by Alice Ward
She reached for the string of my gym shorts and started to delve a hand in the waistband. I nudged her away. “Emma…”
The smile dissolved again. “Don’t Emma me!”
She pushed at me and tried to get away when I reached out. I grabbed her, holding her there. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You know you have your first race this weekend? The Daytona qualifier?”
“I don’t have anything!” she shouted back at me. “It’s over. I quit. I’m done. I’m going back to Arizona because I can’t take the pressure. Do you understand?”
“No,” I said calmly. I strode to my office door, locking it as she tried to escape. Then, as she protested, hammering my back and kicking me, trying to wriggle free, I lifted her up and took her to the bathroom. I opened the shower stall door, turned the water on full blast, and deposited her, clothes and all, on the tile floor.
She didn’t even complain. She just sat there, leaning against the glass enclosure, her legs out in front of her, chin to chest, watching the water go down the drain. I’d never seen another human look so forlorn. It was like all her fight and life was pouring down that drain too.
I knelt outside the shower. She wore only one flip-flop, and I reached over and unhooked the shoe from her toe before tossing it into my office with the one she’d kicked off. “Come on. Stand up. You need to sober up.”
It took a while before she obeyed me. She slowly lifted herself to her feet. Her clothes were drenched now, her white tank top doing nothing to hide her gorgeous breasts. I averted my eyes to stop my cock from getting too excited and helped pull it up and over her head. All the while, she trembled like a caught rabbit, ready to make a run for it.
I was already halfway wet, so I kicked off my running shoes and stepped inside with her, closing the shower door behind me. I unbuttoned the jean shorts and slid them down over her hips, slid her panties down too. It wasn’t until she was naked that she finally spoke. “What are you doing?”
“Taking care of you,” I said, pushing the wet, matted hair from her face. “Just let me.”
She shook her head mournfully, but it didn’t stop me. I took the shampoo and squeezed some into my palm, then began to massage it into her scalp.
I nudged her. “Turn around.”
She did as I commanded, like a rag doll. I worked the lather into her hair as she stood wavering on her feet. She didn’t say a word but did let out a small sigh which I interpreted as pleasure. Then I guided her under the spray and rinsed her hair clean.
When I was done, I took a washcloth and started to run it gently over her back, pressing in so that I massaged the muscles as I went, hoping it would help her further relax.
Without warning, she dropped her face in her hands and sobbed. “Don’t,” she begged. “Please don’t. Brody was right. I don’t deserve any of this.”
I wanted to take her right there against the wall of the shower. I could so easily take my pants down, lift her up until I entered her inch-by-inch, giving her just what she’d wanted when she came to my office. But I couldn’t do it now. Not when she was this fragile. She needed to see how special she was, how much she deserved everything.
So instead, I settled for feeling her wet skin under my fingertips. I leaned over and very gently kissed her shoulder. “You deserve to be taken care of.”
She hung her head and let me work the soapy lather into her limbs. Her body was tense, so I cast the washcloth aside and massaged the tight muscles of her neck and back. Once she stopped crying, I cut the water, took a fluffy towel and wrapped it around her. “Out you go.”
She turned back to me, a look of confusion on her face. Maybe she had been expecting me to take her right then. Because hell, all the rest of the times I’d had the opportunity, I hadn’t been able to resist. This time, it had taken all my restraint, but I’d done it.
I wanted more than just Emma’s body. I wanted all of her, the fiery woman who could level me just as easily with that smart mouth of hers as she could with her touch.
Once she was dry, she sat on the sofa in my robe, hair in the towel as I fed her mug after mug of coffee. I pretended to work on the proposal for the Shred Like a Girl campaign featuring an up-and-coming surfer from Hawaii, though most of the time, my eyes kept wandering from my laptop to Emma. An hour or two later, the color had come into her cheeks, and she looked more like her regular self.
Ten minutes after that, she heaved a big sigh. “I really wasn’t that drunk.”
I chuckled softly as I skimmed my hands over the keyboard. “Sure, you weren’t.”
She looked at me and frowned, and I could see that spirit, that fight in her, even before she opened her mouth. It was nice to have it back.
“I wasn’t,” she insisted, standing, then padding over to the window where I’d set her clothes out to dry in the sunlight.
She picked up her panties, then very demurely, so as not to give me a free show, started to slide into them, glaring at me as I watched her as if I hadn’t already seen everything underneath.
I powered off my laptop and leaned back. “You need to get into the simulator again,” I said. “What’s the farthest you’ve gone?”
She opened her mouth like she was going to say something smart. I thought it would be something to the tune of, Fuck you, I’m quitting, remember? Then she just answered, “Four hundred.”
I nodded as she turned away from me, shrugging off her robe, so all I could see was her sculpted back. “And even that was poor, Bruce said.”
She threw on her shirt and whirled around at me, and yes, the fire was back. “If you knew the answer, why’d you ask?” She pulled her hair out of her tank top and raked her hands through it angrily. “Where I come from, only little boys play games like that.”
I snapped the lid of my laptop shut and shrugged, conceding. It was after six, and the building had all but cleared out. “Want to get out of here?”
“I plan to,” she said, heading for the door as she stepped into her still-damp shorts.
“With me.”
She tapped her finger on her chin, thinking. “Let me see. With most men I know, I’d think that invitation meant a free ticket to the back seat of their truck. In Locke Cage’s mind, why do I think it means I’m gonna end up at the simulator?”
I laughed. “I actually had something else in mind.”
She came up close to the desk and laid her palms on it, leaning forward with mock interest. “Do tell, Mr. Cage.”
“We’ll have to stop at the training center first. You need workout clothes,” I said, standing and pocketing my phone.
“I’m shocked,” she said, not sounding that way.
I peeked my head out into the hallway. Laura’s office door was closed. As usual, she’d stay here late, burning the midnight oil. The rest of the hallways were empty, doors closed, offices dark. We made it outside without seeing another soul and went across to the training center and into our respective locker rooms. When I saw her again, she was wearing a bra top, workout shorts, and running shoes.
“Is this appropriate for your brand of foreplay, Mr. Cage?” she asked me with a wink.
I nodded, raking my eyes over her phenomenal body. The past few weeks had definitely toned her, though she hadn’t needed much help to begin with. Then I motioned her outside.
We went around back, to the grassy field where the course started. “Are you going to let me in on what we’re doing?” she asked.
I nodded. “Parkour.”
“Park-what?” She wrinkled her nose.
“It’s French. You’ve never heard of it?”
“Obviously. Is it some kind of kinky sex thing?” She studied one of the bars that were the first obstacle in the course.
“No. What? Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. Because I know the French. Menage. Budoir. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir.” She shrugged. “They’re all about sex.”
I laughed at how badly she’d just trashed the beautif
ul language. “Okay. No. Not this. Parkour is a discipline of movement that came from military obstacle course training. It’s about getting from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible.”
“Makes sense I never heard of it then,” she said, blushing. “The only obstacles we got out in the desert of Arizona are scrub brush and a few rattlesnakes.”
“Well, you’ll need to get around them, right? So this could come in handy. Matter of fact, I prefer an off-course parkour. Look, I’ll show you a few moves.” I led her to a wall that was about my height. “Okay. So the wall walk. You’re going to approach it like this.”
I ran to it, gaining momentum, then used one foot to scale the wall as I planted my other foot on the top of the obstacle.
“You see? Then you plant yourself, and you’re ready to move on to the next thing. The important thing is about sticking your landing.”
She was studying me carefully. When I moved aside to let her try, she easily approached the wall in a run, then climbed it, just as I’d shown her. She hoisted herself up and straddled it beside me, hardly out of breath. “Where I come from, we don’t call that parker, or whatever, boss. We just call it climbing a fucking wall.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop smiling. “Yeah? Okay, well check out this next move. To stick your landing, you really need to focus on where you’re going to land. So with each obstacle you overcome, you’re looking for your next landing spot. You got it? You have to determine whether you can make it. So I’m going to land on the other side of this wall, right in the area where the head of my shadow is right now. See that? And because it’s a pretty far distance, I’m going to land and roll.” I pushed off the wall, sticking the landing in the exact place I said I would, then easily broke into a roll, stood, and turned back to her.
She gave me a polite golf clap.
Then she went and did the exact same thing, but dammit, better and faster than me. Well, she was smaller and more flexible. Sometimes, my muscles ended up getting in the way of my speed.
She tucked her hair back into her ponytail and smiled at me. “This is easy.”
“Well,” I said, not sure she was fully grasping it. Because parkour was definitely not easy if you knew what it entailed. I thought a demonstration was in order. “Let me just show you how it’s done so you can get a feel for what it is. Okay?”
She nodded and motioned to me that the floor was mine. I got into ready stance and then started the obstacle course. I’d done this course a million times, so it was too easy for me, which was why I liked doing it in other places, where I didn’t know what was coming next.
I guessed I wanted to impress her because I found myself sweating, straining to go faster. I missed a rope that I’d never missed before, skinned my knee on one of the walls, and didn’t stick a landing, ending up barreling my shoulder into the metal bar on the next obstacle. But I still made good time. When I returned, adrenaline pumping through my veins, she was sitting on that wall, clapping for me.
“I get it,” she said, hopping down from the ledge. “What surprised me was that you ran that fast without anything chasing you.”
“You want to try?”
She nodded, rubbing her hands together, and got into ready stance at the starting line.
I thought this would be good. The obstacles took a while to master, so I thought I could follow her around and help her with anything that was too tricky. If nothing else, it would give me the chance to get my hands on her. But when I said, “Ready, set, go,” she tore off and was over the first obstacle, then the second before I even had a chance to jog along beside her.
She was like a fucking jackrabbit. Why did she drive cars again? She could’ve done hurdles in the Olympics.
When she got to the high wall that was probably about twenty feet tall and had nothing but a thick rope down the center, I thought she’d need some guidance. But nope. She just held the rope and walked up the side of the wall, easy as if she was walking down the street. I followed lamely behind her, feeling as useless as a third wheel.
She didn’t quite stick the landing, but it didn’t matter. She just rolled and kept on going. When she crossed the finish line, I watched her, stunned. She turned to me and smiled, arms up, triumphant.
“Not bad for your first time,” I muttered.
“What, are you kidding me? I killed you.”
I was hoping she hadn’t noticed that.
“We should go head-to-head. Want to?” she asked, beaming and still jogging around like Rocky after a winning fight, unable to stand still.
I rubbed the back of my neck, not sure if my ego could take the blow. “You know. I think I’m ready to call it a night. Besides, I want you at the speedway tomorrow morning, then the simulator the next day. You’re doing the five hundred in the simulator in case you qualify.”
If there was anything that could stop her gloating, I knew that was it.
She simply stuck out her chin. “What’s this ‘in case?’ You know I’ll qualify. I’ll kill it. Can’t wait to get out on the track.”
That was what I liked to hear.
We gathered up our gear and went to my Porsche, which was the only car in the parking lot besides Laura’s Jeep Wrangler. When I opened the door for her, she hesitated. “I can just walk. My apartment’s right over there.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Get in the car.”
She did, studying my Porsche with great interest. “So, you could’ve fooled me after all this time. You do like fast cars after all, Mr. Cage?”
“I happen to love cars,” I told her as she slid in, admiring the leather seats and the interior. “I have great admiration for their design.”
“Oh, you just don’t care much for their drivers?”
I grinned as I slid into the driver’s seat. “I’m coming around.”
We sped off closer to the beach, to her apartment. It was hot in the cabin despite the air conditioning, and I was filled with those exercise endorphins despite having my ass kicked all over the course. There was no doubt that I wanted her. I couldn’t help thinking about what it was like to be buried inside her, feeling her body alive atop mine.
When we got to her apartment complex, I walked her inside, then deposited her at her front door. She lingered there, and I was so close to throwing all restraint to the wind, taking her to that big king bed.
I blew out a breath. “Six tomorrow. Okay?”
“Yes, boss,” she said with a singsongy lilt. “I’ll be there.”
I headed down to the car, and when I drove home, my cock was pushing against the front of my pants, screaming for release like it never had before.
Drumming my hands on the steering wheel, I thought of her standing naked in my shower, the water running over her body. When I got to the apartment, I was full of so much regret, I had to physically restrain myself from running back to her. But I wouldn’t. Couldn’t. I reminded myself over and over again that this was for the best.
In my empty apartment, I flicked on the lights and sighed. Though all my furnishings were white and monochromatic, with expansive windows overlooking the ocean, the place had never looked so cold and dark.
I wanted Emma there. I wanted her on my bed, naked and ready for me. And not just to make love to. I wanted to talk to her, laugh with her. I wanted her to look at me with those big brown eyes as we talked about the future and…
Future? What the hell was I thinking?
I stripped down and stepped into the shower, letting the showerheads hit my muscles, washing the sweet soapy scent of her away. But even when the scent of her was gone, I could still picture her perfectly in my head. I thought of her, naked and spreading her legs for me on the hood of her car. Damn, that mental image was sweet. She arched her back, pointing those nipples to the sky, beckoning me forward. I leaned against the shower wall, feeling the water massage all the places I wanted Emma to be and thought of her running her tongue down my shaft.
Taking my cock, I began to stroke, closing m
y eyes, imagining it was in her hands.
I hadn’t jerked off in years before Emma, and now, here I was doing it on a regular basis. Desperate for release because of her. I imagined her snaking her body down the hood of the race car, sucking me good and hard as she lay on the bumper, like she couldn’t get enough. I imagined her giving me that sexy, defiant look through her thick eyelashes as she took me into her mouth. Before I could come, she’d lean back, pulling me forward, inviting me in with her spread legs. I’d enter her, inch by inch as the car motor hummed beneath us, hot and loud and alive.
I came so fiercely that my knees buckled, and I had to hold on to the tiled wall for support.
Then I leaned into the spray of the water and thought about how she’d look on my bed.
I wanted her more than ever now.
And I knew I’d just driven into very dangerous territory.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Emma
The following morning, I woke up bright and early, ready to get to the track for my first drive on the notorious Daytona International Speedway.
Bees swarmed in my stomach as I pulled on my bra top, gym shorts, and a fire suit that had been exclusively made for me. It was sleek and black and looked cool, but I hoped I wasn’t just a poser. Here I was, for the first time, about to drive in the greatest racing building in the world. I needed to calm myself down. This was just a practice round. The real thing wouldn’t be until Sunday, and even that was just a qualifier for the show, the Daytona 500.
The car was waiting outside to pick me up. As the enormous speedway came into view, though, nerves started to get the best of me again. For so long, it’d been a dream of mine to get to race at a speedway as big as Daytona. I only hoped that it wouldn’t swallow me up. Something about driving in a place like that made things seem bigger than they actually were, wins and mistakes.
But it wasn’t just that.
I hadn’t heard at all from Brody since that day on the beach.
Since I got my phone, I’d gotten used to texting him regularly, letting him know where I’d be. Though I knew he was jealous of all the attention I was getting, when I wasn’t being interviewed by reporters or doing all the things surrounding the sponsorship, we actually had a semi-normal relationship. He’d crashed in my apartment a couple days a week after going out with Tom and Jonesy, and I’d bugged him about how much a slob he was when he didn’t fix up the pullout couch. When the racing didn’t intrude, it was just like old times.