Raced (18 page)

She lifts her head forward, her hand sliding out from between her legs, moisture glistening off of her fingers for me to see. “Well, Ace, danger can be overrated. It seems I know how to handle a
slick track
perfectly well.” She smirks that smug smile I want to fuck off her face right now just before she slips her arousal coated fingers into her mouth and sucks on them, eyes taunting me all the while.

Is she trying to kill me right now? Fucking voodoo pussy is back with a vengeance and fuck if I’m not ready to be the first and only victim. The woman has me strung tighter than a hair string trigger—volatile and ready to blow. My balls tighten, my body tenses wanting her so desperately, but my stubborn streak tells me I have to hold out, take the reins when the time is right. My body screams that time was ten fucking minutes ago, while my head loves when Ry gets feisty and defiant. When she makes me work for it like no one else ever has.

“Slippery and wet, huh? Danger has never been more fucking tempting,” I tell her, my eyes watching as she pulls her fingers from between her very fuckable lips and follows the descent back down south. She adds torment to her tantalization by parting her seam with one hand so I can more than handily see her other fingers add the friction her sighs say is more than pleasurable.

Fuck me this is brutal to watch and not partake in when all I want is to do is urge her hips closer to my face and have her sweet taste on my tongue again. For that alone, it’s time for me to mess with her a little more and knock her out of the pleasure inducing coma that’s darkening the violet in her eyes.

“You know, sometimes in a race, in order to reach the finish line, rookies like you have to tag team to get the result you want.”

Her head snaps up, lips parting, and eyes flashing with shock momentarily until she regains her composure. Perfect. Threw you there didn’t I, sweetheart?

“Sorry, but this engine seems to be doing just fine running solo.” She smirks at me, so arrogant that she thinks she dodged the proverbial bullet. Too bad I’m holding the only gun allowed to shoot that shell. And fuck me, she’s sliding her hands back down to my place between her thighs, her moan of pleasure when she finds purchase—my own personal Heaven and Hell.

And then she stops and looks at me, lust in her eyes and evidence of her arousal on her hands. “I know exactly what it’s going to take to get me to the finish line.”

“Oh, so you like to race dirty, huh? Break all the rules?” I ask, fingers trailing up her thighs, leaving visible goose bumps in their wake, her body angling toward me the higher I go. Fuckin’ A straight. She can play the aloof card all she wants but she can’t deny that her body readily submits to me when I want it to. And fuck, how I want it to right now.

“Oh, I most definitely can handle dirty,” she taunts as she trails a finger up my chest and rubs some of her moisture across my lips. My tongue darts out, unable to resist the temptation to taste what I’m craving and fuck me if it doesn’t make me want to flip her over, cuff her hands over her head, and fuck the defiance out of her until she’s screaming my name and owning my heart more than she already does.

She grinds her hips down, that smarmy smile still teasing the corners of her mouth as she rocks back and forth over me. She leans forward, her breath a taunting whisper against my ear. “Being a seasoned pro such as yourself, you just might have to show this rookie exactly why they say rubbing’s racing.”

She’s playing the temptress card and passing with flying fucking colors. I don’t even have time to recover from the notion that her pussy’s wetness is starting to soak through my boxer-briefs when she rocks her hips again. I try to remain unaffected, play her game, but I have to grit my teeth to prevent my eyes from closing at the rocket of sensation that just shot through me.

When I look from her hand back up to her eyes, she raises her eyebrows in the final coup de grace. “Big bad professional race car driver like you afraid to show a newbie how to drive stick, huh?”

And I can’t take it anymore. Fuse lit and control shot. Within a beat, I’ve pushed her back up to sitting, pulled her feet flat on the bed beside my ribs and knees spread wide, because if I’m watching the feature presentation, I better have a goddamn front row seat.

“I’m shifting gears, sweetheart, because I’m the only one allowed to drive this car.” My hands slide up again until they reach the juncture of her thighs. My thumbs brush over her tight strip of curls before I readjust and tuck my fingers into her. She cries out, her tight walls flexing around me and milking against my fingers as they stroke the nerves within. And between her wetness on my fingers and the memories of her gripping my dick has me pre-coming like a fucking adolescent school boy but fuck me, I’ll take it. I’ll take anything I can from her because Rylee?
She’s fucking everything
.

She doesn’t take long to climb because she’s so addled with pent up need—and the fact that it’s only for me is not lost in the frenzied moment. Her fingernails score my skin, body tenses, and pussy convulses as the broken cry of my name fills the room around us.

My name moaning from her lips. God-fucking-damn is that not the sexiest sound I’ve ever heard.

I give her a moment to gain her breath, the senses I’ve just finger-fucked out of her, and when I think she’s coherent enough, I let her know that even though she’s just come, I’m the one who just won the race.

“Hey, rookie?”

She lifts her head forward and looks at me from beneath weighted eyelids heavy with satisfaction. “Hmm?” is all she can manage and I fucking love that drowsy just-been-fucked-right look on her face. The one that only I can put there.

“I’m the only one that’s allowed to drive you to the motherfucking checkered flag.”

She just throws her head back and laughs, cheeks flushed, tits jiggling.

Fucking gorgeous.

Like I said, she’s everything.

The Holy motherfucking Grail.

What was Colton thinking the first time he stepped back in the car after the accident? He’s pushed Rylee away because of the bullshit Tawny has laid at his doorstep, he received a dress down from his dad the night before, and now he has to face the one demon he can to gain back the freedom he needs to outrun his other ones on the track.

And he has to do it without Rylee, the one person he desperately wants to be there.

Or does he?

Fear is a brutal bitch to face.

It squeezes your lungs so you can’t breathe, locks your jaw to bear the brunt of your stress, and cinches your heart so your blood rushes through your body.

The guys are at my back pretending to be busy. Ignoring the fact that I’m standing in front of my car, staring at the cause of my biggest fucking fear right now and my greatest goddamn salvation. I need it more than ever between the bullshit Tawny hit me with and not having the one person I want most but don’t want to taint any further around.

Rylee.

She said she’d he here when I got in the car for the first time. I need her here, need to know she’s here to come back to at the end of the run. The salve to my stained soul. But how in the fuck could I call her and ask her when I’ve pushed her so far away?

So here I stand, surrounded by my crew but battling the shit in my head all alone. And of course my mind veers to the vultures at the gates that shoved cameras in my face and spewed Tawny’s bullshit lies about Rylee when I left the house earlier. Then it slides back to Rylee and how much I want her here right now.

Fuck this, Donavan. Quit being such a pussy and get in the goddamn car. You’ve faced shit ten times worse than this. You’ve got this. Man the fuck up and get in the car.

I take a deep breath and squeeze my eyes shut momentarily as I lift my helmet and push it down on my head. My silent acknowledgement to the guys that I’m ready to tackle this.

It takes me a minute to buckle my helmet; my hands tremble like a motherfucker. Becks steps forward to help and I glare at him to back the fuck off. If I can’t fasten this then I don’t deserve to get behind the wheel.

I slide my hand up the nose toward the cockpit. I knock softly out of habit to ease my superstitious mind.

Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman.

Four knocks, one for each of the superheroes that the little boy in me still thinks will help protect him. They pulled me through the last crash, I know they’re good for it.

I take a deep breath and try not to think as I lift one leg and then the other so I can drop into the driver’s seat. I sit there, try to make myself numb so I can’t feel the fear coursing through me and trickling down the line of my spine in rivulets of sweat.

Becks steps up and locks the steering wheel in place and thank fuck for that because now I have somewhere I can put my hands and grip so that they stop shaking. I feel his hand pat the top of my helmet like he usually does, but before he clicks my HANS device he pulls my helmet up so I’m forced to look at him.

I see the fear flicker in his eyes but I also see resolve. “All you, Wood. Take your time. Ease into her.” He nods at me. “Just like riding a bike.”

A bike my ass. But I nod at him because I have a feeling I could argue the point just to cause a distraction from actually having to do this. I focus on the wheel in front of me as he studies me, gauging whether I really am okay being here.

“I’m good,” I lie. And he stands there for a minute more before the guys bring the crank out and we fire the engine.

The reverberation through my body and sound in my ears of the engine’s rumble is like coming home and making me question myself all at once. Kind of like Rylee.

I hold onto that thought—to the idea of her being here when she’s not—as I rev the motor a few times. It sounds the same and yet so very different from the memory still hit and miss in my mind from the wreck.

The crew gets over the wall and it’s just Becks and me. He leans over and pulls on my harness, the same way he has for the past fourteen years. It’s comforting in a sense because he doesn’t act like anything is different, knows that this is what I need. Routine. The sense that everything is the same when it’s a clusterfuck in my head.

He raps the hood twice as is his habit and walks away. I don’t follow him because if I do, I know I’ll see the falter in his step. And his hesitancy will reaffirm my fear that I’m not ready.

I give it some gas, let the car rumble all around me to clear my head, and psych myself to do this. And I sit here long enough that I know I look like a pussy who shouldn’t be in the car so I put the car in gear and begin to ease out onto pit row. My heart is in my throat and my body vibrates from more than just the car. Nerves and anxiety collide with the need to be here, to do this, to be able to outrun my demons and find the freedom-laced solace I’ve always been able to find on the track.

I exit pit row and squeeze the wheel, frustrated that my fucking grandmother can drive faster than I am.

“That’s it, Wood. Nice and easy,” Becks says, and it takes everything I have to shut him out, to listen to the car like I always do and try and hear what she’s telling me. But I can’t drown out the bullshit in my head so I close my eyes momentarily and tell myself to just push the gas and go.

And I do. I push it, flick the paddle as I change gears, and enter the high line into turn two because I’m not going fast enough to have to worry about drifting into the wall.

But the more I accelerate, the less I hear. She’s not talking to me. The noises aren’t the same. “Goddammit, Becks! This car is shit! I thought you checked everything. It’s—”

“Nothing’s wrong with the car, Colton.”

“
Bullshit!
It’s shuddering like a bitch and is gonna come apart once I open her up,” I grate out, pissed at that placating tone in his voice. I’m the one in the fucking car—the one that can possibly slam headfirst into the wall—not him.

“It’s a new car. I checked every inch of it.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Beckett! Goddammit!” I pound my fist against the steering wheel, completely backing off the gas.

I know he says something about taking it nice and easy but I don’t really hear it because the flashback hits me so hard I suffocate in the open air.