I’m paying attention now, and just like that, Massimo’s not my oldest rival, the guy to beat and the one I’m always chasing. He’s just a twenty-five-year-old guy, trying to find his way through the confusing foreign lanes of love and lust and friendship. He’s a man who works hard at his job, has dreams, a home, a mother and a brother, and…and me.
Me, who is difficult.
Little Tiger, he calls me. Afraid to be tamed yet yearns to be petted. Approach at the wrong moment, the wrong speed, and I’ll rip you apart. But for all the times I’ve attacked him, he keeps coming back, rattling my cage when I need to remember I am deadly, because the truth is, I’m hurt.
Like now. When he said goodbye to his friends and family and flew halfway across the world to support me in the only way he knows how: by pissing me off and letting me take it out on him because he’s strong enough to withstand it. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel my claws, though. That he doesn’t hurt. That he doesn’t love. If anything, it means he does all those things more. Selflessly.
In the darkness of the garage, I see him more clearly than I ever have. I see myself and the ways I’ve used him. The millions of ways I’ve hurt us both because I’ve been stubborn, so stubborn, and the aching truth is that I don’t want to do any of this alone. Not anymore. And I don’t want anyone else but him. I never have.
My hand cautiously moves from his deadly shoulder to the purity of his cheek, and the final gear shifts, locking into place. Right where it was always supposed to be.
As though he could feel it—the shattering of the last of my resistance—he grins, then winks. I can’t help but smile, my forehead falling against his. It’s the first bounce: when you land on your back, sliding until your feet catch and you’re up and running again.
I should have known he wouldn’t have been like the rest of the men I’ve met. That putting an ocean between us didn’t keep him away, and neither did wearing my shirt and my jacket while I stripped him bare.
Running from my fears has gotten me nowhere except alone in the dirt, and it’s past time for my guard to come down and my clothes to come off. To stay close enough to see what he’ll do when I give him all of me.
I’m scared, but I’m ready. So ready.
“You finished being difficult yet?” he asks. “I know this is a lot to ask. For you.”
A choked laugh bubbles from my chest, everything in me feeling lighter, stronger already. “Gimme a break,” I tease, leaning forward to unclasp the belt from around his wrists. “It’s taken me ten years to get here.”
Massimo clears his throat. “That is a long time.”
“Mm-hmm. Ten years of wanting you, and hating you…” The leather hits the concrete, the buckle pinging on the floor. I sit back as Massimo rolls out his shoulders, my palms cradling his jaw as his hands settle on my waist. “Ten years of trying to resist you.”
He grins. “I think you did very good at this.”
I lift a soft kiss from his lips, and then, very controlled, I lower the zipper on my jacket, letting the sleeves slide down my arms until it falls on the floor of the garage. When I grab the hem of my shirt and pull it off, taking my sports bra with it, his eyes widen, focused on the last parts of me I’ve been keeping from him.
“Every good memory I have,” I say, waiting until I’m sure I have his eyes, “every best moment in my life, you were there.”
He nods. “As it is for me.”
“But you’re also in every single one of my worst moments, and I can’t just pretend they didn’t happen.”
Massimo swallows, the fear in his eyes the same as that flowing through me. But he’s the one who said I have to be willing to risk it all, to lose, if I ever want to win again. And I trust him. He wouldn’t steer me wrong.
“So promise me, Massimo. Promise me you won’t break my heart, and you can have it.”
A breath rushes out of him that’s all the answer I need, and I kiss him deep and full. Massimo’s arms come around me, holding me to him, and I don’t want to think about fast or slow, right or wrong, enemies or contracts or complications.
I only want to melt into the sweet promise of his tongue against mine and the uncrackable protection of his hands plated on my body, refusing to let me go.
If I’m lucky, he never will.
But only if I’m lucky.
Chapter 15
Massimo Vitolo—July; Memphis, United States
Praying the hinges don’t squeak as loudly this time, I open the door to Lorina’s room and slip inside. Then I nearly collapse from death by lingerie.
I was prepared for her to be in bed—cheeks flush and hair a mess, clutching a sheet to her bare chest. I half expected her to be asleep. I was not ready for her to walk out of her closet in a navy-blue bra and panty set that crisscrosses its way down her stomach from her breasts to the bow and looks like it should come with a set of instructions.
It instantly pulls a low groan from my throat, and she stops short, her eyes wide and darting to the closed door behind me. “What?”
I can’t do more than stand here and shake my head in admiration. Screw every person who told me you’re not supposed to meet your heroes and you’re not supposed to sleep with the girl of your dreams. Fuck ’em all for saying she’d never live up to the fantasy, because she does. Every single one.
“Seriously,” she says. “What?”
I finally get it together and find my smile, then kiss my fingertips before I fling them away, trilling, “Brava.”
She laughs, giving me a cute little curtsy. “Thanks.” Then she heads toward the bathroom, finger combing her hair before she separates it into three sections and starts to braid it. My eyebrow arches, but I keep it to myself, following behind her. Christ, the back of that thing is ten times more torturous than the front.
I lean against the doorway to her connected bathroom, unable to resist picking a little bit at the strings and straps, searching for a clasp that has yet to reveal itself.
Lorina only giggles and continues braiding her hair, her eyes catching mine in the mirror. “Did my dad bust you?”
She red-flagged me midstroke this morning with the realization that we’d left her panties in the garage last night. Cut to her kicking me out of the bed while yelling at me to get dressed, me sneaking downstairs, and thanking Christ I didn’t meet her dad on my way back up to her room.
I pull her panties from my back pocket, twirling them around the hook of my fingertip. “No.”
She giggles again, and I fling them behind me without paying attention to where they land on her white carpet, somewhere between her white western furniture and under the watchful eyes of all the horse paintings in ornate frames on her long, white walls.
Lorina whips open a drawer and dips in her hand, nudging it shut with her hip in one quick movement I barely caught. Her fingers deftly tie off the end of her braided deathhawk, and when she turns toward me, she’s pure, uncorrupted skin peeking out from naughty straps and a genuinely sincere smile with only the faintest hint of a blush. “Thanks for doing that.”
I steal a kiss because I just can’t help it. “In return? I want you to ask him.”
“No,” she says, laughing as she holds up a finger. “That is not a fair trade.”
“Come on, Lorina. He will not tell you no.”
“Because I’m not gonna ask him,” she says, walking past me out of the bathroom. “First, no way in hell do you get to drive it before me, and second, he’s never gonna say yes.”
“Why?” I whine, heading over to her bed and collapsing on it. Lorina heads into the closet again, and I’d rather have her taking off clothes than putting them on, but if she’s doing what I think she is, I’m not gonna complain. Probably will work out better in my favor to wait anyway. “It is unnatural that an American man should own an Italian car and not let an Italian man drive it.”
“Massimo,” Lorina says from the closet. “That Lamborghini is his baby. He loves that car more than me.”
“Bullshit,” I mutter in Italian.
Lorina chuckles as hangers clink and zippers pull. “If you want one so bad, go buy one yourself.”
I gesture in her direction, even though she can’t see me. “The American woman’s answer to everything,” I respond in English. “Go buy it.”
I’m not really surprised. I’ve seen the way she lives. The way her family lives. The cars, the furniture, the rugs, and the books. And the more I see of her closet, the more I’m thinking her credit card statement probably resembles a phone number. Out of country.
“If that’s what you want, then yeah,” she says. “Besides, it’s not like you have bills to pay. Don’t you live at home in Ravenna with your mom and your brother?”
I walked straight into that.
When I double-check, Lorina is still safely in her closet, and I bite my thumbnail, debating what to tell her. Her situation is no different from nearly every other racer on the circuit—we’re all gone the majority of the year, so except for the married guys, everyone forgoes the rent and mortgage and just crashes with their family in the downtime. But living at home just wasn’t a long-term option for me, and even with Gabriele’s bank account–draining antics, it’s gotten a little more complicated than that.
I bite out a curse under my breath, then give her the truth. “I have un appartamento.”
Lorina pokes her head out of the closet, still shirtless and a wicked smirk on her lips. “Really?”
I pillow my head with my hand and somehow chuckle, even though I’m internally cringing like all hell at the hope in her voice, at the light in her eyes at the chance for privacy when we’re always surrounded by our managers, our crews, the fans, and the press. And, apparently, her parents. “Sì. But…I have a roommate, Lorina.”
She groans, disappearing back into the closet. “We’re never going to be able to have sex in peace, are we?”
I scrub a hand over my face, listening to the clink of more hangers. Does it always take her this long to get dressed in the morning?
“It is okay,” I tell her. “Very soon, I will buy us a house. Then, no one will care what we do, where we do it, or how loud you scream. Okay?”
She laughs from the closet. “Sidestepping the part where you literally were just bitching about spending money… It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you’ve seen me naked, and you’re ready to start looking into real estate?”
It takes me a second to make sure I got all that, then I nod. “Sì.”
Lorina laughs again because she thinks I’m joking. “All right, I’ll bite. Where we gonna live, Massimo?”
Since she can’t see me, I go ahead and smile. Because about an hour from my mom’s, in the Emilia-Romagna countryside, there’s a three-bedroom villa that’s big enough for her, not too big for me, with a separate guesthouse, plenty of land for a stable and a couple of horses, and no neighbors anywhere close. I ride past it every time I’m home, but it’s always just been there. Vacant. Torturing me with how very close I was to having it all and how very far away.
“In Italia.”
Lorina comes out of the closet, and I sit up, a grin tugging at the corners of my lips at her black leather jacket over her white T-shirt and dark blue jeans, the sleek motorcycle boots that probably cost more than my rent. She smiles as her hands settle on my shoulders, despite all the times I’ve hurt her and directly in the face of all the times she promised me this would never, ever happen because she hated me so much. “Of course we are.”
I grin, happy to let her kiss me like she actually meant that and knowing I deserve every one of the monsters scarred into my body when I don’t stop her and bring up my roommate again. But there’s no such thing as a roommate when Lorina’s breaths go shallow, her hands grasping at my shirt and pulling it off me.
She flings it away, her hands fierce on my jaw as she kisses me deeper. I thought she was leaving, but I can’t remember where I thought she was going or why I was fine with it when she’s this freaking sexy.
Lorina pulls back, a fire in her eyes that I’m dying to feel in the way she rides me, but I’m red-flagged again. “I fully expect you to be naked when I get back.”
I blink, barely able to think about anything except where is the clasp on her lingerie? Then I remember—why I’m not going to fight her. Why I’m going to let her go. Why I’m always letting her go.
“I may not wait for you.”
Lorina kisses me again until I’m wrecked, but she’s never been scared to wreck me. Just love me. “Your loss.”
She leaves me with a wink and a smug little laugh that rises and falls to the sway of her hips, her bedroom door swinging shut behind her. I blow out a breath, trying to calm my racing heart. Then I wait.
Down the hallway, past my empty room.
The first flight of stairs, turn at the landing, down to the first floor.
Across the living room, past the kitchen, through the foyer, out the front door. Flower beds, flower beds, flower beds. Garage.
Go.
I half run from her room, coming out and slamming straight into her fucking father. Currently standing outside my door with his fist raised to knock. Now staring at me coming from Lorina’s room. Not wearing a shirt.
His eyes widen and his jaw hardens, and my stomach chokes my throat, but I don’t have time for this. I vault over the railing, landing on the stairs below the turn.
“Massimo!” her mom shrieks from the kitchen, but I’m fine and I stumble down the rest, catching myself with a wobbled slide on the living room rug. I skid to a stop, then turn and bolt the other way, past her gaping mom as I hurdle the coffee table and land on the runner in the foyer, controlling a slide toward the front door. “What the hell is going on?”
“Ricky Ricardo’s got some splaining to do, that’s what,” her dad snaps from upstairs.
I don’t respond, just looking out the window beside the front door and waiting, listening.
Any second. She can do this.
“James,” her mom starts. “Give him a break, okay. It’s not like we didn’t know this was—”
The Dabria roars to life in the garage, and her parents go quiet behind me, everything in me wound tight and vibrating as I urge her on under my breath.
She took what she wanted last night and all this morning, and she can take this win too.
Heavy steps come up behind me, but I don’t look when her father stops on the other side of the front door, looking out the window toward the garage.
“James,” her mom starts again, but she stops when he raises his hand. I don’t know if he’s holding his breath, but I am.
Three seconds.
Four.
Come on, Lorina.
The engine barks and she flies out of the garage, dark and ducked low as she barrels way too fast down the driveway, and I can’t resist a shout at seeing her. Her dad does it too, and I laugh as she disappears behind a cloud of white dust—she’s wearing my helmet instead of her own, but that’s okay, and she’ll get there.
She went. By herself. Because she wanted to. That’s all that matters.
“Was that really Lorelai?” her mom asks, so much relief in her voice that I can’t help but let it fill me up too.
Best night and best morning of my whole life. No contest.
And then her dad looks at me.
“Yes, that was really her,” James says. Then he faces me fully, crossing his arms. I swallow, still watching where Lorina disappeared and the dust has yet to settle. The last thing I need is her parents hating me when I need them to be okay with us staying here in the breaks. And they’ve been cool with me so far, but I know to her father, it might not matter how old we are or how long this has been building.
She’s always been his, but I want her to be mine, and he doesn’t have to say yes.
If he kicks me out right now, I’m totally screwed. Lorina is never going to buck her parents’ disapproval, and even if she did, I can’t take her back to Ravenna with me yet. She won’t understand, and I need more time with her first. Time like this, away from the track when she’s actually willing to give me a chance to prove that I might do messed-up stuff sometimes, but I do it for a reason, and it’s never to hurt her.
Her father leans toward me, and I lean back a little, but I don’t look down, and I don’t blink. “You still can’t drive the Lambo,” he growls, then he turns and walks away.
I let out a breath, then loudly groan. “Oh, come on, James. It is my birthright as an Italian.” He waves me off, heading to his office. I peek at her mom to see how I’m faring there. Lynn’s in the living room with one hip slightly jutted out, a scowl on her face she purposely put there to make me sweat. I know it for sure because her daughter gives me the same one. Regularly. “Per favore, Lynn. I would never hurt his car.”
When she stays silent, I twist my lips into a pout, shoving my hands in my pockets and slowly walking toward her, my head hung. Halfway there, I throw a single skip into my step.
She laughs like a champ. I have a sneaking suspicion Lynn knew what was going on between me and Lorina long before her daughter did.
“Don’t try and charm me,” she says with a smile, then nods upstairs. “Go take a shower, and I’ll make you some breakfast.”
“Grazie, Signora.”
“Don’t smooth talk me either.”
I make a serious face. “Sì, Signora.”
She rolls her eyes, but she lets me drop a kiss to her cheek before I whistle my way up the stairs, happy to wait for Lorina to come back and make good on her promise. I’m definitely keeping mine.
The second I pay off Gabriele, I’m buying that house.
I’m just praying I can do it before she gets anywhere near my apartment and the shaky ground I’m strolling on completely crumbles apart under me.
Wreckless Page 20