Gen Pop (Souls Chapel Revenants MC 6) by Lani Lynn Vale

Not to mention I likely had raccoon eyes.

“Uh, hey.” I smiled. “What are you doing here?”

He pointed to the car of mine that had finally stopped smoking.

“Checking on you,” he said. “It’d be rude of me to leave one of the upstanding citizens of Souls Chapel, Texas on the side of the road.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t.

Instead, I allowed him to keep talking. “You need a ride? Did you call a tow truck yet?”

“A ride, yes,” I confirmed. “A tow truck, no.” I paused. “I don’t know where to send it.”

His head shifted slightly. “I have a friend that owns a garage. Works there in his spare time.”

A friend that owned a garage but only worked there in his spare time?

Was it me, or was that weird?

“Umm.” I paused. “I don’t think I want it fixed.”

That was truthful. At this point, I decided that it was worth the hassle of getting a new car that I knew wouldn’t break down on me in the middle of nowhere.

He tilted his head. “It’s a decent car. You could fix it for cheap and then trade it in, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Actually, that wasn’t what I was getting at. I didn’t know what I was getting at.

“Anyway,” he gestured toward the bike. “Hop on. I’ll give you a ride home.”

I bit my lip, unsure of what to do.

Getting on that bike would mean wrapping my body around Zach, who I’d been watching so intently over the last six months that it was almost comical.

He entered my every waking and sleeping thought with his piercing eyes and his sexy mouth.

Did I really want to add being wrapped around him to my dreams, too?

That question was slapped down fast when an eighteen-wheeler passed by us so closely that I felt the wind coming off of his truck knock me off balance.

“Shit, he could’ve moved the fuck over,” he grumbled as he gestured toward his bike with a jerk of his chin. “Let’s go.”

That last comment wasn’t polite in the least. It was short.

Was he mad that I hadn’t immediately jumped at his offer earlier?

“Umm,” I said as I passed behind him. “Sure.”

I found myself shuffling over to the bike and waiting patiently while he mounted.

When I mounted the bike behind him, I ended up burning the piss out of my leg when I touched the tailpipe as I got on behind him.

Luckily, I was wearing jeans.

Unluckily, I could tell that despite the jeans, it was still going to leave a mark.

“You okay?” he asked at my inhaled hiss.

I sat on the seat behind him, then lifted my legs, trying to find purchase somewhere.

He reached down and caught one of my calves, gesturing where to put my feet before letting me go.

“You ever been on a bike before?” he asked.

I cleared my suddenly dry throat. “No.”

“Then you might want to hold on.”

With that parting comment, I was left reaching for him as he started the bike.

It was so loud that it startled me, and I wondered what in the hell would make someone want to listen to this for hours on end.

But as soon as he started off of the side of the road, and the sound of the motor died down to a dull roar as the wind carried the sound away, I realized what it was that was so enticing.

It felt freeing, as if I was on a roller coaster.

That free feeling didn’t get to stay for very long.

He pulled into the driveway of the convenience store closest to where my car broke down and got off the bike. “Need fuel or I’m not gonna make it. I was pushing it trying to make it here.”

My brows rose. “You’re one of those people then?”

“Those people?” he asked with his brows furrowed in confusion.

I watched as he shrugged off my question and went to the pump to insert his card. When it was ready—who the hell put the highest grade in their vehicle?—he looked back at me expectantly.

“Those people that let their vehicle almost run out of gas before they get more,” I said, then pointed at myself. “I’m one of those that starts looking for a gas station when my gas gauge starts reading half.”

His lips twitched. “Yeah, then I guess you can say I’m one of ‘those’ people. Let’s just say the meter on my truck that says, ‘you have thirty miles left until empty’ is very fucking accurate.”

He filled his tank up and replaced the nozzle, which then had me looking at his muscular forearms.

I’d never been attracted to forearms before, but Zach’s were very nice.

Almost too nice.

He had a nice, strong wrist. A watch that sat just over his wrist that was black with a black face and black writing.

The watch itself looked really expensive, and I wondered if he ever used it.