Levi unzipped his jacket and relaxed against the vinyl of the bench seat, twiddling the radio over to a country station as the wind whipped through the passenger window.
Finally, something had gone right. He regretted leaving the girl behind. She was pretty much everything he liked in a woman—curvy, sassy, competent, and with a very good idea of what she wanted. She would have gone with him, too. Some women were more affected by shifter pheromones than others, and if he’d ever seen one hit with a case of were-lust, well, it was her. And a little company was always welcome. Especially when the company came in a knockout package like that….
But hooking up with a woman, however hot, wasn’t exactly on the list of Smart Things To Do When On The Run From A Vampire, especially when the vampire in question happened to manage half the organized crime in Baltimore. He’d done the right thing for her sake, he thought virtuously, leaning back against the seat of the car he’d stolen from her.
A glint in the rearview mirror made him glance up. It was the sun, shining off the plastic headlight of a motorcycle.
Of his motorcycle.
And it was coming up fast.
Damn.
How had she managed to start the thing?
He considered flooring the Skylark, but there really wasn’t much of a point to it. Most cars, this one included, would be no match for even an average street bike, and his Superbike was no average street bike.
So he kept his needle pointed at eighty-five as the motorcycle roared up behind him, the woman hunched over the handlebars with her bottle-red hair snapping in the breeze.
He watched her approach in the rearview mirror. There was no way she could see anything, going at that speed without sunglasses or a helmet. Her eyes had to be streaming. She was crazy. She’d kill herself if she kept going like that.
Levi dropped his eyes back to his dashboard and realized that he was slowing—fifty-five miles an hour and falling.
Stupid, he told himself. Speed wasn’t the only thing that mattered, but it was important to put as much road between himself and Mortensen as possible. Even as he thought that, the needle fell further. Fifty. Forty-five.
She was just behind him now. Harper, that was her name. She crossed the yellow line so that she was going the wrong way down the opposing lane of traffic—not that it mattered with the road as empty as it was—and pulled even with him.
She reached out and banged on the window with a clenched first.
Yep. Crazy.
Levi decided that he liked her even more. He dropped to forty as she pounded a second time and rolled down the window.
“Give me back my car, you bastard!” she yelled. Even with her hair whipping across her face, he could see the fury in it.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he pointed out.
“You took my car,” she shouted back as the wind snatched her words away. “Give it back!”
Not gonna happen. Why the hell was he talking to her? “Did you hotwire that yourself?”
“No, the Tooth Fairy did. Stop the car!”
He pointed to the fuel gauge. “I can keep going like this for hours. I know that you can’t.”
She snarled a curse and dropped back as an oncoming car appeared over the horizon. For a moment, he thought she was going to give up, but as it passed, she steered to the other side of his car and edged up along the narrow strip of asphalt that passed for a shoulder.
“What are you doing?” he shouted at her.
“Coming in,” she yelled back. And, in fact, she was reaching through the open window for the door frame.
“You’re really going to kill yourself.”
The woman was seriously going to try to drag herself in through the open window from the back of his motorcycle. He was only going thirty-five miles an hour now, but that was plenty to have a fatal outcome if she misjudged even a little bit.
“I don’t even care!”
Dammit. He didn’t want to be responsible for what passed for brains in that pretty head being spilled out all over the asphalt. He lifted his foot off the gas.
“Okay, okay. Bat-shit crazy wins.”
The car slowed, the motorcycle keeping pace. He pressed the brake and downshifted, knowing he was making a mistake.
Levi didn’t want her to get hurt, yet the sane part of his brain knew that her chances of getting in serious trouble were probably even higher if she was with him. If he really wanted what was best for her, he’d disable the motorcycle or tie her up or knock her out or something, just as long as she didn’t come with him.
He was certain that talking her out of chasing him wasn’t going to work. And, he thought, taking in the magnificent view that her position hunched over the handlebars afforded him, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.
Maybe he wasn’t so great at decision-making. He’d managed to get out of all sorts of tight spots in the past. And he probably would in the future, too, right up into the moment that he didn’t.
He stopped the car, and her hand came down on the edge of the open window as the bike stopped next to it. She kicked the stand down and killed the engine. Before he could react, her head and shoulders were through the window, spilling into the passenger side.
So much for keeping her out of the car. That sent half a dozen semi-formed plans flying to the wind.
“I had stopped, you know,” he said mildly.
She gave another kick and wiggle, and her ample hips came through, too, her tempting backside up in the air.
“Yeah, and you stole my freaking car, too. I don’t exactly trust you.” She struggled upright.
That did interesting things to her anatomy, too, and Levi didn’t bother to hide his admiration as he shifted back into first and pulled out, leaving his motorcycle behind for a second time that day.
He pretended he didn’t feel a twinge.
“I really do need the car,” he said. “I’m not exactly in the habit of stealing them. In case you were wondering.”
“You need another hole in your head,” Harper muttered, buckling in with short, angry movements. The belt made her breasts stand out quite nicely under her shirt, too. “Did you steal the bike, too?”
“No. It’s mine,” he said.
She looked at him narrowly, and he could tell she was trying to decide whether to believe him. “Then why ditch it? And even if you needed to get rid of it, why not just ask for a ride? I would have taken you where you wanted to go.”
“I caught that,” he said dryly. “But I didn’t want you along.”
“You wanted to ditch me enough to steal my car? Even though you had the hots for me? Really?” She scraped the red tangle of hair out of her face with a disgusted look, then rummaged at her feet, retrieving a bright pink purse. She pulled it open and dug around in it for a moment before coming up with a wide paddle brush with which she battled her hair.
“I didn’t say I had the hots for you,” Levi said mildly.
Harper snorted. “Since when has a guy ever had to say anything?”
“I’ll give you that one,” he granted. “I didn’t want you along because it’s dangerous.”
“More dangerous than stealing my car from me?” Her look was a challenge.
God, but she had a kissable mouth, full and expressive and, right now, still quite angry with him. Anger looked good on her.
He knew better than to tell her that, though.
“Yeah, I stopped because I’m nice. Or maybe because I’m stupid,” he said. “I didn’t stop because I thought you were dangerous.”
She smiled sweetly, putting the brush back in the purse. “Well, I wasn’t, then. Because I didn’t have my gun.”
