“Don’t have anything else to do,” she said.
Anderson shot her a sharp look that she deflected with, “Let’s go, I’m starving.”
The shining elevator complete with an enthusiastic attendant shot up to the rooftop bar. She gasped at the view it offered over the track. In the rapidly dimming light, the space-age architecture became delightfully apparent; mind-bending organic meshes of pure light covered the hotel and a portion of the track. A quick glance around the bar assured her there were no dashing F1 drivers lounging on the tan leather looking bored. The evening crowd hadn’t come in yet it seemed. A geeky looking Arab with John Lennon glasses tinkered away at a piano.
A bourbon later, the sharp edges of the world began to fray a smidgeon. But it wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. While Anderson was engrossed in the menu, she beckoned for another drink. The waiter cast an inquiring eye at Anderson, and she shook her head crossly.
“Another?” Her father’s eyebrows shot up.
“Anderson,” Cass warned. “So, who’s favored to win this thing tomorrow?”
“Oh,” he grinned. “I think your friend might have a fairly good chance.”
“He’s not my friend.”
Nice. I said that with all the sophistication of a six-year-old.
“Well, whatever he is.” Anderson was laughing now.
“What makes you so sure he’ll win this one?”
“Drivers like this track, and he’s a dry-track kind of guy. Maddux tends to get him on the wet ones, like Spa Except last time, of course. I’d imagine he’s riding a wave of good luck.”
“You people and your obsession with luck. Whatever happened to skill?”
“Oh at this level, that’s a given. But to win … I don’t know. I’ve seen many races and all the circuits the world over many times, in all conditions, and I think it’s a combination of what’s going on in that driver’s head and what the gods are thinking on the day.”
“Anderson,” she groaned, “I’ll need another drink if you’re going to get all esoteric on me. Ah … speaking of.” She beamed at the impassive waiter, took the drink from his hand, and inhaled the vapors of her second bourbon.
“So how’s it going?” he asked.
“How’s what going?”
“Life?” Anderson shrugged. “We hardly got to talk in Belgium.”
“Fine.”
“Well, we’ll have time to talk here. I realize there’s a lot to catch up on, but what I’m concerned about are your plans, you know, for the future.”
Cass prodded her ice cubes. “No idea.”
“I don’t expect you’ll want to go back to … all that anytime soon.”
She looked up sharply. “All what?”
“To being a pilot. It’s a dangerous business. I mean, it’s up to you, of course, but until you know the outcome of the investigation, it may be a chance to reassess priorities.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Reassess priorities? Being a pilot is my life. There’s nothing to reassess.”
Anderson polished his silver knife with a napkin. “You’ve had a near-death experience, Cassidy. Surely that’s got you thinking?”
Cass took a huge gulp of her drink. “Of course, it’s got me thinking. You don’t just walk out of a wreck and go on as if nothing happened. I had to meet with the crisis team after the accident. Talk about what happened with my employer. It’s all good.” She finished the drink in one swallow.
Her stomach heaved. If she couldn’t bear knowing what she’d done, how could Anderson? How could anyone?
“It’s all good?” he repeated, whether because the expression was foreign to him or he didn’t believe it, she couldn’t tell.
“This is helping.” She put her empty glass down.
“Your drink is helping?” he said, a note of alarm creeping into his voice.
Oh God. She was never going to live down the state she’d been in exiting the plane. She’d been so terrified to fly, it had taken four drinks at the bar just to get on the damn jet to Abu Dhabi, and the flight hadn’t been long enough to completely sober her up. Anderson had barely been able to mask his shock as she’d stumbled off the plane. Not the best country in which to be inebriated in public.
“No, I mean … all this … the F1. It’s … a total thrill, and seeing this danger has anaesthetized me, in a way,” she lied. “Can we talk about something else? I’m trying to move past what happened. Tell me about the course. I want to know which bends are likely to see the most jockeying for position, if that’s the technical term for it.”
Anderson settled into his favorite subject with relish, and she kept him talking with nods and appreciative “mmm-hmms” all the way through their exquisite three-course dinner. Until something, or rather someone, registered in the periphery of her vision, advancing rapidly.
Sure enough, when she turned her head upward it was into the smiling, tanned face of Ronan Hawes. Casual in a light blue polo shirt and jeans, he oozed class and a fatal sexiness, standing in a relaxed pose, brandishing a radioactive green longneck. From the way he glanced from her to her father, he was calculating how to talk to her alone. Or maybe that was just her wishful thinking.
“Ronan.” She smiled and stood. He was near enough to get a gentle waft of that Calvin Klein aftershave again. God, she wanted him.
She edged away again, flustered, and let Anderson shake hands.
“Come join us,” Anderson said.
Ronan shook his head. “I’d like that, Mr. Miller, but I really need to get to bed soon.” Here his gaze wandered to her, and she darted her attention to the glasses on the table.
She bit back a grin.
Real subtle, dude.
“Need to be in top form tomorrow,” he was saying.
“Oh, yes, of course, of course,” Anderson said. “How long have you been in town?”
Ronan dragged a chair over and sat down beside her. “Three days. Enough to refamiliarize myself with the circuit, you know?”
Cass took a gulp of her drink. How could she get rid of her father? He wasn’t the type to take a hint. She looked up again. “What’s that you’re drinking? It looks dangerous.”
He narrowed his eyes at the bottle in his hand. “It’s noxious. I’m just holding the bottle.”
“Well, why not get something you’d like to drink?”
“My sponsors don’t do drinks. This is Fizzbang Energy, the main rival to Maddux’s Supernova. I mean, someone’s got to represent the other side. Look at the sheep over there.” He beckoned to the group of drivers and their teams and glamorous girls, uniformly holding orange cans of Supernova, some putting them down on the grand piano.
Cass winced. “I guess none of you can drink alcohol before a race then?”
He shrugged. “Haven’t much use for it at any time, to be honest.” He glanced at her drink for a fraction of a second and cleared his throat. “Have you been here long?”
“No, just got in four hours ago, and by the time we got out here from the airport and unpacked, it was time for dinner.” She yawned for good measure.
“You’ve done well to stay awake this long.” Ronan rested his arm across the back of her chair and did an easy scan of the room. He turned back to Anderson. “Oh, there’s Mr. Al-Saeed, CEO of Treadhill Motors. He wanted to talk to you about a franchise, Mr. Miller.”
“Oh yeah?” Anderson said, eyes twinkling in a way that made it obvious he knew Ronan’s game. He pushed back his empty glass and slapped the tabletop. “Well, I’d better get over there, hadn’t I?”
“No, stay, he’s already on his way here.” Ronan stood up and his hand grazed her shoulder, sending shockwaves throughout her body.
She stood, too. Immediately she felt a wave of curiosity emanate from the piano crowd. They were doing that looking-but-not-looking thing, spying at her in various mirrored surfaces surrounding them, assessing her, speculating.
“I’ll see you at breakfast,” Anderson said.
Mr. Al-Saeed came over a
nd nodded curtly to them all.
She knew better than to offer to shake hands as a woman in a Muslim country. Though leaving a bar with a man who wasn’t her husband was no doubt ten times worse. She glanced around, but the only ones seeming to be judging her were the Western F1 crowd.
“So, what have you been doing?” Ronan asked.
“Shopping, this and that.”
She tossed back her drink; his eyes never left her face. The room temperature seemed to be rising, despite the high-tech air conditioning. Placing her glass carefully on the table, she caught their waiter’s eye. Maybe just one more. She turned a bright smile Ronan’s direction. “What were you saying?”
“Why do you drink so much?”
Her mouth opened. And closed. Opened again.
“I enjoy it.”
“Bourbon?”
“Not classy enough for you? And you’re drinking that nastiness? Those energy drinks are probably worse than any alcohol.”
He shook his head. “Can’t be.”
She smiled to cover her annoyance.
“Ready?” he asked, extending a hand to help her up. She took it, wobbling to her feet.
He gave her a look.
“It’s the damn heels,” she muttered. “Honest to God, I’m not going for a repeat performance of my face-down-on-the-bathroom-floor routine.”
He laughed. “You can’t imagine how relieved I am to hear that.”
She followed him to the exit doors. He plonked the bottle inside a potted palm tree and led the way to the spacious corridor at the elevators.
“My God, your subtlety with Anderson bowled me over back there,” she said.
“One of my many talents.” He grinned. “As is this.” He cupped his hands around her neck and tilted her chin up. Her heart hammered. She was getting lost in his hazel eyes. His lips pressed down and urged her mouth to open to him. She was dizzy with need as his tongue stroked hers. His hands slid down the exposed flesh of her back, holding her to his hips, pressing against her, insistent. A shiver shook through her.
When they came up for breath, he asked, “Your room or mine?”
• • •
Ten minutes of excruciatingly polite chitchat later, Ronan finally cocked his head toward the bedroom. “So?”
It was the signal she’d been waiting for.
She stood and kicked off her shoes. Not waiting for his reaction, she slipped off her wrap, pulled the dress from her shoulders and stepped out, clad only in her cream underwear and matching lacy bra. She didn’t want to think or draw this out in some striptease-type scenario. She wanted it now. She lifted her gaze from the dress on the woolen carpet.
He was watching her calmly, almost impassively, as if she were room service come to fill the minibar, but when she came closer to him, naked lust crossed his perfect features as his eyes scanned her body. He rose from the sofa, toed off his shoes, unbuttoned his cuffs, shook the cufflinks on the coffee table, and stripped off his shirt. His gaze never left her as his hands went to his belt, unbuckling, unthreading while she watched, finding it difficult to catch her breath. God help her, she was desperate. Desperate for him and nervous.
Where had her buzz gone? She’d been slightly tipsy when they’d arrived, but now her body was anything but relaxed. It was clamoring for him. He shucked his dress pants and socks, tossing them carelessly on the floor. He stood before her, his chest muscular and well defined, covered in a sparse amount of golden hair. Her attention drifted lower, taking in his cock jutting out against the thin cotton of his black boxer briefs. Then he stripped those off, too. He took two steps away from the coffee table separating them, and she shivered, her body throbbing.
Ronan yanked her lingerie-clad body against his. He put one arm under her hips and the other behind her head. He brought her to his eye level and lowered his mouth to her neck. It was electrifying. And that scent. She’d never be able to smell it again without associating it with this moment. He backed her up until she hit the wall, then he held her there with his body, panting. His chest was hot and hard against hers.
Her stomach clenched, at the mercy of the familiar and overwhelming ache of arousal. She raised her head and wrapped her arms around his neck, bringing his head down. Her lips met his again and again; she wrapped her legs around his hips.
He thrust his tongue into her mouth, ravaged her, and she moaned. This was no exploratory kiss like the one downstairs. It was hot and hard and desperate, and she was out of control. She urged him on, running her hands through his thick, soft hair. His mouth caught her breath, her hips moving restlessly, impatiently, against the hardness of his cock. The only thing separating them was the thin cotton of her now-soaked thong. She rubbed herself against him, her mouth glued to his.
His free hand popped first one breast, then the other from the confining fabric of her bra. His mouth left hers. He palmed her left breast, lifting it to his lips, sucking the peak into his mouth, hard.
“Ahh, Ronan. Condom?” she managed.
He nodded, but his mouth had moved to her other breast, doing the same pleasure-pain suck on her sensitive flesh. She moaned and locked his head to her with her arm. His hands went to her hips to grind her harder against the hot strength of his arousal, his open mouth leaving a trail of heat as it traversed her neck, her jawline.
She wrapped her legs tightly around him as he leaned away, her arms linked around his neck. He staggered away from the wall and carried her into the bedroom. Once by the bed, he grasped her arms and held them away, then her legs, depositing her on the bed. She scrambled back, pushing off pillows, thrusting the bedcovers down until she reached plush cotton sheets, lifting her hips to slide off the thong, reveling in the ache at the apex of her thighs, the insistent pulsation. She glanced up to see him watching her, his face taut with intensity and desire, holding a condom. He sure was johnny-on-the-spot with that thing.
I won’t think about that … about how many women have come before me.
Men who could get what they wanted, when they wanted, did.
Her body was protected from his past, her heart protected by her past.
Four long strides took him over to her.
Her gaze met his when he finally looked up from where he’d stroked the condom on himself.
Pushing her back on the bed, he knelt and put one of her legs on either side of his hips. She closed her eyes as his hand found her. His two fingers made slow circles on her clit, stroking, teasing. She arched her back, panting.
Her eyes opened, and he was watching her. Too intense. Too intimate. She reached for his hips, grasping them, pulling him down on her. His tongue pressed into her mouth as his cock surged into her slick opening. Her breath stuttered as he worked himself inside. Her legs went numb, and she had seconds to realize she was about to come, hard. Too soon. She tried to raise her hips, to delay her orgasm, but his were inflexible, pressing her farther into the bed, stroking slowly in and out of her swollen channel.
“No, I ...”
Desperate, she pushed against his shoulders. It was too late. She stiffened. Bucking on the bed she came with a long, hoarse cry that broke the silence in the room. She sank back panting, avoiding his eyes and covering her face with a shaking hand.
He thrust into her, tremors wracking his body.
“God, Cass.”
Her mouth went dry as she watched him enter her, over and over, thick and hot against her flesh, his thrusts taking on more urgency until she felt him tense on a push that seated him all the way inside her. He came with a long, agonized groan.
It was a thousand times better than alcohol at making her forget.
Chapter 6
Ronan stood on the tarmac the following morning and stretched his arms wide, raising his face to catch the dry Abu Dhabi desert breeze—the last he’d get before sinking into his goldfish bowl. The heat would abate soon though, before they’d race tonight. Yet another reason to love this circuit.
The roar of the engines being tested last minute
, the familiar, noxious addictive fuel smell, the sun beating down on the bone dry track, this was all ... home. And today, he’d win. He slid his left hand into his chest pocket. Yes, it was right there, the silk cool against his fingertips.
It had been hot. Definitely. But more than that, she held his interest when they weren’t in bed. Which wasn’t a novelty exactly, but he was thirty-three years old, old enough to know that sex with a hot, intelligent woman was a million times better than hot sex with a dolt. She was uninhibited in bed and quick witted out of it. And as different from Vivienne as was possible within the same species.
He shoved the underwear deeper into his pocket. She’d snuck out of his room at some point during the night, but they’d already exchanged two text messages. He needed to take care with whatever this was. It could be awkward sleeping with the daughter of another team’s sponsor. Even more awkward if Pantech’s financial woes left Windsor in the lurch. Rumor had it Anderson’s oil and gas company was looking to be more than just a team sponsor. They were hoping to partner with a car company and race a Nautilus team in the not-too-distant future. Windsor could be that partner.
Yeah. Time to put Cass out of his head.
He pulled the stone from his pocket and threw it across the tarmac. Three bounces. Not bad. Four would’ve been better. But three was okay, too. He retrieved the stone and put it back in his pocket with Cass’s scrap of lace.
“Hey, don’t forget to kiss the ground, Hawes.” Maddux had appeared suddenly, swinging his helmet, the usual cynical grin creasing his tan cheeks. “You need all the luck you can get.”
Ronan shook his head. “Nah. You’re standing too close, mate. It’s contaminated.”
“Suit yourself.” Maddux slipped on his helmet. “I’m sure you’ll find something to blame if you don’t win, so it may as well be luck.” He turned and started to strut away.
“Doing a rain dance?” Ronan called after him. “I think the forecast is clear.”
Maddux turned and gave him that smug grin. This guy’s range of self-expressions were limited to smug, petulant, and maniacal. He saved his look of evil triumph for whenever he actually managed to win. What did women see in him?
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