by Nessa Connor
“I mean, I don’t know what to do.”
“For the passenger, there isn’t even a learning curve. You just sit comfortably behind me and hold on.”
Her head spun. Greg wanted her on the back of his bike. She knew enough to know that when she held on, it meant having her arms wrapped around his waist as they tore through the streets. The idea of putting her arms around him sounded wonderful but his invitation also embarrassed her. It seemed silly, but it bothered her to have to admit to him that she had no plans for the weekend at all. “I don’t know.”
“I understand that it’s sudden, unfairly short notice, but the idea just occurred to me. So if you can’t, I understand, but if you have something booked that you can cancel, I would love to show you how this place looks from a powerful motorcycle. It’s quite an experience.” He winked. “It would even help you understand Carly a bit better—her love of motorcycles, if nothing else.”
There was more than a grain of truth in that. “I do have some things…”
“Organize your day.” He handed her a business card. “See if you can’t move things, condense things, so we can have an hour or two. Day or night, morning or afternoon, whatever suits you.”
It bothered her that part of her reluctance was her own internal stereotype of bikers as untrustworthy, dangerous men who didn’t respect women. But going with him during the day should be safe enough. And they’d be in public and she desperately wanted to taste what it was like. “I’ll see what I can do, but you’d have to have me back at my place at whatever time I say.”
He broke out in a smile. “Of course. You call the shots. If you don’t like the place I take you, we’ll go where you want, except a drive-through place. I hate fast food. And you’d be delivered to your door at the time you choose.”
“Then I’ll give you a call in the morning and let you know.”
“You can call me anytime from this moment on and I’ll be delighted to hear from you.”
She watched him walk away, admiring his build, his confidence. She’d heard prison broke a man or made him worse. Greg seemed unaffected. He couldn’t be totally unaffected by years behind bars, but he didn’t show any ill effects.
As the bark of the motorcycle told her he’d shifted gears (she’d learned that from Carly) and they disappeared, she looked at the card.
Greg “Wrench” Jones
Mechanic
The Chosen Few motorcycle club
At the bottom was his phone number.
She held the card tight, pressed between thumb and forefinger as if she expected it to slip away.
Turning to go into the classroom and get her things she caught sight of Brian heading out. She stepped in front of him. “I’d like to know if your father read my note, Brian.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“Did he send me a note?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything when he read it?”
He nodded.
“What did he say?”
A pained look crossed his face. “I’ll get in trouble…”
“It’s just you and me, Brian. Please tell me what he said and I promise that no one else will know.” She watched him struggle with her request. “It’s okay, Brian, no matter what he said.”
Brian nodded. “He said, ‘fuck that bitch.’” Then he stood stock still as if waiting for lightning to strike.
“Thanks for telling me, Brian. I guess you should go on home.”
He darted off without another word, leaving Melanie frustrated. Monday she would think the situation through from the top. There had to be some other way to get to the man and make him see what he was doing to his son.
Before then, however, she was going on her first motorcycle ride, unless she chickened out. The prospect frightened her a little, but at the same time it had her practically giggly. She tried to imagine being with him on his bike, heading down the freeway on a sunny Saturday. There would be millions of people and cars on the road—there always were in LA. Of course, Murphy’s Law being what it was, she considered the odds of them riding past Donna Turnbull had to be extremely good. The idea made her laugh.
Things just worked out that way more often than people knew. Lateral synchronicity, it was called and it worked for good and ill, but the more she thought about it, the better she liked the idea. She had no idea whether spooking Donna that way would be good or bad, but it sure as hell would be fun.
* * *
Late Saturday morning, under a startlingly clear California sky, a dream came true and Melanie felt as if she’d suddenly come alive, awakened from a coma. Every fiber of her being tingled with excitement. In this dream she found herself sitting on the back of a mechanical monster that throbbed with unbelievable power as it tore down the asphalt ribbon called Pacific Coast Highway, following the coastline. It was a waking dream. Better than that, it was actually happening.
Dressed in blue jeans and a sweatshirt, she was on that bike with her arms wrapped around Greg Jones’ waist, her helmeted head against his hard back. Off to the side she watched the ocean, the beach, the entire world swirl into a maze of color. A warm wind brushed over her skin; the pulse of Greg’s heart pounded loud in her ear, and she had been transported to some different world where everything was startlingly fresh and new.
At first, the abrupt shifting of their weight on the motorcycle as he turned or changed lanes alarmed her. She thought they’d fall over at any moment, but soon she realized his movements, those shifts, weren’t sudden at all. Exposed to the elements, with the road flying by inches below them, they felt that way, but everything she’d learned about Newton actually worked, and the big bike stayed upright. Soon she calmed down, grew accustomed to the sensations and quickly fell under the spell of the rhythm of being on a motorcycle at speed. The intoxicating vibrations of the throbbing engine and those two big tires covering miles of blacktop thrilled her.
How have I lived so long without trying this?
Even now she couldn’t escape the comic idea of them flying down the road and passing Donna Turnbull in her green Volvo, and slowing down to wave at her.
“What on earth were you doing on a motorcycle, Melanie?” she’d hear on Monday. “And with that… biker?”
Now she relaxed as the bike took her up the coast and speed had never felt so wonderful. The question was where was Greg taking her? More to the point, what was she letting herself in for? Being with a man like this was uncharted territory. Although he was polite, almost refined, she was smart enough to know that different subcultures, like bikers, invariably had different codes of conduct. And she knew nothing about them beyond the barbarians the movies made them out to be. Certainly Greg was more aggressive, more confident than most men she knew, but beyond that? Well, he was also an ex con. A man who’d been punished for a major crime—someone who had taken a life. But soldiers took lives and no one thought that meant they were a danger.
Melanie had her doubts, her anxieties. She also knew there was only one way to find out what Greg was really like. It meant taking a gamble, but Greg had surprised her by offering her a baby step, a chance to taste spending some time with him, experiencing something that he thought was wonderful—the open road on a motorcycle.
Already she knew she would enjoy doing a lot of this. It was truly glorious. If Greg turned out to be… well, she if she liked him, then she would enjoy spending a lot of time with him, a lot of time on the back of his bike, and eventually in his arms. His presence, this nearness, made her heart pound faster.
She’d dreamt about him that night. She woke during a vivid dream in which he was making passionate love to her. She didn’t normally put a lot of stock in dreams, but it had seemed so good, so real, that she couldn’t ignore just how wonderful it made her feel.
Some of that was loneliness—she’d been alone, celibate for a long time. And, for her, dreaming wasn’t the same as doing, of course. And yet… Clearly he liked her, or he wouldn’t have asked her to come on the ride. A
nd she liked him enough to want to see where it led or she wouldn’t be where she was right now. The tricky part was what came next. There were questions that could only be answered once she was spending time with him in his own element. Did he see her as a conquest? Was the goal simply to get her relaxed enough with him that she’d let him fuck her? There was the prospect that having sex with someone like her got him points with his club. But it was unfair of her to assume that he wasn’t genuinely interested in her, and wanted to get to know her.
So she’d taken this gamble, this tentative step into his world. And she was glad.
How many baby steps do you take before you try to walk toward a goal? And how well did you ever get to know a person anyway? She’d slept with men she thought she knew, men that came from her world, only to find that she didn’t know them at all, that she’d misjudged their intentions. Others had been disappointments in other ways. There were no guarantees, no sure bets.
Greg downshifted and turned the bike up a hill. She felt the G forces as he leaned the bike and powered back up, getting up to speed and then shifting back to the higher gear, his movements as graceful as those of a dancer in a ballet. She was swept up in it, and felt herself precariously swept up in her feelings for this powerful man even more than the sensations of riding the bike.
Heady stuff, Mel.
* * *
In the warm afternoon Greg stopped the ride at a small cafe perched on the end of a pier, out over the water. They watched as seagulls and terns circled and played, and a one-legged seagull stood on a pier piling, looking unconcerned, almost regal, as they ate hamburgers and onion rings at a table under an umbrella.
Melanie felt carefree… as if they had forever ahead of them and no concerns. She hadn’t felt that way in a long time. Too long. It made her want to stay inside the bubble of that moment.
Actually, her feeling was of being carefree and also wanted—sexually. She ate her meal aware of the delicious look Greg was giving her. His pale blue eyes watched her every movement with rapt attention. He was wondering too. It pleased her that he was also trying to determine what would happen next. She knew it as certainly as she knew how to breathe, that he’d brought her here with no plan, but discovery. He drove her to this place, telling her how great the food was, and she’d found everything fresh and delicious. With his intense and intensely flattering focus on her, she wondered if he even tasted his food. It was all exciting and slightly embarrassing. It also assured her that she wasn’t imagining the electricity she felt running between them.
When they’d finished, they sipped iced tea and sat for a time. She wanted to talk, to exchange ideas, learn about each other, but words didn’t come. A comfortable silence enshrouded them, and neither seemed willing to destroy it. She felt good.
At some point, without her even noticing, he’d taken her hand, and held it gently. Then, as the shadows lengthened, he smiled. “We’d better head back.”
“Now?” A flicker of disappointment coursed through her.
“I made a promise to a beautiful lady. I intend to keep it.”
Her heart ached. She didn’t want to leave, yet she had been the one to set a time, to insist he get her home. This had to be nothing but a test—she needed to see if he would honor that promise. And now that it seemed he would, part of her wanted to take back the demand, to just let time flow on.
That way led along a dangerous path—one she wasn’t yet ready to take. Not yet.
If you are going to ease your way into this, stick to your guns.
“I guess we should.”
He didn’t blink, but she saw something flicker in his face. After a moment, she felt sure it was approval. But what was he approving of? Perhaps he liked strong women, women who knew their own minds. Or maybe it was something else. These were early days. You couldn’t trust reading the expression of someone you barely knew, even if it seemed right. You couldn’t expect to know a person after one ride up the coast no matter how exhilarating it had been.
And she had the return ride to look forward to.
Once again the big machine was kicked into life. This close its roar was almost deafening, but when you were sitting on the back and knew that in a moment you’d feel the way the bike seemed to defy gravity, it felt exciting. As she pressed up against Greg and put her arms around him, she put her hand on his chest. After a moment, he put his hand on hers. It was an affectionate gesture, a reassuring touch, and yet, an incredibly arousing one. The touch of his bare skin against hers was potent—dreams aside, she began to fantasize what would it be like to have this man make love to her.
She caught her breath as he stepped on the shifter and twisted the throttle. They lurched forward and immediately moved out into traffic, blending into the flow, heading south. To her right, out over the sea, the sun moved down toward the horizon. To her left they cast long shadows that danced in the opposite lane. He drove as smoothly as before, and she moved with him, her center starting to flow naturally with the motions of the bike now, comfortable with the way it moved, the way he controlled her.
All too soon he was pulling up in front of her apartment and stopping. They sat for a moment with the bike idling. She didn’t want it to end, but it had to or she would be swept up by her emotions. Once she knew him, then maybe… But now she forced herself to slip off the seat and stand beside him, taking off the helmet, reluctantly handing it to him.
“That was beautiful. Thank you for introducing me to that.”
“I hope we can do it more. If you want to. As often as you like.”
The words were music to her soul. “Yes. I’d like that.” She hesitated. “Would you like to come in for a drink?”
He smiled at her. “Mel, I’d like that more than anything in the world.” He sighed. “The truth is that we both know I’d better not accept. To do this right, at least one of us has to be strong.”
She knew he was right. If he came in, they’d go straight to her bed. “I—”
He stopped her by touching his fingers to her lips, then stroked her cheek, letting his warm hand rest there as he stared into her eyes. Her knees felt weak, then he slipped his fingers under her chin, tilted her head up, bent down and kissed her. His lips burned with a fire, a heat that she’d never felt before. It shot through her, making itself felt in every fiber of her being. Then he smiled. “No, I’d definitely better not come in for… a drink. Not quite yet.”
Lust burned in his eyes. Seeing how much he wanted her, that he struggled to stand there made her tremble more, nearing the point of becoming uncontrollable. “No?”
“Some things need time. I think this is one. Some people need to be very certain about what they want. I want you desperately, Melanie, but I know you aren’t sure about me—what I am. I want to come in. I want you, but even more I don’t want to mess this up. So I’d better go.”
She stood on the curb looking after him long after he was out of sight. Her legs were weak and her heart ached. This biker, this outlaw, seemed to know her. He wanted her, yet he understood her fears. He was willing to be kind, considerate. In her world that would mean he cared about her, but he was right that she needed to know what that meant to him. As badly as she hungered for him now, she wanted something that would be more than a hot night. Finding out if that was even possible for them, if such different people could have a future, would mean getting to know more about his world. That was far more complex, a bigger step than just learning that it was fun to go on a bike ride. He’d already shown her that he had strength, willpower enough for both of them, for she had been well and truly seduced already. All he had to do was step in that door.
She wasn’t used to being wracked by such powerful emotions, and clearly finding out what was possible meant taking more gambles with him, some bigger steps. It was scary but she was eager, hungry to learn more.
CHAPTER SIX
Monday mornings were always chaotic. The kids would arrive still buzzing from whatever they’d done on their days off and s
low to settle back in. The teachers suffered from it too. You didn’t turn your life off and on as if there was a switch you could flip that directed your mind from “personal” to “school” even if that might be efficient. And after her Saturday, that amazing, intense, yet frustrating Saturday, Melanie found it hard to focus.
She’d spent Sunday doing nothing more exciting than her laundry and baking a chocolate cake that she ate while watching a horror movie. Even after that, her nerves still tingled from the emotions of riding behind Greg. She alternated between being thankful he’d respected her request and frustration that he hadn’t ignored it. In some ways she worried he might’ve decided she was no fun, not the kind of girl he wanted.
She was sure she wanted him. But on what terms? Would he ask her out for another ride? She desperately hoped he would.
It was so bad that she had trouble looking at Carly without thinking about her hot Uncle Greg, especially knowing she’d see him that afternoon when he picked Carly up. It was foreordained: He’d smile at her as he always did, and that infectious, dangerous smile would excite her. She’d struggle with a desire to walk over and talk to him, but be unable to think of an excuse. That meant if he didn’t come to her, she’d walk up to him with her head empty and her heart pounding. She’d stand in front of him feeling uncomfortable and know what she knew even when he wasn’t there, that he was almost irresistible.
She’d thought having gone on a ride would make it easier, but somehow it was harder now, as if the stakes were higher. She’d taken that first baby step and he had given her time and space—he wanted to see how it sat with her.
That it excited her, that he excited her didn’t help. She couldn’t consider the man she wanted to get to know without feeling the emotions he aroused in her, and those things didn’t help her judgment. He was probably dangerous and she didn’t know if that was good or bad, but she knew it was exciting. Feeling that way didn’t make her feel very grownup.
During first period Carly gave her an odd look. It was almost an adult look, seeing her as a person, not just a teacher. The girl was mature for her years, and her penetrating look unsettled her. When the bell rang, ending the period, Carly walked close to her desk. “I heard Uncle Greg tell my daddy he was taking you for a ride on his bike.”