Nobody Knows (SWAT Generation 2.0 11)

So, of course, I said yes.

We were just getting geared up to go when a car pulled in.

Since I’d recognized the car thanks to yesterday’s extremely uncomfortable introduction to the man’s parents, I didn’t bother stopping what I was doing—trying to fit the helmet he’d handed me onto my head.

My hair was in too high of a ponytail, so I yanked the tie out of my hair, fitted the helmet on, and then buckled it.

He eyed me for a few seconds as he studied my hair.

“That’s going to go up your nose if you don’t tame it,” he said.

I scrunched up my nose in reaction to the thought of it going up my nose, then tied it back into a low ponytail at the base of my skull.

Just as I’d finished, the car stopped next to us and the man from yesterday rolled down his window. However, during their small trek up the driveway, Gab—Malachi had positioned himself partially with his back to the car, meaning that he didn’t see the car window go down.

He’d heard it, though.

And based on the stiffness of his facial features, he wasn’t quite happy with the situation.

I gestured for him to get on the bike, and he did so, followed shortly by me getting on with him, hiking my dress up high to do so.

“Gabriel.” The man’s dark, exotic voice had me turning to survey the man.

The man was facing our way, looking hard and disgusted at the bike that Malachi had climbed onto.

The woman was staring serenely at her phone, not bothering to even look up.

Malachi started the bike and it roared to life underneath me.

Now, I’d ridden on motorcycles before.

Quite a few times, actually.

My father had one, as well as both of my uncles, a handful of cousins, and even more friends.

So I was no newbie to riding on the back of one.

However, I was a newbie riding on one next to a man that I found highly attractive as well as a little bit scary.

I threaded my arms loosely around Malachi’s chest, only just realizing that he’d donned a leather jacket at some point after he’d left my room with me.

I was in a sweatshirt and a jean jacket, but somehow I knew that I was about to get super cold.

It didn’t matter, though.

Just the idea of being on the back of the bike with the man was making my heart rate do that arrhythmia thing again and my excitement level go through the roof.

Like touching him.

My hands were on him, but over a leather jacket so not on him, on him.

I couldn’t necessarily feel his heat at all… but I could feel his hardness.

The man felt like a solid rock of muscle.

“Ready?” he asked me, turning away from his father to look at me over the opposite shoulder.

“Ready,” I confirmed.

He looked at me. “I probably shouldn’t be letting you ride on my motorcycle while pregnant…”

My lips twitched. “You’ll keep me safe.”

“Gabriel! I’m talking to you, son,” the man hissed over the roar of the bike’s engine.

“I will,” he promised.

Then, without another word, he was riding down the driveway at a sedate pace.

He didn’t roar off as if he expected the hounds of Hell to follow him. Instead, he rolled out at a slow speed, letting me enjoy the quickly brightening day.

It was a fairly mild morning for November.

In fact, it was well into the seventies and I could already see that the day would be heavenly thanks to the nonexistent clouds in the sky.

“You might want to hold on a little tighter,” he said as we came to a stop at the end of the driveway.

Then he took my hands and threaded them underneath his zipped-up jacket and plastered them to his rock-hard belly.

He had abs.

Oh, boy, did he have abs.

They weren’t fake abs or just a tight stomach.

He had multiple dips and valleys that I could feel, as well as the line in the middle of the abs separating one set from the other.

It was only as he laughed that I realized I’d been caressing his belly.

I felt my cheeks heat.

“Sorry,” I admitted. “I’ve just never felt abs like this before. It was a shock.”

He reached down with his hand and patted my thigh in answer.

Then we were off down the road, and my poor little heart started another round of arrhythmia.

The trip to the diner was short and sweet, but oh, so memorable.

We arrived and parked in the very front of the lot—something I never got to do because I never left this early in the morning if I could help it—and both of us got off.

Together we walked into the diner, him not so much touching me as crowding me, if that made any sense whatsoever.

I could feel the length of heat at my back and knew without a doubt that he was there.