Riding Dirty by Abriella Blake

Get dressed and meet me outside in five minutes.”
    Rowan felt a strange swirl of sensation between her legs at the cocky summons, an unconscious reaction to his request. “Are you crazy?” she whispered. “I have to work at the casino tomorrow and there’s this thing called sleep. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
    But he was gone, not even waiting for her to agree. Her cooperation was assumed.
    “Damn it, Ramsey.”
    Annoyed and resigned, Rowan viciously blotted her hair with the towel. Clearly, being a criminal was more of a full-time gig than she had anticipated. Tiptoeing out to the living room, she rummaged in the duffel bag that held her few possessions until she found a sweatshirt and jeans. Pausing, she briefly wondered what occasion she was supposed to be dressing for. A biker bonfire? Another john shake down? But then her lips hardened in grim determination. It was after midnight and she was going to be comfortable. If what Ramsey wanted was pretty arm candy for a biker party, he was just going to have to learn to live with disappointment.
    Rowan triumphantly and defiantly presented herself at the front porch a few moments later, but it turned out she was the one to be disappointed. Bronson indicated no reaction to her appearance, pleasurable or otherwise. Without a word, he handed her the spare motorcycle helmet that lived on the butt of his Dyna Wide Glide and started the engine.
    Gritting her teeth, Rowan had no choice but to climb on. The vibration of the bike between her legs surprised her, and she felt self-conscious as she wrapped her legs around Bronson’s hips. She grudgingly twined her arms around his shoulders, feeling a thrill at his close proximity.
    “OK?” he shouted over the engine.
    Rowan nodded, and they were off. Bronson wove elegantly through traffic, navigating through downtown Las Vegas and on to West Charleston Boulevard until they were narrowly skirting the fringes of Summerlin. With the blurry nightlights and warm wind howling in around his bobber, Bronson was in his element. He could make the demons in his head go blank and empty under an airy static, relieved of the pressure to fight or entertain or pleasure anyone. Alone on the road there was no smuggling, no conversation, no ties to anyone. He could merge with metal and chrome and miles—disappear into the sunset, so to speak. Even so, he felt an odd vulnerability and intimacy tonight as he drove Rowan along the edge of the cookie-cutter, manicured town he had grown up in. Whitewashed tombs.
    Summerlin hadn’t changed much in Bronson’s lifetime, but he’d come to grips with the jarring reality of appearance versus experience in his personal journey. With Rowan’s arms around him, he felt a strange surge of emotion as certain memories surfaced. Finding used needles in his mom’s bathroom, finding her passed out in the bathtub. Crunching on cockroaches and garbage every morning on the kitchen floor with his bare feet. Shoplifting so he could cook for himself. Neighbors calling child services, his mother’s running mascara, silence.
    There was no way Rowan could know this, but he was showing her a glimpse of his private life on this ride, and the soft caress of her breath on his neck warmed him against a deep chill in the pit of his stomach. He smiled faintly.
    Swerving onto the 159, Blue Diamond Rd., the pair moved together as one unit until the smudgy glow of the city gave way to a wide inky blackness of desert sky. Rowan screwed her neck up, relishing the openness and connection she felt to the dark horizon. There were stars peppering the expanse above, and only silent silhouettes of cacti and stone for company. In every direction she looked, Rowan saw freedom and space.
    Rocks began to rise and clump together from the brushy expanse to their right, slowly building to caverns and hills. Before long Bronson Ramsey steered the bike off the highway and into the sheltered cocoon of an abandoned gravel parking lot off of a side