by Alice Ward
He didn’t stop. “What if I took down your pants right here and thrust my tongue deep inside you, Emma?”
God, if anything could distract me, that was it. I dropped my hands for a second, but still managed to block his next jab, but with barely enough time.
He knew it was working because he persisted. “Focus, Emma,” he said, even as my concentration wavered.
The sun was setting behind the buildings of Daytona, its orange rays painting a glow on his sweat-covered limbs, making them look good enough to lick. The endorphins had definitely done their thing, leaving me not only energized but also… extremely horny. I was wet from the second he mentioned his magic tongue on my body.
“Mmm, I could just imagine sucking your clit into my mouth, Emma. Right here, on the beach. You’re so fucking wet and perfect and—”
Yes, yes, yes, that was what I wanted. It had been a long day, and all I could think of now was getting closer to him. I let my guard down for one second, but it was enough for him to sweep my legs. He did it so easily that I toppled backward, landing on the soft sand with all the air knocked out of me.
He crawled atop me, and as I poised to wrestle him, grabbed my wrists and held them over my head. “You’re so incredible, Emma,” he whispered, even as I fought him.
I wasn’t sure why I was fighting. I wanted it, and everything he’d said in his taunts. I knew it wasn’t supposed to be, and maybe it could get us in trouble, but I didn’t care. I was sick of living up to other’s expectations of me. I wanted him, now.
I surrendered as he lowered his mouth to mine.
When he broke the kiss, and his mouth trailed to my jaw, I whispered, “You’ve won this round. It’s clear my reaction time isn’t good enough. I think you need to come back to my apartment and teach me more.”
He nodded and took my hand, lifting me to standing. “Are you sure about this?”
“More than ever,” I told him, feeling brazen.
He pressed kisses into my hairline, then found my mouth in the darkness and kissed me deeply. Nothing in my life had ever felt this perfect, and I couldn’t imagine ever feeling this way again. I whispered, “Let’s go.”
I led him back to my apartment. We didn’t talk the whole time. Mostly, we held hands, caressing, touching, holding and kissing each other. When we got inside, I pulled off my bra top as he was closing the door. I grinned at his expression. “I’m taking a shower. I’m all sweaty and sandy. Care to join me?”
He nodded. “Is this a trick question?”
“It may be. I may test your reaction time.” I guided him into the bathroom, toward the bench in the enormous walk-in shower. “Sit.” He did, clothes and all. It made me grin.
I turned on the faucet, and warm water sprayed down on me. Tilting my head up, I let it pour over me, running my hands through my hair, rinsing the sand from it. Then, I turned my back to him, to give him a look at my ass. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw that he was rapt, watching the water cascade over my naked body. I smiled. “You like?”
He groaned. “There are no words for you. You’re gorgeous, Emma.”
I’d never felt so sexy. I took the soap and started to lather myself up in a slow motion that made his tongue hang from his open mouth. He let out breath after tortured breath, just enjoying the view. And I could tell by the way his cock tented his gym shorts that he was definitely enjoying it.
“Locke…” I said as I ran the soap over my breasts, lathering them up.
“Hmm…” His voice sounded faraway as he focused intently on my body.
“Think fast,” I shouted, and I tossed the soap at him without warning.
It bounced off his chest. He only seemed to notice it when it slid into his lap. He narrowed his eyes at me, and I burst out laughing.
Before he could react, I snaked my hands behind his back and pulled him off the seat, toward me, pressing every inch of myself against him. My nipples rubbed against his chest, but it didn’t feel like enough. He wrapped me in his arms for a moment, and we just let the warm water soak our bodies. It felt so amazing, having him so close to me.
But it wasn’t enough. I wanted more. He leaned in and nibbled on my ear. “It’s crazy how much I want you, Emma. I don’t even understand it.”
I lifted the hem of his tech shirt and yanked it over his head. “Then take me. Unless I take you first.”
A suspicious smile dawned on his face.
Emboldened, I quickly reached down and tugged him out of his gym shorts. His cock was ready, hard and pointing straight at me. I wanted to make him feel good. He deserved that much. I fell to my knees, took his hard cock in my hand, and began to lick and suckle his balls.
“Oh, fuck,” he breathed. “Emma. Shit.”
I looked up. He was grasping the showerhead in a death grip, his chest rising and falling in short, uneven bursts. His eyes were closed, his face a tight mask of ecstasy… caused by me.
I’d done this.
I had this power over him.
The power to bring this strong man to his knees.
The thought was humbling, and tenderness washed over me in waves.
I licked him slower now, relishing this moment. I’d never felt more powerfully feminine before. I loved it.
And I wanted more.
He growled low in his chest as I took the thick head of his cock into my mouth, feeding it into my throat, slowly at first, then working my way toward the base. I fisted the inches I couldn’t take and pumped him just slightly in and out of my mouth, increasing the intensity and speed, the suction.
Forcing my throat to relax even more, I took him all the way, feeling the tip of his cock scrape the back of my throat, and grabbed his ass, urging more of him into me. I wanted all of him. I wanted everything.
His hands moved to my hair where he wrapped the strands in his fists. He began to pulse, feeding himself fully to me. I took what he gave me, greedy for more. I’d never enjoyed oral sex, but I was enjoying it now.
He thickened in my mouth, and his movements became more urgent. I held on to his ass, wanting this too. But Locke had other ideas. He stepped back, his cock leaving my mouth with a naughty pop. When I started to protest, he pulled me up by the hair.
“Come here.”
He kissed me hard, then whirled me around, planting me with both palms against the shower wall. Then he was inside me, splitting me open in one smooth thrust.
With one hand on my breast, the other moved down to my clit, and electricity fired through me as it circled the sensitive bundle of nerves, his teeth nipping my ear and neck, adding to the overwhelming sensations.
“Locke… I…”
“I know, baby. I know.”
He pinched my nipple roughly between his fingers, adding pain to the mix, and I tipped over the edge, my body spasming, tightening, soaring into the place I’d only known with this man.
He followed me, his movements wild, his breath hot against my hair. “God, Emma…”
I leaned back against him, feeling him shudder his release into me. “I know, baby. I know.”
Most people would call me naive, and I probably was. I was a track rat, a dirty little tomboy used to grease jockeys and rough talk.
All this was new, and Locke Cage could be the best actor in the world, making me think I was special… but I knew that wasn’t just an act. We were special. What we did with each other was special.
I knew it. And I believed with everything in my heart that he knew it too.
In the aftermath, even as we still trembled and held each other under the spray of water, I felt our lives melting more completely into each other.
Yes, our relationship was complicated.
Yes, we should have stayed away from each other.
Yes, we should have focused on the race, the business at hand.
Yes… I was overthinking instead of just enjoying.
But I needed to overthink because my entire future was in this man’s hands.
I looked up at him
and relaxed as he gazed down at me. I might be a fool, but I didn’t think that a man who looked at a woman the way he was looking at me now would be willing to hurt her.
He shampooed my hair, something I was quickly becoming addicted to, and I soaped up his chest and back as his fingers moved against my scalp.
“Stay with me tonight.”
He paused, his entire body stiffening, and I immediately regretted the hasty offer.
“I-I mean,” I backtracked, “if you want to. It’s okay if—”
His mouth was on mine, his fingers still in my hair. When shampoo came dangerously close to my eye, I pulled away.
“I’ve never spent the night with a woman before,” he admitted. “But I’ll stay. I want to stay.”
Something strange and unfamiliar loosened in my chest as he lowered his mouth to mine again.
After the shower, I ordered pizza, and he actually ate a few pieces.
He groaned. “God, that’s good.”
I smiled and wiped sauce from his chin.
Maybe I wasn’t the only one who was changing.
Maybe whatever was happening between us was changing us both.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Locke
I woke the following morning, the day of the Can-Am qualifier, feeling satisfied in a way I hadn’t in years. When I stretched, though I was in an unfamiliar bed, it struck me immediately that I hadn’t felt this good for a long time. Gradually, pieces of the night before came back to me, some that I thought must have been a dream. But when I opened my eyes and saw Emma in my arms, her wild curls tickling my nose, I knew it was all real, and that she was the reason I was feeling so fucking phenomenal.
Yes, this was shaky ground. But so what? Even if it was, I had to admit, the ride was pretty amazing.
I looked around her bedroom. We’d given her an allowance to decorate it in any way she pleased, but Emma hadn’t done a thing. She struck me as more no-nonsense, not the type for frills. In fact, when I looked at the desk across the way, with her open suitcase on the top, I realized that she hadn’t even unpacked. She’d just been living out of her suitcase as if she expected we’d tell her this was a mistake and send her packing.
I eased away from her, then swung my legs over the edge of the bed and pulled on my boxer briefs. Then I padded to the closet and peeked inside. Sure enough, it was empty.
Emma, Emma, Emma. You told the reporters you were going to kick ass. Do you actually believe it? Or are you all talk?
I looked at her, sleeping soundly in the center of the bed, the naked contours of her body curved around a pillow. She was fan-fucking-tastically gorgeous. If she’d been nervous about the race today, she didn’t look it now. Maybe I’d fucked the worry out of her. She might have talked a good game, but I got the feeling I was one of the few who saw that other side of her. The one that was scared to death about all this. As close as she was to them, Brody and her family didn’t know. Maybe I was the only one who knew.
I moved quietly out of the bedroom, closing the door gently so as not to wake her up, and went to the great room. I hadn’t noticed it last night as I’d had better things on my mind, but sure enough, she hadn’t personalized her living space at all. It looked like a hotel room — sparse and clinical. Yes, she’d spent much of her time training, but it was showroom quality as if no one had ever lived here at all.
I padded into the kitchen and opened up her fridge, wondering if I’d find that empty too. But no, it was filled with the basics; milk, cheese, eggs, and the produce drawer was filled with vegetables. I pulled out the eggs and milk and got to work, making breakfast in the unfamiliar kitchen.
When she came out, I was just setting the table. She was wearing an UnCaged Fitness tech shirt, and her hair was a mess. She rubbed her bleary eyes. “Are you making pretty-boy food?”
I stirred the eggs, grinning over at her. “Who you calling pretty-boy?”
She shrugged and peered into the pan. “Wow, I’m shocked. Eggs, with their yolks and everything.”
“Well, I’m not going to deny you your protein,” I told her. “It’s important.”
She sniffed the air. “No bacon?”
“That’s pushing it.”
She opened the fridge and pulled out a sleeve of bacon, which she threw on the counter. “Can’t have eggs without bacon. It’s sacrilegious.”
“I made a fruit salad.”
“Okay. But you still need bacon,” she insisted, starting up another burner. “It’s not called fruit salad and eggs. It’s called bacon and eggs. Like peanut butter and jelly. Come on, dude.”
“I don’t like bacon,” I told her flatly.
“Well, I do, and I always have bacon and eggs before a big race. It makes me go faster.”
“Oh, yeah?’
She nodded. I stared at the chunks of it as she unrolled the package. She must have noticed because she took a piece out and dangled it in front of me. The smell alone had my mouth watering. “Yum,” she taunted. “You know you want it.”
“I don’t.” I gave her a tight-lipped smile. “And you shouldn’t want it either. You got that big race this afternoon.”
“Whatever. It’s five hours from now. And like I said, I always have it before a big race. It’s kind of a thing.” She let out a huff and threw it on the pan. “How can you not like bacon? Burgers? Grease?” She shook her head, disappointed in me. “Really, the first time I met you, when you ordered fish and vegetables, I thought you had a major stick up your butt. Don’t you ever want to just live a little?”
My eyes drifted to the bacon, which had begun to sizzle slightly in the pan. Bacon had been my go-to. That and packaged treats from Hostess. McDonald’s burgers. French fries. All of it. I felt a slight pang of unease. “I live just fine without bacon.”
She pouted and let the sizzling strips cook.
“So bacon and eggs… where did this race day superstition come from?”
She shrugged. “But believe me, it’s one of like… a hundred.”
“A hundred? Like what?”
“Some of them are pretty goofy. I have to sit in the car when the time on the dash is an even number. I have to walk in and out of the garage exactly five times before I can suit up. I need to chew Doublemint gum before the race.” She smiled, as I wondered if I’d ever seen her doing any of these things. No, the only race I’d seen her at was the one at the Volunteer Speedway, and I’d only seen her after the race. Then she added, “And I always wear my underwear inside out.”
I stared at her. “Seriously?”
She nodded. “All drivers have them.” She was blushing. “What? Don’t look at me like that. I swear, it’s totally normal.”
“Oh. Yeah. It sounds completely sane.”
She punched my arm.
When the bacon was done, I felt like I’d gained ten pounds on the smell alone. She brought it to the table where I’d set the rest of the meal and sat next to me. She smiled and set a piece of it on my plate. “One piece ain’t gonna kill you.”
I studied it like it was infected. The trouble was, I had no self-control. One piece would become two, and then suddenly, I’d have polished off a whole package.
But she was studying me so closely, that I felt compelled. I broke a piece off with my fork, pushed it into my mouth, and chewed.
At first, my taste buds rebelled. They knew it was something foreign, something that wasn’t going to do my body any favors. But by the time I swallowed, they’d embraced it, and wanted me to go in for another bite.
Dammit. Bacon. Could there ever be anything more sublime?
“It’s good,” I said, which was a massive understatement.
“You act like you’ve never had it before,” she said as she dug into her eggs.
“Not since I was in high school.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You gotta get out more. Why?”
I took another bite of my bacon and shrugged. Was I really going to tell her this? I’d never told another soul. T
he only person who was still in my life who knew what I’d been when I was a teenager was Laura. I lived in constant fear that some news program would do a retrospective of my life and learn what a chubby nobody I’d been. It was best left in the past.
But Emma had let me in on her own secret fears. I felt like it was only fair to tell her this.
“I was an overweight kid,” I said.
She studied me, puzzled. “What?” Then she moved the eggs across her plate. “So? Lots of kids have baby fat.”
“Trust me, this wasn’t just baby fat,” I told her, finishing the bacon. “My mother was the type of woman who thought the way to our hearts was through our stomachs. She believed in feeding colds. She thought a Dairy Queen Blizzard was a great reward for whenever we got good report cards, and our pantry was always stocked with Oreos. By the time I was twelve, I weighed over three hundred pounds. Laura was a little pudgy too, though nothing like me. Carrying extra weight runs in our family.”
She blinked as she shoveled the eggs into her mouth. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Believe me, I was the exact opposite of a pretty-boy.”
She let out a gasp of disbelief. “I don’t believe it.”
“Don’t make me show you the picture.”
“Picture? I need to see the picture.”
Like hell. I wouldn’t show anyone that. Instead, I deflected.
“You’ll just have to take my word for it. I had everything going wrong with me that you can think of. Fat, glasses, freckled pale skin, a ginger. Plus I liked to hang out in front of my computer way too much, coding.” I shrugged. “I was the kid people like your brother Brody probably loved making fun of.”
“I still need to see the picture.”
“You’ll see the picture over my dead body.”
“Is that a challenge?”
I motioned her forward. “Come at me.”
“Brody didn’t make fun of people. He mostly just picked on me.” She grabbed for an extra piece of bacon. “What made you want to change?”
“I didn’t want to be bullied anymore. So I got this bodybuilding book and started lifting weights. Started cutting out the extra desserts. And then everything else just fell into place. I kept coding and developed my first fitness app when I was seventeen. At first, I just used it for myself, but then other people wanted it. I sold it a year later for twelve million dollars and used that money to start UnCaged once I got out of college.”