Then we disappeared within each other, saved the other every night, every weekend.
Before she can pull back from me again or overanalyze it, I pull her hand to my mouth and softly kiss her fingers. I stand up from the table and throw my hat back on, “Ready?”
Don’t think, Em, just feel.
“Yep,” she stands and joins me, and we walk to the garage together. She’s quiet like I knew she would be. She’s thinking about the tiny kiss on her hand, and I can practically see the questions and comments swirling above her head, like a comic book character. But I won’t push her.
Inside the garage, I pull up my race suit as the crew hustles to get every last-minute detail finalized. Emily grabs a headset off the wall, and Dante grabs me to head out onto the track for the national anthem.
My mind is anywhere else as I stand on the track under the sun listening to a big guy in a tuxedo sing while a woman next to him plays a violin. I can still feel Emily’s skin against my lips, and I have to stifle the twitching in my dick when I think about running my lips all over the rest of her body.
Don’t be the asshole with a hard-on lined up in front of cameras while the national anthem plays.
The musical torture ends, and all the drivers head back to their garages. Dante is still in a pissy mood about the last race, not that I blame him. All the championship race points we’ve earned have been compromised this season, he’s just much more of a hot-head than I am about it.
Liam hands me my helmet in the garage. In bold reds and deep blues, the colors of Hungary, I like its design this race. The reds remind me of the paprika I know Emily wants to pick up before we leave.
I give the helmet a once over, even though I know what I’m looking for is there. It’s always there, hidden somewhere. I flip it around in my hands and find the initials hidden inside the swirl of a flour de lis, EW. Then I can put it on my head and strap it down.
As I tighten the chin strap, I see Emily out of the corner of my eye in the back. She’s biting her fingernails again and watching me from behind her computer station.
Flipping my visor up, I walk to her. She drops her hand from her mouth and peers up at me from her stool. If I didn’t have this helmet on, I don’t know that I’d be able to stop myself from taking her head in my hands and kissing the hell out of her.
She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, and I raise my eyebrow at her. I’m going to have a fucking hard-on in the car now, no getting around it. She knows what I want, though.
“Good luck, have fun, go fast,” she smiles, her cheeks glowing a soft shade of rose.
“Go fast, today?” I smile at her addition to the pre-race commentary she started, not that she can see me grinning like an idiot under my helmet.
“As professional advice from your engineer, yes. Go fast,” she nods.
Go fast. I’m going to go so fucking slow, baby. So torturously slow when I finally get my mouth on you.
“Duly noted,” I wink and turn around.
With my back turned, I have to adjust myself in my race suit before I step into the car, and I hear her snicker behind me.
Just you wait, Emily Walker.
I’m sweating my balls off after the race. My fire suit is stuck to my skin, and my hair is soaked. Hungary never used to be this hot. Fuck all those people who deny climate change.
“Drink,” Liam hands me another water bottle that he’s thrown a nasty electrolyte tablet into.
“I am, christ,” I mumble around the water bottle.
“You lost four kilos, drink more,” he stands, watching me like a nun waiting to smack me with a ruler. “And one beer tonight, that’s it,” he folds his arms across his chest.
He’s like an Australian schoolmarm, this guy.
I roll my eyes at him, but I’ll do what he says, unlike Dante, who lives to terrorize his physio. I don’t particularly enjoy working out for hours every day with Liam barking at me, but now that I know how much my girl likes abs, I may be listening to Liam a little more than usual.
Plus, he’s been taking good care of her like I asked, keeping her hydrated and giving her melatonin and other shit to help with the jet lag.
We start walking back to the motorhome, and I unzip my race suit down to my waist, these fireproof things are unbearably hot.
Mila, my PA, jogs to catch up to us and hands me my cell phone and starts rattling off all the updates she has for me. No press to do, which is good, we can get out of here earlier.
Mila’s in her mid-thirties, and I thought she was going to quit the time a tabloid published a rumor that we were sleeping together, but she had Imperium threaten to sue the publisher, instead. She’s a tough German lady like that.