Her beauty, strong ethics, and need for love had never been factors in my plan. The last thing I expected was to find myself in desperate need of her love, too.
Two hours later, I left the glinting steel architecture and congested traffic of downtown Chicago and exited off I-88 to head home. The open road stretched west, the sun glaring in its dip toward the horizon.
The spare bike I’d ridden to Kaci’s vibrated between my legs and filled my chest with a throaty hum. The chilly wind penetrated my borrowed clothes with a refreshing sense of freedom. But the best part of the ride was the woman hugging my back.
Her thighs squeezed my hips and her arms wrapped around my middle, and I wondered if she was the one holding me on the bike and not the other way around. Her chest pressed tight against my back, her gloved hands tucked beneath the opened buttons of my wool coat. Collin’s coat. The suit, tie, thin-striped shirt, everything I wore was from his closet.
He was taller and leaner, but the fancy threads fit and saved me the headache of sneaking out of Trump Tower in my attention-grabbing leathers. The backpack on Kaci’s back held my clothes and a few days’ worth of hers.
We didn’t discuss the possibility she might never return to the condo. Nor did we give Collin a final good-bye. After the race tomorrow night, we would make our escape to DuPage County Airport where a chartered plane would wait. Destination to be determined. All arranged by Collin, who would be there to see us off.
Forty minutes outside of the city, we were off the main roads and winding around smaller streets, headed deeper into farmland. When the traffic thinned and we hit a long stretch of empty asphalt, Kaci’s hand wandered from the coat, down my abs, and cupped between my legs.
My breath caught as her thumb rubbed the head of my cock. A mile later, I strained against the wool slacks, the muscles flexing in my thighs. I moved a hand from the grips to slide gloved fingers over the tight denim leg pressed up against my hip.
She wasn’t wearing her leathers, but her silver helmet lowered to my shoulder. Her hips rolled against my ass, the hand between my legs pulling on my most basic and fundamental need. I fought the urge to jerk the bike over, slide her onto my cock, and fuck her on the side of the road in front of God and everybody.
She didn’t remove those tortuous fingers, and by the time we reached our destination, there was no oxygen left in my lungs.
The remodeled church where I lived was on a dead-end, country road, off the grid and hard to find. It stood sturdy and strong in an open field, with overgrown weeds between the gravel lane and the reinforced-steel front door.
As I veered around to the rear of the red-bricked rectangle, her taunting hand retreated and she sat taller. During the ride, she’d kept her helmet tilted to avoid blocking the rear camera view so I could watch for tails. Now that she’d straightened, her silhouette flashed on my visor, her helmet ticking back and forth as she drank in the surrounding pastures and woodland and the small shed that concealed my jeep.
The custom garage door in the back of the church activated when it sensed the microchip in my helmet. I pulled into the dark, single-bay garage, the steel floor rattling beneath the tires, as the automatic door shut behind us.
From an outsider’s perspective, it was just a garage. A completely empty garage. For a reason.
Balancing the bike between my legs, with my boots on the floor, I hooked an arm behind me to hold her against my back and said into the mic, “Activate lift.”
The voice-control in the helmet signaled the gears behind the walls. They whirred quietly, and the floor shook, then descended.
“Holy shit.” Her voice muffled through the helmet, tinged with awe.
We reached the warehouse two-stories below ground. I rode the bike off the lift and parked it among fifteen others.
She slid off the seat, her long braid draped over her shoulder, her hands on either side of her helmet, wriggling it from her head. She set it on the floor and turned in a circle. Her wide eyes grew wider and brighter by the second as she took in the rows of bikes, the high-end gear boxes, the diamond-plated bike lifts, and the power tools lining the walls.
I would be abandoning all of it. Benny would sell what she could. The rest would be left behind with the remodeled church. That was always the plan. What I hadn’t planned for was Kaci running away with me and everything she would be leaving behind—her dreams for making Trenchant a better company, her career, her best friend.