Racing to You: Racing Love, Book 1 (12 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

I press the bell on the outer door to Terrence’s apartment, and someone upstairs buzzes me inside. I see bikes in the hall. The guys must be back from their ride, and from the stairwell, I hear shouts from the apartment.

I walk in to see Terrence and Caroline arguing.

“Why does Ralph need to run out so fast?” she shouts.

“It’s none of your business, Caroline,” Terrence grinds through his teeth. “Just leave it.”

“No. I won’t.”

Ralph rushes around the apartment, throwing on his cycling shoes and grabbing his helmet, still dressed in his riding kit. He’s not limping, so I guess his knee is better since yesterday.

I don’t know if they’ve noticed me, so I say, “What’s going on?”

Terrence’s gaze snaps to me and his jaw drops in surprise. “Lia?” The growl in his voice dissipates. “When did you get here?”

“I let her up,” Caroline says from the kitchen.

His face crisscrosses with concern, confusion, a little fear. “I’m glad to see you but—” He walks toward me. “I’m not sure you want to be here for this.”

Caroline gives him a smirk that doesn’t touch her eyes. “What’s there for her not to see?”

Terrence’s jaw tenses again, and he says to Ralph, “Scram. I’ll call you after they’re gone.”

“Right.” Ralph pushes past me out the door.

I don’t understand why, but I think I should go. Maybe this is what he meant about me getting in the way of his cycling.

Terrence’s phone rings. “Thank Christ.” He picks it up and turns away from me. “Gary, the vamps are here—yeah, Coach saw them driving into town.”

“Vamps?” I murmur. As in vampires? Have I stepped into a fantasy novel?

“The race officials,” Caroline says bitterly. “They come for random drug testing every month or so.”

Terrence’s voice on the phone is too low for me to hear.

“They’re way overdue. I don’t know why he’s freaking out so bad.” Caroline glares at Terrence like he’s the enemy and she wants him gone.

I agree his reaction is extreme, but I don’t understand why either of them is upset. Drug testing’s only stressful if you’re using. “They don’t do drugs. They don’t even drink.”

She scrunches her brows. “Not recreational drugs. Performance-enhancing drugs.”

“Oh.” Duh.

Sympathy tilts her mouth. “You’ve seen the scandals about doping in cycling, right? You heard about the guy who won the overall in the Tour de France seven times before they caught him?”

“I think so. He was an American.”

She nods. “Makes it harder for them. They’ve cracked down. It’s very strict now.” She glances at Terrence. “Though sometimes not strict enough.”

“But they have nothing to worry about.”

She gives me a meaningful stare that I don’t understand. “Ask your boy over there.”

Terrence’s voice elevates. “Ralph just left. He should make it to the team’s other apartment before dark… Yeah, see you soon.” Terrence hangs up, and his face looks worn, years older, like he’s twenty-three verging on fifty.

I know I should leave, but I want to ease that look from his face, bring back his smile, his teasing. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine.” He sighs without looking at me, his fists clenching and unclenching like he wants to hit something.

Caroline folds her arms over her belly. “So why’d Ralph run out, Terr?”

“Because he took a fucking cortisone shot!” he shouts at the ceiling, making Caroline and I jump. “He’s having issues with his knee again. If he avoids them until tomorrow, it might be out of his system in time. It can’t show up in the test, otherwise he’ll need a doctor’s note and have to miss two weeks of racing.”

“Oh, heaven forbid he should miss two weeks,” Caroline mocks. “Maybe he should. He’s too young to be racing so much.”

“Do you think that’s my call?” His words grit, like a file over rusty metal. “If it was up to me we’d all take the next two weeks off, but I’m not in control here.”

“You have more power than anyone else on this team. If you say the team needs it, Sergio will listen to you.”

“Caroline.” His consonants are sharp. “You don’t know half of it. Keep your opinions to yourself.”

She inhales to retort, but he grits his teeth and says, “Please.”

Shaking her head, she leaves the room.

The look on Terrence’s torn face slashes through my chest. He falls to sitting on the couch, his head in his hands. I understand why Caroline is upset; she and Gary have everything invested in this team and she’s worried. But her putting more stress on Terrence makes me want to…do something not nice.

The hope that he’ll ask me to stay edges me closer to him.

“I have no control over this,” he says to the floor. “My hands are tied worse than theirs. She doesn’t know how bad Sergio and Coach watch my numbers. It’s like I’m a fucking machine, and if I don’t get it just right they’re on my ass. And Ralph. Goddamn it!” He hangs his head. “The kid’s amazing, but there’s a hundred other climbers they could call in if he cracks. He’s a rookie. They’ll just replace him. Asking for time off would be the kiss of death for his career.”

“Even though he’s injured?”

“It’s from overtraining. Just admitting that to the team doctor was bad enough for him.”

“You’re doing the best you can,” I say.

“Am I?”

“You’re giving everything to this team. It’s not your fault, no matter what anybody else says.”

“Caroline…” He laughs bitterly. “You’d think we’d get along since Gary’s my best friend, but it’s like she sees me as a threat.”

“She’s worried about him.” Encouraged his anxiety is waning, I sit next to him.

“She thinks racing is wearing him into the ground, but how else is he supposed to support a family? Racing’s how we make money.” He looks at me desperately for approval, and I wonder how much he really makes. I wonder how important the paycheck is to him. Are he and Gary in the sport of cycling for the riding, the winning, or…for the money? It sounds like he didn’t have much of it growing up.

His hands animate. “I’m worried about Gary’s ass as much as mine. We have contracts, but if we don’t live up to their standards they’ll just swap in someone else for the grand tours this summer.”

I put my arm around his shoulder. He leans away from me at first, and I worry he’ll pull away completely, but instead he softens and turns his head into my neck.

“You should go,” he mutters, then cuddles me closer, wrapping his arms around my middle. “It’s going to be awful with the damn bloodsuckers here. I don’t want you to see that.”

“Bloodsuckers?” I lean back onto the couch with him.

He uses my breast for a pillow. “They come in with their needles and their tubes. It takes forever, like we’re lab rats.”

I kiss his hair, relishing in his taking comfort from me. “But I want to be here for you when you’re done. Can’t I just grade papers in your room until they leave?”

He nods and doesn’t fight me on it. Being the team leader isn’t easy. He needs support from somewhere, and I want to help him.

* * * * *

In his room, my gaze catches on the chair in the corner. The chair where I sat yesterday while he watched me get myself off. It feels so shallow now, orgasms next to his cycling career.

While I wait for the bloodsuckers to finish, I can sit on the chair. Or the bed.

The bed feels too intimate so I opt for the chair, as much as it makes me blush. I get turned on just by sitting in the damn thing, the memories from yesterday are so thick.

His room is neater than yesterday. Not as meticulous as mine, which I’m glad about, but his bed is made and the closet door is closed without any clothes sticking out.

Over an hour later, all my papers graded and lessons planned, I realize I didn’t bring any books with me. I never go anywhere without something French to read. It’s been that way since high school.

I’m terrified at myself, almost as much as when I called in sick the other day.

I’ve fallen so behind in my graduate study plan, I’m not sure how to revive it. My dream of getting a Ph.D. in French—I’m watching that fade away too. Another failure added to my guilt pile.

Maybe it’s for the best. Rebelling against my parents’ expectations for medical school is childish. I’m supposed to be an M.D., not a French Ph.D.

I don’t want to be a doctor. I’m a French scholar.

Terrence finally opens the door. “Lia.” The vowels glide off his tongue as though he’s singing my nickname. It warms me, and I close my eyes.

His footsteps sound closer, then his soft lips are on my cheek. He nudges my chin toward him. “Did you have fun last night?”

“Last night?”

He kisses my jaw line. “Practicing?” The bloodsuckers gone, his temper relaxed, he’s playful again.

“I missed you,” I whisper. He was so stressed, I worried whether his lightheartedness would come back. I’m relieved.

“I’m glad you stayed.”

Touching him makes the other stuff fade—cycling, teaching, Ph.D., M.D., all rational things drift to nothing. In his bedroom, him urging me out of the chair onto his bed, I can only think that I want him.

I leap on him, making him bounce onto the bed on his back.

“Umph,” he says, before my mouth covers his and I’m climbing over him on all fours.

This is what I wanted last night, when I was alone. I imagined straddling him. I eat at him, losing all the things that I should be doing in the thing I want to do most. Him. My tongue plunges into his mouth, and he is mine.

His hands slide down my hips and his fingers grip me. “God, you’re a tigress.”

I lower my hips and rub myself against him. In his ear, I growl, “
Roar
,” though it makes me laugh.

He growls back and turns me on my side, murmuring into my mouth, “What do you want?”

My leg thrown over his hip, I slide my hand down his abs, to the waist of his jeans and over the growing bulge between his thighs. “I want to make you come.” I nip his lips with my teeth.

His hand clasps the back of my head, and he grinds his lips on mine. “I knew you would be like this. I knew it.” He thrusts his tongue in my mouth and presses his chest against mine, making my nipples rise to the friction through my shirt and bra.

“You knew what?”

“I knew you would be this animal in bed. You were this uptight little thing, crouched over your books in that café. It’s like you’re the tiniest bottle of this really expensive perfume. Open you up and you smell like heaven.”

My jaw plummets like a nutcracker. “I smell like heaven?” My American jock, pro cyclist who can’t speak French, he just compared me to heaven. I don’t know whether to laugh in shock or cry with pleasure.

“What?” His eyes are wary. “I thought girls liked poetic stuff like that.”

“It’s good. You’re right.” My fingers play in his T-shirt. I don’t know how to admit that those are the kinds of words a girl dreams of hearing from a guy. Or at least, I’ve dreamed of.

“Are you trying to butter me up so you can get laid?” I blurt.

“Huh? No!” He grimaces. “Well, I would but—no.” He flops on his back and covers his eyes. “I suck at words. Forget about it, okay? I’ll just stick with ‘you’re hot’.”

“Oh, no. That’s not what I meant.” I hurt his feelings. I lean on my elbow, looking down at him. He has so many layers, I’m finding new ones each day. “I’m sorry.” I stroke his wrist and pry his fingers from his eyes. “I’m not good with compliments.”

He intertwines his fingers with mine and kisses my knuckles. “Yeah, well. Get over it.” He says it with a smile, but he’s serious, too.

I sigh. “You can tell me I smell like heaven any time you want.” I lower my head and kiss him.

He caresses my cheek, then laces his fingers in my hair. “I’ll take whatever you’re ready to give me.” His lips suckle mine. “Though I wouldn’t mind seeing again what you did yesterday.”

“Oh, really?” My hands wander below his waist again. Heat seeps through his jeans, and I massage around to feel this part of him that changes size. It fascinates me.

Terrence bites my lip and draws it between his teeth. “Mm, you can keep doing that,” he says.

“Do you like that?” When I did this before, it was like fumbling in no man’s land with no lights on. But this is Terrence—I can ask him.

“Uh-huh.”

“How do you like to come?” I hover my lips over his mouth.

His lips part, and he sucks air through his teeth. “Any way you want. I’ll come just like that if you keep doing it. But—” His hand squeezes my breast, then moves down my belly. “You have to come too.”

“At the same time?” The idea sounds so much like sex that I stroke him harder.

“Oh yeah,” he groans on my neck. “That’s right.”

I want closer, so I shift my leg over his hips and straddle him.

My fingers catch in the hem of his T-shirt, and the urge to see his bare chest flares. “Can I take this off?”

He does it for me.

Muscles. That’s all his body is. Muscle and skin. Ridges outline his pecs and abs. There are only supposed to be six. It looks like eight.

“Is there fat on any part of your body?” I ask, breathless.

He chuckles. “According to my coach, yes. It’s hiding somewhere.” He takes my hands and places them on his chest. I grip and feel him. He’s such a different hard here. These muscles are like granite, but there—I grind my hips into his—there, he’s firm, rigid, and round.

I hum at how good he feels. With my hands bracing against his pecs, holding me upright, I rock my hips. “Does that feel good to you too?”

“Yes.” He clutches my hips, moving with me. “I can come this way too.” His eyes glitter in that devil way.

I love looking at him and touching him. I roll my hips back and forth. The ache is there. It cries for more, it spurs me faster. He pushes into me, hitting that perfect spot, and I whimper and hang my head.

“Oh, that’s good.” His hands encourage me; his hips beneath me gyrate in opposition to mine.

I’m building, the feelings climbing and reaching for the top. “Who knew—leaving clothes on—could feel this good.”

“I didn’t—either.”

I crack my eyes to see his face. His mouth is slack, his eyes barely open, but he watches me, his breath quickening. I hold his eyes with mine. The orgasm leaps at me, clawing inside me to get out.