2HotCurvesAhead
Page 18
We ride for hours, finally stopping at a roadside dinner. In the parking lot Ace helps me off the bike and the road ache engulfs me, making my body boneless. He takes my hand, our feet echoing on the pavement as he leads me in the direction of the diner. I shiver from the chill in the air and he puts his arm around me, instantly warming my flesh. We sit down on the same bench seat at a window booth. The sun is just rising in the east and streaks of its rebirth colors are slanting across the horizon, reaching upwards to kiss the sky.
The diner is nearly deserted except for a truck driver and the waitress who immediately brings us menus.
“What do you want, beautiful?” he asks.
“Whatever you’re having,” I say.
“Two coffees, scrambled eggs and rye toast with strawberry jam,” he instructs the waitress who nods and leaves to put in our food order.
“Let’s not go back,” I say impulsively. “Let’s just keep going—wherever the road takes us.” My head is clear for the first time in months. KISS. Keep it simple, stupid. Just going on and starting a new life would be keeping it simple, right? No motorcycle club, no gunshots, no family with insane connections and expectations. But a hunk of a man who keeps my senses reeling. Who cares how long it lasts. I want some living done before I grow old.
“Wish that I could,” he says, running a finger over my lips, making me tremble.
“Why not? A fresh start—away from the club—you could be anything you wanted to be, Ace. What’s your real name? What are your hidden dreams and desires?”
He pulls away but not before I catch a trace of hope sparking deep in his eyes. For a split second I’ve seen a real human being under the bad-boy persona. He pinches the bridge of his nose, twisting his lips up into a grimace of a smile.
“I have to go back. The whole damn club counts on me to keep things working for them.” His tone is laced with regret and his expression tightens.
I chew at my bottom lip. “What did you do before running Heaven’s Devils?” I press.
“Never had the chance to do anything but club business. Born into it. Dad was the prez before me. Died ten years ago and I took over.”
“You were young to have such heavy responsibilities.” My heart bleeds for him.
“Yeah, well, some of us don’t get a choice.” His look of grim determination was hard to take. I look out the window. One word came to mind. Escape. Now I want it for both of us.
“If you could, would you leave the life?”
His eyes search mine.
The waitress took that moment to plunk down our breakfasts.
“Never gave it much thought,” he says as he picks up the salt and shakes it over his food.
I pick a couple of cheap paper napkins out of the bulging silver dispenser covered with greasy fingerprints and put one on the table in front of Ace. The other I begin to fold accordion-like by my plate with my fidgety fingers. “I can find a job in accounting. The profession pays well. You could go back to school while I find work. Take up a trade. What are you interested in?”
“Are you for real?” he asks softly.
“Yes. How about it? What do you like doing?” My heart is hammering in my chest. This is a moment that will define my life.
“Shit. I don’t know. Never gave it any thought. I like to build things with my hands. I rebuilt my Harley.” He rubs his chin as he thinks about it.
“If you go into business, I’ll be able to keep the books. Save us a lot of money and worry.” I toss the sliver of napkin on the table where it fans out spontaneously again. “I have some money saved up. Enough to buy us some time.”
“Want you doing that—keeping the books—no matter how this goes down, darlin’.” He grins and takes a forkful of eggs and shovels them into his mouth. I lean over and swipe a bit of ketchup from his lower lip with my forefinger. He quickly captures my finger in his mouth and gives it a quick suck, his high cheekbones becoming sharp enough to cut ice.
“Would you at least think about it?” I ask.
“Yeah, okay, but no promises. It’s hard to leave the life behind. No one wants to let you go.”
“I know.” Fuck. Did I just say that?
His look of surprise says the gig is up.
His eyes narrow as he asks, “What are you not telling me?”
My heart sinks into my boots. I swallow hard. And just when we’re making headway. But I know it’s also not right to be keeping this from Ace any longer.
“I know about the life,” I begin tentatively and add, “too much actually.”
“How come?”
“My dad, he’s still in it up to his eyeballs.” I look out the window. The wonderful colors of a new day have faded and a dusty glaze is settling over the desert.
“Where’s Nowhere, USA?” he growls.
“Alamo. My old man’s Preacher, prez of Death Raiders.” I take a deep breath and pray.
“Fuck! No kiddin’.” He gives me an inscrutable look and pushes his nearly empty plate away, his fork rattling. “Well, don’t that just beat all.” Disgust tinges his tone and my heart falls further into my boots.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you because I knew this would happen—that you’d react this way. I can’t help who my parents are.”
“Next you’ll tell me your mother is Typhoid Mary.”
“No, we’re not contagious.” I grimace with the reference. “She was a good mom. Always tried to see to our needs and give us lots of love.”
“Was?”
“Yeah, she got caught in the crossfire.”
“Shit. I’m sorry to hear that. That’s not supposed to happen. Family is sacred.” He swipes his hand over the scruff of his beard and purses his lips. A few strands of hair have escaped from his leather hair tie and my fingers itch to tuck them back into place. He’s a real man’s man. Both arms are tattooed with dragons that look ready to bite the unsuspecting. One has a Latin motto engraved in the banner.
“What’s that say?” I ask as I lean forward and run my finger over the old-school lettering. His flesh is warm and hard beneath my hand.
“Nil Carborundum Illegitimi—don’t let the bastards grind you down.” He smiles grimly.
“Good advice. I live by my family motto—never back down. So where does this leave us?” I ask. I have to know.
“Like the Capulet and Montague families—we’re most likely doomed.”
“You like Shakespeare?” I can feel my eyes widen.
“High school English—Mrs. Fletcher loved the Bard. Me—not so much.” He shrugged. “I think life is tragic enough without writing it down.”
My eyes drift back to the open road. One heads back to possible purgatory while the other’s limitless. The untraveled road that beckons to my soul. “Let’s head south. Mexico. Or we could go up north into Canada. Always wanted to see the Land of the Midnight Sun.”
He takes my hand in both of his and swallows it up. He runs hotter than me. “Wish that I could, beautiful, but I got responsibilities right now I can’t run from—wouldn’t be fair to my people. But maybe, someday, in the not so distant future, I could see leaving this life behind. Make a fresh start. With a woman like you.”
His conflicted look says it all. He was born into this and has to play out the hand he’s been dealt. It chills my heart. No place to hide. The promise of someday stirs something else as well. Maybe given time…
The sun warms my flesh as we walk back to the Harley and glints off the gleaming chrome of the bike. I get on behind Ace, brace myself and give a final longing glance at the road not taken before he fires up the bike.
We sit there for a long time as I wait for him to push off. As the minutes pass I begin to wonder. Hope blazes within me. He’s thinking. I swallow hard. What’s it to be?
Then he dips the bike to the right. We head out onto a new stretch of highway and time falls away. My heart swells with so much emotion that tears begin running down my face under the helmet. I turn my face upward to give a prayer of thanksgiv
ing, the sweet air caressing my cheeks and drying my tears. He’s chosen to set us free.
Post Time
Tabitha Cockburn
Chapter One
The Apprentice
It was refreshing to see that at least one of the women who subscribed to Mates.com actually looked like her profile picture. The two women he had dated from the site had not at all been what their profiles and pictures proclaimed them to be and had turned out to be disasters. The first woman of the two Mates.com dates he had recently attempted, Chastity, had been at least ten years older than the pictures she had posted. The jarring contrast of her raspberry-colored lipstick (most of which she wore on her teeth, rather than her lips) with her dyed flaming red hair had been almost nauseating. After an endless meal at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant during which he constantly found himself ducking to avoid the chip crumbs flying from her mouth as she prattled on about her love for the equine, Jacque had rushed Chastity back to her car with the excuse of feeling a migraine coming on.
Jacque had chosen his second date more carefully. After exchanging a few introductory messages with Caroline, he had asked her to friend him on Facebook so he could get a look at more pictures of her and check out her posts to make sure she wasn’t a total whacko. He was a very busy man and didn’t want to waste his time and money on another farce. He had found Caroline attractive enough, but at five foot seven, she wasn’t as tall as he would have preferred. She had been pleasant, although she hadn’t come across as very bright. Her tits and ass were nice and ample and she chewed with her mouth closed, two positive attributes in Jacque’s eyes. So after a few glasses of wine at a quaint little Italian restaurant (she had listed pasta as her favorite food in her Mates.com profile), he had decided to bring her back to his place to give her a test ride. Thinking he would impress her with his acrobatic ability, he brought her back to one of his barns he was in the midst of renovating into a yoga studio. He had recently outfitted it with trapezes, poles, aerial silks, yoga hammocks, mirrors and other various pieces of equipment that he used in his yoga classes. Jacque had not told Caroline he was a yoga instructor, so when she had gotten a look at his strange setup, she had been visibly shaken and scared and insisted that Jacque take her back to her car immediately.
Jacque had not even tried to explain. She isn’t tall enough anyway, he thought. He wanted an Amazonian woman, a big beautiful woman he could virtually climb on and give pleasure to in all the ways he knew he was capable of. He was wiry, agile and talented, not to mention extremely well-endowed. There was some beautiful Amazon waiting for him out there somewhere he would make very happy. He was completely confident about this.
After returning home that night, feeling a little discouraged, Jacque had poured himself a stiff drink, sat down at his desk and logged into his Mates.com account to remove Caroline from his favorites list. He hoped that she didn’t decide to report him to the dating site as some kind of pervert. He was wishing now that he had given her some sort of explanation, but he had known he wasn’t interested in seeing her again. Just to prevent any future confusion, however, he edited his Mates profile to include Yoga Instructor in his occupation description. My luck can’t be that bad, he thought to himself, as he scrolled through the new list of mates that had been sent to him since he had last logged on.
Jacque sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his dark curly hair as an intriguing picture of one very striking woman in particular caught his eye. He picked up his drink and leaned forward in his chair to get a better look. Gretchen, hmmm, he thought to himself, twirling the ice cubes around in his glass of scotch as he sat back and propped his feet up on the desk to read her profile. The first thing he perused her blog for was height. He did not want to waste any more time dealing with anyone under six foot. There were plenty of pretty little things clamoring for his attention, but they were not his thing. According to Gretchen’s profile, she was six four and “big and beautiful” and by just reading that, he was aroused. Calm down, Jacque old boy. Read a little further before you get too excited.
Her profile was very well written he noted as he read Gretchen’s “About Me” blog. Ah, no wonder, he thought when he got to her occupation. She’s an author. Wow that’s really cool. He wondered what kind of books she wrote. In her physical description, she referred to herself as “big and beautiful” and had chosen yoga, water activities, hiking and other types of exercise as the types of sports and exercise she liked. “Score!” he said aloud. He was one of the best yoga instructors in town. That should be a point in his favor. And “other types of exercise”, I really like that. Endless possibilities.
“I could definitely come up with some workout routines for this beautiful lady,” he said under his breath as he paused in his reading to look at her pictures.
She had quite a few, and was either very photogenic or just downright absolutely perfect as far as he was concerned. Her profile picture was an amazing close-up shot of her sitting on a big rock by a river. She wore her hair in two long braids and short jean shorts with a low-cut tank that showed off her ample cleavage. He had to look closely, but he could have sworn she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her nipples showed prominently through her shirt, virtually making his mouth water by just looking at them. There was another picture of her, bikini-clad, swinging from a rope swing. It was a location he thought he recognized but couldn’t quite place. Her sexy, confident stance made it apparent that she had no hang-ups about her size.
“Damn!” he said as he stared at the picture, imagining her swinging naked, long legs wrapped around colorful aerial silks, as he called out commands to her. I want to fuck this big beautiful woman senseless in one of my yoga hammocks. This had been a fantasy of his since he had purchased them for his practice studio that Caroline had obviously thought was some type of torture chamber. He had put the proceeds from his latest horse races to good use by remodeling a small barn on his property into a practice studio with state-of-the-art equipment. He had to laugh and thought again that it would have been a good idea to give his disaster-of-a-date earlier that evening some sort of explanation for the strange-looking setup. He was glad he’d taken the saddles and bridles out of the studio. That would been even more reason for her to consider him some sort of perverse freak.
As Jacque continued reading, he sipped his scotch and stroked his chin. He had an incredibly good feeling about this woman. He sat up straighter in in his chair and scooted closer to the computer when he read that she was an Ohio girl, and although he wasn’t surprised that she listed horses as her favorite animal, it gave him an excited churning in his belly that spread down into his loins when he scrolled back up to take another look at the rope swing photo. He had been the winner of quite a few races at River Downs. If she was a horse lover, he was pretty sure she had attended some races there.
Maybe he did have a reason to get excited. On paper, or computer rather, Gretchen seemed to be the Amazonian woman of his dreams. He felt confident she would be impressed when she read that he was an acclaimed jockey and would very likely even recognize his name. Although his occupation did not seem to hold a lot of sway in Texas, jockeys, especially winning jockeys, were highly respected and admired in the Midwest, and he was quite well known on the horse racing circuit.
Jacque had moved to Texas to train horses. A fellow jockey had told him about a quarter horse ranch in the Texas hill country just outside of Austin. The place had an opening for a trainer and was willing to pay big bucks for someone with Jacque’s experience. Jacque had a good friend in Austin that he had visited on several occasions and had fallen in love with the city, so the opportunity had been like a dream come true.
Gretchen’s profile was very thorough and read almost like a novel. It was much longer than any of the other starkly written profiles he had looked at on dating sites. I look forward to reading one of your novels, sweet Gretchen, he thought nodding in affirmation at the description of the big beautiful woman unfolding before him. After reading the portion
of her blog about her ideal man, he became so excited he set his glass down, stood up and danced a jig around the room. She did not describe her ideal mate as tall, dark and handsome. Although she was an “unusually tall, large woman,” she stated in her profile, she was okay with dating men smaller than herself.
Jacque sat back down and finished his drink as he studied her photos and tried to come up with a clever message to send her, but nothing came to mind. Maybe I should sleep on it. He had spent a long day training an obstinate young horse before his disappointing date with Caroline. It would be better to approach this with a clear, well-rested mind. He did not want to fuck this up. He fell asleep that night with visions of Gretchen swinging naked on aerial silks. He awoke the next morning with the vague remnants of a dream in which he was riding on her back, holding her braids like reins, smacking her bottom, and in the dream she was loving every minute of it.
Chapter Two
Front-Runner
Twenty-eight-year-old Gretchen Gunther, newly relocated to Austin from Wapakoneta, Ohio, still couldn’t believe she was here. What a beautiful city, she thought, gazing out the window of her third-floor apartment overlooking Zilker Park. What took me so long to move here? She had visited a friend in Austin twice before for big music festivals and had experienced such a good time she had been dreaming of moving to the exciting city ever since. So far she loved everything about living here, from the eclectic people to the wide variety of activities and festivals, not to mention the awesome weather. It was a beautiful sunny day, mild for November in comparison to Ohio. It was weird to see people wearing shorts and sandals this time of year.
Looking for her running shoes and sports bra, Gretchen rummaged through the antique chest of drawers she had picked up at funky used furniture store downtown. She was meeting her friend at the lake behind her apartment to join the masses of runners and walkers who flocked to the jogging trails on a daily basis. She pulled her long dark-blonde hair into a ponytail and sat on her bed to put on her running shoes as she watched herself in the antique free-standing mirror that matched the chest of drawers. All the fresh air and exercise she had been enjoying had given her a radiance that she hadn’t had in Ohio. She stood up and smiled at herself in the mirror.