Page 8 of Coyote

He reached for my hand.

"Later." I was already moving toward the bikes because if he got those hands on me right then, I was going to bite him. I was going to find out whether the gentleness held with my teeth in it, right there with four men cooling in the gravel.

"We need to leave before somebody trips over their friends."

The Sportster caught on a fob I'd nearly left on the board. It was beat to hell and dropped at least once, but she turned over when I kicked her. Tusks were wired to the handlebars, filed to points.

Out of the whole row of bikes, I'd stolen Zaroff's personal ride. He'd want her back.

Good. I'd love for him to come and ask.

I swung a leg over and looked back. "Get on."

The big man climbed on behind me, and the suspension sank under his weight. His hands settled carefully at my hips, like he wasn't sure he was allowed.

Of course he was.

Touch me anywhere and quit being careful about it.

I drove us toward the road with his palms burning through my jeans. I shifted on the seat to make room and nearly put us in a ditch.

Back by the pens, Zaroff had come to stand over the guard I'd left in the scrub. He stepped across the body and put himself square in my sightline. Then he lifted two fingers from the tusks at his throat and tipped them toward me in a small salute.

I flipped him off and opened the throttle. "Hold on."

The big man held on.

When the speed came up, his arms wrapped all the way around me. My hand came off the grip to move his, and I put it back before it got there. That was the whole ride. Me negotiating with my own hands.

"What do they call you?" he asked near my ear.

"Percy." The name left my mouth before I decided to give it to him. Nobody got that name but the wind, the water, my mamma, and Sierra, and my mamma was dead. "People who know me call me Coyote."

He thought about it. "Fits."

His forearm crossed my stomach like it had always lived there. "What about you?"

"John. Most people land on Big John."

"Can't imagine why."

He laughed, and I felt it come up my spine before I heard it, everywhere his chest met my back.

"They'll come looking," he said after a while. "Men like that don't let go."

"Neither do I."

His arms tightened. "You're not worried."

"I'm always worried. Never once slowed me down."

I leaned back until my mouth was close enough to his jaw that he could feel the words move against it.

"Besides. You're mine now, Big John. I take care of what's mine."

He went still against my back. I felt his breath stop and the exact second those words dropped into him.

"Yours?" he said finally, trying the word.