Straddling the Line - By Sarah M. Anderson Page 0,37
he slowed down and made a series of turns. Soon she could even make out her surroundings—large warehouses in an industrial neighborhood. Ben brought the bike to a fast idle when he pulled up alongside a nondescript building. He punched a button, and a steel door rumbled up. He walked the bike inside and pushed two more buttons. The steel door slid down, and moments later the whole floor was lifting them up.
“Where are we?” she asked, finally venturing to unlock her arms from around his waist now that the bike was no longer hurtling in a horizontal direction—although she found the vertical a little disconcerting. Who had an elevator big enough for a motorcycle in their house?
“My place,” he said, unstrapping his helmet. He put the kickstand down and waited, but Josey wasn’t sure she trusted her legs right now. After a second, he slid off without knocking into her. He took her helmet off for her. “Also known as the former headquarters of Crazy Horse Choppers.”
He lived in the old factory? Visions of a place that looked exactly like that stainless-steel office—only with a bed in it—flashed before her eyes. Was there anything even remotely sensual about stainless steel?
The freight elevator—for that’s what it was—lumbered upward. They passed the second floor. A heavy bass beat cut through the gauzy red fabric that covered the elevator shaft.
Ben caught her confusion. “I rent the second floor to a couple of artists. They clean my place twice a month, and I let them pay me in paintings when they can’t make rent.”
“Really?” He was an art patron? Maybe that wasn’t so far off from savior of the school. “Who else is here?”
He stepped closer to her and unzipped her jacket, the edges of his fingers grazing the inner curves of her breasts. Vibrations—different from the mechanical rumbling that had burned between her legs—caused her upper body to tremble. The corners of Ben’s mouth curved up. He’d noticed. “The first floor is the band’s—storage, practice. Been thinking about building a recording studio in there…Billy uses the third and fourth floors to store all his old bikes. And I live on the top floor.”
Two entire floors of emptiness separated him from the rest of the world. And now that her jacket was unzipped, she was just that much closer to naked. In a freight elevator.
He leaned in, one hand on the seat in front of her, the other behind her bottom. He wasn’t touching her, but only by millimeters. Otherwise, he had her most intimate areas surrounded. The tip of his nose brushed against her forehead, then down to her ear. “Did you like the ride?”
“Seemed fast.” Like speed-of-sound, life-flash-before-your-eyes fast.
His lips caressed her neck. “I can do slow, if that’s what you want.” He shifted, and he went from not touching her to touching her—a small difference, but one that sent shock waves through her center. One of his fingers was between her and the leather seat. She gasped when he moved again—the smallest movement possible, but one that hit that secret spot in just the right way. “Very slow,” he murmured, his lips tracing the curve of her jawline.
A bed? Who needed a bed? Josey pushed his jacket aside and dug her fingers into the swath of muscles he called shoulders. Ben exhaled extra hard against her skin and rolled his hand so that he was cupping her. Tightly.
Her body bore down against his hand as he pushed back against her. He rolled his fingers against her jeans, and she had to bite down on something to keep from screaming. His shoulder did the job. Did people get naked in freight elevators? At the rate they were going, would they even make it to naked?
The elevator answered the question for her. It lurched to a stop, breaking all the wonderful tension of the moment and coming way too close to knocking her off the bike—and Ben’s hands.
He caught her around the waist before she fell. “We’re here,” he said with that mischievous smile as he guided her off the bike.
Thank goodness, because between the bike ride and the slow, slow touches, she was so close already. Any reservations she might have had about coming home with him were long gone, burned away under the heat of some hard facts. The fact was, she had never physically needed a man so much in her entire life. The fact was, Ben Bolton was more than willing and, she had no doubt, extremely capable.