Page 34 of Handful

“Ready?” I said over my shoulder.

“Ready.”

I started the bike.

The first lean was a left. I went into it slow, slower than I’d take it solo, and I felt her body fight it for half a second before she remembered. She leaned. Not far enough — she was under-committing the way every new passenger under-committed, because their instincts were screaming at them to stay upright — but she leaned. The bike came out of the curve clean. She held.

I felt her exhale through my back.

Her arms were tight around my waist but not death-gripping. About halfway I felt her relax — not all the way but enough that I knew she’d found her rhythm.

The point where you stop fighting the bike. The point where you start moving with it. I’d told her in my head that it would take an hour. She found it in twenty minutes.

We came up on the railway crossing. Tracks raised, the bike was going to bump. I tapped her thigh once — not a signal we’d drilled, just a heads-up — and she braced. The bike crossed clean. Her body came back into mine without me having to tell her.

She was learning.

We rode back to the clubhouse. Easy curves, slow traffic, the back way into town. I took the last left and slowed for the clubhouse gate. Cut the engine in the lot. Put my feet down.

Sat there a second. Didn’t move. She didn’t move. Didn’t shift, didn’t lean, didn’t reach for her helmet. Just stayed.

I sat with the engine ticking down and her warmth against my back and I thought about the way her body had found mine in the last quarter mile.

“Okay,” I said. “Ride’s done.”

She unhooked her hands. Swung her leg back over — the right way, the order I’d taught her — and got down. Pulled the helmet off. Her hair was flat where the helmet had pressed it and her face was flushed but her eyes were brighter than I’d seen them all morning.

From somewhere behind us, Glitch started it — a single whoop - and then Dutch and Colt and Smoke picked it up. Not loud. Not making a spectacle. Just the way brothers marked a thing that deserved marking. Austen looked over her shoulder at them, startled.

“How was it,” I said.

She looked at the bike. Looked at me. Looked at the gear she was wearing, like she was checking that all of it was still there.

“I want to do it again.”

I grinned. “Tomorrow,” I said. “Same loop. Then a longer one. We’ll build up each day so you’re ready for Glenwood.”

She put her hand on the bike. Just the seat, the place where she’d been sitting. Not possessive. Exploratory.

“I’ll be ready,” she said with a smile.

Chapter 9

❧

— Handful —

Austen was by my bike in the full kit. I looked at her - all the way down, all the way back up, because she made it impossible not to.

I’d had my head between her thighs for a significant portion of the night. Now, she was standing fifteen feet away in riding gear and I was doing the math on how long it would take to get her back to my room for another round.

Three hours to Glenwood. Mark expecting us a little later than usual at noon. If I carried her back to my room we weren’t making noon. We might not be making dinner.

Across the lot, Glitch was watching. He looked at me, looked at Austen, looked back at me. Shook his head once — slow, deliberate, the face of a man who’d done the same math and arrived at the same answer.

I picked up Austen’s helmet. The longest she’d ridden in one go was forty-five minutes. Glenwood was a different category — highway, weather, fatigue, the part of riding where small mistakes cost something — and I wasn’t getting on this bike until I’d heard her say every rule out loud.

“Mount from which side?”