The Rogue (The Moorehouse Legacy #4)(44)

“Oh, yes.” She quickly had some wine. Then a little more. “I’m just fine.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. After a moment, her coloring came back and she cleared her throat. “So tell me…You really do like Mad, don’t you?”

He shrugged, not about to discuss that kind of thing. “What’s not to like?”

Amelia put down her wineglass. “Be good to her, will you?”

As the woman seemed to honestly mean what she said, he took the comment at face value. “As much as I can be.”

Which wasn’t all that good, was it? The secret he kept from Mad turned him into some kind of imposter, didn’t it. And he was leaving tomorrow without looking back, wasn’t he?

Well, he was leaving at any rate. He couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t look back. This thing with Mad was going to linger…Oh, God, it was all over tomorrow, wasn’t it? The weekend would be over.

“I’m sorry?” Amelia looked at him with brows raised.

“What?”

“I thought you just said something.”

“Oh…yeah. No. Nothing at all.”

When the table broke up after dessert, Mad was among the first to leave and he was right behind her. Out in the foyer, he took her arm and dropped his head to her ear.

“Let’s go for a ride.” He was suddenly desperate for the freedom of the night and her on his bike. Because he didn’t know if he’d ever have her on his Harley again.

As her spine stiffened, he braced himself for a no.

But then she said, “All right.”

They disappeared out of the house and were on the road moments later. He had no idea where he was taking them and didn’t care. His past and his present were colliding and he was trapped in the middle, suspended between bad outcomes: one completed over a decade ago, one impending with tomorrow’s dawn.

All he could think about was that tonight was his last night with her.

He took them miles and miles away from Greenwich, the Harley eating up the asphalt. Some forty-five minutes later, he realized they were deep in rural Connecticut and that, after a series of random turns onto smaller and smaller roads, he’d probably gotten them lost.

He slowed down and pulled over onto the gravel shoulder, figuring it was time to re-group. The deserted two laner they were on was out in the middle of nowhere: no cars or houses around, only maples and oaks and a small pond. The moonlight was the closest thing to a street lamp they had.

As he engaged the kickstand, she dismounted from the bike and flipped the helmet off. Her hair was tangled at the ends and her skirt wrinkled where she had balled it between her legs to straddle the Harley. She looked a little wild.

Which matched his mood. He felt unhinged and starved. Needy. Clingy. Things that he didn’t usually throw out at the world, much less at women.

Mad put the helmet down next to the bike and strolled across the road. He tracked the sway of her walk and the slender curves of her body like she was an animal.

No, that was wrong. He was the animal. He’d brought her here, to this nowhere place, to this nothing-counts-because-it’s-not-real slice of rural anonymity, for one reason and one reason only. He wanted to take her. Wanted to be covered with her body. And he wanted to do it in the kind of privacy they couldn’t find at her family’s house, no matter how many doors and locks they had.

He wondered if she knew and hoped she didn’t. Because he wasn’t real impressed with himself at the moment.

“We should go back,” he said roughly. “I’ve taken us too far away.”

She pivoted around in the middle of the road. “Have you?”

“Yeah. Definitely.” He bent down and picked up the helmet. “Put this back on. Let’s go.”

“I don’t want to.” She turned to the pond again. “I can breathe out here.”

Funny, he couldn’t. Especially as she reached her arms over her head and stretched. As her body arched in the moonlight, he saw her naked.

Spike put his hand up to his chin and cracked his neck, trying to loosen the tension in his body. Then he put the helmet over his hips and rearranged his arousal with a grimace.

“Let’s go, Mad. If you want to stay out, I’ll take you the long way home.” Yeah, the really long way as he only had a vague idea how to get them back to Greenwich.

“Not yet.” She walked down to the edge of the pond, a breeze teasing her skirt around. It was a long time before she turned and looked at him.

Separated by the gray, moonlit road, they stared at each other.

“Mad?”

“Yes?”

“Can you come here?” he said in a deep growl. “Can you come over to me…. please?”

She drifted across the road, as quiet and graceful as a ghost. While she approached, he kicked his leg out and around, turning himself toward her on the Harley’s deep seat. When she was within range, he reached for her, his hands going to her hips. Through the warm night air, his questioned her with his eyes.

She touched his face. “You look hungry.”

“I am.” His voice was low, hoarse. “And I feel like I should apologize for it.”

“Don’t.” She put her mouth on his. “I’m hungry, too.”

With those quiet words, it was as if she’d popped the lid off of him. His arms shot around her and he spread his legs wide so he could get her into his hips. He was almost out of time and she was everything hot and good and sustaining in the world.