotch, where an erection was slowly hardening in his boxers.
"You know, if I stay down here, I'm not sure how much of this I'm gonna get cleaned up."
"I don't mind," he said, sweeping his fingers in little circles across the back of her hand.
"Yes, well, I do—or, I should say, I'd rather clean you up first, and enjoy a bit more exploration around this area later." She sat back on her heels, and retrieved her hand with a light, teasing brush across the rising bulge in his underwear.
"Foxy lady," he murmured, grinning down at her.
"The foxiest," she agreed dryly. "Especially when I'm on my knees wiping up your blood." She soaked the pillowcase in the water and began making a more thorough effort to wash off his thigh so she could see better.
In spite of his protests about being fully healed, Remy tensed a little when she washed the red, raised area where the bullet had torn a crease through his thigh. Earlier in the evening, it would have been bad; she could tell by the amount of blood. It looked like the bullet had gone into the muscle and exited just above his knee. Now it had healed to an angry-looking red area in both locations. By morning it would probably be impossible to tell anything had happened.
"I guess I haven't really been thinking ahead at all," she said, concentrating on her work rather than looking up at him. "I didn't leave with any plan in mind except getting away. Even after I met you, I was still just dealing with one thing after another. Now we have someplace to stay for a little while, but I don't think we should stay that long. They might find out about this place, and anyway, we'll have to leave to get food and stuff. And I don't know where in the world to go from here."