Free Bad Boy Valentine by Sylvia Pierce

taken with him after, she’d never not been able to think about that night.
    Including right now.
    “You’ve got a dirty mind, Miss Molina,” he said, still laughing.
    Kate head-butted him between the shoulder blades, but she was laughing, too. It was like the bike was a time machine, whirring them back to lighter, happier times, way back before all the fighting and the drama.
    Way back before the end.
    “Ready?” he said, squeezing her hand once. She squeezed back to let him know she was good to go, and then he gripped the handlebars, jumping on the kickstart. On the third try, the engine roared to life, the bike rumbling between Kate’s thighs like a loud, wild beast, hungry for the open road.
    It sent a rush of adrenaline through her body that she hadn’t felt in years.
    Jagger pulled away from the curb, weaving into the crush of Woodside Avenue traffic, eventually navigating them onto the BQE. Traffic was choppy across Manhattan, but once they hit the Palisades Parkway on the Jersey side, the road was clear and open, begging for them to tear it up. Jagger shifted gears, and Kate felt the muscles in his body loosen, lengthen, the tension draining right out of them.
    The sky was clear and jewel-blue, the sun beaming as they rocketed along the highway. Within minutes, the thick tree-lined border of the Palisades faded into a blur of skeleton bone branches, waving them along to some distant place.
    Kate was so happy, so relaxed, she didn’t even feel the chill in the air. Like Jagger’s muscles, Kate’s seemed to be unknotting themselves one by one, stretching out and relaxing in the crisp spring air. She felt like she could fly.
    The contrasting sensations made her head spin. She was soaring above the earth on a rocket ship, but she was still grounded, rooted by the pure physicality of it—of the bike rumbling over the pavement, of Jagger’s warm body sitting in front of her. The whole world rushed by, but Kate and Jagger were right here . Together. Untouchable. Invincible.
    On the back of Jagger’s Harley, Kate had always felt like she could accomplish anything.
    Jagger had done that for her, and she’d done the same for him. As teens, they were troubled. Angry. Lost. But somehow, they’d found each other. And together, as the rest of the world spun around them, they’d built a safe haven from the storm. A home. An epic love full of passion and fire, never wavering.
    Fighting, fucking, laughing, riding the bike… everything they did together was pure passion. Love. Lust. All of it. They’d belonged to each other once, and there was a time when Kate would’ve died before she’d let anything change that.
    But in the end, she hadn’t been given a choice.
    Something did change it. Jagger changed it.
    God, she was so confused. She should hate him, shouldn’t she? She did hate him. But that’s where things got muddled. Lots of people believed that the opposite of love was hate, but Kate knew better. The opposite of love was indifference. And whatever her feelings for Jagger were now, she certainly wasn’t indifferent.
    Far from it.
    As if he could read her thoughts, Jagger grabbed her hand again, pinning it against him and squeezing hard. It was possessive, that touch. But it was protective, too. Kate kept her hand firmly in place, closing her eyes and letting her body sense everything at once—the snap of the wind against her arms and legs, the growl of the machine vibrating between her thighs, the warmth of Jagger’s body before her, his hand holding her steady.
    On the Harley there was no talking. No fighting. Nothing but the road, the sky, the sun, and the wind as they sped away from the city, from their troubles. They rode for hours, all the way up the Hudson, through Bear Mountain State Park and past West Point and beyond before Jagger finally turned them back toward home.
    It was dark and cool when they finally pulled up to Sweet Bliss. Most of the other storefronts were closed at that hour, but