I was looking over what I've put up here and realized that it could take a bit of time to bring even one to a conclusion since they aren't short, any of them. I wanted to give readers a nice little romance without any fur or horns in it. Well, other than what's supposed to be there, I guess... I have a few like this, but they're mostly woven into longer epics and I didn't want to pull them out of context.
This is just a little tale and involves two people and the friend who helps out to make it happen for them, since she's the only one who can see it. It's really two stories, though one is 40 years in the past. Just so you know, this happens in the mid to late 1980s, mostly due to technology.
I think that I can do this in three chapters minimum, four more likely depending on the sticky bits of the love scenes, but not much more. I hope you find the characters easier to relate to than demons or werewolves. :)
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He'd come home from work and showered, glad for the feeling that the water was washing the effects of the day's work off as well as keeping him clean. It had been a long day. A change into his leathers and he was out the door again. He pulled into the gas station and asked the young attendant to fill it with super, but retracted that when he saw the kid take the regular hose from the pump.
"Thanks, but I'll just do it myself, Chief." he said.
With a full tank now, he slapped the fuel filler shut and went inside to pay. Back at the bike, he turned the key, noted the neutral indicator, pulled the clutch and hit the starter. He still had his helmet on and no one saw his small grin at the growl coming from down there between his knees. He'd cut a lot of corners in his life to get this little red pony into it. After a long day putting up with everything that his life and his job could throw at him, this was the start of his therapy.
He pulled the clutch again and snicked the gear selector down into first gear. A quick check for drivers snoozing along in their metal cages, and he was off, looking for his favorite route.
Will had always wondered about this stretch of road. There were enough straights followed by winding and tight turns here to challenge the most frantic speed junkie. It hadn't been paved all that long ago judging by newness of the asphalt surface, and it was on the maps, but he never saw anybody out here. And not just bikes. He'd never, ever seen one other vehicle here.
He'd begun to think of it as his own private track, but he never discounted the possibility of meeting some sweet grandmother out here on her way to a church function or something. It might be his addiction, he thought, but a glimpse of one other vehicle, and he'd stay at the limit. He only rode deserted roads fast. And he never raced with anyone. If he'd wanted to do that, he would do it properly on a track. This was just a solitary thing to him.
The trees and small lakes flashed by as the engine sang its lovely song to him. It had been a rough week and he was trying to get some kinks out. Not from his body - doing this would make a few things hurt from the vibration and the taut suspension. And that's assuming of course, that he didn't do something stupid like go too deep into a corner and lose it. He had three short gentle bends coming up and pre-weighted his feet on the pegs and lightened his butt on the seat at the same time to flick through them.
A light squeeze on the front brakes and an easy drift to the right, and he was lined up. Down two gears with a blip of the throttle. Will slid his ass to the left off the seat just a bit, and stuck out his knee a little, preparing to alternate this position back and forth through the series. And ... left, right, left, then down hard onto the tank with his chest while he let it wind out.
The front end was getting light, so he slid forward a touch listening to his very favorite tune, and there was no radio. That transverse four's exhaust note was gorgeous - a snarl mixed with a howl, throaty at the lower end of the power band, but once it was on the cams, oh man... The back of his ass hit the rear of the notch on the seat, and screw Star Wars or any of the films or that genre, this was the only real, pure hyper-drive. Wail for me honey, he thought, I so need this today.
He glanced quickly at the tach. He was in fifth gear at this point, headed for the up-shift to sixth, but there was one bump coming up in the road. He didn't want to get past redline when it got light on the tires there. The lower front edge of his helmet hit the filler on the tank and he grunted - never could help that right here, and then he raised himself up off the tank as he hit sixth gear. Will never looked at the small speedo - who the hell has time? But he guessed that his little red pony would be kissing maybe 260 klicks or so here, judging by the way that the edge of his low curved windshield buffeted in the windstream.
He saw a black shape up ahead topped by red leathers. So somebody else knew about this place. The brake light came on, and even from here, Will saw the back end rise a bit as the front shocks compressed under heavy braking. But he was coming up on them quick now. It was time to get on the brakes himself.
There were three disc brakes, but he didn't use the rear disc much. Once the beefy dual fronts take hold and the center of gravity shifts forward, there's no braking authority out back there anyway. Mostly he just used it to hold him at an uphill stop, or to flash the brake light to wake up Henry Q. Henpecked if he was getting too close to Will while checking out the ladies on the sidewalk in town.
Right here and now, he heard and felt the hum of the front calipers on the big discs as he blipped the throttle and downshifted while squeezing the front brake lever at the same time. It had taken Will a while to learn that little move.
The anti-dive forks were doing their thing and didn't compress. The system knew the difference between a bump and braking, so he was happy. He stuck out his right knee, and tugged the bars left, countersteering to flick the beast down hard to the right. Will's knee puck kissed the pavement lightly, and he forgot about hauling ass out of the turn so he could figure out what this rider ahead of him was going to do - and also, there was something about that butt on the seat ahead of him.
Will saw the long black ponytail held with three ties and wondered as he let old Red beneath him wander sideways a bit. She slid that backside across the seat to prepare for the next right, and Will nudged his high beam button to let her know that she wasn't alone out of courtesy.
Her helmet came up a bit to check her mirrors, and then she was up and downshifting, taking her upper body weight onto her wrists as he was. She didn't downshift like Will did. He could hear her revs sailing skyward through each downshift from back here. That habit is hard on drive chains and sprockets, he thought, but it sounds cool. Well if ya got money, you can travel, he always said.
Maybe his sudden appearance had distracted her, but her line wasn't tight through the curve, and Will saw the daylight that he'd been looking for. He passed her on the inside, knee planted hard on the pavement, and just got a quick sideways glance over the side of his tank and past his left handlebar, since he was hanging off almost below it. Her dark eyes were like saucers in the clear visor. Well, she'd left him the opening...
He saw her in the mirror as she dropped onto her tank. Her front tire came off the asphalt a bit as she launched to catch him, but it was already too late for that. That was all he could see in the vibrating mirror. She did know how to ride well, he could see that, and he kind of hoped to get a chance to talk with her, though he had his doubts. This addiction was pretty much a solitary thing with Will. He wasn't into trying to impress anybody, but anyone he met usually was.
He noticed that his spidey-sense was tingling. Will somehow knew there was at least one cop up ahead, he almost always just knew. If they had a window open, they'd hear the howls of the headers. He sat up and tapped the top of his helmet a couple of times before he got onto the brakes and pulled to the right side of the lane.
Rocket Girl did her noisy downshift thing and appeared on his left to pace him just below the limit. She looked over at him with raised eyebrows, and he tapped his head again and pointed. There was a downhill left coming up, and just as they crested the rise, he saw the edge of the cruiser sticking out of the trees, parked on the wide shoulder there. He made a mental note that it was a great place for a speed trap. Then he saw that there was a second one there in front of it. Wow...
They motored by innocently, though there was no doubt in the faces that Will got a glimpse of. He didn't know if she had the same kind of sense that he seemed to have, but he kind of doubted it somehow. They rode like that for a couple of more klicks until the one cruiser that had pulled out to tail them turned off. A bit later they came to the end of the road. Will looked over, and raised his visor. But Rocket Girl just nodded her thanks curtly, turned left and was gone. Will shrugged and turned right, resuming his normal identity as just a guy who rode a crotch rocket painted in "arrest-me" red.
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Will lived with a few friends and together they'd rented a huge house. There were odd invisible boundary lines all through it marking their personal spaces, but the rest was communal. It being Friday night, and with nothing social planned, they'd all sort of just cooked dinner.
Will was thankful many times over that his buddies were married. For one thing, while they could all cook, it just wasn't great stuff - unless the wives were involved since they had some minimum standards after all, and for another, though it did make for an odd structure, he really liked having the girls around. It really cheered the place up for him, and if he was the one cooking, it always helped to have a bit of feminine direction to stave off food poisoning.
They sat discussing things, and Paco told him that it was looking as though they had a new garage tenant. The thing was three spaces wide, and Paco kept his car in one, Jimmy just parked in the driveway as did Will with his truck, and Will used one space for his bike and tools. They thought to maybe offset a tiny bit of the huge rent. Paco was saying that his cousin might rent the open slot. That's all Will heard as he got up to make sure it was presentable in case anybody came by to look at it or something.
There wasn't much to clean, but he made the space spotless, and then thought he'd ride some more, not pushing anything hard, just riding. That changed slightly when he found himself at the top of that road again. He still wasn't flying, just motoring. Will had some engine work coming up that would be a little unpleasant at the beginning and the end, and he'd be stuck in his truck for a little while as the open heart surgery happened on the engine.
He thought about that until he saw the single headlight coming up quickly in his mirrors.
