Make You Mine by K.T. Quinn

33

Charlotte

I woke to warm lips kissing me on the forehead. Everything was still dark, and strangely silent. It took me a moment to realize it was because the rain had stopped.

“Mornin’, Peaches.” Jayce smiled down at me. His hair was tied back, with a few strands hanging down, framing his ruggedly-handsome face.

This is how I always want to be woken up.

I stretched my hands over my head and squeaked. “What time is it?”

“Time to go home.”

“Do I have to?” I reached for my phone, then groaned. “Jayce, it’s five in the morning!”

“I need to get you home while the town is still asleep.” He kissed my forehead again, and his voice was a deep whisper. “If anyone sees us driving together from my barn…”

“It’s going to take at least eight more kisses to wake me up,” I said.

I meant it as playful morning banter, but Jayce grabbed my head with both of his callused hands and planted exactly eight kisses all over me: forehead, nose, cheeks, chin, and neck. I giggled as his beard tickled its way across my skin.

“There’s eight,” he said, with a final kiss on the lips that lingered longer than the rest. “With a ninth as a bonus. Good enough?”

“Mmm hmm,” I hummed. I was tempted to pull him back down for a deeper kiss, and a third round of sexy time, but he was already getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom. I enjoyed the sight of his nude body as he disappeared, then reemerged a minute later.

“A girl could get used to that,” I said. “If you don’t go back to factory welding, you could be a model.”

“I prefer to work for a living.”

“Modeling is work,” I said.

“Real work, Peaches. With my hands.” He came over to the bed and picked me up. I yelped as he lifted me into the air with ease, then put me down on my feet. “Get dressed.”

He gave me a hard slap on the butt, eliciting a loud smack. I squeaked and sent a fake angry glare in his direction, which only made him laugh even harder.

“There’s something we didn’t talk about last night,” I said. “Something more important than Sid.”

Jayce’s smile slipped. “I didn’t take your virginity, did I?”

“No!” I sputtered. “I lost my virginity in—you know what, it doesn’t matter. What matters is something about you. A deal breaker.”

He frowned and waited for me to answer. I walked toward him with as much disappointment on my face as I could manage. I put my face close to his.

“Simone.”

He groaned. “Aww, hell.”

“Your middle name is Simone! Like the gymnast!”

He stared flatly at me. “Can we go back to making fun of my art?”

“I never made fun of your art. I thought it was special. But your name, on the other hand…” I giggled. “Was it a typo on your birth certificate, or was your weenie so small at birth they thought you were a girl?”

He grabbed me and held me close. “I didn’t hear you complain about the size of my weenie last night, Peaches.”

“It was satisfactory.”

He snorted. “I’ll have you know that Simone was the name of my grandfather. It’s a masculine name in Italy.”

“If you say so.”

“I’m serious,” he said a little too defensively. “Look it up.”

“I believe you,” I said in a tone that implied I most certainly did not believe him.

The ground outside Jayce’s barn was covered with individual puddles from the rain, requiring us to pick our footing carefully. Jayce pulled the rain cover off his bike, folded it up, and placed it on the ground next to the barn.

“Why are we taking the bike? Won’t I be able to hide better in the truck?”

Jayce shook his head and gave me the peace sign with his fingers. “Two reasons, Peaches. One, it’s easier for us to hide on a bike. If we see someone comin’, I can pull into the woods and wait for them to pass. And two, if Sid finds out what we did with Carl and shit hits the fan, I want to be on my bike in case we need to make a quick getaway.”

He threw his leg over the bike. I approached, then stopped.

“Hey, I just remembered something. Last night, after searching the barn, Sid said they were going to check out your bike. They might have messed with it.”

Jayce paused with his keys halfway in the ignition. “Good call.” He stepped off the bike and crouched down. “I bet those fuckers messed with the brake line, or the clutch line—”

He froze with his hand underneath the bike. His entire demeanor changed and he began breathing more rapidly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he replied in a too-calm voice. “You got your cell phone on you?”

“I do. What’s wrong, Jayce?”

“Turn on the flashlight app and give me some light, would you?”

I did as he asked, and then started to walk closer to the bike.

“Don’t come any closer,” he said firmly. “Aim the light from there, Charlotte.”

Hearing him use my real name filled me with more unease than if he were shouting. I aimed my phone flashlight, sending long shadows across the driveway. Jayce crouched low, ducking his head to look underneath the motorcycle. His hand was on a small piece of metal. A drab-green cylinder a little bigger than a Coke can.

Jayce took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“That’s good enough.” He never took his eyes off the bike. “I need you to do one more thing. Go back inside.”

“Why? Jayce, what is it?”

“Just go inside, Charlotte. This will only take a minute.”

“What will take a minute?” I asked. My voice was shaky but I didn’t care. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong.”

Finally he turned to look at me. His blue eyes were piercing in the light from my phone. “There’s a grenade on my bike.”

I gasped. “Oh my God!”

“And my hands will be a lot steadier if I know you’re a safe distance away. You understand?”

I felt like I was frozen in place. It took extra thought to force my feet to move backwards. Like I was controlling someone else’s body and there was lag between the command and response.

I backed up until I felt the barn door behind me, then slipped inside. I pulled the door mostly closed, leaving a sliver where I could see. Jayce hadn’t moved since finding the grenade.

“Do me a favor and turn the floodlights on?” he asked in that too-casual voice. Like a mechanic asking for a certain type of wrench. “Switch is on the wall to your right.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off Jayce, so I felt around on the wall until my fingers found the switch. The area in front of the barn was suddenly bathed in harsh white light.

“Get away from the door and windows,” he called, but he didn’t look over at me so I didn’t go anywhere.

Jayce didn’t move for a long time. He remained crouched next to the bike, deathly still, with one hand underneath. For the first time, I had an opportunity to get a good look at the bike. While other bikes were covered in shiny chrome, the components on Jayce’s bike were matte black. Even the twin mufflers on the left side. Only the wheel guards and engine housing were a burnt red color. It was beautiful in its uniqueness.

It might explode at any moment, killing Jayce.

I never saw Jayce do anything. For what felt like several minutes he kept his hand underneath the bike. Maybe he was carefully probing the object. Then suddenly he pulled his hand away, with the grenade in it. He walked straight back to the barn, toward me.

“What are you doing!” I demanded. “Don’t bring it in here!”

“I thought I told you to get away from the door and windows.” Sweat covered his face like he’d just run the Boston Marathon. He held out the device for my inspection, and although I wanted to run and hide under the bed in case it spontaneously went off, I made myself look. The grenade was the shape of a family-sized can of beans. A metal ring stuck out of the end, as if it could be attached to a keychain and carried around. Wire was tied from the ring to another piece of metal that looked like a bobby pin.

“This is a fragmentation grenade,” Jayce said. “An old Russian model. Pull the ring and it explodes. This wire was attached to my bike’s engine housing. The engine would have pulled on the wire, yanking the pin out of the grenade.”

“Oh my God.” I didn’t know what else to say. I felt like a broken record. “Oh my God!”

“It’s fine now,” he said, walking past me and into the workshop. His voice drifted out into the main room. “I’ve plugged the pin so it won’t go off.”

“You could have died,” I said in disbelief. “You almost did die! If I had forgotten to mention it…”

He returned and rubbed my arms. That simple gesture instantly made me feel better. “But you didn’t forget. You remembered just in time.” He kissed me on the forehead, and my skin felt warm where his lips had touched. “You might have saved my life, Peaches.”

“And my own life,” I managed to stammer. “Yours is a nice secondary benefit.”

The joke sounded dull to my ears, but it made Jayce laugh. “All joking aside, since that’s a frag grenade and not a concussion grenade, it probably wouldn’t have killed us. The bike would have protected us from most of the shrapnel.”

“Oh. Then what was the point?”

He led me back outside. “It would have shredded our legs. Leaving us crippled.”

“Oh, that’s all,” I said in a small voice. I glanced down at my legs and fought the urge to vomit.

I got on the bike behind him, winced when he turned on the engine, and then clung to him as we drove away from the barn.