Eden

 

“So you’ll come?”

 

Am I crazy? Is something wrong with me?

 

“I’ll come.”

 

The sparks that fly between us are undeniable and impossible to ignore, and yet I know I should be working; my game isn’t going to fix itself. I should walk away from him, forget I ever saw him, and work on my game. I should run from here and never look back. And yet when I look into his strong face, that cocky smirk, the last thing I want to do is run. He looks like such a prick! That’s a warning sign, surely? That’s something to push me away? But I move toward him.

 

He smiles down at me. “You’re making the right choice.”

 

“Am I?” I ask, genuinely curious. “It doesn’t feel like that.”

 

He laughs and claps his hands. “Does it feel like the wrong choice?”

 

I think about it, truly think about it, and realize that yes, it does. It feels like the worst choice I could make. Maddox is standing in front of me, casual and carefree, but his men are huddled together like a band of thieves. Each of them is covered with tattoos and wearing the leather of The Miseryed. One of them hawks and spits onto the road. Further down the sidewalk, I see a man and woman, perhaps husband and wife, step up to the road, look left and right, and cross the street, so they don’t have to walk past the mob.

 

“Eden?” Maddox says. “Is everything alright?”

 

I nod shortly, because if I talk, I might say something I regret. Two urges, both equally strong, compel me. One is the urge to run from here and get back to work. It appears in my fingers, causing them to fidget, as though a keyboard is in front of me and it’s time to type. My fingers twitch, and I hang my hands at my sides so that Maddox won’t notice. The other urge, completely unlike me, is to throw myself into this stranger’s arms and feel the muscular warmth of him, lay my head upon his leather and let him wrap his arms around me.

 

The urges meet somewhere deep in my chest, canceling each other out, so that I just stand statue-still for a minute or so.

 

He arches an eyebrow. Damn, he looks so bad when he looks at me like that, his kissable lips smirking, his eyes narrowed like a hunter. And then: Stop it, Eden! Stop it now!

 

“Well?” he says. “Are you coming?”

 

“Yes,” I sigh.

 

I take a step forward, and then a thought occurs to me. Holding up my finger, I mutter, “One second.”

 

I see that big bald man who stands at the front of the group of bikers nod his head and smile, teeth flashing, goofy. The Mexican men shout something in Spanish and then laugh. The scary-looking man with the scar down his face – the one who spoke with an Irish accent – says to another man, “When’re we leavin’ then?”

 

Maddox turns, faces them all. I can’t see his face because his back to me, but I can imagine it from the way he stands. He stands with his arms at his sides, chest puffed out. “There a problem?” he calls, and the group immediately becomes quiet. The Irish man stares at the ground. The Mexican men shake their heads, one of them biting his lip.

 

“No problem,” the Irish scarred man mutters.

 

“Good,” Maddox grunts. “Keep it that way, eh?”

 

How tough is he that he can make all those men be quiet with a few simple words? How impossibly tough!

 

I take out my phone and open my text messages. Going to my thread with Nat, I type: Hey, just met a biker in a coffee shop. Going for a ride with him. His name is Maddox Owens. He’s tall and blonde and handsome. If anything happens, call the police—I’ll try and be safe! I send the text and then turn back to Maddox, who stands close to me, so close I can smell his aftershave: musky, manly.

 

“If we don’t get going, we’re going to be late to the job,” he says.

 

“Are you sure I can come to a job? Won’t it be dangerous?”

 

“What? Scared of a little danger?”

 

“No!” And then I smile, admitting, “A little.”

 

“I’ll protect you,” he says. “Anyway, you might be surprised by what you see.”

 

“Surprised good or surprised bad?”

 

“Both?”

 

I laugh, can’t help but laugh. He’s so cool, so casual. He doesn’t give a damn. It’s refreshing to find a man who cares so little. Normally men are so pleading, so desperate, so oblivious of themselves. Maddox just smirks at me like he owns me, smirks at me like he owns everything. I think back to the restaurant, how he swaggered into the place, spoke way too loudly and flirted way too obviously. A tingle runs up my spine, a tingle I have no chance of stopping.

 

“Come on,” he says, and then turns toward the bikes, toward the men. “Let’s get rolling.”

 

He takes a few paces toward his bike. Last chance… Last chance to turn back and stop this. Last chance to come to your senses.

 

But then I follow him, and the men heave a collective sigh of relief and start mounting up. A dozen bike stands are kicked away, a dozen engines are prodded to life, growling, and then a dozen sets of tires squeal away from the coffee shop.

 

Maddox reaches underneath the bike, into the storage area, and hands me a helmet. I put it on. My mouth is suddenly dry, but I ignore it. This is easily the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. Hands down. No competition.

 

Then Maddox climbs onto his bike and twists around. “Get on,” he says.

 

I sit on the back and wrap my hands around his belly. I do this without thinking, as though I have sat on his bike a thousand times before. I’m shocked by how natural it feels. His belly muscles must be rock-hard; I can feel them through his leathers, a hard-packed sheet.

 

When he kicks away his stand, I know there’s no going back.