Racing to You: Racing Love, Book 1 (20 page)

It’s for show. He’s told me before, he doesn’t do models. I know this. I need to chill.

He reaches behind one model and pinches her ass.

My lungs close. It’s like that YouTube video I watched of him weeks ago, where he frenched that random girl on the side of the road.

“It’s nothing personal,” Caroline says. “He’s never happier than when he’s winning. He’s married to it. Even if he could commit, he’d never be around. You’d always be his second favorite.”

I inhale. “Do you really believe that?” Perhaps she is commiserating with me, but I don’t need her to shove the truth in my face.

“Why do you think I’m going home tomorrow?” she says. “Gary will be supportive of this child, but the bike will always come before the baby or me. And I can’t live with that. Their Bugatti visit just confirms it.”

I glare back at the television.

He’s changed me so much. I thought he’d changed, too, that we’d changed each other. My insides cinch like a vise, wrenching at the place that’s been tender since Terrence told me he needed me.

It was an easy confession born in weakness and fear, not a declaration of longevity.

Bitterness taints my misery, making me doubt even the good stuff.

On the screen, he shuffles through a mob of partiers tossing streamers and screaming college girls wearing low-cut tank tops. One girl hands him a pen, and he does that thing.

He signs his name across the top of her cleavage.

I can’t watch.

His voicemail said he’d come back, win or lose. What he really meant was, if I lose I’ll come back to you. If I win, well, it’s been fun. I’m ashamed now I believed him.

I shouldn’t be sad. I shouldn’t want to be with a creep guy who signs his name on a girl’s tits.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you better news,” Caroline says. “If it means anything, he cared more about you than any girl I’ve seen him with.”

My shoulders release. She’s being genuine, and I realize that she’s been warning me since her twice-a-month comment. She never believed Terrence would commit to me. But neither did I. It’s only ever been a physical relationship.

He taught me to have orgasms. I should be grateful, not hurt. The raw hole in my heart won’t listen, though. It pulses at me like a gaping wound.

I pat her shoulder on my way to the door. “Thanks, Caroline. Have a safe trip home, and good luck with the birth of your baby.”

“Thanks.” She gives a nervous smile.

I pass my bike in the hall and can’t take it with me. I don’t want to ride it anymore. My joy in riding it is polluted.

I believed he cared.

So naïve.

Back in my apartment, I curl into my lonely bed and cry like a girl over a stupid guy.

Chapter Thirty-One

I bolt awake. It’s dark. The clock says two a.m.

“Aurelia!”

Someone’s screaming my name. Outside.

I fumble with the bed covers, and the voice cries again, “Lia, it’s me! Open up!”

I’m dreaming, delusional. I knee across my bed and toggle the window open.

“Aurelia!” Terrence stands on the cobbles two stories below my window. I can’t see his face, backlit by the street lamp.

“Terrence?” I whisper loudly.

“Let me up!” His voice echoes off the buildings.

“Sh!” If he woke me, he’s woken the neighbors. “What are you doing here?” My eyes are puffy from crying, my limbs lethargic and my brain foggy from sleep.

He steps closer. “I won the race!”

“I know.” I remember him roaring across the line, him spraying models with champagne.

He bounces on his toes. “Can I come up? I came home to see you!” Excitement enriches his voice. He’s begging to tell me about his amazing day.

“Wait.” My sleepy brain clicks. “You came home from San Remo in the middle of the night to see me?”

“Duh! Now open the door!”

A stranger shouts from a window. “
Zut alors
! Let him in so we can sleep!”

A chain reaction of somersaults flips from my toes through my gut to my heart and up my throat. It bubbles out my mouth in a screech. He won the race, then came home to me. “I’m coming.”

I retreat into my room and, not bothering with shoes or real clothes, I run down the stairs in my PJs. I turn the knob, and he pushes through the door before I can open it. He hugs and kisses me.

“I won, Lia!” His lips mash over my face. “Can you believe it?” He loops his arms around my legs and brings me level with his face.

I brace my hands on his shoulders, and I kiss him back, soaking up his elation. I can barely breathe between kisses, and it’s lovely. He’s here. Traitorous giggles escape my mouth.

He came all this way, for me.

He palms my bottom, urges my legs around his hips and carries me up the stairs.

“Terrence, I’m heavy.” I cling to him like a monkey, squeezing his neck and hooking my ankles at his back.

“Never.” He rushes to the second floor, into my open apartment, and kicks the door closed behind him.

“You’re crazy.”

“I wanted to see you.” He dumps us on my bed.

I squeal, delighted. “Aren’t you supposed to be at parties?”

I can’t see his face in the dark, but he sounds impetuous. “I haven’t slept next to you in eleven days. I won their goddamn race, now I want you.”

It
has
been eleven nights. He’s been counting too. A smile stretches my mouth so wide my cheeks strain. “But how did you get here? Did you steal someone’s car?” My brain is still reviving from sleep, and I’m not certain this is real.

“Hopped on the train and ran from the station.”

“You ran here? After racing today?” The train station is over twenty blocks away, on the far side of the boulevard. He wins the longest one-day race of the season and then runs here.

He stills, gentling his fingers over my cheeks. “It wasn’t enough. Winning the race wasn’t enough.”

“But you were so happy on the podium. I thought—” I bite my tongue, ashamed now of what I thought and what I almost let Caroline convince me of—not just the girls, but the doping. All of it.

Terrence never lies.

“You thought what?”

“You were just—with the models and the girls.”

“It was all for show.” Air gushes from him, and he hugs me flush to his chest. “Lia.” The longing in his voice is thick and palpable. “How can I convince you?” He massages my nape. “After I won, I couldn’t shake this feeling. I looked everywhere, the trophies, the cameras, the team—all of it. I thought, there’s more, there’s something missing. Something I need so I can breathe!”

“What?”

“On my phone. After the interviews. Your picture. You climbed the Col d’Èze by yourself!”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t the top.”

“It’s as good as. The best view point. The very top is in the trees and you can’t see anything.” He brushes my shoulders. “I wish I’d been there. I saw that picture of you and—”

“And?”

He cups my face. “It’s you, Lia. More than winning, it’s you. I think—” He rests his forehead on mine. “I’m in love with you.”

Oh my.

His kisses soothe me, a creamy meeting of lips, without the frenzy, a pure declaration. And I believe him.

He left the race, left behind the press, the sponsors, the parties thrown in his name—he skipped them all because he wanted me.

He rode the train in the middle of the night and showed up at my window, yelling my name.

He loves me.

A burn simmers in my belly and quakes through my limbs, vibrating and bubbling through my skin. There’s nowhere left for the burn to go, except through my hands and my mouth into him.

I turn him onto the bed and land on top of him. I tear at his shirt, wanting it gone. I want to touch him. I want us skin to skin.

My shirt and bra, I toss to the floor. Our bare chests meet, my nipples tickling on his skin. My tongue masters his mouth. I give it free will and pour into him all the burning inside me.

His pants, I tug at them, wanting them off.

“Wow, did I say the magic words?” He sits up.

“Yes.” It’s true, but it’s not just the words. It’s the actions that give his words meaning.

I can’t remember why I held off sex before. All I know is, I want him in me now more than I want my next breath.

I slide my pajama bottoms off, and I’m naked underneath. Though, in the dark, Terrence can’t see me. I pull his jeans down and take his boxers with them.

“Oh, hey. Okay,” he says.

I crawl on all fours over him. “Do you have a condom?”

His breath stops. Saying nothing, he reaches for the lamp and switches it on. The muted yellow glow makes us both squint in the brightness.

His lips part. “Lia, I—” He gulps; his gaze moves over my naked skin, my curves, my sexiest parts. He’s seen it all before but never all at once.

He schools his eyes to mine. “I didn’t come here for sex. I came home for you. You know that?”

I sit on my heels, my hands on my thighs. “I know.”

He leans back on his elbows. “Then why—”

“I think I might love you, too.” I don’t know it till the words leave my mouth, but I don’t want them back. It’s true. All the vulnerability and the heartache that chased me on my bike up the climb—it’s this. I love him.

His brown hair shines golden in the lamplight. His brow less wrinkled than the last time I saw him. His eyes calmer. The agitated stress from the burden to win has lifted.

He draws my face closer, his fingertips flutter over my cheeks, and his lips caress mine like warm butter and sweet honey.

“I don’t have a condom,” he says, with a curving smile. “I wasn’t planning on having sex tonight.”

I bite my lip. “I’m on the pill, but—”

“You are?” His eyes widen and enflame. “I’m squeaky clean. They test me for everything whenever they test my blood for stuff.”

A gasp tightens my chest. This is it.

I look in his lap and see him lengthening and hardening there. It’s intimidating, but when I think of putting him inside me, my boiling point tips over. My hips roll on instinct as though he’s already there.

“What are you thinking?” His look is searching, gauging me. His arms begin to shake, his forearms bulging. He wants me. Bad. He’s such a good boy for trying not to show me.

I give him a salacious smile. “I want you to be bad.”

He swallows. “Bad?”

“Yes.” I straddle him, and grasping his hand, dip it between my legs where I know I’m wet, as though with enough moisture my body could put out the fire searing my blood.

I wrap my fingers around him, where he’s long and thick, and I roll my wrist.

He shudders. “How bad do you want me to be? I’ll be the devil if you want.”

I press into his stroking fingers. My whole body feels empty, sobbing from my core with the need to be filled—by him.

I lean over him, my knees astride his hips. “Can I do it this way?” I’ve only had sex in missionary, but I want to be on top.

“Y—yeah.” He stares, ravenous, at my hand holding him, then his gaze rises to my nipples. He dips his head and licks and nibbles me, the way he knows I like it.

His hands glide to my hips and subtly direct me to tilt them. I lower and hum when he bumps me in that hot spot, my clit. I notch him into my opening and struggle to get him inside.

“It’s okay,” he rasps, his voice hoarse. “I’ll do it.” He grasps himself, and I balance my hands on his shoulders.

His one hand guiding my hips lower, the other holding himself, he tips—more like squeezes—inside me. He tightens everything on his way in. It would be uncomfortable except it feels so good. He’s filling me.

I hold my breath as I lower by inches onto him. Until my hips rest on his, and he’s all in. I suck in air with a gasp. He’s so full inside me, it’s like he’s pushing through my skin. I want to swallow him up and keep him there. But at the same time, I want to move. I want to feel him push into me again.

Before I can lift my hips to withdraw, he enfolds me with his arms and lowers us back on the bed, me lying across his chest.

“Lia,” he whispers, and grinds his hips into me deeper. “Are you okay?”

“Mm-hm,” I moan, and grind back.

It’s too much, never enough. It’s as overwhelming as I feared, the reason I haven’t been ready for this. He is everywhere inside me, and I don’t know where I am and he isn’t. He is in me. I am in him. There are no lines. It’s us. Together.

I meet his eyes. I need to know that he feels it too. That he knows this thing he’s planting inside me is big enough to move my soul.

His lips ghost across mine. “Yeah. I’m—there too. Uh. God.” He rolls his hips, pulling out a fraction before burrowing inward again. It primes me, and I move, letting him in and out of me once.

I do it again and again, and I mewl into his neck. He’s scratching me in the deepest, most perfect place. I want more—more—infinitely more.

I pump my hips up and down, the way it feels good for me. I hope it feels good for him, too, because my orgasm is coming, gathering, rising. It’s more whole than before, not just up my spine but down my bones, pulsing, beating farther, higher with each thrust.

I detonate around him, pushing onto him, absorbing him into me. My body clutching him, as though needing to drink from him the way my heart needs to feed from him.

He groans beneath me and his every muscle seizes. Then he slams his hips upward, driving into me with sharp orgasmic bursts, beyond restraint. He unleashes everything I know he’s been withholding. And I’m ready. I hold him, sucking in all he has to give me: his goodness, his badness, his compassion, his greed. I want everything that is him because I want him to be mine.

He is bad, the bad I want him to be, pouring it inside of me.

He binds me to him, one arm enfolding my hips, the other my ribs. Kissing my shoulder, his breathing rapid, but in synch with mine.

“Love you,” he groans, the tones spiraling through my ear.

My lips on his shoulder, I groan back, “Love you.”

“Did you come?” he teases. He knows I did.

“Uh-huh.” I snuggle into his neck. It’s all of him against me, around me, in me. I love him. He’s touching me everywhere he can be touching me.

And I don’t want to lose him. Even though I will soon.

“First time having sex with an orgasm.” He nips my lip and grins cheekily.

I nip back at him. “Yes.”

He rolls with me to the side. Kissing me in fervent bliss. He slips out of me as we move, and I whimper into his mouth.

“I don’t want you to leave me.” I wiggle my hips into him. “I want you to stay inside me.”

“Give me a minute and we’ll do it again.”