Page 123 of Vandal Unbound

I chuckle at that and start the bike. The engine rumbles beneath us as a familiar vibration settles in my bones. We ride toward the small strip where the local store and Annie’s bar and a handful of other businesses are, past people enjoying themselves on a regular Friday night.

Then Daisy’s hand slides beneath my cut, her fingers dipping between buttons on my shirt.

“Daze,” I warn. We aren’t going so fast that wind and revs drown it out.

“What?” she says innocently.

“You know. Behave.”

“I am behaving,” she says.

I bark out a laugh at that. “You absolutely are not.”

Her fingers drift lower, over my cock that is suddenly interested in what she’s doing. “Still behaving.”

“Babe. I’m trying to take you on a date.”

Daisy chuckles. “I know.”

“You spent forty minutes doing your hair.”

“Iknow.”

I slow the bike and pull over to the side of the road, put down my feet, then twist to look at her. “So why does it feel like you’re trying to sabotage dinner?”

She rests her chin on my shoulder. “Because I missed you.”

I was gone two days. Forty-eight hours.

And since then, we’ve had to squeeze intimacy around sleep schedules and Elsie insisting on camping on our bedroom floor the first night I was home.

“Wait,” I say, taking the hint. “Let’s choose this or that. This…we carry on with our plans to go to dinner.”

Daisy smiles, and I can’t resist trying to kiss her. It’s messy with the helmets and position. “What’s involved if I pickthat?”

“That is I find us a pizza, we go to the clubhouse, and I rail you for the next three hours. You can make as much fucking noise as you want.”

Her eyes widen. “That. I pickthat.”

I laugh and wrap her hands around me. “Are we really bailing on a fancy dinner in the next town for clubhouse pizza?”

“Vandal,” she says close to my ear.

“Yeah, babe.”

“I don’t give a crap about the pizza. We’re bailing for the railing.”

God, I love this woman. I love the life we’re building; I love who we are to each other. When we pull up at the clubhouse, I help her off the bike.

“I thought you two had date night,” Knox says when I see him by his bike.

“We do,” I say as I take Daisy’s hand and lead her inside. “Pizza first?” I ask.

Daisy shakes her head, her blonde curls falling around her face. “Definitely not.”

And I kiss her, right there in the middle of the clubhouse. “Me neither.”

EPILOGUE