Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 156796 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 784(@200wpm)___ 627(@250wpm)___ 523(@300wpm)
But he didn’t.
He just waited.
As if he had all the time in the world.
Almost as if he could sense that I needed a second because I wasn’t a girl who made split-second decisions. I was a woman who made lists. A lot of them. And did research. A lot of it.
But I didn’t have the luxury of lists or research right then.
I only had the handful of moments this man was going to give to me before he took off into the night, leaving me in silence and, presumably, safety.
Because there was only a short amount of time a man like him would wait. It was a miracle he hadn’t left in the first place.
Or was it a curse?
Before I could decide what would save me or damn me, my leg was up and I straddled the motorcycle.
No sooner had I situated my butt in the leather seat did he roar off. No warning, no asking me if I was okay, no telling me to hold on. No, he just took off.
Instinctively, so I didn’t fall off the back of the bike and onto the road, my arms fastened themselves over the middle of his body, wrapping around his torso. The second I realized what I was doing, the second my body pressed into his warm and muscled back, my palms grazing over his rock-hard abs, my body reacted.
Almost violently.
It was such a shock, I jerked my hands backward, momentarily forgetting that such a movement would send me toppling off the back of the bike and eating the asphalt. But I didn’t. Eat asphalt. Because a firm grip atop of my hands stopped me from moving them.
The man with the muscled back and the rock-hard abs—as if it could be anyone else—was driving the motorcycle one-handed, the other working as a restraint to stop me flinching out of his grip.
Once I gained control of myself, I figured keeping my hands where they were was my best bet at surviving the ride—physically, at least.
But his hand didn’t move from mine.
The whole ride.
Two
Gage
He walked into the clubhouse early the next morning, though he hadn’t expected to be doing so. No, he’d planned on coming to Amber, picking up some shit, tying up some loose ends, and disappearing into the night for as long as it took to get himself figured out.
Or as figured out as he could ever get.
But everything changed with the woman.
The woman who spouted statistics about fucking skull caps, who listed every symptom of concussion in an orderly manner while standing on the side of the road, in front of him, bleeding from the fucking head.
So yeah, everything changed with the woman.
With the fucking damsel.
He didn’t fuck her.
No, he saved her.
Last night, at least.
He’d clutched her warm and soft body to him as he roared into town. First, he’d done it because he’d felt exactly what she had the second she’d fastened her small arms around him. He’d felt it right in his fucking cock. And not because she was a woman pressed against him. That was in part true, but not all of it.
Because even in the dim light he could tell she wasn’t his kind of woman. For starters, his type of women wore a fuck of a lot less than she did. And a fuck of a lot more makeup, enough so it would’ve been visible even in the dim light of the moon. Fuck, it would’ve been visible from space.
And the women he chose didn’t argue with him.
Ever.
Nor did they smell like fucking lilacs and vanilla.
And they sure as shit didn’t have brains in their heads. Not brains that could spout statistics and did so with a sophisticated curl to the words like she did.
Nor did they radiate a kind of innocence that men like him sensed from a mile away.
Horses smelled fear. Monsters smelled innocence.
Gage was the worst monster of them all, and her innocence sang to him like a siren’s song.
So no, she was not his kind of woman.
But still, he had fastened his fucking hand over hers the entire ride into Amber, all the way to the hospital. He’d found himself wishing the trip was longer, despite the fact that she was bleeding, injured, and obviously in need of medical attention.
And needed to be as far away from his attention as possible.
Which was why he’d dropped her off at the hospital, gunning it as soon as her feet hit the pavement, before he could do anything stupid.
Before he could do what every fiber in his being told him to do.
Claim her.
Especially when the bright lights of the hospital illuminated her face and it punched him right in the fucking chest.
Blood stained half of her small and pale face, some glistening and wet, some dried and flaky. The gash on her forehead had bled like a bitch, as head wounds tended to do, but it wasn’t life-threatening.