Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 105813 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105813 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Reluctantly, I turned my helmet forward. How could I not stare? “It’s hard not to.”
“I will be hard if you don’t stop.”
I shivered and drew in a deep breath. If he’d said that in his synthesized voice, I might’ve climbed onto his lap and ruined the whole I’m-here-to-kick-your-ass charade. But he’d turned off the distortion, as well as the external speakers on our helmets so our conversations wouldn’t be overheard.
“How do you do it?” I turned my head just enough to see him through the side of the visor. “It’s one minute before the race, and you’re all casual and cool.”
He unfolded from his forward recline and rubbed gloved hands on his thighs, his visor pointed toward the road ahead. “I’m terrified.” He dropped his boot to the ground and adjusted his stance above the bike. “I don’t know what’s waiting for us at the finish line, but you can not deviate from the plan. Promise me.”
The plan where I followed the map to the DuPage County Airport, no matter what happened to him, during or after the race. I wouldn’t leave on that plane without him, but I’d follow his instructions to the point of departure. “I promise.”
The starting line faced the entrance ramp onto I-355. We would race on the outskirts of the city, all highway, no turns. Logan designed the racing map to minimize as much risk as possible. There would be no dark alleys to hide traps. No sharp turns to slide the bike. His protectiveness of me, however overbearing, warmed me to the very deepest level.
A man with a thickset body and shoulder-length blond hair strode to the crosswalk in front of our tires. Standing on the curb beside us, he held a black flag low to the ground.
We’d only been waiting five minutes, but my lungs released a huge breath at the sight of that flag. Dozens of people had gathered. The cops would be rolling in soon.
With the map illuminated at the edge of my visor, I leaned forward, hands on the grips, eyes straight ahead. “Thermal.”
The world bloomed into a rainbow of colors. The buildings and streets brightened into blue and green. Red and orange concentrated on faces and torsos and the engines of purring motorcycles.
At my side, Logan’s fiery silhouette lowered into a crouch over his bike. This was it.
My heart thundered, and the flag went up.
I opened the gas and shot forward. The jet turbine engine whined as it launched me with enough torque to rattle my teeth. I reached ninety miles per hour in three seconds, dusting everything in my wake.
Except Logan. He held at my side up the entrance ramp and weaved around me as we cut through interstate traffic.
Within six seconds, I cracked two-hundred mph, and with no more pedestrians to worry about, I tucked close to the gas tank and turned off the thermal imagining.
Cars and billboards blurred into normal range of color under the black sky. The wind battered my jacket and pulled on my arms as I whipped on and off the highway’s shoulder and squeezed between lanes of traffic. Adrenaline fired through my arteries. My hands slicked in the gloves, and my body shook with the force of the engine. My heartbeat was somewhere in my stomach. Fucking amazing.
“Goddammit, Kaci. Slow it the fuck down.” His voice muffled above the scream of the motor.
He was right. If I wiped out at this speed, he’d have to scrape me off the pavement, piece by piece. I slowed to one-sixty, a pace I was used to on the Ducati, and focused on the openings in the heavy flow of cars.
The rear camera image showed him maneuver behind me. His body tucked so low only his wide shoulders and the top of his helmet rose above his aerodynamic windshield. Just ten more miles to the finish line, and we would be on our way to the plane, where I intended to wrap that body around mine for the entirety of the ten hour flight.
“I miss your braid.” His rumble caressed my ears just as his bike passed mine and slipped in front of me.
The braid was there. I’d just tucked it out of sight in the helmet. “I miss your electronic voice.”
“This voice?” His timbre morphed into the sexy, computerized overlay I remembered from the first night I met him.
I veered around a Greyhound bus and caught up with him on the other side. “Definitely that voice.”
Sirens sounded in the distance. Cars honked. Chase vehicles and motorcycles with mounted cameras zipped onto the freeway. And Logan and I gave them a show.
I dodged and swerved and fishtailed the bike. He tore up the shoulder, cutting too damned close to the guard rails and gliding between cars as if they weren’t there. And the entire time, he told me all the dirty things he planned to do to me, his modulated voice wrapping around me and trembling my thighs.