Corinne

 

The ride into town was the most exciting journey of my life. Also, the fastest and the roughest journey, as the bike tore over the rough ground, bouncing me up and down so much that it seemed Asa might have been right about me not being able to sit down for a month. But that wasn't what made it exciting. I held onto Asa as tightly as I could, clinging on for dear life, but also relishing the feel of him tight against me. My hands slipped into his jacket to feel cut muscles through his T-shirt. My face was buried against his shoulder, and I breathed in his masculine scent like it was a drug, making me giddy. My breasts were crushed hard against his back, and the whole of my torso rubbed against him as we rode, sending hot, urgent messages up and down the pleasure receptors in my body until I felt like one big nerve. The bike throbbed between my legs, seeming like a part of Asa himself, an extension of his body. The world sped by, but I barely noticed it, locked into my own private little world of heat and ecstasy.

 

It felt all too soon when we skidded to a halt, and Asa pulled away from me as he got off the bike.

 

"Stay there, and keep your head down!" For once in my life, I did as I was told, partly because the tone of Asa's voice told me that he meant it, but also because the fight that was going on was pretty scary. I may have had a little bit of a fascination with danger, but I wasn’t not an idiot. This wasn't a brawl outside a bar at closing time amongst a few drunks slurring, 'Were you looking at my girl?’ This was vicious, bloody, and real. I had no idea what was going on, or why these two groups of large men were whaling on each other, but there were clearly no holds barred. But if the reality of the fight scared me, watching Asa wade into it provoked a different reaction altogether.

 

I might have had a bit of a rebellious streak, but I had never made a habit of picking up bikers who showed up pretty suspiciously at my dad's house. At this point, I still didn't have any idea what Asa had been doing there, but, whichever way you looked at it, it didn't look good. But even allowing for my fascination with bad boys, there was something about Asa.

 

Still, watching him strolling into a fight like he owned the place was pushing some very specific buttons on my libido that were a whole lot easier to explain. He was a devastatingly masculine and dominant presence. A hulking figure swung a tire iron at his head, but Asa simply ducked, popped back up, and knocked the hulk off his feet with a well-aimed blow to the jaw. Someone slashed his arm with a knife, and I gasped as I saw Asa wince with the sharp pain. He jinked left as the attacker stabbed forwards, then grabbed the man's arm and twisted it till the man screamed and dropped his knife. With a well-placed knee to the stomach, Asa knocked the wind out of the man, then spun him around by his arm into the side of a parked car, so hard I thought he might leave an imprint in the bodywork.

 

As I watched, he fought his way through the throng, seemingly with a definite destination in mind. Finally, he reached a strikingly ugly man who had one of Asa's bikers in a headlock. Asa grabbed the man's shoulder and yanked him backwards, startling him so much that he let go of the biker. The ugly man took a swing, but Asa was far too quick on his feet, easily dodging and returning a blow of his own that sent the ugly one staggering backwards. Before Ugly had a chance to recover, Asa lunged forwards, grabbing the man by the throat and slamming him back into the wall.

 

"I thought I was clear last time we spoke." I shouldn’t have been able to hear him speak, but Asa's presence seemed to silence the rest of the fight, at least to some extent, and his words, though not shouted, carried a sort of weight that made them heard. "This place, Fiona's place, is under the protection of War Cry." I felt a fresh tremor of excitement. War Cry. Asa was literally one of the men my dad had warned me about. "And if nasty little villains like yourself show up to cause trouble, or try to shake Fiona down, then we will give you a beating you won't soon forget. You understand?"

 

I wasn't sure the man would be able to speak with Asa's hand tight on his throat, but no spoken response was necessary. The man's eyes gave his answer loud and clear—he understood.

 

I wanted to go to Asa as soon as the fight had ended, and the ugly man and his cohorts had fled, but he looked busy. There was something curiously businesslike about the way he dealt with the other bikers. He was the boss, no question about that. A woman in her early forties came out of the bar, and Asa spoke to her for a few minutes. I watched closely. There was something about the way in which they spoke, an undemonstrative intimacy, that suggested that they had known each other a while. She seemed to be thanking him.

 

Once their conversation was over, Asa strode back over to me. I felt myself going a little weak in the knees as he approached.

 

"Right. Let's get you back home."

 

"You're bleeding."

 

"Don't change the subject."

 

"You can't ride a bike with blood pouring out of your arm."

 

Asa glanced at where the knife had cut him. "Hardly pouring."

 

I rolled my eyes. "Are we debating the rate at which you're losing blood?"

 

"I've ridden with worse than this."

 

I believed him. "I'll do a deal with you."

 

Asa looked like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "A deal? What do you think this is? You're going back to your dad's right now, if I have to tie you to the bike. And, knowing you, you'd probably prefer it that way, you little freak."

 

"No, no," I held up my hands. "I'll go back to Dad's place, and I promise I won't make a fuss, if you let me take a look at your arm first. That cut needs cleaning and dressing, and, given where it is on your arm, it'll be difficult to do yourself. Let me clean and dress it, and I'll go home quietly and do what you tell me."

 

"Meaning that,if I don't let you dress the cut, you won't go home quietly?"

 

I nodded. "You would have to tie me to the bike. And, yeah, I probably would quite enjoy it."

 

Asa looked at me for a long time, his chiseled features and dark eyes impossible to interpret. Finally, he spoke. "There's something a bit wrong with you, isn't there?"

 

"Maybe."

 

"Come on."

 

He led me around the back of the bar to a battered motorhome, resting on bricks, that looked as if it had been there since the Second World War

 

"This is where you live?"

 

"Fiona lets me stay here when I'm in town."

 

"Where do you actually live?"

 

No answer. He opened the door, and I followed him in. Although I was theoretically here purely on an errand of mercy to help with his injured arm, I couldn't suppress the slight frisson of excitement I felt passing into Asa's home. I let my eyes linger way too long on the unmade bed that sat in the corner. Being with him there, in the confined space, seemed to focus the effect he already had upon me. Such a small room could hardly contain the charisma that Asa exuded, and I felt it like a physical thing pressing in upon me.

 

"Here." Asa passed me a handful of fairly clean bandages and a bottle of off-the-shelf antiseptic.

 

I took the rudimentary medical supplies, and he took off his jacket. He poked his fingers through the hole left by the knife, shook his head, and muttered something to himself.

 

"I think," My words came out through a dry mouth, "It might be easier if you took your shirt off, too." Not strictly true, but it was worth a try.

 

Asa looked at me for a long time, his face like granite. Finally, he stripped off the T-shirt, revealing a muscular torso that made me catch my breath and gulp like an ostrich trying to swallow a beach ball.

 

"How does it look?" asked Asa.

 

"Fantastic," I breathed.

 

Asa frowned, and I realized what he was talking about.

 

"Doesn't look too bad. It's a clean cut. Not ragged, I mean." I took a first aid course when I went to college, so I knew I was saying all the right words, even if I wasn't one hundred percent sure what they all meant.

 

"Does it need stitches? I've got a needle someplace."

 

"No!" Just the thought of stitching up human flesh made my stomach turn. I was not cut out to be a nurse. "Just a cleaning and a bandage."

 

Asa sat down on the bed. "Get on with it, then."

 

I sat next to him, hyper-aware of his half-naked body next to mine, and idly wishing it was the other half. I tore off a piece of bandage, soaked it in antiseptic, and dabbed at the long laceration. Asa didn't even wince. His features might have tightened a bit, along with the rock hard muscles of his torso, but no more than that.

 

"Doesn't it sting?" I felt I had to talk to take my mind off what I was doing. Maybe that would stop my hands from shaking.

 

Asa just shrugged.

 

"Do you mind me asking ...?” I began.

 

"Almost certainly, yes."

 

"What was going on out there?"

 

Asa looked at me for a long moment. At times like this, he seemed to be assessing me, deciding if I could be trusted or not.

 

"My friends and I help out local businesses getting heat from unsavory characters."

 

"Unsavory?"

 

"You know what it's like. Any time a business does all right, some bastard with a load of cash is looking to move in and take over. And, if the business owner doesn't want to sell, then the bastards hire men like the ones you saw tonight to persuade them. I stand up for the business owners."

 

He made it sound pretty noble.

 

"You're with War Cry."

 

"You've heard of War Cry?"

 

"My dad mentioned the name."

 

Asa snorted. "I bet he didn't have much good to say."

 

"What were you doing at my house tonight?"

 

"Focus on what you're doing."

 

I began to wrap a bandage around Asa's arm. My fingers brushed against his skin and, to my surprise, I heard him catch his breath this time.

 

"You've got cold hands," he muttered, trying to explain away his reaction.

 

"You've got strong ones."

 

As I tied off the bandage, he turned to look at me, and our eyes met. The heat between us was almost palpable. You could have fried an egg where our gazes met.

 

I thought back to what I had said about going home to Dad's. But things had changed now. Something was happening, and that promise no longer mattered. Something crackled between Asa and me, and if I didn't do something about it, then I was going to explode. I placed a trembling hand on Asa's thigh, feeling the muscles tense beneath my touch and hearing his breath become suddenly more audible.

 

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

 

What a ridiculous thing to say. It made me sound like a little girl, not the wild child rebel I wanted to appear. It would have surprised my dad, and probably Risa, too, to learn it, but I wasn't really that girl. I had played the part well, but I never drank as much as I pretended, I never smoked or took drugs, and 'Do you think I'm pretty?' was probably my best chat-up line.

 

I liked painting—it wasn’t just an easy course for college drop-outs to me. It was a real career. I preferred spending an evening curled up with a book than getting wasted at a party. But, for whatever reason, I didn’t want people to know that. Maybe I wanted to be the wild child that everybody thought I was. Maybe I needed it. I never had a chance to get to know my mom. I learned about her mostly through the distorted prism of my father's memories. The less I got along with Dad, the less I seemed to take after him, compared to Risa, and the more I assumed I must take after my mom. Maybe the more I wanted to take after her. I wanted to be the bad girl that she was—the rebel, the hard drinker who hooked up with men for sport. I wanted to be that, but the truth was that I was no more like her than I was like my dad.

 

So, my heart fluttered all the more quickly in my chest as I slid a cautious hand up Asa's thigh, because this sort of situation wasn't as common to me as my family might have thought. As my hand travelled toward the point of no return, I leaned toward Asa to kiss him.

 

But he pulled back. And a split second before my questing hand entered the danger-zone, I felt his strong grip on my wrist, stopping me.

 

"You promised you'd go home without a fuss. You promised you'd do as I tell you."

 

"I will," I nodded, trying to keep the nervousness out of my voice. "I'll do anything you tell me. So, what are you going to tell me to do?"

 

"To get on my bike, and keep that mouth of yours shut while I drive you home."

 

"There are a lot more fun things you could tell me to do."

 

"I'm sure."

 

"I'd do them."

 

"Are you keeping your promise or not?"

 

"You don't think I'm pretty?"

 

He stood up sharply, and a little hastily, and I caught a glimpse of a bulge in the front of his tight pants that answered the question for him. "That's neither here nor there."

 

"Okay." I stood up, demure and subdued. There was a strange mixture of emotions in me. Disappointment, of course, and the sharp frustration of thwarted desire. But relief, too. Perhaps I wasn't ready. Still ... "But you do think I'm pretty, don't you?"

 

I had come up close behind him, so that when he turned he was flush against me, and I felt his hot breath on my upturned face.

 

"I'm President of War Cry. You're the sheriff’s daughter."

 

"I don't care."

 

Asa scoffed. "I know that. You love it. You'd like nothing more than to score one against your old man. And then you'd regret it. And I'm damn sure I would. I'm many things, but I'm not any girl's plaything, and I don’t want to be. Now get your ass on the damn bike."

 

We rode back to my house in silence, arriving there in the early hours of the morning. I wasn't sure what to think about the events of the evening. Maybe he was right. I didn't want to be with him for any more reason than to irritate my dad and because the idea of being with a bad boy thrilled me. But I had hung out with bad boys before, and I’d never felt anything like this. I wanted Asa like I wanted my next breath, but even I didn't know if I wanted him for an hour, for a week, or forever. My head was too muddled with lust to know more than that.

 

But he had known. He had read me like a book, and, rather than taking advantage for an enjoyable one-night-stand, he had chosen a higher path. Which somehow made him more desirable still. My friends and family didn't understand me—they all thought I was something I wasn't, something I was trying to be. Truth be told, I didn't really understand myself. But Asa had sized me up in one night. He got me. And, so, I couldn't have him.

 

We pulled up outside my house.

 

"Off you go."

 

I made no move to get off the bike, pushing my luck to the last, unable to help myself and secretly hoping Dad was watching through the curtains. "Don't I get a kiss goodbye?"

 

Asa kicked out the kickstand, swung himself off the bike and went to take me in his arms. For a moment, I thought he was actually going to do it, that I was going to get my kiss, and my insides melted just at the thought. But instead, he scooped me up off the pillion and dumped me unceremoniously in the dust in front of the porch.

 

"Good night."

 

He rode off, leaving me exactly as he had met me: a virgin.