27. Grace
Chapter 27
Grace
The very next day I’m staring at Hendrix’s motorcycle and wondering what the hell I was thinking, agreeing to do this.
Clearly the post-sex, post-heat hormones muddled my brain. There’s no way I’m going to be able to conquer this. Just looking at it makes me feel queasy.
“This is insanity,” I say out loud.
“The fun kind,” Hendrix replies. He grins and hands me my helmet. “Go on, safety is important.”
“You don’t need to wear a helmet when you get into a car,” I point out, but I put the helmet on anyway. “Because a car is safe.”
“A motorcycle is safe if you use it properly. People get into car crashes all the time. What’s important is that you’re responsible.” Hendrix adjusts my helmet. “Don’t you worry, darlin’, I know you’ll do great. You’re one of the toughest women I know.”
I can’t help but blush a little at that. “Well, if you’re going to spoil me with compliments…”
“That’s all I want to do, you know that.”
I think I do know that now. Now that I realize his flirtations are serious.
The motorcycle looks huge. I’m not sure I’ll fit on it and I’ll just look ridiculous. But I know that I can ride a horse, so I’m sure I can do this. I just need to swing my leg over and do it.
The seat is a little big for me, since it’s Hendrix’s bike, but then he settles into the bike as well, scooting me behind him.
“Now, in movies, you always see the woman wrap her arms around the guy’s waist. Don’t do that, it’ll throw off my center of balance on the bike.” Hendrix takes my hands and guides them to his thighs instead. “This is where you want to hold on.”
It’s a bit more intimate than even the waist would be, and I can feel myself blushing. Hendrix must be able to tell, because he chuckles, and I can feel it vibrating through my chest.
“All right.” I can feel every single shift of Hendrix’s body against mine, under my hands. It feels almost like we’re not two people and a motorcycle but one creation, each of us flowing into the other. “I’m going to turn on the engine now.”
He narrates his actions as he does them, talking in the same low soothing tone I’ve heard him use with the horses. A part of me wants to bristle and insist I’m not a horse, but the rest of me really is soothed, damn him, so I accept it.
He’s trying to make me comfortable. It’s sweet.
Once everything is ready to go, Hendrix puts his foot on the kickstand. “Okay, I’m getting rid of the kickstand now. My other foot’s bracing on the opposite side, so we’re not going to fall over, but you’ll feel the center of gravity shift.”
He does as he narrates, and sure enough, I feel a definite shift in my balance. My hands tighten on Hendrix’s thighs, and I can feel him grinning.
“Balance is everything on a motorcycle. Similar to riding a horse. Really good riders use their center of gravity to guide the horse, along with their thighs, far more than they use the reins. So just keep your center of gravity low, and lean where I lean.”
I nod against his back.
“Okay. I’m going to push my foot up onto the bike and ease into the accelerator. It’s just like riding a non-motorized bike. You need to ‘push off’ so you don’t fall. You ready?”
“Ready.” As I’ll ever be.
Hendrix does as he says, kicking off and hitting the accelerator. It’s a smooth transition, although the engine roaring to life does make me jump a little. We take off smoothly, pulling out onto the road.
Hendrix keeps it slow, ten or fifteen miles an hour, letting me get used to the feel of it. I can’t help but dig my nails into his thighs, and press myself up against his back. I feel like any little wobble is going to make me fall, and we’ll crash, even at this slow speed.
But we keep up that slower pace, and everything’s… fine. It’s actually fine. Objectively, I knew that it would be all right, but it’s another thing to actually feel it.
Then Hendrix speeds up.
I gasp, as he slowly picks up speed, taking us to about thirty miles an hour. It feels so much faster than it does in a car, isolated against the world. You can feel everything on a motorcycle. No insulation.
It’s actually kind of… exhilarating.
Hendrix doesn’t get up to any crazy speeds, I think he keeps it under fifty miles an hour, but it’s just fast enough that my stomach swoops and I actually find myself grinning where my cheek rests against his shoulder.
This is actually a bit fun. Especially with Hendrix driving. I trust him, I realize. I trust him implicitly. Which feels like a silly thing to think, after I trusted the man to see me through my heat and all that, but trusting someone with your sexual pleasure and to take care of you one way doesn’t mean you trust them with something like a dangerous motorcycle ride.
But here we are. And I do. I really do.
I hold on tightly, enjoying the way that it feels like my body molds itself to his. The way it feels like we’re one person together instead of two separate people. It’s so intimate . I had no idea it could feel this way.
We whip through town, and I see various familiar faces turning their heads around to watch us as Hendrix speeds by with me wrapped around him. I feel a curl of hot satisfaction in the pit of my stomach. I know it’s just for the fake courtship, but it still makes me feel like I’m back in high school and getting a date with the popular senior, the guy who flirted with everyone, the guy all the girls wanted to date.
I feel like I won something.
We pass through town and reach an abandoned stretch of old highway. It’s mostly used by ranchers now when getting from ranch to ranch and especially when transporting cow herds, which like to roam.
Hendrix slows down and eventually stops, putting his foot down on the dirt road. “All right.” He looks back at me over his shoulder and grins. “Your turn.”
“My turn?” I watch as he turns off the bike, puts up the kickstand, and gets off. “Riding on the back with you should be enough, right?”
“I could feel you enjoying it,” Hendrix agrees, his voice a purr. He says it like we’re doing something much more intimate and sexual than riding a motorcycle together, like he’s got his fingers inside me and knows how wet I am, purring at me I can feel you enjoying it.
My face flushes.
Hendrix grins at me knowingly, then gestures at the bike. “Go on, scoot up. I’ll sit behind you. If anything goes wrong I can grab the handles and take over. It’ll be easy especially since you’re smaller than I am. My arms and legs can move past yours.”
If this was just about any other scenario I’d argue that I could do it all myself and don’t need a man—or anyone—to be ready to take over like that. But this isn’t the usual scenario. I’m grateful for how considerate he is. “I don’t know.”
“Come on, you got this. You’ll be good at it. It’s easier than you think. It’s like riding a horse, except the horse isn’t alive so it can’t pull little tricks like hold its breath in so the straps on the saddles are too loose.”
I laugh. “You’ve had a horse do that?”
“Oh, it’s a common trick if they’re not in the mood. They hold their breath so you get the straps nice and tight, then they exhale, all the air goes out of them, their lungs deflate, and the straps are now too loose and you fall off.” He chuckles. “They’re clever that way. They think it’s hysterical.”
The image of Hendrix getting tricked by a grumpy, playful horse has me grinning. “Well, all right.”
There is a part of me that wants to try this. To show myself that nothing can get to me, no fear can conquer me. And, well, Hendrix believes in me. He thinks I’m a badass. I don’t want to let him down. I want to be the confident, fearless woman that he sees.
I move forward so that I’m in front, and Hendrix seats himself behind me. I jolt a little when his hands land on my thighs.
He rubs his hands up and down my thighs, squeezing them, before his fingertips graze the spot right between my legs. I squeak out a breath as goosebumps race across my skin.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he murmurs in my ear. “I promise that riding a bike can feel just as good. Or almost as good, anyway.”
I nod, biting my lip against a smile even as nerves flutter in my stomach. After the amazing sex I had with all of the Alphas during my heat, I have to admit that Hendrix’s argument is pretty convincing. If he really thinks riding a bike is almost as fun as sex, it has to be pretty thrilling then, right?
“Turn that engine on, darlin’.”
I do as I’m told, jolting a little as it roars to life. Hendrix nips at my neck. “Feel the vibrations? Lean forward a little, and they’ll rub right… against…”
Oh god. I squirm a bit as I do as I’m told, feeling the vibrations ripple through my core.
“Take her for a ride,” he murmurs encouragingly, wrapping his arms around my waist. “I’ll be right here with you the whole time. I’ve got you. I promise.”
This time, I can’t stop my smile from breaking free. I’m sort of grateful that he’s sitting behind me, so he can’t see me grinning like an idiot at his words. I nod, giving his forearm a quick squeeze before I push the kickstand back, following Hendrix’s murmured instructions. The fear I felt at first is beginning to fade away, replaced by a rush of excitement.
I take off, and soon we’re flying down the road.
Well, ‘flying’ is a bit of an exaggeration. I don’t go over thirty. Hendrix puts a hand over mine on the throttle at one point, guiding me, and I can feel him using his weight to shift our balance a few times, correcting for when I shift too far the wrong way. I’ll need practice.
But it’s fun. It’s sexy. And just like he promised, Hendrix is with me the entire time, the warmth of his body against my back a steadying, reassuring presence as he gives me little tips and pointers here and there. We ride for close to thirty minutes, and the longer it goes on, the less shaky my arms feel as I grip the handlebars.
I’m feeling pretty darn confident by the time we finally take a break. Hendrix instructs me on how to pull the bike over and cut the engine, and then he hops off first before offering me a hand to help me off the bike too.
We rest in the grass for a while, enjoying the breeze and watching the clouds go by.
“You’re good at that,” I note.
Hendrix glances over at me, one hand resting behind his head. “At what? Riding a bike?”
“Well, yeah, you’re good at that for sure. But I meant coaching me through the whole… fear thing.”
“Ah.” He gives me a little smile, his expression softening. “I’m glad I could help. Because I know firsthand how fear can hold you back. I get it.”
I stare at him. “You do?” I can’t imagine Hendrix being scared of anything.
He nods. “Yeah. You know I used to be on the rodeo circuit, right?”
“Uh huh.” I knew he’d done the circuit for a while, but I never knew why he stopped, or exactly when. I just put it down to something about running the ranch, and chalked it up to yet another thing I didn’t know about because I was away from home for so long, out of touch.
“Well, one day during an event… I choked.”
That’s the last thing I expected to hear. “You—you choked?”
“Yup.” Hendrix’s face is tight. “It was bad enough that I choked at all, but in front of a crowd—and on a horse? I’m lucky I was the one who got hurt and not the animal.”
“Were you badly hurt?” I didn’t see any evidence of it when we were having sex. I saw some scars, but they were all small, the sort of things I’d expect a rancher to have.
“No, through sheer dumb luck.” He shakes his head. “I should’ve been but I wasn’t. After that I walked away. The first time I got on a horse after that disaster, I was terrified of fucking it up and hurting both the animal and myself.”
I glance over at the motorcycle, remembering how Hendrix has been pointing out all day that the motorcycle isn’t an animal, it’s not alive. I realize now that must’ve been a comfort to him. If he messed up riding his motorcycle, the only person who’d get hurt is him, not an animal that you have to put down as a mercy if it breaks a leg.
Because Hendrix is a good man. Of course he’d feel a responsibility and care about the horse too, almost more than himself.
“Have you thought about going back to it?”
“I’ve practiced,” he admits. “Done some trial runs. Just for the fun of it, to see if I still have some of the right stuff. But I haven’t ever gone back to a rodeo.”
His tone is wistful. I think I already know the answer when I ask, “Do you miss it?”
“Honestly?” Hendrix gives a melancholy, breathless laugh. “Every day.”
My heart aches for him. “You know… if I’m brave enough to get on that bike, then I know you’re brave enough to get back on the horse. If you want to.”
Hendrix gives me a smile that’s achingly fond and leans in, kissing me softly. “Speaking of getting back on the bike…”
I laugh and groan at the same time, but let him haul me to my feet. “Okay, okay.”
This time, when we get on, I drive and I let myself fully feel the exhilaration of it. My heart and blood race, and the wind in my face makes me feel alive. My fear finally dissipates, especially with the warmth of Hendrix around me, hands on my thighs, chest against my back, ready to guide me if I should make a mistake.
Yeah. I can see why he and Cade love this so much.