Page 16 of Driven By Impulse

On a quiet mountain road, with nothing else to distract her but the muscled man under her fingertips, Hanna could admit to herself and the winter-bare trees that the answer was obvious.

Since the beginning.

Since she’d first learned what she liked. Since she’d found secret books in the back of the library shelves and devoured one right after the other. Since the night Ash Rhodes had pinned her hands over her head and told her to trust him.

The cold March air wasn’t nearly enough to keep the heat from flooding her cheeks or glowing between her clenched thighs.

It’s just been a while. It has nothing to do with Ash.

Except…

Tori would call her a workaholic, and she’d be right. There had been times when Hanna had gone much, much longer without consistent release, and not a single one of them had left her feeling nearly unhinged with wanting, aching, not for pleasure, but for salvation…

Salvation she knew only Ash could provide.

Strangely, it wasn’t only flashes of blond hair that she saw in the evolving fantasy that had taken over her mind. There were also dark curls, rich onyx, streaked with slivers of gold.

“Especially since he’s always got that hot, broody captain standing behind him like a sexy shadow.”

She blamed Tori and her wicked ways for even putting the idea in her mind. Niccolo was in Bitterroot as a favor. Nothing more. Certainly, things were complicated enough between her and the boy she had once loved and lost in the span of a single year without having to drag his best friend in to it.

“We’re here.” Ash’s voice came over the comm, and Hanna dragged her focus away from the strange and unwelcome thoughts she’d been following. “Hollow Point.”

Hanna shook her head. “You brought me to Make-Out Point.”

“Just for old time’s sake,” Ash joked. He pulled off his helmet and his hair fell free, no longer pinned back, just loose, gold waves, spilling down to his shoulders. It should have made him look more elegant, more feminine.

It had the opposite effect.

“Hmm, and are we just making out for old time’s sake, too?” she volleyed, wishing she could stuff the words back in her mouth the moment they slipped out.

Ash was off the bike in the next second, crowding her against a tree littered with carved initials, and Hanna felt seventeen again, a young girl just figuring out what she wanted, but knowing without a shadow of a doubt that she wanted him.

“Hanna.” His voice was low and gruff, echoing a need she felt pumping through her own veins. When had he gotten so big? And why was she so fascinated by the tendrils of ink spilling over the collar of his shirt? In a momentary lapse of all sense, the only thing Hanna could think about at that moment was just how far the tattoos went down.

“Ash.” And God, she sounded just like him, ragged around the edges like she was being torn apart by needing something she absolutely shouldn’t want. It was the memories—that was the only explanation. Ash was back in her childhood home after a lifetime apart, looking like a man, and it was mixing her up. There was no other reason she should be hoping that he had brought her to Hollow Point.

“You know what the boys used to call you back then?” he asked. His eyes, normally the soft blue of Colorado columbine, were now a storm at sea, desire crashing in their depths, a desire that was sure to drown them both.

Hanna tasted sour. “Red Hot. They called me Red Hot.”

She had hated it, hated the nicknames about her hair, the comments about how she must be just like her sister, the ever-teasing does the carpet match the drapes. It was an act of survival to be a woman in the world, but to be a teenage girl was another Hell altogether. “They stopped. The summer after you showed up.”

Ash’s eyebrow quirked. “Figured that out, did you?”

Hanna closed her eyes, so only Ash’s scent could torment her—but that was enough. He smelled of leather and metal, of fresh mountain air, of dangerous laughter. Of adventure. Of possibility.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing that wasn’t warranted.”

Hanna opened her eyes. Somehow, Ash was even closer to now, and with Hanna’s back pressed against the tree trunk, she couldn’t have run if she’d wanted to.

I don’t want to.

“Ash, what did you do?”

He gave her the devil’s grin, the one that had landed him in so many detentions—and so many beds. “I broke Ellis Johnston’s arm.”