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RAVEN

“ D id you pick this book on purpose?” I ask Quinn at our next book club meeting at Dawn’s apartment.

She at least has the good sense not to laugh. “Vi Graydon is a well-respected motorcycle club romance author. I thought you could give us your opinion on whether it was a factually accurate representation is all.”

I glance at Dawn and Sam, who can barely hide their grins. “I feel like you guys are setting me up.”

Dawn laughs as she shakes her head. “ Fortune’s Loss has been on our list to read for ages, just seems like now is the right time to read it.”

I can’t help but chuckle. This is what having friends actually feels like. With Marco’s friends’ wives, it was pretentious. Snobbish wine choices mixed with fancy vacation stories. But with our book club, everything is down to earth and real. We’ve eaten cookies, drank cheap wine out of plastic cups, and enjoyed a good discussion about the perception of dark romance after a so-called “leading feminist” claimed it perpetuates the myth that women enjoy being assaulted.

Dawn asserted it was fantasy and was clearly not what women wanted in real life. Sam felt the nuance was boundaries and consent. Quinn said the critic didn’t understand the difference between consent, consensual nonconsent, and nonconsent.

Meanwhile, I wondered how most of it would feel if Wraith and I engaged in a little consensual nonconsent of our own.

I feel like I’ll never be the same after what happened in the woods. My whole world was beige before. An unhappy marriage. A house that felt nothing like a home. A sex life that was dreary, a chore, unwanted.

Now everything feels breathtakingly expansive and colorful.

“Come on,” Sam says, shaking me from my thoughts. “It’s not life imitating art. It’s escapism. Let us live vicariously through you and your boyfriend.”

My cheeks heat at the term boyfriend . It seems like such an utterly underwhelming word to describe what Wraith is fast becoming to me. “Fine. We can read the book.” I’m curious to see if I can learn something more about the world I’ve swerved into.

The three of them cheer. “I expect notes in the margins,” Quinn says.

“I will neither confirm nor deny.” I take a sip of the cold, crisp Sauvignon Blanc Dawn provided. “But I will say that riding on the back of a motorcycle is addictive.”

Quinn flops back in her chair. “Man, if a guy put me on the back of his motorcycle, I’d tell him to keep riding forever with me on it.”

Dawn offers me the plate with cookies and I take another. “It’s nice of Wraith to have Fen tonight.”

I smile. “Yeah, he’s good with him. It’s weird—I thought my ex-husband was a safe bet. Financially stable, wore a suit every day, etc. All the trappings of being a good man, but with a rotten soul. And then there’s Wraith. A biker. If you passed judgement based purely on that, you’d miss how good a human being he is.”

Sam pours out the rest of the wine. “Which is why we should stick with Vi Graydon’s book and let a fictitious biker take me away.”

As we start to finish up, I message Wraith to tell him I’ll be leaving soon. He’s going to pick me up from outside Quinn’s bakery so I can walk her home, while Ember pops over to watch Fen at his place while he does.

Tiny stars look like glittering pinpricks in the blackened sky. “Never really noticed how dark the sky is,” I say, more to myself than anything.

“Welcome to Colorado,” Quinn says. “It’s always pretty on a night like tonight.”

The street is quiet, beyond the rumble of a vehicle moving slowly up the street behind us. I glance over my shoulder and see a nondescript truck.

“Let’s move a little faster to the bakery,” I suggest.

“Is everything okay?”

“I’m probably totally overreacting, and we can laugh about this tomorrow.”

Quinn looks back at the truck. “Let’s step it up anyway.”

The truck gets louder as it comes closer. Although there isn’t a lot of traffic on Main Street, it’s not doing anything close to the speed limit.

My heart races, and Quinn grips my arm as we walk faster toward the lit sign for the bakery.

“We can take the side alley down the side of the barbers,” Quinn says.

“I’m not sure side alleys are smart.”

“It leads behind the bakery. The truck can’t follow.”

“Wait,” I say. I hear the roar of a motorbike coming towards us, then almost faint in relief when I see it’s Wraith.

He pulls up on the opposite side of the stoplights and raises his hand when he sees me.

The truck rolls by us, the driver checking us out on the way past, in the lascivious way men sometimes do.

A leer out of a window, a double take, and an elbow nudge to the driver.

It then waits patiently at the light when it reaches them, then drives on past Wraith when they change.

“Jesus,” Quinn says. “That was weird.”

I stare at the back of the truck. “Yeah.”

“Your man looks good on that bike,” Quinn says. “Not hitting on him or anything, but I can admire a fine form when I see one. I’m jealous.”

He does. He’s wearing a T-shirt beneath his cut, but black leather riding gloves. With jeans and cowboy boots completing his outfit, he looks delicious.

Wraith pulls the bike up alongside the curb and removes his helmet. “You girls have a good night?”

“We did,” Quinn says as she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her keys. “Thanks for walking me home, Raven. And don’t forget to tell Wraith about our book club pick.”

I roll my eyes, but wave as she opens the door that leads up to the flat above the bakery.

When the door shuts, I turn to face him. It’s going to take some getting used to, being with a man who is always so genuinely happy to see me. His eyes always light up around me.

“What book is that?” he asks.

“Have you got any idea how dangerously charming you look when you smile?” I realize how much he’s changed from the sullen man I first met.

I step closer to the bike, and he snakes his hand around my waist and pulls me to him. “Only when I look at you. Now, tell me what the book is?”

“A steamy motorcycle club romance. I get to decide if the author knows what they’re talking about or not.”

Wraith laughs. “Steamy, huh?”

I bite down on my lip. “Mmm-hmm. You know how you said we should be honest?”

He brushes his lips over mine. “Yeah?”

“Well, the last book we read was a dark romance, and it contained somno.”

“What now?”

“Somno. Somnophilia. It’s where someone likes…umm…having sex with someone while they’re asleep or unconscious.”

Wraith’s eyes narrow, and he squeezes my ass. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Well, I thought maybe we could…” I feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “You know…if one of us wakes up in the night sometime, or in the morning if one of us wakes up first, we could, you know, initiate or something.”

“Get on the bike, Blue,” he says, shoving my helmet at me.

“I don’t mind if you don’t want to. It’s just I?—”

“The sooner we’re home, the sooner we can fall asleep, the sooner one of us can wake up and fuck the other awake, yeah?”

“You like the idea?”

“Having access to your body twenty-four seven, whether you’re awake or not? Abso-fucking-lutely. You got any more ideas from those books? ‘Cause I’ll build you a fucking library for ‘em if you do.”

“You know, there’s this thing where you buy paperbacks and use highlighters and stickie notes to mark up your favorite bits. I could do that, and then you could pull a book out at random and find a marked-up scene for us to try.”

He grips a fistful of hair and kisses me hard before biting my lip gently. “Send me a list of the books you want, and I’ll buy them for you too.”

The need in his voice fills me with warmth. “Let’s go then.”

We put our helmets on, and Wraith revs the engine impatiently as I climb on. When we finally move, it’s faster than we have in the past.

“This speed okay?” Wraith asks as I snuggle up close to him.

“Yes!” The night air is perhaps too cool for my denim jacket, but there is something so freeing about it.

I let my hand drop a little lower and stroke the outline of Wraith’s cock.

“Unless you want me to pull over in the next field and fuck you on the bike, you better stop. Because I’ll make you explain to Ember why we’re back late for Fen.”

“Right up until the last part, that seemed like a good idea.” While I really like Ember, I’m not ready to share my sex life with her.

Wraith’s laughter is good for my soul.

“I hope we’re always this happy,” I say.

“It can’t be any other way, Blue. I refuse to let it.”

But his sentence is barely finished when I glance over my shoulder to see the truck coming behind us.

“Wraith,” I say as my mind races. “That truck is following us.”

“Why do you say that?” His head shifts, as if studying the wing mirror.

I squeeze my arms around him even more tightly. “It did a slow drive-by of Quinn and me in town. You passed them at the lights.”

“You certain?” Even as he asks, he shifts. He leans closer to the body of the bike, and we speed up.

The truck does too.

“Definitely. We both had a creepy feeling. We were literally about to run down the alley behind the bakery.”

“We’re about ten minutes from home,” he says.

The thought of safety is double-edged. “Please, don’t take us to Fen. I don’t want him to hear, see, or experience any more violence.”

Wraith takes a second to pat my hand. “Nothing is going to happen to any of us.”

The truck begins to gain on us and turns its lights on to a powerful blast of light. It’s intimidating but does serve to better illuminate the road in front of us.

“Fuck,” Wraith mutters. As if the action confirms this isn’t a coincidence. “Reach inside my cut and take my phone. My pin is zero, seven, zero, one. Find Butcher in my contacts and dial it. You’ll hear the call because we’re paired.”

I do as he says. Letting go of him to bring the phone in front of me scares the crap out of me. I’m in denim, but I know the road would make light work of the clothes I’m wearing, and my skin, if I fall off the damn bike.

My hands shake when I do as Wraith instructed.

The trucks gains on us, and I panic. I know the alphabet, I know how to search, but somehow it feels like it takes me a million years to find Butcher’s number and dial it. Once I’ve done as I was asked, I keep hold of the phone but wrap both arms around Wraith.

He’s weaving, dodging potholes, but also avoiding riding in a dead straight line.

“Wraith,” Butcher says, his voice booming through my helmet.

“Got a problem. A truck’s following me. Raven’s backpack. We’re on the rural road behind the Shacklestone Ranch, headed toward my place.”

“Northwest corner of that place has some outbuildings,” Butcher says. “Head there. Find cover. We’ll find you. Everyone is still here except you.”

“Thanks.”

The club coming to help is a flicker of hope in overwhelming darkness. In this wide-open expanse, there aren’t a lot of places to hide. There is no washing machine to crouch behind and no clean bedding or dirty clothes to pull over my head.

We fly down the country roads, leaning into bends as we turn, hugging the line where we can. Things begin to blur.

A loud ting precedes the back of the bike sliding out.

It takes a second for it to register as a gunshot while Wraith fights to regain control.

“Fuckers,” Wraith says.

I bury my head against Wraith’s back, very aware that I’m his shield and the next bullet could hit me. “Let me see my son again,” I whisper.

“You will,” Wraith says. “We’re going into the field up ahead. There are some outbuildings we can hide out in, but I need you to do exactly as I say.”

“Wraith, I’m scared.” Fen is losing a father; he can’t afford to lose his mother too.

“I know. But trust me. I promise I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”