She was lit up like a city at night, her legs wobbly on the stairs to the library’s employee entrance, feeling both inordinately proud of her motorcycle gear, and terrifyingly exposed. The helmet banged against the doorframe on her way in, making everyone seated in the shared office space look up.
So much for avoiding attention.
“What on earth?” Carol said, her eyes widening.
“Hi,” she said with a quick glance at the clock. “I’m not … I’ll tell you later, after I get changed.”
She ducked into the bathroom, banging her elbows and knees on the tiny stall as she shimmied out of the tight leathers and into her slacks. Her blouse, fortunately, was a forgiving polyester blend, but the scent of leather and sweat and skin was unmistakable. She scrubbed her fingers against her scalp to give her helmet hair some lift, then peered at herself in the mirror.
She looked like she’d just had sex. Amazing sex. Heart-pounding, multi-orgasmic sex. Same flushed cheeks and throat, same bright eyes, same obvious but inexplicable energy vibrating in her skin.
The bathroom door opened and one of the work-study students walked in, her quick gaze taking in Erin’s face and hair, the helmet at her feet, the leathers neatly folded and tucked into her backpack. “Wow. Was that, like, you I saw riding up with what’s his name, the SEAL guy who’s lurking all mysterious and broody in the psych classes?”
She should have frozen. She should have lied. They were in a relationship, which was expressly forbidden by the school’s code of conduct. She should have felt ashamed, threatened, exposed.
“Yes,” she said simply. Chin lifted, gaze direct. It wasn’t about truth or lies. It was about claiming who she was becoming. “That was me.”
The student nodded, then slung her backpack down on the floor. “Cool,” she said, and walked into a stall. Erin bolted the second the door closed, shoving her backpack and helmet under her desk, then turned to Carol. “I bought a motorcycle,” she said.
“You did?” Carol said, eyes wide.
“A Ducati Monster 696.”
“Nice bike,” Terry the bearded electronic collections librarian said, peering around from behind his wall of monitors. Erin stared at him, because in the six months he’d been working at the library, he’d said not a single word not related to the job. “New?”
“A couple of years,” she said. “It’s in the lot.”
Just like that, everyone who wasn’t working with a student crowded back through the door and down the stairs to the parking lot to cluster around Erin’s new bike.
“Wow,” Carol said.
“Who put the scratches in it?” Terry said, fingering the gouge in the paint.
“I did, about two hours ago,” Erin admitted.
“Keep the shiny side up,” he said sagely.
“Working on it.”
“I didn’t know you knew how to ride a motorcycle,” Carol said.
“I learned,” Erin said. “The state offers beginner rider courses. Some dealerships give you a discount on a bike afterwards, so the course basically pays for itself when you buy a bike.”
“What did Jason think about this?” Carol asked.
“He thought it was a stupid idea to invest in an expensive hobby that would probably get me killed, or worse, permanently disabled.”
“Good thing you divorced him,” Terry said, hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “That’s a sweet bike.”
The work-study student opened the door and leaned out. “Uh, I’ve got a printer issue in here?”
Erin sighed. “I’ll take care of it.”
* * *
She floated through the first part of her shift. She taught a student to use EBSCO; she fixed seven printer jams and one wireless router problem. She said good-bye to the day-shift librarians, and watched the reading room slowly empty out as students went in search of dinner. Slowly, ever so slowly, the routine dampened the adrenaline rush and her body settled down, her heart rate approaching normal, the color fading from her skin. But she couldn’t deny the spring in her step, the new, proud tilt to her head, the smile that broke across her face every time she looked out the tall windows and saw her Duc waiting in the parking lot.
There was a dead period in the library around the time when the dining hall was open, students taking a break before transitioning from the class day to evening study hours. She picked up her phone and sent Jack a text.
Eat dinner or take my bike for a ride?
She could hear the rough amusement in his response. Tough call. Come down to study room 4W and I’ll help you decide.
Guiltily she looked around the room. Carol was taking her shift at the circulation desk. Only one earnest student sat at a table in the main reading room. The library was as empty as it would ever be, and if anyone could keep them hidden, it would be a Navy SEAL.
She snagged her backpack from under her desk, shouldered it, and walked up to Carol. “I’m taking my dinner break now.”
“A student just asked me to text her a copy of the book she needs,” Carol said, idly clicking through Overheard in the Library on Tumblr.
“The call information?” Erin said, arrested mid-stride.
“No, the whole book,” Carol said brightly.
“You’re all over that, right?” Erin said, and pressed the button for the stacks.
“I’m so all over it,” Carol said.
The cement walls and florescent lighting of the stacks felt oppressive after a morning spent in the sunshine, the wind a physical presence against her body. She made a careful round of each floor of the stacks, checking study rooms, the rows and rows of shelves, all the while remembering how riding the bike was like sex with Jack, a push and pull, a way of testing herself against something stronger, more powerful, something that challenged her to go beyond what she was capable of, even beyond her dreams.
But this was getting dangerous, in a way she’d not expected. Relationships with a student were clearly forbidden, but Jack was no ordinary student. He was, she thought as she walked a slow circle of the third-floor stacks, no ordinary man.
4W was in the far corner of the bottom floor of the stacks, a study room largely ignored thanks to its out-of-the-way location and inability to get Wifi or cell service. Only the most desperately introverted undergrads found their way there. She peeked through the rectangular safety glass inset and saw Jack, long legs stretched out in front of him, typing away at a laptop. He looked up and beckoned her in.
“Hi,” she said. “I didn’t know you were coming back to the library today.”
“This paper won’t write itself,” he said. “How are you doing? Sore?”
She pulled out one of the awful plastic chairs clustered unevenly around the table and sat down, wincing. “I didn’t notice how sore I was until I spent an hour in the chair at the circulation desk.”
The lazy smile he gave her didn’t quite mitigate the sharp look in his eyes. “C’mere,” he said, holding out his arm.
She winced as his forearm tightened around her hips, just above the tender spot where her butt hit the tarmac, but didn’t let that stop her from straddling his lap. “I really, really shouldn’t do this,” she murmured against his mouth.
“I shaved hoping to tempt you into doing exactly this,” he replied.
He wasn’t kissing her. His hands gently kneaded the tops of her buttocks, then moved lower, finding the deepest aches and pressing into them. An unexpected heat flared low in her sex, kindled by the warm look in his eyes, his clean-shaven jaw, his full lips she’d never seen quite so exposed before.
And, if she were truly honest about what she felt, the thrill of the hidden and the danger of being caught.
“This isn’t like me,” she said, making herself a liar by bracing her elbows against his chest and stroking his hair, his ears.
“What isn’t like you?”
“Thinking with my body, not my mind.”
He captured her hand, now resting against his neck, her thumb on his pulse, and kissed her palm. “How do you feel? Right now. What’s your body telling you at this very moment?”
She tipped her forehead to rest against his, closed her eyes, and sank deep inside her skin. Her body was talking to her, the message subtle but insistent in a way it hadn’t been before she bought the Duc. The pain flaring with each gentle curl of his fingers against her bottom only added to the clamor. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “The signals are so mixed. I should be terrified. I should be in pain. All I am is turned on.”
She breathed the last word into his open mouth, his lips plush and resilient against hers, while her fingers stroked the ruthlessly shaved skin of his jaw. Her index fingers brushed the corners of his mouth as she kissed him, his tongue flickering out to taste hers, then lick the tips and suck them into his mouth.
A beat of pleasure pulsed through her, lingering in her nipples, her sex. His gaze met hers unashamedly as he bit down ever so gently on the pads of her fingers. “What’s your body telling you, Erin?”
She paused for a split second to consider the messages dancing along her nerves: arousal, desire, excitement, and a connection she could no longer deny. She was falling for Jack, and falling hard. Her heart all but stopped when this fact burst into awareness in her brain, her stomach doing a slow loop. She’d already broken one promise to a man, a big promise. A “love, honor, and cherish until death do us part” promise. But the promise she’d made to herself was just as important, the promise to live her life as fully as she could, throttle open all the way, engine screaming at the redline, the wind pushing her back as the machine bore her forward.
She would do this, everything her body asked of her, and she’d let him go. She’d keep both promises, and damn the cost. It was easy enough to tell herself that. The only thing left on her list was skydiving, and Jack had already booked them flight time to make the jump.
He was still looking up at her, eyes expectant, hands a warm weight against her bottom. In response she hitched herself forward just a little, wrapped her right arm around his neck, slid the fingers of her left hand into his hair, and kissed him. “I want this,” she breathed between kisses. She was slick and hot and quivering with eagerness, and all she could think about was how good it would feel when he stretched her open and slid inside. “I want this,” she said again.
“Me, too,” he murmured.
He hoisted her to her feet and backed her into the wall beside the door, then swung one of the chairs around and wedged the back under the handle so the door wouldn’t open.
“Wait,” she said, and wriggled free to yank the stretchy key ring from her arm. She opened the door, locked it from the outside, then let it close again.
“Did you just lock us in?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“That’s my girl.”
She reached over and flicked off the light switch, plunging the room into near darkness. The fluorescents from the stacks lit up a rectangle on the table, but otherwise, the room was in shadows. He backed her into the wall again, and claimed her mouth; she let out a strangled yelp when her bottom hit the cement. The noise quickly became a shuddering moan when his strong arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her into his body and away from the wall.
It was a smearing, intense kiss, too much pressure and slick, hot tongue, and yet not enough, not nearly enough. She arched into his body and wound her leg around his calf, desperate to get him against her, inside her. One day on a bike and she was an adrenaline junkie, sliding down that slippery slope to wrack and ruin.
Yes. Oh God, yes.
Jack braced one arm against the wall and used his hips to shove her back, grinding against her. She gasped again and reached for his belt, tugging his shirt up, running greedy hands over his ridged abdomen, gripping his waistband and pulling him closer.
“Fuck, yes,” he growled when her fingers brushed his straining shaft. “Get … come on…”
She went to work on his belt and zipper while he flicked open the hook-and-eye closure of her trousers. The weight of her belt and the lining sent her trousers to the floor. She hooked her thumbs in her panties and dropped them, then stepped out of one leg opening, listening for any sounds other than Jack’s deep breaths and the tear and slick sound of a condom rolling down.
“Gonna have to be quiet,” he said, and unceremoniously wrapped his arm around her waist again and hoisted her.
“Okay, yes, hurry,” she said, ready to promise whatever with his hard cock nudging into her folds.
A tentative thrust, then he adjusted, and slid in. She made a shocked, disbelieving sound when he breached her, and with a stifled curse he tipped her head into his shoulder. “Shh,” he said, predatory and soothing all at once.
Her legs, already overtaxed from riding the bike, were quivering. “Hold on,” he said.
She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck. He adjusted his hold on her, bringing both hands forward to grip the sorest part of her bottom. She gasped, writhed, then gasped again when her squirming set off signal fires flaring from her sex to her nipples. In the back of her mind, she was shocked she wasn’t glowing.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she breathed. The pain was there, steady, manageable, and making her crazy hot. “Oh, yes.”
He leaned forward, using his shoulders to brace her back against the wall. With each thrust she trusted more of her weight to his strong arms and hips, tightening her crossed legs above his loosened jeans, sinking into it. There was no kissing, no touching other than his hands on her aching bottom and his shoulders pinning her to the wall, his plush mouth hot and open against her ear. Each thrust was slow, measured, devastating, until all she could hear was her heart pounding in her ears, his staggered breathing, and the dirty, slick sounds of his body taking hers.
She came with her face buried in his shoulder, choking on the sounds trying to tear free from her throat. With one final deep thrust he pinned her to the wall, shudders ripping through his body. They rode out the aftershocks together, tension slowly seeping from their bodies until she could relax her legs. He disengaged their bodies, stepping into the darkness at the back of the study room. With trembling hands she patted at her hair, her blouse, then bent to untangle her trousers and panties from her ankle. Faint sounds reached her ears, the rustle of a plastic bag, cotton against skin, a zipper.
“Can you bring me my backpack?” she whispered, giving up on working out the knot of clothes and kicking off shoes, pants, panties.
He set the bag down in front of her. She dug through the front pocket for tissues and cleaned herself up as best she could. When she looked up, he was holding out a paper with the remains of his fast food dinner and a tied-off condom. She added her tissues, and dressed while he folded the top of the bag over, hiding the evidence. “Food is not permitted in the study rooms,” she said in her primmest voice.
“You gonna turn me in?” he asked, one corner of his mouth lifted in amusement.
“I’ll let it slide this once,” she said, the sound of her zipper belying her prim tone. “Do I smell like sex?”
“The whole room smells like sex,” he said, but leaned in and sniffed her. “You actually smell like leather and sweat.”
“Great,” she said, relieved.
“It’s pretty hot,” he murmured, his lips brushing her skin sending a shiver along her nerves. “Really sexy, actually.”
She turned to kiss him, his tongue a velvety flicker of heat teasing without pressing for entrance. “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Okay,” he said, but his hand slid into her hair, holding her close.
“I really … really have to … stop that,” she said, smiling and holding him at bay. “I have to get back to work.”
He stepped back, hands raised in a feigned innocence she found laughable, and very amusing. She unlocked the door. “Wait here,” he said, and walked out, his booted feet echoing off the stacks as he checked first one hallway, then the next. “You’re clear.”
“Thanks,” she said, preparing to make her escape for the stairwell no one ever used that led to the storage rooms.
“Wait,” he said. “I made an appointment for your tandem jump. A friend of mine can take us up on Friday morning. The weather looks great.”
She blinked, felt a smile flicker across her face. “You did? You made the appointment.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“You’re not going to talk me out of it.”
He bent his head and kissed her. “Never,” he said. “I will never try to talk you out of something that matters to you.”
She reached up and ran her hand through his hair, making it come up crazy cowlicks. “Thank you,” she said. “Friday’s my day off, so that sounds great.”
* * *
Friday found Jack standing in a hangar, watching Erin as she zipped herself into a borrowed jumpsuit. “Laces tight?” he asked with a nod at her running shoes.
“Double knotted,” she answered.
“I’ll take those,” Jack said, pointing at Erin’s earrings. They were pretty, long and gold and nestled into her hair, and definitely a hazard.
“Why?” she asked.
“At a hundred and twenty miles an hour, they could get tangled in your hair, or the harness, and rip right out of your ears.”
“Ouch,” Erin said, obediently taking them off. Jack stowed them in one of his cargo pockets. She then pulled her hair back into a ponytail, catching his eye as she did. “That was my next instruction,” Jack said, smiling. She thought ahead. He liked that, liked how she stayed with him, every step of the way.
Tandem dives were a piece of cake to arrange and pull off. Jack already knew how to orient his body and control the canopy during free fall; the trick was making sure the passenger knew what to do to basically be nothing more than extra weight. Erin paid close attention as he guided her through how to position her body under his, how to keep her arms extended from her shoulders, her legs tucked together, between his, because he was so much bigger than she was. He walked her though the actual jump moment, how to cross her arms over her chest and trust her weight to his, getting nods of understanding at each step.
“Thumbs up?” he asked.
“Thumbs up,” she replied, giving him two and a big grin.
He’d packed their chutes himself, layering the tandem parachute into the deployment bag, then loading the deployment bag into the pack. Hefting the pack in one hand, he kept a firm grip on her harness as they walked to the waiting plane. Disdaining the stairs, he cupped his hands for her foot and boosted her into the plane’s cargo area, then planted his palms and swung himself aboard. The pilot fired up the propellers and taxied to the end of runway, and in moments they were airborne. A delighted grin on her face, she watched out the window as the ground dropped away at a sharp angle.
She was fine while he shrugged into the pack and secured the straps.
She was fine when he beckoned her to sit in front of him so he could secure her body to his at the shoulders, chest, and hips.
Of all people, Jack knew how someone’s mind could change in an instant. In his case it took a firefight gone wrong for his mind to wig out. In Erin’s case, it was the moment he shuffled their harnessed bodies across the plane’s floor to the hatch. She took one look down at the patchwork fields below them, and went rigid, bracing her sneakered feet and pushing back.
“Jack!”
“What?” he shouted back, running through his mental checklist. He’d packed the drogue chute himself, and the main tandem chute, and the reserve chute, too. Cords hung freely. Harness secure, Erin’s harness secure, the straps harnessing them together. He adjusted his mirrored goggles, then tried and failed to wiggle a finger under the strap of Erin’s pair, borrowed from the jump school’s equipment. Her hair was secured at her nape in a ponytail, leaving her elegant cheekbones and stubborn chin visible.
“I can’t do it.”
The body’s instinctive reaction to heights was to either back away slowly or tip over the edge. “It’s going to be fine,” he said.
“No, it’s not!” she shouted.
“One minute!” the pilot shouted back toward them. Jack checked the altimeter on his watch and gave him a thumbs-up.
She reached back, blindly grappling for something. To keep her away from the chutes, he guided her hand to the loose fabric of the jumpsuit. It went taut as she fisted her hand in it, all color blanching from her face.
“We’re above the clouds!”
“Yup,” he said. “Gonna be a good jump.”
“Nope. Nope, nope, nope. This is crazy. This is insane!”
He gripped the bar bolted above the door, as did she. Her knuckles popped through the thin fabric of her gloves, giving away the death grip she had on the bar.
“Thirty seconds!” the pilot yelled.
She had to let go in order for them to jump. “Erin,” he shouted next to her ear. He could see the whites of her eyes as she stared at the ground under them. “The fear is normal. But think ahead! If we call this off, what will you feel the moment we touch down, and you walk away from the plane? Relief?”
“Yes!”
“Or regret?”
Silence. “Yes,” she shouted, “but I’m scared, Jack! I’m really, really scared.”
“I know, sweetheart,” he said, patting her abdomen. It fluttered under his palm; she was all but hyperventilating. “But you’re not alone. I’m going out of this plane with you.”
A crazy, high-pitched cackle trilled from her mouth. “Then we’re both crazy! How many jumps?”
“Hundreds,” he said. High-altitude, low-chute deployment, for training, into enemy territory, into jungles and deserts and urban areas. “Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of jumps, sweetheart.”
“Hundreds?” she repeated, like a mantra.
“Hundreds. Erin,” he said, then reached up and gently turned her chin so she could look over her shoulder at him. “Trust me. I know what I’m doing, but that’s not really the point. No regrets, sweetheart. No regrets.”
“Go time!” the pilot yelled, and the light overhead went green.
The pilot could make another circle if they needed him to, so Jack waited. “Trust me,” he said again, breathing the words into the skin of her cheek.
Silence. She was exhibiting all the signs of extreme duress, with a side order of terror thrown in. Accelerated heart rate, eyes the size of plates, fast, shallow breathing, full body tremors. “No regrets,” she breathed, eyes huge. “Yes.”
“Go?” he asked.
“Go.” She let go of the bar bolted above the hatch, folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t make me say it again!”
He cupped her forehead and tipped her head back against his shoulder, then wrapped both hands around the bar, rocked back, and flung them forward out of the plane. The first few seconds out of the plane in unabated free fall were such a powerful rush. He expected ear-splitting screams, but all he could hear was the shriek of the wind against his ears. He knew she hadn’t fainted because her arms were still tightly crossed, and she was straining to keep her legs lifted between his. Holding position. All in.
He tapped her shoulders, and she flung her arms out, fingers stretched wide, and let out a scream of pure joy. “Oh my God, this is amazing!”
He laughed, then glanced at his watch, where the altimeter recorded their descent. Forty seconds and he’d deploy the main chute for a five-minute drift to the landing zone. He held out his hand, palm down, in front of Erin’s face, and she slapped it hard, giving him an exuberant, very high five.
“Arms in!” he shouted.
She jerked her arms back in, and he pulled the main, rocking them hard against the harness as the chute expanded, slowing their fall considerably. As they drifted toward the landing site, a powerful possessiveness thrummed inside him, vibrating like the cords connecting the chute to the harness. He was the one who protected her while she pursued her dreams. He was the one who set her free.
“It’s so beautiful,” she called back to him.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at the color high in her cheeks, the grin splitting her face. “Beautiful.”
When the ground rushed up to meet them, she lifted her knees to her chest and let him make the landing. He stuck it, taking three big steps forward until he got his balance and the chute drifted down behind them. Crouching a little so Erin could get her feet on the ground, he yanked the chute down out of the breeze, then released the straps holding her to him. She sprang away with a whoop and ran in a tight circle in front of him.
“Holy cow!”
“Uh huh,” he said, wrestling with the chute.
She shook her clenched fists and bounced on her toes. “That’s better than the Duc,” she said, emphatic, shoving the goggles up to her hairline. “That’s amazing. Exhilarating.”
“Pretty much,” he said.
She reached out and grabbed his harness, hauling him a little off-balance. “Arousing,” she said, and kissed him.
He remembered this, too, from his first few jumps, the adrenaline rush triggering a predictable male response, but it had been a long time since he’d gotten hard jumping out of a plane. But when Erin’s mouth crashed into his, hard and open and so completely alive, he went from blasé to aroused in three heartbeats. Blood bloomed hot and coppery on his tongue. He fought off the chute and wrapped his other arm around her shoulders, holding her close for a hot, possessive, tongue-tangling kiss. Something was different deep inside him, something he hadn’t predicted or expected, but what his body was telling him was true and there and real.
She shoved away with a delighted gasp, then shook her hands hard and held them out for his inspection. Her fingers visibly twitched, even in the gloves; if he took them off, she’d be trembling. His body recognized the hot, wild look in her eyes that boded very, very well for an incredible afternoon in bed.
“Look,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, and held his hands out in response.
His were rock solid. Not a twitch, tremor, or ripple in them. He blinked, and pulled off his gloves, tucking them under his arm, then did it again.
Granite. His hands were back, and not just his left, but his right. His trigger hand, his rifle hand, his dominant hand. He was as steady as the foundations of a skyscraper.
His body knew. His body knew it was ready to go back to work. He searched deep within himself and found it to be true.
Not recognizing that anything was different, she gripped his hands and peered into his eyes. “I want you. Now.”
He gripped the back of her head and pulled her in for a hard, swift kiss. “I know exactly how you feel, sweetheart, but trust me on this one. You want this back at your place, in a bed, curtains drawn, total privacy. Because I’m going to take my time and make you scream.”
A full body shudder ran through her. She nipped his lower lip, then looked around. “I don’t know,” she said. “Out here, in the field, under the sun?”
“Bed,” he said firmly, because once the adrenaline wore off she would be sore from the harness. He had plans for her: a bathtub and a hot oil rub before round two started.
She pouted prettily for a second, then brightened. “The ride home is going to be electric.”
One eye on the horizon, he said, “We need to turn in the gear,” he said, and pointed. The pilot was lining up for a landing.
Together they gathered the chute and helped the pilot push the plane into the hangar that doubled as the storage facility. After they turned in their harnesses, jumpsuits, and goggles, he waved them out, staying behind to finish up some paperwork and close the place down.
Erin swung her leg over the Duc. “Race you home?”
He laughed, and pushed the start button. “I know you love your pretty new bike, but it doesn’t stand a chance against mine,” he said.
“So give me a head start,” she said, and settled her helmet on her head.
This woman. She wanted to race and win, race and lose, race and be caught, race the sunset. “You’re going to lose,” he warned.
“I bet I’ll like it,” she said and goosed the throttle. Not much, not enough to send the bike out of control, but enough to show him how she felt. He followed at a leisurely pace, thinking through the straightaways along the country roads, the curves that followed the river into Lancaster. By the time he caught up with her, she’d settled down, riding at a sedate five over the limit. They rode up onto the overpass and down the other side, then approached the curve where the straight-line country road yielded to the river, banking left. It was a pretty curve, the water glinting forty or fifty feet below, trees lining the banks sloping from the road to the river. Other than the trips to the airfield, she probably hadn’t taken many big curves on the motorcycle yet, so he hung back, watching her with an eye toward giving her some tips when they got to her house. She slowed to well below the limit, keeping the bike a little too upright, but comfort leaning into a turn would come with experience. He thought about that experience … she’d come a long, long way in a couple of weeks, from a research librarian dreaming of owning a motorcycle to a woman who owned an Italian sportbike and jumped out of airplanes.
A brown blur shot out of the tall grass in the ditch, straight into Erin’s path. Jack shouted, knowing it was useless, then watched helplessly as she made the rookie’s worst braking mistake: underbraking the front tire and overbraking the rear. The bike wobbled, laying down a skid mark, then tipped over, sliding in a straight line down the two-lane highway while Erin slid on her side under the guardrail and into the trees.