Ride Hard (Raven Riders 1)

“So much yes,” she whispered. God, Dare could read her, and he always seemed to know exactly what she needed to hear—like how he’d reacted to what happened after the night her father had caught her with Zach. Dare’s anger, his outrage, his desire to get vengeance for her all filled her with such a sense of understanding, acceptance, and more than a little affection, too. “Okay,” she finally said.

“Tell me about the list.” His voice was gruff in her ear, and she couldn’t help but lean her face against his. His skin was so warm, his cheek scratchy from stubble. It was thrilling.

“It’s a to-do list of things I want to experience now that I finally can,” she said. Okay, that wasn’t so hard, and that realization made the words come faster. “I’m so tired of being scared, Dare. And being taken in by the Ravens has let me believe I can actually want things, and have a chance of having them, for the first time ever.”

“Look at me.” He loosened his hold on her so she could turn, and then his arms went right back around her, hauling her up tight against his front. Jaw hard, eyes guarded, brow furrowed, tension rolled off him.

“I guess it sounds pretty silly—”

“Knowing what you want and going after it is fucking brave, Haven.” One beat passed, and another, and he heaved a deep breath. “I know about the list.”

For a moment, Haven couldn’t make sense of the words, and then they crashed over her like a breaking wave. “Oh, God.” Instinctively, she pushed against his chest, needing to escape, to hide, to run. With each second he resisted her efforts, the full ramifications of his admission pounded through her. Embarrassment turned into humiliation that morphed into gut-wrenching mortification. “Your confession.” She gasped the realization. That’s what he’d been trying to tell her?

“Yeah,” he said, letting her go.

She reeled back until her spine hit the wall, and then she slid down into a ball and buried her face in her knees. “I can’t believe . . . oh God.” Right about now would be a great time for the floor to open up and swallow her whole.

“It was the day I found out about the reward. I knew you’d been keeping something from me, and the reward, the reward was pretty fucking big. I came to confront you about it, but you weren’t in your room. And then I remembered seeing you write in that notebook, and I thought maybe it was a diary that would tell me if there was anything else I needed to know,” he said, his voice gravelly, and maybe a little . . . sad?

Haven lifted her face enough to see him standing in the middle of the room, feet spread, arms folded across his chest. Lifting her gaze higher revealed that Dare’s head hung down, his eyes to the floor. He looked almost defeated, and it struck her as so wrong. “Go on,” she said, mind reeling but needing to hear it all.

A single tight nod. “At first, I couldn’t figure out what it was, but then I realized that there was nothing there that could help me. But I was so moved by the things you wanted that I couldn’t make myself stop reading. More than that, I wanted to help you make the list come true. Every fucking thing. I wanted it to be me, Haven. But then, I already knew that new identities were one possibility for you and Cora, and that would mean you’d have to go, so I . . .”

She looked up at his face, her mind and body a confused mix of embarrassed, angry, grudgingly understanding, and, impossibly, even a little intrigued. And then she gasped. “The motorcycle ride.”

“Yeah,” he said, gaze still down.

Slowly, Haven rose to her feet, her back still against the wall because this whole conversation was making the room spin. “The . . . beach?”

Dare finally looked up, and his dark eyes absolutely blazed with need and regret. “I didn’t plan that. And I wasn’t thinking about the list when I put my mouth on you either.”

The blunt mention of what’d happened made Haven’s belly clench. She swallowed, hard.

“I just needed my mouth on you like I needed my next breath. And I loved it—your taste, your come on my tongue, your hand pulling my fucking hair. I shouldn’t have done it knowing I needed to confront you, but I sure as shit couldn’t let anything more happen, which is why I pushed you away.”

His recollection of what they shared, and his raw, honest description of it did strange things to her. Oddly, the worst of her embarrassment cooled. Much of her anger yielded to a feeling of regret about how circumstances had forced both of them to questionable decisions. But most pronounced was how hearing him say these things out loud had her core suddenly aching with arousal and need. “You tried to tell me,” Haven said, the room still a little spinny around her.