Ride Everlasting (Demon Riders MC Book 3) (5 page)

“Dolly?”  Nick looks blankly at them.

“It’s the name the guys have christened the car that Mrs. Pow…I mean, Joyce, gave to Elyse…because she needs a little dolling up.”  Elyse’s mother smiles at the explanation.  “A ’75 Mustang…she really is a thing of beauty.”

“I loved that car.”  Joyce’s voice gets a faraway quality.  “It was the one good thing that came from my ex-husband, apart from my beautiful daughter.”  Joyce squeezes Elyse’s hand to signal that she hadn’t forgotten about her.  Her eyes get all misty, but she recovers well.  “Now, let’s eat before I start embarrassing Elyse more than I already have.”

Elyse looks at her mother gratefully, and they all set about choosing appetizers and entrees.  Elyse looks around the table and feels a sensation that she has never experienced before.  There’s something special about having two of the people that she cares most about together, in the same room.  But it’s not just that, they’re getting along like a house on fire.  Joyce seems charmed by Dane, and Dane and Nick have no problem finding common areas of interest.  All in all, the night couldn’t be called anything but a great success.  Elyse is almost disappointed when the check is called, and it’s time to leave.

“So, you ride?”  Nick and Dane lead the way towards the parking lot.

Elyse stifles a laugh. She’s probably had a little too much to drink, but she’d worry about that in the morning.  “Dane learned to ride a bike before he could walk.”

“You’re into bikes?”  Dane gives Nick a surprised look, ignoring Elyse’s interruption.

“I love them, but I don’t get a chance to get out as much as I’d like.”  Nick shrugs as if to say ‘But that’s life’ and the two men lapse into talk about motorcycle makes and limited editions that just sounds like Greek to Elyse.

“So what’s going on?”  Joyce hooks her arm through Elyse’s, forcing her to hang back from the men a touch so that they can have some privacy.

“With what?”  Elyse frowns at her mother, her alcohol fuzzed brain taking her a few extra moments to catch up.

“With you two.  I may be your mother, but I’m not stupid.”  Joyce takes hold of Elyse’s shoulders, making her focus.  “He seems like a great guy, and he clearly cares about you.  So, what’s got you all bent out of shape?”

“It’s…it’s complicated, Mom.”  Elyse shakes off her mother’s concern. 

“It’s a relationship, of course it’s complicated, Elyse!”  Joyce looks up at the sky for strength.  “Nothing about being with another person is simple.  That’s just how this works.  But if you care about him as much as he clearly cares about you, then it doesn’t matter how complicated it is. You decide that you’re going to be with each other in spite of all the reasons your little brain is telling you not to.”

“How do you know what my brain is telling me?”  Elyse gives her mother a sarcastic look.

“Because I too was twenty-two once.”  Joyce gives her daughter a withering look.  “So, how serious are you two?”

Elyse rolls her eyes at her mother.  “Well, I think we’re a little way off from picking out china—if that’s what you mean.  What about you and Nick?”

“I really like him!”  Joyce gives off the megawatt smile that’s been a permanent fixture on her face since the start of dinner.

Elyse laughs at how much like a teenager her mother sounds.  “He seems really nice.”

“So, does that mean that you approve?”  Joyce bites her lip in an expression that Elyse recognizes as something she must have inherited.

Elyse blinks at her mother.  “Are you asking me what I think you’re asking me?”

It’s Joyce’s turn to roll her eyes this time.  “Well, we haven’t been seeing each other for very long, so I don’t want to jump the gun, but…he’s dropped a few hints.”

Elyse opens her mouth in shock, not for the first time that night.  “Mom, it’s only been a couple of months, isn’t it a little, I don’t know, soon to be talking about churches and white dresses?”

Joyce gives her daughter an indulgent look, one that Elyse would probably have found frustrating under other circumstances.  “It could be a couple of years, a couple of months, or a couple of hours.  It doesn’t matter, Lysey. When you know that you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you just know.”  Her mother gives her a wink, and Elyse can’t help but laugh.  They embrace warmly as they hit the cold air outside.  “Ah, boys with their toys.”  Joyce looks over Elyse’s shoulder, as her daughter twists around to see what she’s talking about.

Nick is crouched next to Dane’s motorbike, making appreciative noises.  Elyse overhears something about ‘horsepower’ and ‘polished chrome’ before she fades out of the conversation.

“I think it’s time we left these two bright young things to the rest of their evening, don’t you?”  Joyce places her hand on Nick’s shoulder, and he looks up at her with so much love in his eyes that you’d have to be blind not to see it.

“I guess so.”  He takes her hand and reaches the other out towards Dane to shake.  “Pleasure to meet you, Dane.”

Dane smiles back, returning the shake.  “Same to you, Nick.  And if you want some company on a ride one of these days, let me know.”  Nick nods in agreement.

Dane reaches his hand out to shake Joyce’s hand, but she looks down at it, frowning. Elyse watches as Dane’s shoulders tense up, as if he’s expecting her to embarrass him. 
Always expecting the worst
, Elyse thinks.  It’s probably a pretty tough habit to break.  But instead of taking his hand, Joyce reaches up to plant her hands on his shoulders and gives him a kiss on each cheek.  Dane stands stock still, as if he weren’t at all expecting what had just happened.  Joyce leans in and says something quietly in his ear, and Dane looks at her seriously and nods once, emphatically.

“We hope to see much of you, Dane.”  Joyce gives Dane a serious look and then does the same to Elyse. 

Before she moves off with Nick towards the car, Joyce turns around and looks at Elyse, smiling cheekily.  “So…do you know, Lysey?”  She doesn’t wait for a reply before she gets into Nick’s car.  Elyse watches them as they buckle up and drive off. Then, it’s just her and Dane left alone in the lot.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Do you know what?”  Dane’s voice breaks Elyse’s reverie.

Elyse shrugs.  “I guess, Mom got a little carried away with the wine.”  Elyse knows exactly what her mother was talking about, but she doesn’t feel like it’s something she can share with Dane without him thinking that she’s some kind of crazy woman.

“I like her. You’re a lot like her, you know?”  Dane keeps looking towards where the car had left the parking lot.

“Apart from the red hair, most people don’t really think we look alike.  Apparently, I take after my father. Lucky me.”  Elyse rolls her eyes.

“Maybe you do, physically at least.  But your mom’s a good person. She has the same kind of light that you do, the same way of looking at the world and making it seem better.”  Dane sighs deeply, as if it were something that he could never have imagined existed.

“She’s the best.”  Elyse smiles without the slightest hint of irony; she really did believe it.  She turns to Dane, prepared with the questions she needs to ask. They can’t just continue with the evening as if nothing of any note had happened.  “How did you know I was here?” 

She folds her arms, staying just out of reach of him.  So far, Dane had made good on his promise; he hadn’t touched her.  She’d held his hand at the dinner table, and when she’d released it, he’d made no move to take it back.  But the intensity that draws her to him is like a moth to a flame, and it just keeps getting harder and harder to ignore.

“Suzi told me you were meeting your mom’s new boyfriend.  Jen told me where.”  He shrugs, looking not at all embarrassed at having tracked her down. 

“Jen told you?  I thought after last night you’d be on her ‘persona non grata’ list for a little while.  You must’ve done some serious sweet talking.”  Elyse raises an eyebrow at him, watching as he smiles at her in a way that makes her stomach do somersaults.

“She took a little convincing; that’s why I was late.”  He gives her an apologetic look.  “But eventually she believed what I was trying to tell her.”

Elyse narrows her eyes at him.  “And what was that?”

Dane rocks up and down on his heels, a gesture that she’s only seen him use when he’s nervous.  “You know, ‘Lyse, you look amazing.”  He looks at her appreciatively—in a way that makes her cheeks heat.

In her high heels, she hardly has to look up at him at all, but with the energy that he radiates off, she still feels as if he towers above her.  “You don’t clean up so bad yourself, Mr. Fletcher.”  She smiles wryly at him.  “Nice misdirection, too.  So what did you say to Jen that made her give me up?”

Dane rakes his fingers through his hair, mussing it.  “How did you think tonight went?”

Elyse stifles a sigh, knowing that she can’t force him to say something that he doesn’t want to.  But oh how she wants him to say it.  “I think my mom loves you, but I think you already knew that.”  She gives him a pointed look, and he responds with a rueful grin.  “So, how’d you get to be so good at the whole ‘meet the parents’ thing?”

Dane looks thoughtful for a moment until his standard half-smile is safely back in place.  “I don’t know.  It was kind of my first time.”

Elyse looks at him in shock.  “What about high school girlfriends?  You never had the big, ‘Make sure she’s home by ten o’clock’ talk?”  Elyse points her finger at him, mimicking an angry father, or what she imagined that would have looked like.

Dane laughs.  “No, but if they looked as cute as you did just then, I wouldn’t have minded.”  He smiles at her, and Elyse sways a little feeling herself get lost in his eyes.

“So, why did you decide to this time?  What changed?”  She shivers in the cold wind.

“You did.”  Dane gives her a serious look that makes her insides warm despite the cold outside. “Let’s get you home.”  He hands her the spare helmet that she’d come to think of as her own and motions her towards the bike.

As she wraps her arms around Dane’s waist and they zip through the streets, Elyse is reminded of her first time on the back of his bike.  It doesn’t seem like it was only a few days ago.  She clutches onto him, breathing in the smell of his leather jacket and holding onto him, feeling his muscles tense against her hands.  When they pull up outside her house, Elyse finds herself wishing that the ride would never end.  All she wants is to hold Dane and to be held by him.

Elyse pulls her dress down as she jumps off the bike.  “I guess this dress isn’t really made for a motorbike.  I probably gave half of Portland a view.”

Dane looks at her—from the tips of her stiletto shoes, up her long legs, over her dress, and up to her gently tousled hair.  “You look beautiful.”  He tilts his head, as if he’s considering something.  “But if you’re going to be riding on the bike, we should probably get you some leathers.”

Elyse feels a little tingle starting in her toes.  “Does that mean you want me to ride on your bike?”

Dane takes a deep breath, like he’s calling on his stores of patience.  “It means that you’re the only one I want to ride on my bike.”  Dane closes the distance between them, stopping just short of her.

“What did you say to Jen?”  Elyse looks up at him, biting her bottom lip, suddenly nervous.

“I told her how special you are to me, and that I wanted to be there for you tonight. I knew it was important for you.”  Dane’s hands clench and unclench by his side, and Elyse wonders if he’s finding it as hard not to touch her as she’s finding it to be without his touch.  He takes another step towards her, so his head is only inches away from hers.  “I told her that I’m in love with you.”

Elyse’s eyes widen in shock.

“Now it’s your turn, Elyse.”  Dane takes a deep breath, his voice low.  “What did your mom ask if you knew?”

Elyse finds her voice on the third try.  “She asked if I knew that I wanted to be with you, if I knew if I loved you.”

Dane’s eyes burn with intensity.  “’Lyse.”  His voice is husky, and she feels it right down to her bones.  “So, do you know?”

Elyse finds herself nodding without even realizing it.

“I need a little more than that, ‘Lyse.  You haven’t exactly been your talkative self, tonight.”  Dane huffs a laugh, but it’s more nervous tension.

“I love you, Dane.”  Elyse says the words, words that she has been holding herself back from speaking because she thought that it was too much too soon.  Now, all she cares about is how she feels and what she wants—and she wants Dane.  She reaches up and kisses his lips, softly, pulling his head down to meet hers. 

She teases her tongue between his lips and tastes him, eliciting a deep moan from inside of him.  She rocks back onto her heels, feeling buzzed from their kiss.  She looks down at Dane’s hands and sees that they’re still clenching and unclenching.  He hasn’t made any move to take her in his arms, to touch her face, or to slide his fingers in her hair like he normally would.

“You said you wouldn’t touch me until I begged you to.”  Elyse’s heart feels like it’s hammering out of her chest.

Dane nods slowly, his eyes never leaving hers.  “That’s what I said.”

Elyse looks up at him, her eyes heavy with desire.  “So, now I’m begging you.”  She reaches up and kisses him hard, smiling as his tongue tangles with hers. She feels his arms take hold of her waist and pull her closer to him, melding their bodies together and turning them into one hot, beating heart.