Full Throttle (7 page)

The poor thing had blushed madly when he’d been at
her door this morning, especially after surmising he had heard her frustrated
sounding growl of temper. Hopefully, the frustration was because they hadn’t
finished last night, because then Josh was not alone. He could still imagine
the silky feel of her hair in his hands, the pent up urgency and need in her
kiss, and Josh could not get her little mewling sounds out of his head. So much
so, he frequently found himself imagining what she would sound like when she
came. Oh, he hoped she wasn’t a screamer like Penny. No, Josh imagined that she
would still be classy.
Even when she lost control.

When Bev and Reg exited their rooms, he had almost
huddled her under his jacket. She looked mortified the moment that Bev had winked
at her, and Josh nearly felt the need to shield her from their scrutiny. Sammy
was gentle and kind. Her blatant innocence and timidity was drawing him like a
fish on a line. He wanted to hold her and pet her. He wanted to make her feel
shielded from the likes of Bev and Reg.

And God damn it, he wanted to kiss her again.

That phone call from Penny ignited something inside
him, had shown him, with clarity, the difference between her and Sammy. And
Josh, though he knew he shouldn’t, wanted to sample a new flavor.

He wasn’t after another long term relationship, but
he was young, and so was Sammy, so why not?

****

Sammy was relieved when Josh finally overtook her
and led the small group of bikes. She felt his hot stare on her back all the
way from the small cottage bed and breakfast. She might blame it on her over
active imagination, but he had also watched her with a skin-tingling, dark, sexy
expression over breakfast as well.

But why?

Was he mad that she led him on? He didn’t look mad
this morning. Was he thinking that he might actually get lucky tonight?
Because there was no way.
It would be a cold day in hell
before she put herself through that again. She just wasn’t brave enough. Shame
stung her chest again, and Sammy curled her hands tighter around the handle
bars. The roar of her bike cut into her thoughts and she accelerated to hear
some more. Her bike shot forward along the long, country road, and adrenaline
coursed through her veins.

Now that was a high she could live with.

There was no one but her, no one to judge her, or tell
her that she was doing the wrong thing. This was just where she longed to be,
alone, and in control.

She looked to her side and saw Josh’s black bike
pull alongside her. He turned his head, and although his visor was tinted, she knew
he was grinning at her. Her heart gave a thump in her
chest,
the adrenaline that flowed at a manageable level now thundered through her body
and heated her blood. She grinned back at him, even though, through her helmet,
he wouldn’t be able to see. She did it anyway. She couldn’t help it. Then, Josh
twisted his throttle and his bike flew forward with a roar of sheer power. His
black-leather covered body tensed over his bike, his strong arms bent and his
head low. Sammy watched in rapture as he passed her in a blur of noisy
phwoar!

Her smile slid from her face as her mind whispered.
S
exy, sexy man.
She twisted her own throttle and raced
after him. The surroundings she’d been leisurely taking in with every mile
became a green-blue blur as she focused solely on Josh and his sexy, black
back.

Did she just laugh out loud? Yes! Nothing was more
fun than the feel of the air pushing against her body, the power in her bike, and
the chase.

Sammy twisted the throttle some more and gained on Josh.
She watched his brake lights flash on, the red blink of light the last thing
she saw before he twisted away and her eyes fell upon the car pulling out from the
junction ahead, seemingly unaware of the oncoming motorbike.

Her laugh curdled inside her throat.

Panic coursed through her body, a thunder of noise
to her ears. She tensed, and a split second later, she hit the car.

Chapter
Seven

“How could you let this happen?” Josh stood against
the wall in the hospital where he had waited for hours and laid his head back
against the clinical blue wall, closing his eyes as his older brother Tony
railed at him down the phone line.

“I’m sorry.” He mumbled, wishing that he could say
it to Sammy who was currently in the other room with a team of doctors.
Doctors who won’t tell him a damn thing about how she was doing.
His chest still hadn’t released from the tight clench that had almost strangled
him the moment he saw her bike plough into that stupid fucking car.

Had the driver not even looked?

Fuck!

“You’re sorry? Jesus, Josh.” His brother was angry.
Fuck, Josh was angry. He was bloody frantic with worry and pissed at himself
for tempting her to ride the way she had. She was a beginner, a new rider, and
he’d peeled off up that country road and expected her to follow him.

Dickhead!

“Look, I’ll let you know if I hear anything, ok?”
Josh’s stomach rolled as his mind passed over the memory of her petite body as
it lay on the ground next to the dented car. Her bike had skimmed across the
road, leaving her small form flopped on the road like an unloved rag doll.
Nausea rolled over him and he bent his knees and slid into a crouch, he dropped
his head and took a deep breath.

Please
be ok.

“Are you ok?” Tony asked through the phone line and
Josh felt a knot of emotion burn in his throat. A sudden, painful nightmare
flashed in his mind. Blood pooled in her helmet, running from a wound that he
hadn’t been able to see. He’d fought every instinct not to tear off her helmet
to check her wounds. He had literally twisted his hands into knots, his gaze
rooted on the grizzly sight of her blood
..
But he knew
if he’d taken off her lid he could have hurt her worse than she already had
been. Sammy had looked at him with her green eyes, pain showing in her teary
gaze, making no noise as she lay on the cold concrete. Her silent tears were almost
Josh’s undoing. Sammy had been so brave, though Josh knew she must have been in
agony. She must have been terrified.

“Yeah.
I’m
fine…”
O
ther than
almost dying from a heart attack.
“I am just anxious to see her.” And wasn’t that the truth. He’d never
wanted anything more than to see Sammy’s beautiful green eyes again.

“Did you ... you know? Did you and Sammy hook up last
night?” Tony asked and the question brought a strange pain to his chest. Regret?

“No,” Josh snapped, feeling a strange possessive
heat within his chest.
Not through lack
of want, or trying.
“Look, I am gonna go and see if I can get some more
information.” Josh spied a nurse and stood, ignoring his brother as he
continued to talk down the phone. “Call you later.” He hung up and headed
towards the nurse at the same time a tall, dark-haired woman bristled into the
waiting room and scanned the area with frantic, jerky movements. She spied the
nurse and lunged to grab her attention. Irritation spiked in Josh as he wanted
to talk to the same nurse, until he heard her speak.

“Hi. Is there any news on Sammy?
Sammy
Briars?”

The nurse tilted her head to the side, “Are you a
relation?”

“Yes, I am her sister.” She said, and Josh scowled. This
was obviously Rachel, the first name in Sammy’s “called” list on her phone. She
was Sammy’s friend, not her sister. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He could
have said he was her brother, and then, he might have gotten some information.
He frowned at that. No, he should have said boyfriend.

Josh listened to what the nurse had to say.

“She has suffered a head trauma.”

Rachel’s very well-manicured hand flew to her mouth
and her eyes went wide.

“But—” The nurse added hastily, “She doesn’t seem to
have any lasting damage, other than a mild case of shock, and concussion.”

Rachel’s shoulders sagged in what looked like
relief, but Josh couldn’t get the image of her leg as it lay at a … wrong
angle, on the roadside.

Bile rose again, and his head swam a little. “What
about her leg?”

Both women looked his way. The nurse eyed him and
flared her nostrils. Rachel narrowed her gaze and crossed her arms.

“And you are?” The nurse inquired.

“Her boyfriend.”
He
answered quickly, Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but when the nurse began to
talk, Josh saw the relief in Sammy’s friends eyes, and instead of disputing his
claim, she stopped and listened instead.

“She has suffered a compound fracture to her tibia.”

Rachel gasped and Josh could swear the floor tilted.

“She broke her leg?” Shock flowed into his voice and
the words came out in a deep growl, even though he had known her leg wasn’t
undamaged. But broken? Shit.

The nurse looked up at him and nodded.

“She
broke
her leg?” Rachel repeated a little hysterically. “But, you said she just had a
concussion.”

The nurse patted Rachel on the arm in a calming gesture.

“I have to get back, but she will be ok. Her leg is
in a temporary splint at the moment, and when she is feeling a little better we
will have more x-rays done, just to check we have it right.” Then the nurse
breezed off, leaving him and Rachel silent, with open mouths.

“How the fuck did you let this happen?” Rachel
rounded on Josh with a glare so
hot,
he nearly took a
step back. Where Sammy was gentle and quiet, Rachel was loud and not at all
shy. If he wasn’t mistaken, she had a shadow of a small bruise on her chin,
making her hot glare and spat words seem more threatening.

He stared down at Rachel and considered his words
carefully. What should he say?
We were
racing and flirting
? Nope. Josh knew, without even knowing Rachel, that
saying that would get his nuts twisted off. She held the stiff shoulders of a
protective mamma bear, and the glare of a ball-buster. The bruise on her cheek
was just the icing on the extremely hard-looking cake. So Josh decided to stick
to facts. “We were driving along a country road, and a car just pulled out on
her.” He swallowed back the rising bile the words brought up and continued.
“She tried to swerve, but didn’t clear it, and her bike clipped the front of
the fucking stupid car.” He ran his hands through his hair as his anger curdled
in his stomach again. Talking about the accident just made his temper flare. Shit.
The image of her bike flipping.
Her
laying on the roadside … the blood.

My
fault!

Rachel turned and grabbed two fistfuls of her own hair.
She seemed to take a deep breath and then rounded back on him. “Josh, is it?”

All that Josh could think was u
h-oh
. A cold, bleak expression now replaced the frantic worry on
her face and Josh really did take a step back this time.

She followed him.

“If I find out that this is in any way your fault. I’ll
string you up by your balls, got it?”

Josh wanted to laugh, an awkward, threatened laugh,
because he knew she was a ball-twister, but he swallowed it back just in time. He’d
been worried when he found no family in Sammy’s phone book. There was no mother,
no dad contacts, no brothers or sisters from what he could see. And to his
confusing relief, there had been no boyfriends, either. But as he stood,
taller, but no less intimidated, in front of Rachel, he knew that Sammy had family
in her friends.

“Well, then, I guess I better start wearing a cup.”
He hoped to hell that she was all bluster in her threats, and that she had a
sense of humor.

She turned from him, dismissing him and his words, paced
to a window and pulled out her phone.

Josh moved back to his position at the wall and leaned
his head back again. She was going to be okay, he thought in relief as he
played back the nurse’s words. He hated she had broken her leg, but knew it was
probably better than all the horrible things he had been imagining. He watched
Rachel as she paced back and forth. She was muttering into the phone, her brow
pulled into a tight scrunch. Josh heard some of her huffed words filter over
the space and he realized she was having a spat with someone. He tried not to
listen, but in the silence of the waiting room, it was all Josh could hear.

“Just look after them for another couple of hours. I
know you need to go to the garage, but I need to be here with her… Rob, she
doesn’t have anyone. Yes … yes, I know that… Please don’t. No, I’m sorry…”

When her phone call ended, Josh heard her sit down
heavily. He turned his gaze and found her glaring at him. Her arms crossed
tightly over her chest and Josh saw disapproval in Sammy’s friend’s glare.

He sighed heavily. Sammy’s friend blames him for her
accident.
Yeah, well that makes two of us.