Free Mortal Kiss by Alice Moss

foot, and she stumbled, right under the beast’s nose.

Chapter 14: An Unexpected Encounter
    Faye tried to right herself, but the stumble turned into a fall and suddenly she was rolling down the slope full-tilt. She opened her mouth to scream but shut it again as dirty snow and dead leaves made her cough instead.
    She scrabbled desperately with her hands, trying to grab on to the trees as she rolled past, but she couldn’t. She thought she was going to fall forever, but suddenly the ground leveled out. Her head struck something harder than the surrounding mulch—tarmac! She had rolled onto the road, which had been sanded against the snow.
    She could still hear the wolves howling as they chased down her scent. She scrambled to her feet, ignoring a sharp pain in her elbow.
    A roar sounded behind her, but it wasn’t an animal this time. Faye spun on her heel, throwing her hands up to shield her eyes from the fierce glare of the headlight that appeared around the bend in the road, cutting through the darkness like a knife. She tried to get out of the way but, disoriented by the chase and her fall, didn’t know which way to leap. She recognized the sound of the vehicle as a motorbike as it bore down on her.
    Faye held her breath, but in the split second that she waited for the collision, the bike skidded around her. She watched as the rider fought to control his bike. Its back wheel kicked out against the blacktop as it hit a patch of stubborn snow and slid until it was almost horizontal against the road’s icy surface. She could see the rider holding on grimly, his leather-gloved fingers gripping the handlebars for dear life. He and the bike spun in a semicircle around her quaking figure. Faye stood, rooted to the spot, waiting for the rider to crash to the ground.
    But he didn’t. With a monumental effort, he pulled the bike upright, completing the semicircle he had cut on the treacherous ice and coming to a standstill with his front wheel just inches from her legs. The engine idled, suddenly quiet.
    In the vast moment of silence that followed, Faye could hear her breathing, even louder than the beating of her terrified heart. She could feel herself shaking, her teeth chattering with cold and fright.
    “What the—?” said the rider, struggling to catch his own breath. “
Faye?
It’s Faye, isn’t it? What the hell are you doing out here? I could have hit you! I could have killed—”
    She had a second to wonder how on earth he knew her name before the rider’s words were cut off by another wolfish howl from somewhere in the trees. The rider pulled off his helmet, and Faye found herself face to face with Finn, the biker boy from the mall. He stared up at the forest, his face dark with anger.
    “Get on,” he ordered. “Behind me. I’ll take you home.”
    Faye didn’t hesitate. She straddled the bike’s wide seat and wrapped her arms around his waist. As soon as he felt her weight behind him, Finn kicked the engine into gear and roared off down the road toward the lights of Winter Mill.
    She’d never been on a bike before. It was exhilarating to race with the wind through the night. She held on as tightly to the boy as she dared, her face against his warm, heavy jacket. It smelled of leather, an old smell but not unpleasant. Her heart was still beating, but as she felt the muscles of his back move where she was pressed hard to him, her fear melted into deep excitement.
    “Where do you live?” she heard him shout as they approached the town.
    “McCarron’s Bookstore,” Faye called back, hoping that the wind hadn’t snatched her words away before he had heard them.
    The ride was less than ten minutes, though as the bike pulled up Faye wished it could have lasted an hour. The boy killed the engine and kicked down the stand, leaning the bike into it. Faye slid off, pushing her windswept hair back from her face, and found she had to catch her breath once again. “Thank you,” she managed to say as he removed