ARC Review + Tour and Giveaway: Ride Steady by Kristen Ashley

Peaches.

What is your secret to staying in love with a series over several books, and what makes you keep coming back to the Chaos series in particular?

If it was up to me, I’d probably live in a series for eternity. I don’t ever really want to say goodbye. I guess this is why I keep spinning off series or having random folks from one series show up in another one, just so I can spend some time with them. Chaos is special to me because Chas reminds me of a particularly awesome time I had with two very close friends and a variety of fast friends (all bikers) that we made at the rally at Sturgis. I always go back there when I’m with the Chaos MC, and it’s a very good place to be.

Finish this sentence: 

My heroine will never…say the f-word.

If you could trade places with anyone for just one day, who would you want to be?

You know, no one. This is a very cool question but I’ve been sitting here thinking on this for a while and I cannot come up with a response. I have a good life. I have a wonderful family and fabulous friends. I love my job. I live in an interesting city with many, many interesting people in it (and the weather rocks!). Perhaps I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at being Beth Chapman and going bounty hunting for a day with Dog and Leland, but I’d want Beth to be there too.

What are you looking forward to most this summer?

My bestest bestie from England, Helen, is coming to Vegas to marry her beau of many years, James. Elvis is serenading them and my whole family adopted them, which means Helen and James adopted my family right back, so everyone’s invited and it is going to be a blast. I can’t wait!

 

“Yo!” I heard Snapper call and I looked to him to see he was looking beyond me. I turned around and saw Tabby was heading toward me and Snapper. “I’m takin’ Carissa out on my bike. You wanna look after her purse or put it in Shy’s room or somethin’?”

At his request, Tabby’s gaze immediately cut to the pool tables. When she took them in, for some reason, her face got hard before she softened it and looked back toward us.

“Not a problem,” she said, stopping at us. “Go. Ride.”

“Never been on a bike,” I told her and her face split in a big smile.

“Then go. Ride.” She leaned in to me. “Beware, wind in your hair, moon on your skin, you’ll fall in love.”

I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. I’d fallen in love with something I couldn’t have, and if I fell in love with the wind in my hair and the moon on my skin, without someone to give that to me, I couldn’t have that either.

But to heck with it.

Maybe this would be the only bike ride I’d  I’d have in my life.

And maybe the kiss Joker gave me was the only fabulous kiss I’d ever get.

And maybe my dream of having a family or the other dream of getting behind the steel guarding Joker’s eyes was lost to me.

But I was still breathing.

So I’d take what I could get.

Tabby put her hand on my purse, which was lying on the bar. “Got this. Have fun.”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

She winked at me.

I looked to Snapper. “Let’s go.”

“Meet you at the end of the bar, babe.”

“Right!” I chirped, jumped off my stool, threw Tabby a smile, nabbed my jacket that I was sitting on and bounced to the end of the bar.

When I got there, Snapper had pulled on his leather jacket. He grabbed my hand and guided me out the door and to his bike. Then he got on his bike before instructing me on how to do the same.

The bike roared, he backed out on an angle, and we glided over the tarmac of Ride.

He pulled out onto Broadway and I got it.

The wind in my hair.

The moon on my skin.

The leather of his jacket in my nostrils.

The solidness of him under my hands at his waist.

We got close to the onramp of I‑25 and he shouted, “Hold on!”

“Sorry?” I shouted back.

“Hold on!” he yelled, taking one hand off the grip and using it to pull my hand from his waist and around to his stomach.

He put his hand back on the grip and we turned up the ramp, going faster, faster, faster, the wind whipping my hair and biting into my skin. I curved my other arm around him, put my chin to his shoulder, drew in air and leather, and I got it.

Instantly.

That it being why this was the life for a biker.

No encumbrances. You wanted to smoke pot, you smoked it. You wanted to wear a tube top, you wore it. You wanted to drink shots, you drank them. You wanted to make out hot and heavy on a couch in a room filled with people, you did it.

You wanted to live, you lived.

You wanted to be free, you got on your bike and rode in the moonlight.

You did not drink martinis you didn’t like. You did not take a job your mother‑in‑law thought you should have. You did not take guff from your ex, not ever.

You did what you wanted.

You were free.

In all that was happening to me, all that I was feeling, all the disappointment of that night and the bizarre devastation I felt that the first time this happened, me on the back of a bike, I would have preferred it be with Joker . . . right then, for that moment, I let it all go.

I let it go, held on to Snapper and I let myself feel it.

Feel something rare and beautiful and overwhelming.

Feel something I knew for certain I hadn’t felt in my whole life.

Free.

 

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