Walk on the Wilder Side by Serena Bell

26

Rachel

“Rachel,” my mom says. “Brody Wilder is on a motorcycle outside. You’re not going on his bike, are you?”

Concern laces her voice. Her eyebrows bend together in a V.

I look out the window.

My mom’s right. Brody’s shiny, beautiful black motorcycle sits in the driveway, but that’s not where my eyes are. They are on Brody, pulling his helmet off and shaking out his rumpled hair. On his thighs, braced around the steel and fiberglass frame. On his leather boots and torn jeans, and his big hands, the leather cuffs on his wrists, the ink on his arms.

I look at my mother, and think about all the times I sat up with her at night while she waited for Connor to come home, and how I vowed never to be the kid who caused her worry.

She will worry about me the whole time I’m gone, if I get on that bike with Brody.

In general, making people worry is one of the many things I pride myself on not doing.

She’s totally justified, too, because motorcycles are dangerous. Getting on that bike has not ever been and will never be part of any sane, well-thought through plan.

And you know what?

I’m going to do it anyway.

Being her good girl, being anyone’s good girl, doing it right, getting it perfect?

They’re all old habits I can give up now.

“I don’t want to stress you out,” I tell her. “But I think if I don’t do this? I might regret it for the rest of my life.”

Something like a smile smooths out the wrinkles in my mother’s forehead.

“Oh,” she says. “It’s like that, is it?”

I nod. “Yeah. It’s like that.”

She nods. “Well. Yes. I’ll worry about you the whole time you’re gone. But all of parenthood is about trying to figure out the balance between tying your children to your waist and letting them run around in the world. All right. I’ll try to find a new show to watch on Netflix so I won’t think about it too much. But he better have a second helmet.”

I can see him out there, holding it. “He does.”

I give her a big hug, and I promise her we’ll go slow and stay on familiar roads, even though I have no idea if that’s true.

“You might…” I take a deep breath. “Not want to mention this to Connor. If you feel like you can omit it without, I don’t know, lying.”

My mother smiles. “Poor Connor. No one wants to tell him anything.”

“If he weren’t so dang opinionated, maybe we’d tell him more stuff.”

“I might be able to fail to mention it. But you might want to think about telling him that you and Brody—” She looks outside. “—are?” she finishes. A question.

I shake my head. “Does it make any sense to tell him when I’ll be gone in a week, two at most?”

She tilts her head to the side. “You’re sure about that?”

I don’t answer her, because I don’t know the answer.

“I’ve always liked Brody Wilder,” she says. “He has good manners and a big heart. I figured he’d get the rest of it out of his system.”

I don’t want Brody Wilder to get anything out of his system. I like him exactly the way he is.

I don’t say that out loud, but maybe my mom can see it on my face, because she says, “Oh, Rachel.”

I give her one more hug. Then I step outside and wave at the beautiful man on the beautiful bike in my parents’ driveway.

He waves back, and a smile breaks over his face, lighting up the world.

Okay, Brody Wilder, you got me, I think.

He hands me the helmet, shows me how to fasten the chinstrap, and tests it to make sure it fits.

“You’ll mount behind me, here,” he says. “There’s no backrest, so you have to hang on to me tight.”

“Mount behind you. Hold on tight. Sounds pretty good to me.”

Brody’s eyes get big.

I grin. “What? Did you think good girls didn’t talk dirty?”

“Pleasantly surprised,” he murmurs. “If you need to tell me something while we’re riding, you can tap my shoulder once for ‘stop when it’s convenient,’ twice for ‘it’s urgent,’ and three times for ‘right the fuck now.’” His gaze flicks to mine and I raise my eyebrows.

“Are there signals for slower and faster, too?” I ask.

He closes his eyes. “Rachel.”

“Just curious.”

“Pat my right thigh for slower,” he says. “And if you want to go faster? Squeeze me tight with your thighs.”

He delivers that instruction with full-on Brody smolder and my knees go liquid. Pretty sure he’s messing with me on that one, but I’m okay with it.

He gives me a few more instructions—what not to touch, because it’s hot, what to do when we’re turning, how not to throw him off balance, and how I’ll get off the bike at the end.

I throw a leg over, the way he showed me, settle my feet in the footrests, according to his instructions, grab him tight with my thighs, and wrap my arms around his waist.

Which, oh, my God is so hard. Brody Wilder is all muscle. How does my body know that the feel of his abs under my hands is a signal to start melting?

I hope I don’t lose all control and start groping him midway through the ride.

And then we’re upright and he kicks the bike into motion and holy wowser.

I wasn’t expecting it to be so noisy or so—

Buzzy between my thighs.

And even with the helmet on and no way for the wind to slip fingers through my hair, the speed and the rushing of air is a total thrill.

Not to mention the man between my thighs and in my arms.

My whole body burns at the contact.

He takes us on a long, slow cruise around Rush Creek. I notice, though, that he avoids the area near Connor’s apartment and town itself.

It’s impossible to ignore the roar of the engine or the vibrations that surge through the powerful machine. But it’s also impossible for me to ignore what those vibrations, in combination with Brody’s hard body, do to me.

I’m vibrating, too, by the time he takes the bike down a long, dirt road that emerges into a grassy meadow.

“Brody,” I say, when it’s quiet enough for me to be heard. My arms are still around his waist. “Nobody told me a motorcycle was a sex toy.”

His chuckle is burnt vanilla, rough like his stubble on my thighs that day at the lake.

I am all heat and liquid and craving.

He half turns, carefully avoiding the hot pipe, and lifts me onto his lap. He removes my helmet, and his, and leans down to drop them into the grass. Then he kisses me. No preliminaries, just hot, open mouth and searching tongue, leaving tingles everywhere it sweeps. When he pulls away, I’m panting.

“You all revved up?” he murmurs.

“God. Yes.”

“Hold on tight.”

I lock my arms around his neck, and in a feat of athleticism that takes my breath away, he stands, swings his leg off the bike, and—without putting me down—works open the strap of his motorcycle satchel to remove a blanket. He sets me down to lay it out, then swoops me up again. A moment later, we’re on the ground, his body covering mine.

Brody Wilder is better than my teenaged fantasies, which is—

Well, off the charts.

Actually, this scene bears a striking resemblance to my teenaged fantasies. The way he’s kissing me, like he can’t get enough. The weight of his hips exactly where I want it. And Brody Wilder knows how to move. A hitch, a swivel, the perfect amount of friction through his jeans and mine.

I pant and writhe under him, lifting my hips to try to get more contact. He kisses me deeper, slides a hand between us and into the V of my thighs. Working me with his palm, getting the pressure in exactly the right place. He breaks the kiss long enough to ask, “Like this?” and I nod. He wedges his thigh where his hand was, working the thick, denim-clad muscle over the damp seam of my jeans. I am already on the edge, and he somehow knows exactly how much pressure I need and want. The pleasure is both amplified and muted by the layers between us.

He finds my nipple through my t-shirt and bra, brushing his thumb back and forth over it.

“Brody,” I beg, but he just kisses me again.

He’s relentless, the thumb on my nipple, the rhythm and friction of his thigh, and I try to slow him down, to draw it out, but he breaks the kiss, watching me, eyes gone dark at whatever he sees in my face. I’m helpless, and he holds my gaze, eyes green and fierce on my face, knowing exactly what he’s doing to me.

“Brody!”

“That’s it, you come, baby. Come for me.”

I’m clutching him, thrusting up desperately to meet him, coming in thick, drowning waves of pleasure.

He cups his hand over my throbbing mound, feeling me through the last surges and aftershocks, his expression… awestruck.

“Holy fucking God, Rachel, you’re so hot. If I had had the slightest idea, high school would have been an entirely different experience for both of us.”

“Probably for the best,” I manage, breathless. “Want me to—?”

He lets me unfasten him, and then I kneel and take him in my fist, ducking my head to lick around the tip of his cock.

“If you don’t want me to come in your mouth, you should probably know that I’m pretty worked up.”

His hands are tangling in my hair. Gently, though. No force, no pressure. It feels good.

“It’s okay,” I say, and take him in my mouth. I love the sensation, the velvet of the taut head, the way each suck I give him echoes in my core. I pop off and say, “I’m not, like, good with the whole, you know, deep thing.”

“You don’t have to prove anything to me. You don’t have to take me deep and you don’t have to swallow. It’s only sexy if you like it.”

Brody Wilder has destroyed me for all men, I think, as I resume licking and sucking him, loving it in a way I have never loved a blow job before. Genuinely. Wanting to make him feel good the way I do and not the way some nameless faceless sex goddess might.

And I think I do all right, because a moment later he’s calling my name, pulling my hair (still feels so damn good), and coming (in my mouth).

And I love it the whole time.

“Rachel,” he says, much more quietly, when he’s done. “Ahhh. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me. It was good for me.”

He laughs quietly, that rough honey chuckle. “I can’t unlearn my manners.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

When he can stand again, he extracts two cans of root beer and a paper sack bearing the Rush Creek Bakery logo from his motorcycle bag.

“Picnic time.” He spreads the blanket and we sit. The sky is blue, the sun is warm, and it’s that magic time of year and day when the whole world holds still except for the hum and buzz of insects among the wildflowers in the field.

The paper sack holds Nan’s cookies.

“Oh, you are my hero.”

“That’s all it takes?”

I nod.

“This is my perfect date,” Brody says. He says it super casually, but I feel like it contains a world of significance.

“Motorcycle ride and picnic?”

He nods.

“It’s pretty dang great.”

He smiles, maybe at my inadequate curse.

“What about fishing? I would have thought that would be your dream date.”

“I mean, that would be pretty amazing, too. But there aren’t a lot of women who want to go fishing as a date.” He thinks about it. “Actually, zero. There are zero women I know who’d want to go fishing as a date.”

“I’d go.”

“Yeah? For real?”

“Sure.”

“Monday?”

He sounds so eager, it makes me laugh. But only kind of. The other part of me feels like some shy wild creature has just eaten out of my hand. “Absolutely.”