Chapter 17 Need for Speed
Need for Speed
I am one with the bike. I am one with the bike slips through Nix’s mind as he squeezes the throttle and lets out the clutch slowly. The bike surges like a tiger on a leash, and the back end swings out to the side before Nix can back it off.
“Holy mother of Chuck!” Luca squeaks, the words coming through the in-helmet mic barely audible over Nix’s pounding heart. His twittering mate squeezes the remaining breath from Nix’s lungs.
He should be surprised at how easily he gets control of the bike, testing the speed in short bursts down the driveway. When he finally has the brake-throttle combination settled, he presses the gate remote, and they sail through as he shifts into second gear.
He turns left out onto the quiet residential street, toward the city.
“You’re doing it! You’re fucking doing it!” Luca gives in to several fist pumps and wiggles that make the bike swerve.
“Just move with me, okay?” Nix mutters after righting the wobbling vehicle. It’s the advice Jamie had given him, and it had seemed to work then.
“Yeah, yeah, okay. Fruit of the Moon is by the river. You remember where we went for a walk with Finn?”
“Just tell me where I’m going, and hang on! Here we go!”
Nix slips it into third gear and accelerates down a straightaway. Usually, he’d avoid downtown, but Lupine Park is on the other side of the city center, and time is a luxury that he can’t afford. Especially since he really has no idea what the hell he’s doing.
But it turns out it’s as if he were born to drive this vehicle.
He takes the corners by instinct, passing slower-moving cars at high speeds and weaving in and out of traffic as if he were a ghost. Miraculously, every light is green and they fly through intersections like part of a well-timed ballet.
That is, until they reach the busiest road and finally get a red light.
Gearing down, Nix rolls to a stop next to a low-slung purple Subaru with neon lights glowing from the undercarriage. The young woman in the driver’s seat does a double-take before grinning and nodding at the light. Revving the engine, she raises her eyebrows.
“Did that tuner just rev at us?” Luca mutters, affronted.
A tingle of excitement stirs in Nix’s belly, and not for the first time, he checks that his bonds are turned down to a simmer.
There’s nothing but a straightaway in front of them, clear of traffic and no pedestrians, but it narrows to a single lane shortly afterward.
“No, Nix Rhodes. Don’t you dare.”
Oh, but Nix would dare.
He would so—very, very much—dare.
In a big way.
Responding with a rev of his own, he spins the back tire, sending the scent of hot, melted rubber smoking around the bike. “Baby, I have a need. A need for speed.”
“Oh, fuck,” Luca moans.
The woman throws back her head and laughs, and in the next blink, the light goes from red to green. She must be a Were, too, as her foot is on the accelerator a nanosecond after Nix shoots away from the light.
Shifting lightning-quick, Nix anticipates the exact moment to shift through second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth gear right after each other, the bike screaming with power.
When he finally hits sixty miles an hour, he’s flying through the intersection, flowing into the space in front of the purple car just in the nick of time.
She lays on her weird techno horn in defeat, no louder than Luca’s shriek of victory in his ear.
He swerves into the opposite lane to avoid a parked truck, narrowly missing a yellow taxi that honks its horn. It’s music to his ears as the pure power of the Ducati sings in his veins, humming a new mantra that sounds a lot like freedom.
In no time at all, they’re rolling into the parking lot of a strip mall, where the Fruit of the Moon sign glows above a surprisingly busy storefront.
Pulling to a stop, Nix pops the kickstand down and turns the bike off. He hopes the sudden stillness will calm his racing pulse.
Luca jumps down laughing, jacket flaring around his bare thighs. His feet launch into a chaotic but familiar rhythm—Nix clocks the TikTok dance instantly the one Margot insisted Long Road Home learn last week.
“Yeah, Nixie! That was fucking awesome!”
Nix dismounts so he can throw his helmet on the seat of the bike. He grabs Luca’s hands, and they jump up and down like two children going to Disneyland.
“Who knew we could do that?” Nix lets the sheer thrill and adrenaline course through him, making his knees wobble. “We are doing that again.”
Another car drives into the lot, and two women get out and head into Fruit of the Moon. When they open the door, What’s New Pussycat by Tom Jones blares out into the night.
It’s enough to stop their adrenaline high in its tracks.
“Shit, we gotta rescue Doods,” Luca mumbles. He pulls up his leg-warmers and cracks his knuckles. “Come on. I’ll distract your stalker by kicking his ass, and you can save our baby.”
“Luc, you can’t kick anyone’s ass with yours hanging out. You’re a rock star, and that jacket is the only thing keeping you from an appearance on Nashville Now. So, I’ll distract Tommy, and you grab Doodle. And for all that’s holy, do not cause trouble.”
“If you insist. Our goal here is to get in, get out, and get home before anyone knows we are gone.”
“That’s an affirmative. Let’s hit it.”
Fruit of the Moon is booming when they push open the door, music shifting from old Tom Jones to house music, the beat pounding up through the floor into the soles of Nix’s bunny slippers.
It’s not the only thing pumping; the small space is wall-to-wall humans, jumping up and down to the beat.
Don’t they know it’s Tuesday?
It’s not the bodies or the line-up at the smoothie bar or the realization that they must all be stone-cold sober that gives Nix pause; it’s the man standing on the bar, holding Nix’s cat high in the air.
Doodle sits serenely in the palm of Tommy’s hand as he sways in a trance, like a goddess surveying their domain. Her piercing yellow eyes catch his across the room as if to say, about fucking time, dimwits.
Not like she was the one who got in Tommy’s car on her own, or anything.
“I’m not the dimwit, missy.”
“What the fuck is he doing?” Luca mutters beside him, TikTok’s livestream still going, pings signaling that watchers are sending hearts and crowns and other rewards to his account.
“Fucked if I know. Let’s go get our cat.” Nix begins pushing through the swaying crowd, who have various crystals raised above their heads.
“She is ordained!” Tommy shouts, his eyes rolled back in his head. “An emissary of love.”
“Hey, fuckhead. That’s my cat,” Luca yells. So much for not drawing attention to them, let alone not causing trouble. “You’re a fucking cat burglar.”
Tommy doesn’t even twitch at the verbal assault, and it seems to push Luca right back into his angry squirrel stage. He’s revving up to vault onto the bar and give the room a look under Gideon’s jacket.
“Must I do everything?” Nix mutters to himself, barely audible in his own head over the techno and humming from Doodle’s sycophants.
“Tommy.”
There is no denying that it is creepy as fuck when Tommy’s eyes pop open at the sound of his name. How he’d heard Nix over the noise is one of life’s greatest mysteries.
“Nix! You came.” He beams, as if surprised anyone would retrieve their stolen feline. “I knew you’d come if I kept her safe.”
“She’s my cat. Obviously.”
“She brought us together. It’s fate.”
“Oh, I will show you fate, you fucking tofu-brained raccoon—” Luca growls, claws already flexing.
Nix throws an arm across his chest. “You could’ve just brought her back to our place.”
Jumping down from the bar, Tommy blinks, confused, like that had never occurred to him. “But then you wouldn’t have come. We couldn’t have enjoyed a couple’s pineapple-high-colonic together.”
Ouch.
And that’s when Luca snaps.
He grabs Doodle by the scruff and drops her into Nix’s arms with zero ceremony. The music halts, as if someone yanked the cord.
“Nix, my love,” Luca intones, deadly calm. “Hold our cat. Doodle, I will be having words about your disobedience post-haste.”
Then he turns on Tommy like a judgment in thigh-high socks.
The bigger man backs against the bar, eyes wide as Luca stalks forward.
“You,” he growls, low and menacing, “will never, ever look at my mate again. Or I will reach down your throat and play cat’s cradle with your entrails.”
Nix sways slightly, hard as a rock in under a second, praying no one notices the slick between his cheeks.
“Luc,” he whispers.
Doodle sneezes from the scorched coffee scent rolling off Luca’s fury.
But his mate’s not done.
With claws digging into Tommy’s shirt, Luca pulls him close, biting out, “And that won’t be the most painful part. I’ve got one hell of an imagination. Are we clear, Thomas?”
Tommy nods frantically, following it up by visibly peeing himself.
“Good,” Luca purrs, letting him collapse onto the counter.
He swipes the phone, clears the livestream, and tucks it gently into Tommy’s now soggy waistband.
He cracks the glass on Tommy’s contraband photo of Nix.
Folding it neatly in half and then again in quarters, he tucks it inside Gideon’s jacket pocket.
“Say goodbye, Baby.”
“Bye,” Nix offers, voice all sugar, while his thoughts are filth. So hot.
The crowd parts like the Red Sea, and as soon as they step outside, the music resumes like nothing happened.
“Holy fuck, Luc. That was so hot,” Nix murmurs, wondering if he can suck Luca off in the alley and how much of a technicality it might be if he tells Gideon he made Luca do it. “Want you so bad right now.”
“I didn’t know I could do that. Wait till I tell the others I made him pee his pants—” He stops, visibly disappointed when he realizes they won’t be telling anyone anything of the sort.