It was too soon and too fast to be in a relationship, but all the calculation I’d learned from being a Hale apparently evaporated around her. I didn’t know if I could trust her, plus I had the terrible suspicion she wasn’t telling me everything.
You aren’t either, an irritated voice reminded me.
Because I hadn’t told Emery about Lambert’s threat. In my defense, I hadn’t told anyone, nor had I done anything to address it. Like a lot of things I didn’t want to deal with, I set it aside to be handled later.
I jerked off in the shower while thinking about all the things I planned to do to her. My vow meant I’d have to get creative, but I didn’t hate the idea. As she’d said, there were plenty of different ways to have sex, and I was intrigued to find all of them.
I came in a hot rush, one hand bracing myself on the tiled wall of the shower, and the other clamped tightly around my dick. It’d been difficult to strangle back my groan, but I’d been mostly successful, and then drew in a deep breath to even myself out. It was fucking unreal how fast I’d gotten off.
I finished my shower, banded a towel around my waist, and took a few steps toward my sink when the door swung open, and Emery appeared. She hadn’t knocked, but that was probably my doing. I’d purposefully left the bathroom door open an inviting few inches.
She wore one of the hotel’s white bathrobes, and it teased me mercilessly because she barely had it cinched around her waist. The deep V of exposed skin down the front of her displayed an amazing amount of cleavage.
Her gaze started at my bare chest, still dotted with water droplets, and moved down over my abs before ending where the terrycloth began. Disappointment pinched her eyebrows together, and warmth swelled inside me. She wasn’t happy about missing her opportunity to see me in the shower.
“I was coming to see if you wanted company,” she said.
I smiled and jammed a hand in my damp hair, shaking out the water. It gave her a nice view of my bicep tone, which I used every opportunity to flaunt. I worked out with a trainer three times a week, and my hard work had paid off. I looked damn good.
“Not today,” I said with regret. “We’ve got a lot on our schedule.”
Which was true, and it was good I’d finished myself off so quickly. If she’d joined me in the shower, we’d be in there a while, and that was guaranteed to make us late to our first event. I stalked toward her, grabbed the knot at the belt around her robe, and pulled her up against me.
“Maybe some other time,” I uttered before lowering my mouth to hers.
I always enjoyed coming to the Monaco Grand Prix, but Emery made it a million times better. We ate a long lunch at a rooftop restaurant which overlooked one of the race turns while practice commenced below. We watched the cars slide around the corner, navigating the tight turn of the street that was boxed in by the barriers, and listened to the high-pitched whine of their engines ricochet off the surrounding buildings.
Janssen said it was like driving in a cage, and I could understand why. Tall chain-link fencing rose above the barrier wall to ensure no debris flew off the track and damaged the buildings lining the streets. I’d seen video from inside the car during the race, and it was terrifying.
I’d been to this race enough times, I knew what to expect, so getting to witness it through Emery’s eyes was both satisfying and entertaining. She was more impressed with the living flower arrangement on our table than the sophisticated engineering on display as the Mercedes car sped across the pavement so fast, it looked like it was gliding.
“I returned Leitner’s watch this morning,” I told her after one of the cars zoomed past. “Well, I had someone from concierge handle it.”
“Oh.” She blinked, and her gaze drifted off. Was that a frown?
I chuckled. It was a frown because she was disappointed. “Don’t worry. I had them return it with a friendly note.”
I’d grabbed a pen and the hotel stationary from the desk, scribbled out a message, and slipped it in the envelope before turning the watch and the letter over to the customer relations manager. Asking him to deliver it to Niko Leitner was no easy task, but he assured me it would be done. If nothing else, he could get it to someone from Red Bull’s team and they’d take it from there.
“What’d you say?” she asked.
“That he should be more careful because he’d dropped his watch while he was talking to you. He might have thought it had been stolen, but I would never try to take something he cares about.”