Dear Life(64)

But the city will have to do for now.

I pull off at exit twenty-four and make a right off the highway, onto East Fifty-Sixth Ave. Farmland passes by, but it doesn’t take us long to get to where I want to go, an empty lot in the middle of nowhere.

Once we arrive, I put the bike in park, pop the kickstand, and turn my head toward Daisy. “Swing around me.”

“What?” she asks, confusion written all over her face.

Instead of explaining, I just force her into position myself. I grab her legs and swing her around until she’s sitting on the little portion of the seat between me and the handle, her eyes looking straight into mine, her lips parted on a gasp.

“Goodness.” Her legs drape over mine, and it’s an intimate position that I don’t mind one bit. Bastard. She’s an innocent, for fuck’s sake. Mind out of the gutter.

Needing a little breathing room—for some reason my body seems to heat up whenever I’m around her—I take off my helmet and toss it into the soft dirt a few feet from the bike. I can feel the heat of my head, my hair damp from the helmet. She removes hers as well, but carefully leans down to place it on the ground beside us.

“Do you think you can handle my bike?”

Her eyes widen, searching me to see if I’m telling the truth. “You mean, drive your bike?”

“Yeah. We have to learn something new. Why not learn how to drive a motorcycle?”

The idea came to me when I was thinking about how hot Daisy would look driving it. I had to make the dream a reality. Had to. Like I said, bastard.

She gulps hard, her hands resting at the base of my jacket, her fingers playing with the end. “Um, when we were told to learn something new, I was thinking of something more in line with learning a new knitting knot.”

This comes as no surprise to me.

“That’s too safe, Snowflake. You have to put yourself out there more. Knitting is in your wheelhouse, step outside your shell, like you’ve been trying to.”

“By driving a motorcycle?” she asks, her voice rising with slight hysteria. “That seems a little extreme, don’t you think?”

“Not at all.” I smile and cup her face. How is her skin so soft? “I’ll be behind you the whole time, guiding you.”

“But I don’t have a license to drive one. I don’t want to get a ticket.”

“You won’t get a ticket. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Now, are you going to grab life by the balls and do something unexpected, learn something new?”

She bites her bottom lip adorably as she thinks. “Well, I’ve never really grabbed anything by the balls. Even a man.” Her face turns bright red. “Not that I want to grab a bunch of balls or anything, I just haven’t done it before.” Exhaling hard, she leans forward and says, “I hear when you grab a man’s testicles, you have to be gentle because they’re sensitive, is that true?”

My hand drops from her face, my head flies back, and a bark of a laugh comes out of me from the serious tone coming from her. Is she really asking me about “testicles” right now?

“What’s so funny?” she asks, swatting my stomach. “That’s a legitimate question.”

“I don’t know.” I laugh some more. “Do you like it when your boobs are squeezed hard?”

If I didn’t think her face could get any more red, I’d be wrong. She casts her eyes down and shakes her head. “I’ve, uh, never done the boob or testicle grabbing thing before.” Peeking up at me through her long, dark eyelashes, she says, “I’m a, uh, virgin.”

This comes as no shock to me. I could have guessed that given how sheltered she was, but she hasn’t even fooled around?

Curious, I push her a little. “Let me ask you this. Have you ever kissed anyone before?”

Shying away, she shakes her head, no.

Never been kissed? This beautiful, vivacious woman has never been kissed? How is that even possible? Those sweetheart lips are going to waste, just resting on her gorgeous face, never once connecting with another soul.

Why do I feel the need to rectify that?

Because her lips are one of the things I haven’t been able to out of my head the past few days. I want to know how they taste, how soft they are, how they would feel up against mine. Would it be serendipitous? Like we were meant to be?

There’s a scary side of me that believes that very well could be true. I block out that side of me though. I can’t go there. Not right now, not with Daisy.

Instead, I focus my attention back on her. “You’ve never been kissed, Daisy?”

She shakes her head, unable to really look at me, so I fix that. Lifting her chin, I force her to make eye contact. Those depths of blue hit me hard, harder than I was expecting, drawing me closer. Slow, intense seconds pass between us, the air growing thicker with each breath despite being outside. The heady atmosphere sucks me into her intoxicating orbit. Just one taste, that’s all I want, just one simple taste.

“Never been kissed, huh? We’re just going to have to change that now, won’t we?”

Wrapping my hand behind her neck, I pull her forward, her hands now shaking against my thighs. I’m millimeters away from her mouth, our lips barely able to graze against each other. “Tell me to stop, Daisy. Tell me you don’t want this.”