RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) by Daphne Loveling Read Free Book Online Page B

the verge of racing out of control. As we sat there, I started thinking about the fact that in a couple of months, we would both be finishing high school.
    “Caleb,” I said suddenly. “What are you going to next year? After high school?”
    “Dunno,” he shrugged, unconcerned. “Haven’t really thought about it yet.”
    We talked about my plans to go to University of Washington. He asked me why I was going so far away, and I almost told him. But my heart still wasn’t sure if I could trust Caleb Jackson, and anyway, I didn’t want to ruin this perfect moment by talking about things that hurt.
    Still, something compelled me to talk to him — to confide, just a little, to this person who made me want to open to him like a flower.
    “Have you ever felt like you were going to explode if you didn’t get out of your life?”
    The words burst from me almost before I knew I was going to say them. I flushed red, wishing I could take them back, but then Caleb made it all right.
    “Yeah. I have. Pretty often, in fact.”
    I sighed. It felt like a bubble that had been choking me from the inside had just burst. To know that Caleb understood, just a little, what I was feeling — to know that sometimes, he even felt that way himself — made me feel close to him, comfortable around him in a way I never had with anyone else before.
    “I just… I just want to go somewhere else,” I admitted. “I want the chance to be someone else for a while.”
    He looked at me then, his expression intense. Slowly, so slowly, his hand reached up to my face. With an almost excruciating softness, his thumb caressed my cheek.
    “I think who you are already is pretty fucking great.”
    And then… he kissed me.
    Even to this day, ten years later, I remember how it felt. The way his lips were soft and hard, cool and burning, hesitant and insistent. I’ve been in a few relationships since then, and I’ve even had a one-night stand or two, but there has never been anything like it since.
    Maybe it’s because it was really my first kiss that wasn’t just a perfunctory peck on the lips. I don’t know. But just the memory of the heat between us, all these years later, can make my pulse race and my nipples harden with the intensity of it.
    One of the things I remember most is Caleb’s eyes. At one point, when his lips had trailed down to my the neckline of my T-shirt, his hands caressing the outline of my breasts, he raised his head to look at me. For a few frozen moments, we locked eyes. The intensity of his expression communicated a rawness of need, almost as though he was baring his soul to me without saying anything at all. It was at that moment that I almost asked him to take me somewhere more private, somewhere we could be alone to say everything we wanted to say, with our bodies instead of our words.
    It’s the memory of that moment — of how naive I was to fall for his little performance — that still has the power to make me feel the sting of humiliation to this day.
    At the time, though, I believed him. Which is why I have no idea how I managed to pull myself together enough to tell him I thought we should stop, before we went too far and were discovered.
    “Whatever you say, princess,” he murmured, kissing my neck.
    A thrill went through me and I almost changed my mind, but he stood up. He spent a moment trying to conceal the obvious erection in his jeans, then grinned at me sheepishly and held out his hand. We wandered around the paths for a while, talking about other things, and then finally went back to the motorcycle and he took me home.
    At the time, I remember feeling disappointed that we were going back, but hopeful that this was the beginning of something important. Something real.
    What an idiot I had been.

    I sighed and drained my iced tea, then looked up at the clock above the cafeteria exit. Shit . While I had been sitting here reopening old wounds, my break had ended more than ten minutes ago. I stood abruptly and