Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79338 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
“You ju—just, wanna s—see me naked.” She gives me a weak smile.
“Yeah, you caught me. I was fucking jealous that Scrapper got you all to himself and this seemed like the easiest way to get some private time for just the two of us.”
I help her strip down and spread out her clothes as best we can. Then it’s my turn. A few minutes later, we’re sitting in a patch of sunlight on the cold cement. Water sprays up occasionally, but it’s not too bad. Not yet anyway. I pull her into my lap and wrap my arms around her. Eventually her shivering slows, then goes away. She leans her face into my chest and closes her eyes.
“You know,” I say, “I was hoping to get you naked tonight. Didn't have this in mind, though.”
Despite everything, a soft chuckle escapes her. I try to ignore how it makes her pretty tits jiggle, and how good her ass feels in my lap. Too bad my dick doesn’t understand that there's a time and place for everything.
“Are you about to suggest that exercise will help keep us warm, too?” She's joking. That's a good sign.
We press closer to the wall, and I try to shield her from the worst of the spray. Fuck, everything aches. I feel like I've been run through a goddamn thresher, and I bet Mila feels no better.
“You're bleeding,” she says, tracing a path with her finger down my side.
“Look bad?”
“No, it's shallow. Looks painful, mostly.”
My laugh is dry. “Maybe it is. I don't fucking know. Still hopped up on adrenaline. But if it doesn't look too bad, I'll just count my fucking blessings.”
She sighs. “How are we going to get off this thing?”
I look up, examining what I can see above me in the early evening dusk. “Not sure. No way we're gonna be able to climb sheer concrete.” I search my jeans for my phone, but it's dead and I can't get it started.
“Need to put it in a bag of rice,” Mila says deadpan.
“Shit. I usually keep one on me, but I forgot it today. How’s yours?”
“It was in my purse.”
So still in the case on the back of my bike. Fuck. “The best thing we can do right now is stay put. I don’t want to go back into the water again unless we have to, and if they don’t know we’re missing, they will soon.”
I leave out the obvious what if. Those motherfuckers got me, so they might've gotten Mack and Scrapper, too. I've ridden with those guys since I became a blooded member, and known Mack a lot longer than that.
They made it, of course they did.
21
MILA
“Talk to me.” I curl into Reaper, watching the first blush of sunset color the sky. Every time I hear a siren in the distance, I wonder if it’s for us, but it never is. His partly dry t-shirt is hanging over us as a makeshift blanket, but it’s mostly his body heat keeping me warm.
“You okay?”
“Of course not. I'm trapped on a support pillar under an abandoned railroad bridge and my chest kinda hurts. Now, talk to me so I don't think too hard about it.”
He strokes a hand down my back. “Alright, what about? I'm not good at this small talk shit.”
“Tell me something real. Tell me about you.” I trace shapes on his muscular thigh, tempted to work my way higher, but in this situation? As much as the thought is entertaining, I’m a little too stressed for the reality of it. I still feel all mixed up and jittery from the chase and almost drowning.
He’s quiet for a really long time. “I’m one test short of getting my GED. I was gonna do it next month.”
“What? Really?” I sit up and look at him, surprised. “You never graduated?”
Reaper stares at something across the water. He shrugs. “Me and school never really got along very well. It’s not like I decided to drop out. I just spent more and more time doing other shit until it didn’t seem like there was a point in pretending anymore. The people I hung out with weren’t in school either, so it seemed normal.”
“What other shit was there to do?”
“Drink, smoke, fuck… Most of the time we weren’t a problem for anyone but ourselves, but eventually we started stealing cars. We weren’t even selling them or anything, just joyriding.”
“Sounds like you and my brother would have gotten along.”
He laughs. “Yeah, probably. I eventually did some time for it.”
I know bikers are rough types, but for some reason it surprises me anyway. “For stealing cars?”
“Sort of. We got stupid one night and aimed too high. We stole a fucking Porsche. Damn that thing was a goddamn monster. I drove it first, then I traded with Red, one of my friends. He’d had a couple beers, shit, most of us had. There were five of us squeezed in there like sardines, and Red fucking floored it. The road was clear and we were young and fucking invincible.”