Ride Dirty (Raven Riders 3.50)

Right. He revved the bike and took off like a shot down the street.

Because he didn’t have an answer for those questions. At least, no answers that he fucking liked.

* * * *

Emma pulled back her bedroom curtain…too late to know if the biker who’d ridden by her house was the one about whom she couldn’t stop thinking.

She’d been up since the sirens had woken her over an hour ago, since realizing that a house just down the street had been on fire. She’d lived in this house nearly her whole life and hadn’t experienced as much excitement in all that time as she had during the past few days. Not that excitement was the right word. Excitement didn’t give you nightmares, and it didn’t leave you gasping awake, sure that you’d heard something, and surely it didn’t have you deciding you must’ve imagined it because your dog lay perfectly calm.

Sipping the hot tea she’d made, she sat on the edge of her bed and thought for the hundredth time about what Catalin had said. Why shouldn’t she try to get in touch with Caine?

Besides the fact that he was a member of a biker club and that was potentially a little…intimidating.

And besides the fact that he hadn’t tried to get in touch with her?

And besides the fact that she might put herself out there only to learn for sure that he’d not given her his number for a reason?

“Yeah, except for all of that,” she whispered to the quiet room. Chewy lifted and cocked his little head, making her smile.

She finished the last of her tea and crawled back under the covers.

In the darkness, she saw Caine straddling his bike. Those long legs spread wide. Beat-up boots scuffing the ground. His club cut-off jacket hanging off those broad shoulders, as intriguing as it was menacing. Those strange pale eyes flashing in the dimness. The fullness of his lips the only thing that looked soft on his whole body.

Heat rolled through Emma’s blood, pooling sensation low in her belly. Okay, maybe there was one thing that qualified as excitement the past few days…because thoughts of Caine had been setting off these reactions within her since the man had been in her house five days before.

Emma squeezed her thighs together, the friction good but not nearly enough. It was too soft, too timid, too…tame. Everything she imagined Caine wouldn’t be.

Would his hands grasp her roughly? Would those full lips be hard or soft against her mouth, her throat, her breasts? Was the tattooed body beneath his clothes as lean and masculine as it looked? Would his hips move with fevered urgency or in a slow, teasing grind, and would his words be sweet or dirty against her skin?

Those were the imaginings that had her hand slipping down her body and threading under the waistband of her panties to where she was already wet. Just from thoughts of a man she’d met for only a few hours but who’d somehow invaded her mind.

Her fingers moved in slick, fast circles, and her hips strained upward into her own touch. It took almost no time at all until she was holding her breath and coming, a little cry spilling out of her into the quiet of her room, her body shaking against the bed.

“Jesus, Caine, what did you do to me?” she whispered, pulse racing, heart pounding.

That was the moment she knew she was going to try to find him. Because if she didn’t try, she’d always wonder. Always regret. And having lost so many people she cared about during her life, regret was the emotion she most despised. Because Emma had learned first-hand that life was finite, and none of us were replaceable, and death was capricious and sudden.

So, regret? She didn’t have time for that.

Emma turned on her side and curled into a ball, and Chewy came closer, relocating himself into a little ball against the crook of her knees. And in the peaceful, satisfied quiet, she knew exactly what to do.

Dutch’s.

She’d go talk to the baker woman. Haven. Caine had said she was the club president’s fiancée, so she’d have to know him. Right?

The moment the plan cemented in her mind, sleep finally took over, real and deep, for the first time in days.

Chapter 6

Thursday afternoon found Emma walking through the door of Dutch’s, a downtown hole-in-the-wall with a long soda fountain with spinning stools and red-and-white booths that had miniature jukeboxes on the walls above each table. And, of course, there was that massive dessert case right as you walked in the door.

At just a few minutes before five, it was a little early for the dinner crowd, so Emma had her pick of seats. She slipped onto one of the stools at the bar and pulled a menu from the rack behind the napkin holder.