Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

49. Daisy

I’m not going to lie, it was a little scary at first. I’d never ridden on a motorcycle before, and I felt exposed and vulnerable, like I was straddling a rocket ship and riding through space.

The old me, the one who worried and lived in a state of careful consideration about every detail of my life, couldn’t help thinking about the fact that if we crashed, we were probably dead, because even though we were wearing helmets, we were in street clothes and the pavement was zinging by at light speed only feet away from our terrifyingly vulnerable bodies.

But somewhere along the way, I started to let go. It was freeing to fly through the night with nothing between my skin and the cool night air, and it didn’t hurt that the insides of my thighs were pressed against Jace’s, my tits smashed against his back.

I held tight to him, my arms around his waist, and fought the sexual thrill that had started to run through my body. The vibration of the bike was like a full-body vibrator between my thighs, and the hard plane of Jace’s abs under my fingertips didn’t exactly help.

My nipples were hard against his back, nothing between us but the thin fabric of our T-shirts, and somewhere along the way my pussy had started throbbing with desire.

The helmets had speakers and mics with Bluetooth, but we didn’t talk. The winding roads were empty, and there was something magical about the fact that we were hurtling through the night with our bodies pressed so tightly together, the separation of our clothes somehow making the whole thing even more erotic.

We were about halfway up the mountain road leading to the house when I heard the sound of another car behind us.

I looked in the motorcycle’s side mirror and saw headlights approaching.

Fast.

Great, just what we needed. Some asshole driving like a maniac on the winding roads at three in the morning.

Jace slowed down a little and moved over, giving the car room to pass. It moved up fast and I held my breath as I waited for it to move past us.

Except it didn’t. The sleek black car moved over, like it was trying to hit us.

Adrenaline surged through my body, my heart racing with fear. The car’s driver’s side was only a foot away from crushing our legs when Jace gunned the motorcycle.

We lurched forward, putting the car behind us again, and I heard Jace curse through the speaker in my helmet.

“I guess we have company,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s not some random asshole. They’re trying to run us off the road.”

“What? Why?” But as soon as I said it, I remembered the letter that had been on my desk the day before at Cantwell.

I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE IT ALONE. NOW YOU’LL LEARN.

I should have told the Beasts as soon as I got it, but I was guessing this wasn’t a good time to rectify that mistake.

“Hang on,” Jace said.

I tightened my arms around his waist as he pushed the motorcycle to go faster.

Behind us, the car gunned its engine. I heard it approaching like a runaway train and wondered how we could possibly outrun something with such a powerful engine.

The car tried to pull alongside us, but Jace weaved across the narrow road, keeping the car at our back until the driver changed tactics and tried to ram us from behind.

“Fuck,” Jace said.

The motorcycle’s engine whined as he pushed it to the limit, trying to keep the car from hitting us as we crested a hill.

My stomach dropped out from under me as we sailed over it, then tore down the other side.

On the left, the valley was spread out below us, only a few feet separating us from a sharp drop from the granite cliff.

We were going to die. The car would either run us off the road or it would force Jace to make a mistake. We’d either slam into the sheer mountain face on the right or plummet to our death off the cliff on the left.

Then the cliff was gone, replaced by sloping dirt that wound down into the woods. On the other side of the trees, a smaller road wound along a plateau halfway between the upper mountain road and the valley below.

“Hang on,” Jace said.

I had no idea what he planned to do. We were about halfway down the hill, the car gaining on us, when Jace jerked the bike to the left.

I kept my arms locked around his waist as we sailed over the embankment, then landed with a thud in the dirt. I felt it slip under the motorcycle’s tires as he maneuvered the bike down the hill.

Then we were in the forest, the motorcycle’s headlights cutting a path through it as Jace maneuvered the bike between the trees.