Page 2 of Edge
The café door slammed shut, and I froze where I crouched beside the motorcycle and my bike. My scraped palm stung as I scrambled to shove my tote back together, but my focus was locked on the man stepping into the street.
My stomach plummeted.
He was huge. Well over six feet tall, and his shoulders were broad enough to block the door behind him. Tattoos wound down his muscular arm, the skin on the left completely covered in a colorful sleeve of ink. His dark auburn hair caught the laststreaks of sunset, its color the same rich shade as the close-cropped beard framing his jaw.
My pulse spiked. Adrenaline shot through my veins, and I couldn’t tell if the heat flooding my skin was panic or something else entirely.
I was much too aware of this man, and not just because my bike might’ve damaged his motorcycle.
“Oh no,” I whispered under my breath, forcing my shaking legs to straighten.
My poor bike wobbled as I pulled it upright, desperate to do something—anything—that might make the disaster less obvious. I could practically hear my parents’ voices in my head, lecturing me about responsibility, about how careless I was. I knew I should apologize, but the words wouldn’t come out.
My eyes were too busy eating up every sexy inch of the man prowling toward me. He looked like he could crush me with a flick of his wrist. And judging by the beast of a motorcycle gleaming beside mine, my bicycle had landed against the one thing he probably cared about most.
Each deliberate step seemed to eat up the space between us, his boots scuffing against pavement. Our gazes locked, and the oddest thing happened—he smiled. It was movie-star perfect. The kind that probably had women ready to toss their panties at him, which irritated me for some strange reason.
His gorgeous eyes were fierce enough for him to play a Highland warrior in a historic action film. They gleamed green, sharp and unblinking, with the kind of intensity that made me feel like I was prey caught in the sights of a predator. One I’d pissed off.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
Heat coiled low in my belly, and I didn’t understand why I felt sexual attraction now—for the first time—when fear should’ve been the only thing rushing through me.
The air seemed to thicken around us as his gaze locked on mine, unrelenting. His eyes narrowed just slightly, like he was peeling me open without a word.
I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. I wanted to offer to pay for the damage, but that would be ridiculous because no way could I afford to fix a bike like that.
By the time he stopped in front of me, the world had gone silent except for the pounding of my heart. I tipped my head back, wide-eyed and speechless, bracing for the explosion I knew was coming.
2
EDGE
She froze in front of me, big eyes staring up like she wasn’t sure if she should bolt or beg for forgiveness. And fuck me, the sight hit harder than any high-speed crash I’d ever taken.
Heat shot through my veins so fast it left me reeling. My cock was already hard, straining against my jeans like it had been waiting for her all my life. Images slammed through my head uninvited—her sprawled beneath me on tangled sheets, her pretty mouth wrapped around me, her hips grinding down as she rode me raw. A filthy reel of possibilities my brain hadn’t played in years.
Because there’d been no desire for it. Not really. Not since the club and the races consumed everything. I didn’t have any interest in a one-night stand, and there hadn’t been a woman who’d made me consider more than that. Until her.
She was gorgeous in the kind of way that made the air shift around her. Young—twenty, maybe—but with a face that looked like it had been drawn with care. Bow-shaped lips, pink and lush, made to be kissed until swollen. Nose upturned just enough to give her that celestial innocence, the kind that begged to be ruined. Her brown hair was mussed from the fall, strandscurling around her lightly tanned face. And her eyes—fuck—Prussian blue, sharp and startling, like they could cut me in half if I stared too long.
She was average height and average weight—except nothing was average about her. Every line, every freckle, every inch pulled at me with the force of a damn riptide.
And her scent. I caught it before she spoke, soft and clean but with something sweet underneath, like sunshine layered over sin. A contradiction that made sense in my bones. That crash hadn’t been an accident. It was fate doing me a favor.
She swallowed hard, her lips parting. “I-I’m sorry,” she stammered, voice husky on the edges. “I didn’t see the raccoon until it was too late, then the bag slid, and—” Her gaze cut to the Harley, then back to me, panic and mortification wrestling behind those blue eyes. “Please don’t be mad. I’ll figure out a way to pay for whatever?—”
The apology spilled out of her awkward and fast, like she expected me to roar and break her in half for scuffing chrome. But instead of anger, something else clawed up my chest. Something wicked. And hungry.
I leaned one palm on the handlebar of my bike and bent closer, letting the grin come slow and wicked because it made her breath catch. “Mad? Baby, if I knew crashing into me would put you on your knees, I’d have parked here sooner.” I tipped my head toward the café door. “You want to make it right, buy me a coffee.”
Her eyelashes fluttered. “A coffee?”
“Hot. Strong.” I let my gaze skate over her mouth and back up. “Black. Like my sense of humor.”
The laugh escaped her before she could strangle it. “I can do coffee.”
She gathered the strap of that overstuffed tote and nodded toward the door, then glanced back at her mangled bike.
