Page 6 of Pining for Pierce

She sounds ideal, doesn’t she? Sexy, beautiful, available. She’s all of that.

But there’s a problem…

She’s just too clingy for my tastes.

Even over dinner, she wouldn’t let go of my hand. I actually had to ask her to release me, so I could cut my steak, and the moment I had, she grabbed a hold of me again. It was infuriating, to put it mildly. What made it worse was her reaction when I rolled up my shirtsleeves. I only did it because I was getting warm, but after that, she became positively unstoppable. She gazed at me for a moment, her eyes switching from my slightly unkempt hair to my left arm, and then over to my right, before she leaned in a little.

“How far do they go?” she asked.

“How far do what go?”

“Your tattoos. Do they go all the way up?”

“The pattern meets in the center of my chest,” I explained, and she licked her lips. It was clear she found that thought appealing, and from then on, she not only held my hand, but stroked it, too.

Afterwards, once we’d finished our meal, it was all I could do to stop her from clutching at my arm as we walked along the street, and she positively purred as we climbed the steps to her apartment. The apartment I’m currently backing away from.

“That’s a shame,” she says, tipping her head and biting on her bottom lip. “You could still stay the night and get up early, couldn’t you?”

“Sorry. I can’t.”

I move toward the stairs, and she steps outside. “You’ll call me, won’t you?”

I nod my head, turning to go down, even though I know I won’t call her at all… and I feel bad about that. It’s wrong of me to lie to her. But if I said no, she’d probably be offended,and she’d want an explanation, and I don’t feel like explaining. I’m done here, and I’m so damn relieved she doesn’t have my number. I made a point of not giving it to her, and that – as it transpires – was a wise move. Admittedly, when I first arrived here and knocked on her door, looking her up and down in that sexy dress, I thought I might have been too cautious. I mean, who wouldn’t wanna give their number to a woman who looked like that? Naturally, I didn’t just blurt it out at her, randomly quoting the digits by way of a greeting, but I told myself I’d find a way to give it to her before the end of the night… or maybe in the morning. Because at that stage, I had every intention of staying the night… if asked.

That was, until we got down the stairs and outside her apartment block, and she saw my motorcycle.

“Who left that thing here?” she asked, looking down the street, as if she expected someone to jump out and reveal themselves as the culprit of this seemingly heinous crime.

I’d parked it between a BMW and a Lotus, and had locked my helmet to the handlebars before going up to her place. Standing there, looking at it, in all its black, shiny glory, I was hurt by her calling my precious motorcycle a ‘thing’, and I turned to her and said, “I did.”

She frowned and looked at me. “This is yours?”

“Yeah.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to ride on it with you.”

I shook my head. “I booked us a table at the Italian restaurant around the corner.”

“Thank goodness for that.” She sighed out her relief and linked her arm through mine, guiding me along the sidewalk, while she explained how much she detested bikes.

No matter how sexy she looked, that was a deal-breaker for me.

I felt like I had to go through with dinner, though… and it was nice enough, aside from her clinging to my hand the entire time. Within seconds of us sitting down, she made it clear what she expected from a man, and that if I wanted to be hers, I’d have to change.

Needless to say, that wasn’t gonna happen, but I was still intrigued by her interpretation.

“Being a bad boy is one thing,” she said, studying me closely. “But there’s such a thing as taking it too far.”

She didn’t say so in as many words, but I got the feeling that riding a motorcycle was taking it way beyond her expectations… which was why I was kinda surprised by her reaction to my tattoos. They were clearly okay, although the bike wasn’t. Not in her eyes. If I wanted to be with her, the bike would have to go.

Over my dead body.

It’s a reaction I’ve experienced before on many occasions, and as I get out onto the sidewalk again, I wrack my brain, trying to recall the last woman I dated who was actually enthusiastic about the prospect of being seen with a biker. It takes me a moment, but I honestly can’t think of one, and I wander over and unlock my helmet, pulling it on before I mount up and start the engine, and then smile to myself as I set off for home.

The journey from Concord to Hart’s Creek doesn’t take too long, but it’s just long enough for me to remember the last time I was in this position… riding away from someone who’d felt right, but who’d turned out to be the exact opposite.

Her name was Bellamy. She was a stunning brunette, with sultry eyes and captivating lips… and I let things go a lot further with her than I did with Kenna. In fact, it was only when I was getting dressed, looking down at Bellamy’s naked body, still lying sprawled across her bed, that I realized she was all wrong for me. Like Kenna, she’d made a remark about my motorcyclewhen I’d arrived at her house a few hours earlier, but it was less personal. Or it felt that way at the time, when she studied my bike, then glanced out at the quiet street, and sighed, saying, “I hope my neighbors won’t mind that.”

---