by S. E. Jakes
I wasn’t sure why I was still friends with the asshole.
Finally, I went home to an empty house, still flying. I stripped and got into bed, still smelling like grease and car exhaust, and fuck it, I was fooling myself if I thought I could sleep. Especially when my sheets, my pillow, my blankets, they all smelled like Ryker. I turned on my side, buried my head into the pillow.
Last night with Ryker had been intense. The bleed off of adrenaline from the bar fight I’d started—started in the first place because I was so fucking jumpy and it was either fight or steal a car—hadn’t calmed me like it normally did. Not the way it had before Ryker came into my life and my bed. So I’d still been clawing at the walls when he’d shown.
As if he’d known (and really, how the fuck could he?), he’d flipped me over onto my belly. Grabbed my hands behind my back. Slapped my ass hard enough for me to struggle . . . and hard enough to realize I really fucking liked it. Then he’d driven into me and there was nothing I could do but take it.
As usual, there’d barely been any talk, just a complete fuck-me-hard fantasy that’d left me wrung out and happy. I could still feel his hands where they’d smacked my ass, even though he hadn’t left marks.
Well, he had, but they’d faded by the time I woke.
Another vision flashed in front of me—that cherry-red Ferrari, me helpless and spread across the hood, and Ryker fucking the hell out of me. Holding my hips as he filled me. Like he was claiming me, punishing me . . . for stealing, for racing, for talking to the other guys while he was there.
With the sheet pushed to the side, I grabbed the headboard with one hand, jerked my cock with the other, pretending it was Ryker’s hand, Ryker’s mouth. I imagined he was here, watching me. I wanted that, wanted him to know I was fucking myself thinking about him.
Would he care?
Jesus, way to ruin it, Sean. Whether he cared or not wasn’t the point. Would he watch? Tell me what to do? Order me around? Or just put me into the positions he wanted?
Being tossed around like a rag doll wasn’t something I’d been used to at all—and I’d be damned if I ever came out and admitted with words that I liked it with him. But I guess my acquiescing said it all. And more.
Still, tonight I’d reclaimed a part of my life I’d missed and mourned. My body still buzzed like a livewire of electricity ran through me. I couldn’t stay still, couldn’t be satisfied by my own hand, but I’d have to try.
“God, you’re so fucked up,” I muttered to myself, and then Ryker’s big hands were pressing my shoulders to the mattress.
“So get yourself unfucked,” Ryker told me, forcing my hand away from my cock as his body weight pinned me, his blue jean–clad cock rubbing mine, both of us hard.
I bucked up, determined to say no this time. Except I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why I wanted to, or if that no was for something else. And suddenly, the fight wasn’t about stopping him. Not at all. The fight was me stopping myself . . . me getting out of my own goddamned way.
Even though it was pitch-black, I could feel Ryker watching me. Reading my goddamned mind like he was so good at doing when we were fucking. He waited there calmly, and I could still feel his hands pinning me, but he wasn’t attempting to do anything else. “Waiting for you to tell me to go.”
But I hadn’t. And I wouldn’t. I just couldn’t vocalize anything when he was here, like I was afraid talking would somehow break the spell, make him realize how fucked up I really was.
Ryker was silent for several more seconds, then asked, “Were you thinking about me tonight?”
Whether he meant just now or at the race, I could honestly murmur, “Yeah.” Because it was dark. Because I could convince myself that this was still my dream, my fantasy, and nowhere near my reality. Maybe I had fallen asleep and this wasn’t really happening. Either way, I kept my eyes closed to keep reality far, far away.
“Tell me,” Ryker demanded.
I couldn’t admit that I’d been out stealing and racing cars—although, hell, maybe he already knew. “I was thinking about last night. And I was thinking about you fucking me on the hood of a car.”
“What kind of car?”
“Does that make a difference?”
“I don’t know—does it?”
Hell yeah, it did. “A Ferrari. Bright red. I was on my back, and you were standing . . .”
I stopped because, fuck, I’d said enough.
“Keep going, Sean. Tell me everything.”
Sean. He’d called me Sean from the very first night. He was the only one in forever who didn’t call me Rush, and I wanted that to mean something. It spilled out in one long, breathless story. “You were at the race, keeping an eye on me, and afterwards, you came over, pushed me down on the hood, told me to strip. I didn’t want to, because everyone’s watching. But you don’t care. And I’m naked and you’re still dressed. You only pull down your zipper, and you fuck me on the car, holding me down.”
“You were jerking off thinking about that,” he said after a long beat, his eyes dark with arousal, and dammit, how long had he been here? I flushed thinking about that, and only his hand giving my balls a tight squeeze stopped me from coming immediately.
“Yes,” I managed.
“You’d let me fuck you in front of all those guys?”
“Yeah. No. I mean . . . for this . . . yes.” Christ, I couldn’t make him understand, not when I was this full of pent-up need.
But Ryker’s voice growled through the dark, “No more fantasies without me.”
And I almost came right then. Because holy fuck.
He pushed off me then, and I was about to protest—and yeah, I got the irony in that—but he moved back so he was standing at the foot of the bed. And then he yanked me down toward him, my body sliding along the sheets.
He put my calves over his shoulders. Stuck a pillow under my ass to make it the right height, and I swallowed hard when he told me, “Taking you for a ride.”
Jesus. My cock leaked, my breath hitched, my muscles flooded with adrenaline I thought long spent. I could let everything else fade away, until I was on the hood of the Ferrari, with Ryker between my legs and the throb of my heartbeat in my ears.
I swear I heard the men around us murmuring. I heard Ryker’s zipper go down. I heard the snap of a condom, the click of the lube bottle’s cap, and then he was sliding a finger inside of me, and then a second and third to open me.
I was still sore from last night—but the burn was that hissingly good kind of pain I craved. I was a goddamned ticking time bomb. Shaking. Sweating. In the dark, he reached out and tweaked my nipples hard, and I arched into the pinch, wanting more. He gave it, the slow burn on my nipples and my ass, firing me up.
He rubbed his cheek, rough with stubble, against my calf before biting my skin, then licking the tender spot as he held me tightly in place against him. He didn’t move, his cock nestled and pulsing against my ass crack like a car revving at the starting line.
Impatiently, I thrust my hips, using my hands to leverage myself . . . and that’s when Ryker grabbed my arms and said, “Leave them over your head. I’ll chain you down if I have to.”
And as much as that intrigued me, there was no way I could handle it. So the threat worked, in that I put my hands overhead, grasping the sheet while he impaled me on his cock, stretching me with a steady push that forced a moaned “Fuck,” out of me as a shudder rippled through my body like an earthquake’s aftershocks.
“Still so tight,” Ryker murmured.
My hips surged up and pushed against him, as if I could force him any deeper. “Fuck, Ryker, I need this.”
Ryker stared at me in the dark, and for the first time since the first time, I realized that he goddamned knew that. And what the hell did that mean?
What did I want it to mean?
Was he trying to break me? If that was the goal, well hell, he’d achieved it the first night when I’d begged him, over and over, to let me come. Even as he was letting me co
me. That’s how crazily incoherently addicting he was for me.
“Keep fighting,” he told me now. “See where that gets you,” and I hadn’t realized I’d been slowly writhing against him, too full with him, my heart and body racing, a fine sheen of sweat covering my entire body. All I needed to do was let go and let my body take it all in.
No reason to fight the ride of my life.
When I stopped moving, I was all too aware of the rise and fall of my chest. After a beat, Ryker pulled back so his cock was almost completely out of me. “And Sean?”
I managed a “yes,” my voice strangled.
“Fuck the Ferrari. That’s too tame a car for you. Too smooth. You need a rougher ride. Always have.”
And then his strong arms wound around my thighs as he simultaneously yanked me to him and slammed against me with a swiftness that jolted me. And from there, he didn’t let up. It was bone-grinding, nonstop, out-of-control, could-barely-keep-my-hands-on-the-wheel sex. I was fucking flying as he rode me, trapping me, my calves on his shoulders, my thighs flush with his chest, my heartbeat in my cock.
My whole body ached and hummed, and I was getting loud. I was never sure exactly what I yelled out during sex with Ryker, but it definitely spurred him on.
And I was helpless against him, impaled on him, my ass filled and my gland singing every time he hit it. He held my hips still so the only motion was his, the only friction, my ass on the blanket, and I groaned when he sped up.
The guy strummed every fucking nerve of mine without trying, like he was a goddamned to-be-feared ’68 Dodge Charger R/T with its big engine rumbling through me, fucking me smoothly, the same way it would the streets. I was his gearshift, steering column, and he infused me with power I didn’t think I had.
There were no brakes. I didn’t fucking need them.
He was everything I could want. Hell, everything I didn’t know I’d wanted. And when that threatened to spill from me, I wound my hands into my hair, tugged hard, slid my hand down and bit the edge of my palm because fuck . . . I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Not tonight. Not when he fucking knew . . . and he knew too goddamned much. I might’ve just decided that, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need to be rational when a hot, tattooed biker was breaking in to my place and fucking me senseless.
Two nights in a row.
I was reduced to sensation, to the pounding of Ryker’s cock against my gland. He was a massive shadow, his arms wrapped around my thighs, pulling me hard against him even as his hips pistoned. I was overheated—on complete, searing overload.
For a brief second, it was obvious that he almost lost control too. His hips stuttered, a groan escaped his throat, and it was more than I’d ever remembered pulling from him. So I clamped down harder on his cock, wanting to make him come first.
He retaliated by fucking me blind, deaf, and dumb, so much so that I became the poster child for the expression rode hard and put away wet, my orgasm ripping from me without anything touching my cock, the cum spurting in hard, hot jets along my stomach and chest. I swore I tumbled into a second one, that’s how goddamned drawn out it was, and at some point, I reached over to grab his arms. They still held my thighs in a viselike grip, but the second I touched him, he went over the edge, pulsing inside of me. He closed his eyes and emptied with a series of short, hard thrusts, and by that time, my entire body was one big tremble of overworked muscles.
I’d always been able to keep my cool under pressure, never lost it, not when the cops were chasing me, or someone was trying to kill me in juvie. Nothing shook me, not until I got to Iraq—and even then, I could contain it to just the Army.
But Ryker completely knocked me down, scooped me up, and decided I was his. Of course, I’d always assumed that was only after I decided I wanted him. That first night, I wasn’t going to stop until he was mine. He was my conquest, my Kryptonite, my power source, all rolled into one.
Tonight I finally realized that I might’ve been the one in his goddamned crosshairs the whole time.
dmund was satisfied enough with the job to lay off Noah, but I didn’t kid myself that it was the end of the story. For now, though, I’d keep working at the garage with Noah to keep an eye on both of them.
The rest of the week was a typical one—too much work to possibly fit in, and still, somehow I managed to get it done by Friday afternoon. Being a perfectionist worked in my favor sometimes, even though a big part of it was keeping myself too busy to notice the soreness of my body and Ryker’s absence. The fact was, I hated falling behind, and some of Edmund’s clients were bitchy enough to make my life hell. Never mind that most of them didn’t drive their damned cars, but stuck them in their marble-floored garages, taking them out for a spin every once in a while and then bitching when they stalled out.
In order for anything that pretty to run right, you had to let her run, often and hard and well. I guess the same could be said of me too. I didn’t like to be penned in, so I felt for the damned cars. When they were in my possession, I made sure to spend some quality time with them out on the road. Most of their owners wouldn’t notice the odometer change, but I knew how to turn back time anyway.
Today’s ride was a sweet ’84 Camaro. Totally old school. It’d been custom-made for the lead singer of some LA hair band, and judging by the undercarriage, it had seen some major accidents. But that didn’t affect her drive much, and I took her out on the highway, opened up and blasted eighties music to egg her on.
It was worth it. My body was still vibrating from the ride when I pulled into the nearly deserted garage to find Noah waiting for me. Smirking.
“I saved your ass from Edmund,” he informed me when I turned the music down.
“Edmund knows what I do.” I remained in the Camaro, the leather smell enveloping me. “She went a hundred and ten on the open road without losing any torque.”
“I’ll bet.” Noah was as into cars as I was. It was one of the things that’d drawn us together from the start, even though he liked to steal more than vehicles, while I remained a purist.
Noah was also tense as hell.
“What’s going on?”
“He’s got another job for me.”
“Did you try to get out of it?”
Noah hesitated, enough for me to know that he hadn’t, not at all.
“Come on, man . . . what the hell’s going on with you?”
“Same thing that’s going on with you.” His words were clipped. Tense. “You got right back into it. You’re more like yourself this week than you’ve been in forever.”
“Maybe that’s true, but it’s not juvenile shit anymore, and I’m not ending up like my dad.”
“You seriously don’t think we should spend the rest of our lives working on cars for rich people who never drive them, never mind appreciate them?”
“Who the hell said anything about the rest of our lives? We’re twenty-four years old.”
“And we’re stuck.”
“We just got out of the Army. It takes time to adjust.”
“I don’t want to readjust,” he said firmly. “I want what we had before.” I stared down the guy who’d been my friend since we’d been fourteen, and he gave as good as he got. “I’m sorry, Rush, but I’m not going to lie to you. I know you tried to help me get out—and you did. I just didn’t realize I didn’t want out.”
“Fuck.” I stared straight ahead out the windshield to the big Edmund’s sign. “I was always a free agent. I’m not working for anyone.”
Noah nodded. “I get that. But it’s a different game today.”
“And I’m not in it,” I told him.
And I meant it.
Until Noah went missing, and I got a call that I needed to finish his job if I ever wanted to see my friend again.
he job was a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454. 360 horsepower. 500 ft-lb of torque. Under normal circumstances, I’d be jerking off thinking about all that power and all that goddamned torque slamming my body into the seat.
Knowing that Noah’s life was possibly in danger put a brutal stop to that.
Of course, Edmund merely insinuated the danger by telling me he’d been trying to reach Noah all day with no luck at all, that Noah was supposed to be doing a job for him tonight, and since he was now suddenly unavailable, someone needed to step in. It was all very friendly-like. If I was imagining Edmund’s goons from the docks holding Noah until I got the job, Edmund would no doubt tell me I was overreacting.
“I figured you’d want to help your friend out of a jam, whatever that may be. I really hope nothing’s happened to him—that would be truly terrible.” Edmund managed to sound as slick on the phone as he did in person.
I closed my eyes as I listened to Edmund outline the whens and wheres of the job. Normally, it was parked in a six-car garage in a private house in a gated community. Tonight, the owner was taking her out, and I’d find her, valet-parked in a lot behind a wedding hall. I’d grab her and deliver her to the docks, to the same men Noah and I had delivered the Ferrari to.
“According to Noah, it should be a piece of cake,” Edmund told me, and I pictured him sweating through his expensive suit.
“Then let Noah do it,” I growled, mainly because I wanted to hear the threat from him, not this thinly veiled shit.
Instead, Edmund told me in his most reasonable tone, “Rush, I’d hate to have to call over to the police station and report what you’ve been doing. You and Noah could go back to jail.”
“And you’d be reporting yourself,” I pointed out, although really, it was my word against his. Thief against thief. We’d both go down.
“Maybe. But I’m sure that drag racing isn’t part of your parole.”
“I’m not on parole,” I said through gritted teeth.
“And I’ve got video of you racing a stolen car.” Edmund’s smugness made me cold.
“I’m assuming that when I give you the car, I’ll get the tape?” And Noah.