Page 5 of Burn (Two Wheeled Psychos #2)

“Hey. You good?”

The words filter through my sleep, while a hand smacks my face, tilting it to the side.

“Fuck man. Let me sleep.”

I grunt out, blindly swinging at the pest bothering me.

“You’ve been sleeping for days straight. Up and at ‘em.”

Pete, my captain and only father figure in my life says, slapping my face again.

I never had a father in my life, I don’t even think the whore of a mother I had knew who he was, and Pete knows this, and has always tried his best to fill in where I was lacking, ever since one of his boys pulled me from hell.

“No.”

“Your bike’s in the way, and I’m tired of moving it around the garage every time we need to wash the trucks and shit. Come on dude.”

He says, breathing out a heavy sigh.

“Fine.”

I grumble, wiping the sleep from my eyes, wincing at the pain from the burns across my cheeks.

I can breathe almost normally, but a deep breath in has me coughing violently, forcing me to bolt upright on my cot, holding onto my chest as I feel it rattle with the exertion.

“Smoke inhalation is a bitch huh?”

He snickers, slapping my foot before he walks away shaking his mostly bald head, murmuring under his breath about me being a hero, yet again.

“Yeah she is.”

I wheeze, bracing myself with my hands wrapped around the edges of the small bed.

I don’t remember being thrown into my little cubby and onto my cot. The past few days have been a blur while my body recovered from the fire at the high-rise building. I’m still sore, but now it’s mostly from lack of movement and everything being tight from the extreme exertion then nothing. I feel like death warmed over and need to get my ass back in the gym, that is if my lungs will cooperate.

The bed squeaks as I swing my legs over and put my bare feet on the cold tile floor. It makes me shiver at the sensation, when the last things that I recall touching me were hot as hell. My chest hurts as I cough through another round of goosebumps and my head swims, making little sparkling flashes appear in my vision.

Fuck me.

Everything in me cracks and pops as I rise slowly, pushing off the flimsy mattress with my hands, feeling my wrists buckle and creak under my weight. It’s painful, but as I stretch out, bending my back and twisting my neck, things start to loosen up. In the matter of a minute I have my shoulders moving almost normally, except for the pain that stabs into my chest with each rotation.

A small tapping sound and feeling on my foot takes my attention off the discomfort and my brings my gaze down to the floor. A small card lays on top of my toes, teetering like a seesaw off my biggest one.

“What do we have here?”

It’s the ID of the woman I chased, the woman I’d forgotten about except for in a few of my dreams.

Phoenix.

She stares back at me from her license photo, her cat-like eyes judging me, as if she knew what I did to her picture right before I went to hell and back again. She knows I did dirty things, and the evidence is still on the laminated surface as I turn the card over in my hand, feeling the dried cum on it.

“Don’t you look at me that way.”

I mumble to the license, tossing it back on my bed, running my fingers through my greasy, unwashed hair, smelling the odor from my armpit with the raising of my hand.

“Okay fine, but only because I stink.”

I chuckle looking back down at her picture, giving it a slight wink.

I do stink, like something homeless, just how I was before Pete brought me into the firehouse after years of living on the streets, fending for myself. The smell of my rancid body odor brings me back to the nights sleeping under the overpasses of the blue route, eating anything I could find when I made my way back in to the city. I would go days, sometimes weeks without the opportunity of a shower, bathing only with a tiny scrap of soap I carried in my torn backpack and the rain.

“Hey, the dead has risen.”

Joe, one of my brothers says as he trudges sleepily between bunks, looking for his.

He smells of smoke, his t-shirt is wet from perspiration, and his dark brown hair is plastered to his forehead.

“You on a call?”

I ask as I grab clean clothes from my little dresser, draping them and a towel over my arm.

“Yeah, you slept right through the tones. A bitch of one too. Three alarm, with two other companies.”

“Damn. Sorry man.”

“Nah, it’s all good, you needed your rest, mister hero.”

“I’m no hero.”

I say shaking my head, looking down at my bare feet, avoiding eye contact like I always do.

I try to keep their eyes from mine, afraid that they will see the psychopath that lies behind them. They might think I’m a hero for my actions, but they know I’m not right, even though none of them ever say anything about it, at least not to my face.

“Yeah? Tell the little boy that. He was asking about you at the hospital when we dropped off our lone survivor.”

“He was?”

I ask, my voice an octave too high and cracking.

“You sound surprised. You saved his life. Without you he would have burned to death like his mother. Damn shame we couldn’t get her out in time.”

Mumbling under my breath I turn from him, giving him a little wave.

“Yeah damn shame my ass.”

“Huh?”

He calls out after me.

“Nothing.”

The shower renewed me a little, even if the steam made me lurch and cough like a madman, and as I swing my leg over my bike, pulling on my helmet, I take as deep of a breath in as I can. I need a ride, to clear my head, and to fix what’s wrong with my body. My bike is the only thing I have that has always been there for me when nothing else was, and time spent with her is what keeps me sane. Well, as sane as possible for a freak like me.

My sleek black R3 with red streaks on the fairings fires up like a roaring beast, echoing around inside the garage. Her growls bounce off the sides of the firetrucks, coming back to me with vibrations in my chest that make me calmer. The engine vibrates under me, the seat massaging my ass as I twist the throttle back and rev her up.

“I’ve missed you baby.”

I say to her, petting her gas tank before I slip on my riding gloves.

The smooth feel of her paint is nice under my calloused fingertips, and the encasing of my hands in the soft leather makes my eyes roll back better than if I was slipping my cock into something hot and pretty.

“Ready to go?”

I ask her, clicking up the shifter to first gear and bringing her to the garage doors.

The city flies by as I take her out on the streets, weaving in and out of traffic, splitting lanes and moving between vehicles. I go to the front of the line at every traffic light, careful to avoid being rear ended by careless drivers in cages. It’s not that I worry about my own safety, if I died today I really wouldn’t give a fuck, but I worry about her. I could never afford to replace her, and another bike just wouldn’t be the same. She’s my only emotional attachment in this godforsaken world.

People stare at me, the muscle-bound man in half of his riding gear. It’s daytime and I’m not on the hunt for my next cleansing, so there’s no need to cover myself completely from view. My leather pants are more for keeping any road debris from hitting my legs, but my arms are bare in a white, wife beater tank. Ladies notice me way more than I notice them, probably because I’ve never been interested in the opposite sex, or any sex for that matter, that is until the pretty little Phoenix, whose ID is in my pocket, saw me and ran from me.

I’d like to chase her on my bike, hunt her down, play a cat and mouse game, just like the one my other female love, fire, does with me. It’ll be fun to see if human women behave the same way. Or would she cave much faster and easier than the flames that love to taunt and play?

It's different, thinking of a woman while I ride, and definitely not anything I would have imagined. Before I know it, I’m pulling up outside her apartment building, checking the address on the front stoop with the one on the license that has magically ended up in my gloved hand again.

This is stupid asshole.

The building is an old brick duplex, with two hunter green painted doors at the top of the front stoop. Flowers in large pots flank them, making it a welcoming entrance, and as I sit on my bike across the street looking at where she lives, I wonder if there will ever be a time where I walk through those doors as an invited guest.

Yeah right, you? Invited into a woman’s house? Are you delusional?

“Yes. Yes I am.”

I murmur to myself, flipping open my visor to get a better view in the windows on the first floor, hoping for just a peek of the witness to my crimes that has stolen my attentions.

I jump a little, making the bike rock on its kickstand when the doors open, and she steps outside, her hair instantly blowing in her face from the early summer breeze. Her dainty hand comes up to pull the strands from her eyes and mouth, and I’m transfixed on her movements. She’s unaware of me watching her, and the fear that I saw in her eyes the last time I encountered her isn’t there. She looks just like the vixen in the photo still clutched in my grasp, the edges of it digging in the leather of my gloves as I squeeze it hard.

She’s beautiful under the midday sun in skin tight capri leggings that hug every inch of her slender legs, and an oversized t-shirt that billows around her, hiding her lithe body yet accentuating her chest at the same time. I could sit and watch her all day, especially when she looks across the street and her eyes land on mine. Those cat-like black eyes that look like deep pools of ink, which are fathomless and eternal, are pointed right at me.

Do you see me baby? Or are you looking right through me?

The sounds of the busy avenue between us disappear as her gaze lingers, and her head tilts like a curious feline that’s looking at a toy. She’s gazing through the opening on my visor, her eyes narrowing and pinching together at the brow.

“You do see me.”

I mouth silently under my helmet, the movement of my lips hidden from her view.

“Do you see something you recognize?”

The chirping of the birds in the trees above my head have faded away, and the noises of honking horns and tires on pavement cease to exist as we stare at each other, stopping time in its tracks. I feel the earth pause, the rotation on its axis dead, the circling around the sun non-existent. The only thing moving is her eyes as they scan me up and down.

I don’t see the cars at they pass between us, and I don’t hear anything except the beating of my own heart in my ears. It’s pumping as hard as it does when I’m jacked up on pre-workout and doing skull crushers in the gym, thundering in my chest hard enough I need to rub my fist across my sternum to alleviate the awkward sensation.

The horn from the red sedan that pulls up in front of her blasts me from my trance, and I suck in a much-needed breath as she steps off the concrete stairs at her door and goes to the passenger door.

“Who do we have here?”

I ask myself, peering into the driver’s window.

A man, mid-twenties with sandy blonde hair that loos like some surfer dude way out of place sits behind the wheel, tapping on it impatiently as she opens the door and slides in. When he leans across, grabs her chin, and kisses her roughly, a low growl rumbles from my chest, stopping the beating of my heart for its duration.

“Fuck no.”

I spit out, my spittle hitting the inside of my helmet, bouncing back in my face, making me scrunch up my face in disgust.

“Oh, fuck no.”