Page 17 of Indecent Lies

“Can’t we catch a cab?”

“Poppy, climb on, it’s safe.”

“Where do I put my stuff?”

He sighed, exasperated. “Keep it tucked on your lap and wrap your arms tight around my waist.”

Oh, well that’s no big deal, she mentally eye rolled, approaching the beast like it was a hissing cobra. Good thing she was wearing Roux’s circulation cutting jeans.

She got her leg over…just.

The machine was big and taller than expected.

When her butt was perched, Tait unexpectedly reached back and pulled her into him, closer than she was comfortable with, squashing the dress between them. Then she tentatively laid her hands on his leather jacket. “Gonna have to hold tighter than that, babe. Or you’ll fall off.”

“Oh, my God, Tait. Can we not talk about me flying off this thing at high speed? I’m already a wreck.”

She thought she heard him chuckle but the engine drowned out the noise.

When it rumbled beneath her, she instantly latched on as tight as she could, her face went into his back and she could honestly say she didn’t open her eyes again until he stopped the bike sometime later.

“Well?”

“Terrifying,” she breathed, “wait, this isn’t the bus station. Where are we?”

“My place.”

Oh.

She didn’t hesitate in scrambling off the back of the bike, even when her legs wobbled a little and Tait caught her by the elbow. She was looking up at the three-story red brick building with the wide windows.

“Do you have nice neighbors?”

He strode forward and started hitting numbers on a keypad discreetly hidden inside a metal box. Unable to help herself, she shuffled her feet and moved to his shoulder. It seemed a bit security conscious for this kind of building. In New York—Manhattan especially, even the higher end apartment buildings didn’t come with an electronic keypad to get inside.

“No neighbors. The building is mine. I didn’t want to have to deal with assholes being loud all night long.”

Something warmed in her chest to hear that.

Not because it meant Tait must make good money, she wasn’t a gold-digger as she’d heard people whisper about her. She liked money just fine, didn’t everyone? But it wasn’t her sole reason for her decisions.

But it meant he’d made something of his life. To hear his family talk about him, it was as if Tait had joined a cult.

She didn’t know the biker way of life, save for what she’d seen this past week, but if it made him happy and he was successful too, then she was super happy for him.

Not everyone got to choose what they did with their own lives.

“You coming inside or going to gather wool here on the doorstep?” She caught him watching her.

She smiled and moved her feet, following him inside.

He didn’t have an elevator so they walked up the three flights to his top floor and he again opened his front door by entering a sequence of numbers on a pad and then used a key to unlock three locks.

“Is it a dangerous neighborhood, is that the reason for the security?”

“Nah. I’m a biker…was a biker.”

She didn’t understand what his job had to do with it. “What do you mean?”