Denver: A Bad Boy Romance (FMX Bros Book 3)

  Jami and Sayler had made themselves comfortable under the awning in the pits. It wasn’t triple digits, but it was hot enough to make some shade a necessity. Jami lifted her sunglasses and whistled at me as I stepped out of the back of the trailer in my gear.

  She looked over at Sayler. “What is it about those shit-kicking motorcycle boots and riding pants? Or maybe it’s just the man wearing them.” Jami lifted her glasses one more time. “A little of both, I suppose.”

  “Can definitely see why Crushin’ It was dying to have Denver in their advertisement campaign. Delish,” Sayler continued.

  “If you two are done talking about me like I’m some sweet piece of cotton candy, Rodeo is about to ride. If you want to watch, join me at the fence.”

  Jami hopped up. “Thought you were riding next?”

  “I am. Right after Rodeo.”

  Sayler turned her water bottle straight up and drained it before standing from the chair. “Sure hope Parker does all right out there. He might be a little worn out from last night.” She winked at me as if I needed a clue as to what she meant.

  Cole was already standing at the fence. He was watching Rodeo at the entrance gate. “Why does he keep fidgeting with his goggles?”

  I looked Rodeo’s direction. “Knucklehead must have grabbed my goggles instead.”

  Cole laughed. “And I guess there’s a little difference in head circumference.” He leaned back to talk to Jami. “Have you noticed the Einstein sized head on this guy?”

  Jami laughed. “I have indeed. I’ve grown quite fond of it.”

  “You know what they say about guys with big brains,” I said in Cole’s direction.

  “No, dude, that’s big feet.”

  I scooted my motorcycle boot next to his shoe. “See, I’ve got you beat there too.”

  “Huh, you forget, I’m the son of a rock star, so fucking try and match that.”

  “And you’re my boss, so I’ll just keep my big feet to myself. Rodeo is heading out on the track. I guess I’m going to have to wear his goggles. I hate that.”

  “Why? Is there something wrong with Rodeo’s goggles?” Jami asked.

  Cole jumped in to answer. “Denver doesn’t like anything different when he goes out to ride. He’s superstitious about stuff like that.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with superstition. It’s all about physics. I am at one with my gear, which helps everything go smoothly.”

  Cole glanced up at me. “At one with your fucking gear?”

  We paused the conversation to watch Rodeo kick off his run with a Nac Nac. “He’s looking sloppy,” I said.

  “That might be my fault,” Sayler said with a grin.

  My name came up on the board to be on deck to ride next. “I’m going to go get on the bike. See you all after my ride.”

  Jami hopped up on her toes and kissed me. “In my business, they say break a leg, but I will just say have fun out there.”

  “Probably a better choice of words. See you in a few, Holliday.”

  By the time I’d adjusted Rodeo’s goggles to fit my head and pulled on my gloves, a cheer roared through the stands. Rodeo had finished his run, and from the sound of it, he’d done a good job.

  I kick-started my motorcycle. Jami and Sayler waved as I rolled past on my way to the entrance gate.

  It was only an exhibition, and I’d already decided to skip the front flip. It was by far my best move, but it was also one that took my full determination and focus. My relationship with Jami and the knowledge that she’d be flitting out of my life as quickly as she’d flitted into it had been gnawing at me. I’d been pissed when Cole had warned me not to get to wound up over her, but it turned out he’d been right.

  The bike was running solid, and I’d had a good practice run. I was feeling secure about my ride. My name came through the speakers. The crowd applauded loud enough to vibrate the stands.

  I rode out and circled back to the first kicker. My feet came off the pegs and the feeling of weightlessness followed. The ground rolled up into blue sky and back down to a blur of people and then dirt again. My feet landed solidly on the pegs. I grabbed the throttle and rode to the next kicker. The bike and I were working in perfect unison as I pulled one hand off and clicked my heels. The dirt jump was next. In the schematic I had etched in my brain, I was going to do a backflip and transfer to the adjacent landing.

  Just like in the nature of the world, unexpected things were always around to throw stuff out of whack. I was heading toward the lip of the dirt hill, pressing down on my suspension for that pogo stick launch, but the jump had a different plan. It happened so fast, I wasn’t completely sure if it had been a square edge or a hole but my back wheel lost traction. The suspension popped up before it was supposed to. My ‘holy shit’ moment followed, a flash of a second when I knew I was going down and there was nothing I could do to stop it. But first I went up. The launch had happened but not at the right time or angle. The force of the suspension popped my hands off the bars. My body went higher as I watched my bike fall away from me. The instinctual arm movement of rolling up windows followed. I had a split second of rational thought and I balled my body up, keeping my feet down. I was heading toward the downside of the jump, better than flat, I briefly reasoned as my body hit the ground, and the daylight faded to black.

  Chapter 23

  Jami

  I pressed my hands over my face. Sayler kept her arm around my shoulder.

  “Tell me. No don’t. Yes do. Tell me. What’s happening?” My shaky voice sounded unfamiliar to my ears.

  I felt Sayler’s body lift up as if she was on tiptoes, stretching high to see what was happening on the opposite side of the track. The low, worried murmur of the crowd only made me tremble more.

  Being a complete novice, I hadn’t realized the trouble Denver was in until I saw that the motorcycle was flying in a completely different direction than his body. Cole and Rodeo had torn off toward the track long before Denver had slammed into the ground.

  “He’s up!” Sayler cried. The crowd clapped. “He’s sitting up. You can look now.”

  I lowered my hands and looked across to where the small circle of people were standing. Cole was standing with Denver’s helmet under his arm while the man with medic written across his vest talked to Denver.

  “I’m officially not a fan of this sport,” I warbled, still unable to overcome the waver in my voice. “Humans were not meant to fly. We were meant to keep our feet on the ground.”

  “And Denver would respond to that with an emphatic ‘now where’s the fun in that?’ These boys live to jump those motorcycles. Nothing you can do to change that.” Sayler lifted her arm and pointed. “I see the top of Denver’s head. He’s walking off the track on his own, which means he’s fine. Just a little bell ringing, and I imagine a lot of sore body parts for a few days. But it seems he got lucky.”

  She looked at me. “I don’t know about you but all this excitement and this crazy hot sun is giving me a headache. Let’s go sit under the awning and wait for the guys. The medic will have to give Denver a thorough looking over and that will take a little time.”

  I nodded. “Good idea. The sun is hot. It doesn’t get nearly this warm in Colorado before August and even then, it’s rare.”

  “That’s right, Denver mentioned you were originally from Colorado.” A short laugh followed. “How coincidental is that? I mean you could have been from any other place, but you are from the state with the famous city of Denver. Like it was destined or something. I’m from Montana, and the temperatures here in summer nearly killed me. Funny thing is, now I’m a total wimp when it gets cold here. And by cold, I mean the sixties. Went from twenty below to a place that rarely sees frost and I’m a damn lightweight.”

  We sat on the chairs under the shade of the awning. I?
??d grown instantly fond of Sayler. She was one of those spunky, no nonsense kind of people, a girl who seemed far more world wise than me, a person who had visited almost every country before my twentieth birthday. “It does feel like destiny to me. Denver and I clicked immediately.” The tremble in my voice had disappeared, and only the dryness in my throat, brought on by the moment of sheer horror, remained. I reached into the ice chest for a water. “That was so damn scary, I think I’m going to relive that horrible image of Denver plummeting to the ground in my nightmares.”

  “He might just do the same for awhile. Hopefully this one incident won’t mess with his head too much.”

  “What do you mean?” I handed her a water bottle.

  “You’re a performer, right? Have you ever gotten stage fright?”

  “Ah, I understand. Yes, yes I have gotten it before, and it’s terrible. No matter what I did to talk myself out of it, it only got worse. It was in my late teens. I think most of the anxiety came from being thrown into performing right when my hormones and teen angst had taken over.”

  “It’s basically thinking about something so much, you talk yourself into a panic. Falls like the one Denver took out there can sometimes give a rider some apprehension to ride again, for obvious reasons, pain and that dramatic moment in time when you’re not sure how it will end. Getting back on the horse is what they tell you to do in Montana, but I doubt they’ll be telling Denver to get back on his bike today.”

  “Which means he’ll have time to mull the whole ugly thing over. Then it might mess with his head. Sounds perfectly logical.”

  Sayler glanced at something over my shoulder. “Parker and Cole are coming back with Denver’s bike and helmet.”

  I jumped up. “How is he?”

  “He’ll be feeling it for a week or so, but he must have bounced just right. He should be here soon,” Cole said.

  Rodeo walked past with the bike and several spare pieces. “Nothing broke. Just a little swishing around of that big brain of his. His bike didn’t come out of it as well.”

  I couldn’t hold back a cry of relief when I saw Denver walking toward us. His face was a shade or two paler than usual, and he was moving slowly as if everything hurt.

  “Well, if that isn’t a big package of heartbreak, I don’t know what is.” Sayler shot me a faint smile. “That boy is going to need a lot of TLC tonight.”

  “He looks so sad.” I got up from the chair and walked toward him. “What did the medic say?” I gripped my hands at my sides to keep from throwing myself into his arms. He looked as if every bone in his body was hurting.

  “I’ll live . . . apparently.”

  I turned and walked next to him. He was moving at a snail’s pace on his long legs. “Guess, like you mentioned, you went to a logical analysis of just how to hit the ground.”

  “Nah, just got lucky. I was flailing around up there like a bird who’d forgotten that his wings were clipped. I tightened up and stuck down my feet, figuring I should land on them instead of a shoulder or wrist . . . or head. But the impact knocked me senseless for a few seconds.”

  We reached the awning. I dug into the ice chest for a cold water as Denver plopped onto the chair.

  Cole came out of the trailer. “You wearing your boots home or can you get them off? Or I can pull a reverse Cinderella on you and yank them.”

  Denver pointed down to his boots. They were covered in dust. “Take them off. Otherwise, I’ll be wearing them to bed tonight.”

  I opened the water and handed it to Denver. A thin layer of dust covered his face. A tiny cut in his chin was smeared with dried blood.

  “If you have a first aid kit, I could clean that cut for you,” I said.

  “No, that’s all right. It’s dry now.” He looked down at Cole who was pulling off the boots. “How long was I out?”

  “About a week. Nah, about twenty seconds. You came to right as I reached you.” He laughed. “You remember what you said when you came to?”

  Rodeo was laughing in the background as he pushed a bike into the trailer. “It was fucking classic.”

  “Shit, hope it wasn’t anything too embarrassing. What the hell did I say?”

  Cole stood with the boots. “Let me see. I want to make sure to quote you properly. ‘Did fucking Einstein eat the last slice of pizza?’”

  I covered my mouth to stifle a laugh.

  Denver shook his head but laughing would have taken too much effort. “Shit, at least it wasn’t something like ‘where are my favorite pink panties?’”

  Cole nearly doubled over with laughter.

  Rodeo walked up to us. “Yeah, yeah, I told you I was obviously thinking about a girl when I was blacked out. At least I wasn’t thinking about some old crazy haired scientist.”

  Sayler sat forward with interest. “Wait a minute. Do you mean that you were knocked out, and you asked the medics about your favorite pink panties when you woke up?”

  “He sure as hell did,” Cole said barely catching his breath from laughter.

  Sayler and I burst out laughing. Denver’s mood was lightening too. By the time we climbed into the truck, most of his color had returned. I drove and he rested his head back against the seat and shut his eyes.

  “Not going to lie,” I said, “you scared the bejeebus out of me today.”

  “Yeah, I think I lost some bejeebuses myself today.” He was silent for a long moment, and I was sure he’d fallen asleep. “Were you really worried about me, Holliday?”

  “I was.”

  With that, he drifted off to sleep, and I wondered just how I’d ever be able to leave him.

  Chapter 24

  Denver

  A hot shower and two aspirin had relieved some of the pain. The medic had floated the suggestion that I go to urgent care and get a pain prescription, but I had a few leftover painkillers from my last crash. They were all I needed. I downed them with a shot of whiskey, and even though my body was still feeling the crash, my mind was feeling pretty fucking good.

  Getting dressed seemed far too complicated. It had taken long enough just to get undressed for the shower. I stretched out naked on my bed, pulled up the sheet and waited for Jami to return with some food. She was all I needed to forget about the shitty day and the aches in my body.

  The door opened and shut and the smell of burgers drifted into the bedroom. Jami’s face popped into the doorway. The sight of her helped alleviate the pain even more.

  “Do you want to eat in here?” she asked.

  I scooted up. “Yeah, the walk to the kitchen counter seems long and arduous. Not even sure if I’ll be able to eat much.”

  She put the bag on my nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed. “You poor thing. You look a lot better after the shower. Do you feel any better?”

  I smiled at her. “I know a sure way to make me feel better, and it only requires one, extremely intoxicating drug.” I reached for her hand and laid it on my stomach.

  A grin inched up on her face. “If you’re sure you are up for it. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Are you kidding, Holliday? Just sitting here looking at you is causing all kinds of aches, the kind that only you can remedy with that sweet body and even sweeter pussy.”

  “Oh my, I think those pain pills have kicked in and washed away every inhibition. I rather like this roguish, saltier version of you.”

  “Yeah? Then it’s settled.” The drugs and whiskey had definitely slowed my speech. “You’ll have to do most of the work. And just a warning, it might take a little longer than usual because of the buzz I’m feeling.”

  “Longer than usual? What girl doesn’t like to hear that warning?” She smoothed her palm over my abs, and her face softened to a more serious expression. “I’m more than happy to oblige if you’re sure.”

 
“Hell yes, I’m sure. The day’s been a blur of events I don’t ever want to repeat, but the one thing that stands out is that I’ve hardly touched you all day. I miss it. I want you, Holliday. All of you.”

  Jami glanced at the bag of food. “Do you want to eat first?”

  I shook my head, and the room spun some with the movement. Or maybe it was just the girl sitting in the room, stealing the oxygen from my head.

  Jami stood up from the bed. I watched as she pulled her shirt off. A sweet smile crossed her lips as she gazed down at me with big blue eyes and reached back to unfasten her bra. It slid off her shoulders and to the floor. Her nipples tightened in the cool air of the room, and my cock reacted instantly.

  She turned around and winked at me over her shoulder as she wriggled out of her shorts and panties.

  “Condom?” she asked. I pointed to the nightstand, and she fished out a package. But before ripping the foil pack open, she climbed onto the bed on her knees. She peeled back the sheet and grinned approvingly down at my erection. “Guess those pills haven’t dulled your senses too much.”

  “Think I’m seeing, hearing and feeling everything ten times better than normal. My heartbeat too but that’s been the case from the second I first saw your silky legs climbing the stairs to your apartment.”

  “Extrasensory, you say? Well then.” She leaned over me and lowered her lush lips down the length of my cock. I reached for her, and she scooted on her knees so her bottom was closer to me. I reached up and ran my fingers over the naked cheeks of her ass.

  She lifted her mouth up and ran her tongue around the tip of my cock as I ran my fingertips through the moist folds of her pussy. Her breath warmed my cock as a sigh of pleasure rolled off her lips.

  “I have to touch you. Even with your mouth on my cock, I have to be inside of you, touching you.” I pushed my fingers inside of her. She took her mouth temporarily off of me, and a soft mewl rolled up from her throat.