Only when my knees softened like butter and I almost fell against him did King pull away from me. Without releasing his hold, he turned to our table of avid spectators and said, “Thanks for takin’ care of my woman. Tryin’ to keep her, so it means a lot you took her under your wing.”
“Okay, cue the swoon,” Cleo sighed, her eyelashes fluttering like fans.
“Even I have to admit, that was pretty sweet,” Harleigh Rose allowed with a little wink sent my way.
“Okay, bye!” I said so loudly it was a shout because suddenly I was the one eager to leave.
The ladies laughed at me as I tugged my badass biker guy out of the bar and into the night. We were both so preoccupied, we didn’t notice the unfamiliar bikers hanging out in the corner of the parking lot as we swung on to King’s bike, but they sure noticed us.
For the eighth morning in a row, I woke up beside King. Or rather, I was sprawled diagonally across him as if he were an island salvation in the midst of a mattress ocean. One of his long arms held me on to him, anchored over my shoulders by the hand that twined in the hair at the base of my neck. Even in sleep, he held me like he would never let me go.
I lay there beside a man-boy I never should have known and loved him secretly, desperately with every atom of my being. I’d loved him since the moment my eyes had landed on him in the grocery store parking lot and since then, he’d not only given me more than enough reasons to continue to love him, but also the means to begin to love my life.
Before King (B.K.), I’d enjoyed my books, going on long quiet walks through Stanley Park and hanging out with my parents.
A freaking pathetic list.
Now, I loved riding on the back of King’s black and chrome customized Harley Davidson with my breasts to his leather jacket and my hair to the wind. I loved feeling his hands on my skin tuning and revving my engine with his sometimes rough but always-reverent touch. I loved the biker babes and the rest of the Garro clan, the least traditional family I had never interacted with and also, somehow, the most genuine. I loved my students, sweet Benny and misunderstood Carson, beautiful but broken Louise and even Talia and her crew of beautiful but vain girlfriends. They all trusted me to teach them and to love them from afar so even though teaching had never been my original dream, I found myself loving even that.
King had arrived in my life like an angel fallen from heaven and ascended from hell, like my own real-life Satan who whispered rebellion in my ear so winningly I had no choice but to answer his call.
I didn’t know if Eve was happy in the end, uprooted in her new life and new world with Adam, but I knew I would be if that future was available to me.
“Shut up,” King croaked.
I propped my elbow on his chest, placed my face in my hand and stared down at him. “I’m being quiet.”
“’Bout as quiet as a souped-up Mustang drivin’ down the Sea to Sky,” he muttered without opening his eyes.
“Are you saying I breathe loudly or something?”
“I’m sayin’ never heard someone think as loud as you.”
I glared at him, and feeling it, he opened one sleep-heavy eye to see it.
He grinned.
I glared harder.
Then he chuckled, a low sound so deep that moved under me like shifting tectonic plates. I hung on tight and waited for it to pass, liking the way his laughter felt and that I kept discovering new ways to appreciate it.
“Time?” he asked, closing his eyes again but shifting to align me front to front over top of him.
I abandoned my position to press my cheek to his lightly furred chest, tuck my arms under his back and up over his shoulders. His workingman hands abraded the skin at the base of my spine just over my ass as he stroked me in lazy whorls.
“Early, we’ve got an hour and a half before school,” I told him.
We rode in together sometimes, but not always. I’d objected at first because it seemed blatantly inappropriate to go to school with the same teenage lover that I taught in fifth period English, but King had pointed out that everyone thought I was dating his father so it wouldn’t be odd to catch a ride with him in the morning as we were going to the same place. To keep it safe, sometimes other bikers would take me in. Nova volunteered for the job most of the time, which made King especially grumpy, but so did Zeus, Priest, a quiet but beautiful man who didn’t ever speak to me unless it was to confirm a question I’d asked, and, surprisingly, Buck. The latter drove an absolutely enormous motorcycle with tall, swooping handlebars called ‘ape bars’ and the engine growled so loudly, I wore earplugs even under my helmet. I loved riding with him though because he told me stories about King and even Zeus, whom I was surprised to learn was only thirty-four, growing up. We also always made a point to stop at Honey Bear Café and Bakery so Buck could get his daily donut and I could get a coffee.