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She gave him a look and climbed on behind him.

“Put your arms around me.”

Not until hell froze over. Bianca looked at the bars on either side of her. She hadn’t noticed them before. Surely a passenger could cling to them.

“I said—”

“I heard what you said, Lieutenant. Just start this horrible machine and take me to my hotel.”

“Which is?”

She named it. He knew it. It was actually a motel, right on the beach and only about ten minutes away.

He turned the key.

“I’m warning you,” he said. “You should put your arms around me.”

“In your dreams,” she said sweetly, and he gritted his teeth, turned on the engine, and they flew out of the parking lot.

He was right.

She knew it instantly. She needed to wrap her arms around him. Sitting up straight, clinging to the bars on either side of her didn’t help take away the awful feeling that she was going to fly off the motorcycle. They were soaring through the night, flying past hills on one side and the Pacific on the other, going faster, much faster, than before.

“Damn you,” she said, and she leaned in, wound her arms around him, felt his heat, his strength penetrate her skin, her muscles, her bones. “Damn you,” she said again, and she did something daring, freed one arm so she could pound her fist against his shoulder because this was impossible, impossible for her thighs to tingle where they cupped his body, her nipples to peak where they pressed into his back, and she loved it, the feeling of speed, of flight, and the feel of him against her.

She wanted to throw back her head and laugh, or throw back her head and weep because everything was upside down, everything was terrifying and exciting and none of it made sense, and suddenly he jerked the Harley hard to the left and they were bouncing across sand, the Harley’s headlight picking out the shape of her motel, but he rode past it, down the beach, along the hard-packed sand down where the waves rolled in from across the world.

He stopped the bike under one of the palms and turned it off.

The night became very still. All she could hear was the sigh of the breeze through the palms, the whisper of the surf, and the heavy thud, thud, thud of her heart.

She let go of him and sat up straight. “The motel is behind us.”

“I know where it is.”

“Then what are we doing all the way down here?”

“We need to talk.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Get off the bike.”

“Didn’t you hear me? We’d don’t have anything to talk about.”

He put down the kickstand. “Get off the bike, Bianca.”

“Mannaggia! What is this nonsense, Lieutenant? You do not give me—”

He slid off the Harley, dumped his helmet on the sand, wrapped his hands around her waist, lifted her from her seat and stood her in front of him.

“This has to stop.”

His voice was low. Hard. Hard and…Her pulse rocketed. Hard and hot.

“I don’t know what you—”

“Yes. You do. This fighting. This wanting. It stops. Right now. Tonight, goddamn it, it stops…”