“Coal” sits on the left side of his vest, over his heart. “Vice President” lays opposite the name on his right side. The rest of his vest has a bunch of different patches with different cities and sayings. Is this a biker in the same club as Desirae’s man?
He shakes his head. “You okay?”
“Yes, I am, but are you?”
He nods. “I’m fine. Get in your car, pay attention, and go home,” he dismisses me. “Don’t just stand there, looking stupefied. Get in the car and go home. It’s done.”
“I need to make this right,” I stammer as my mind spins. I feel like things are suddenly out of control. I am not one to panic. Normally, I would tell myself to breathe through it. Only, I sense a brokenness in this man I have never felt before.
Clutching my chest, it feels like there is a knife straight in my heart. Our energies link in a way I didn’t think would be possible.
“Nothing wrong, so nothing to make right.” He studies me as cars rush past us. “Get in your car. Can’t leave till I know you got back in the vehicle.”
“Don’t you need my information? I have insurance,” I mutter, feeling like my world is off-balance.
“It was a bump.” He doesn’t hide his frustration. “Not a patient man, Pixie, so get in your pedal car and go on.”
Pixie? I want to ask, but I don’t. The man is clearly not wanting to do anything about our incident. Therefore, doing the only thing I can think of, I get back in my Prius, turning off the hazards and putting it in gear.
I try to shake off my emotions. Anxiety, guilt, frustration, and sadness all toy with my carefully balanced core. I feel myself tipping, falling, and stumbling down into the darkness. I feel stuck to this man, like our worlds have aligned for a higher reason. Fate, destiny, the Mother Earth, or God—something has us linked, and I don’t know how to explain it to him or myself.
Instead, I do what every respectable twenty-six-year-old woman does when she is faced with a scarier than a horror movie biker, I follow him.
Chapter Two
~Coal~
Watching the car following me, I twist the throttle and hit the highway a little faster. Believe it or not, when I check my mirror again, I find that battery-powered machine she calls a car keeping up. Thirty minutes later, we are in Fort Lauderdale, and she is still on my ass, but at a safe distance. When we clear the city, I pull over into a grocery store parking lot, and she follows.
Climbing off my bike, I walk to her driver’s door, which she promptly opens and climbs out. The woman in front of me doesn’t show an ounce of fear.
Like a magnet pulling me in, I’m drawn and unable to fight this temptation inside of me. Inside, I stumble at my own emotions, but outside, I show nothing.
I don’t believe in love at first sight. In fact, I don’t even really believe in lust at first sight. I believe in science—the human need to procreate, the need for a release, and the body’s carnal desires to plant a man’s seed in a woman’s womb. As many times as I have held off until I found a hooker to handle my needs, I have never had an attraction and intrigue like this. I have never had such curiosity and amazement over a stranger. Anyone else, I would be mad as hell. Yet, this woman has me twisted in knots, needing to know more about her in an instant.
She is so short that the top of her head hits my chest, and she might weigh a hundred and twenty pounds with her clothes on dripping wet. She’s skinny, but not in the way that says she skips meals like most of the South Beach women. No, this woman works out. Her arms are toned with muscle, the T-shirt she’s wearing is tight enough to see that her nipples are hard on her little breasts, and the yoga pants she is wearing doesn’t leave much to the imagination.
I have a fucking wicked imagination. Right now, it’s running a bit wild as I take in the small woman in front of me with a sweet face and fiery red hair that is braided loosely behind her. It’s so long it hangs down her back to the top of her ass. An ass that I would bet my motorcycle on is firm enough to bounce a quarter off of.
As much as I want to get wrapped up watching the pretty, little thing and picturing her naked, I don’t have time for this. As much as my body is suddenly alive in a way I can’t remember ever feeling, I don’t have room for this in my life. More so, as much as I should scare her far away, there is a part of me that wants to protect her from all hurts, including the ones that aren’t physical.