Work Me Up

What can I say? Antonio’s insatiable when there’s something he wants. And right now, that something is me. I can still feel the heat of his gaze tracking me, the pull of him like gravity. I was an idiot if I thought a baggy shirt and some boy jeans would keep him from wanting me.

He already knows what I look like under all this, after all.

His arm grazes mine as he comes to stand beside me. In the reflection of the new window, I can see his eyes seek out mine. Find them and hold on. “So that’s what you want?” he asks quietly, one eyebrow arched. “You work on this car, and I work on mine…”

“I wouldn’t want to delay any of your work,” I say, my voice only quivering slightly, barely catching when he tilts a little closer to me, his arm so hot his skin seems to scald mine. “After all.” I straighten my spine. “I told my father I would repair your car myself in order to help you. Not so I could slow you down or delay the other cars you need to attend to.”

“Very noble of you.” He’s smirking, still, for some reason.

It makes my eyes narrow. “Like I told you. I have to be here. So I might as well do what I came for.”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” he replies, and that smirk remains, dancing around his lips, as he leans down, making sure his whole body grazes against my side on his way down. He scoops up the tools at his feet and passes them to me. Then he rises again, just as slow, in order to press them into my hand. As he does, his strong, calloused fingers wrap around mine and squeeze, just hard enough to remind me where those fingers have been, and how they felt stroking me into an orgasm.

“If you need me,” he says, his dark eyes serious where they catch mine. He nods his head toward the car he was working on when I came in, some green sedan looking thing with the hood still popped. “I’ll be right over there.” He gives my hands one last gentle squeeze, and then he peels away from me, seeming to take all the air in the room with him as he goes.

My heart gives a lurch in my chest. But I turn back to the tools spread at my feet, trying to mentally recite all the steps he told me for popping out dents from metal doors yesterday. And then I kneel down and do my best to forget about the smoking hot man standing less than 30 feet away, with his eyes boring holes into my back.

* * *

I lose track of time. All I find myself concentrating on is the door before me, which I’m trying to un-dent as best I can. There’s something oddly satisfying about it, finding each little indentation and flaw, then using the tools to correct it, push and suction and pull it back into shape. When I finally finish, I get an unfamiliar sensation starting deep in my chest. It takes me a moment to realize: it’s pride.

I did this. All by myself.

Well, with a lot of upfront instruction, and some demonstrations on how to go about it in the first place, sure. But still. The actual hard work of it was all me.

I’m standing there admiring the door, which now looks a whole lot more like a car door than it did a day ago, my hands on my hips, when I feel the air in the garage shift.

I don’t even need to turn around to know that Antonio’s approaching. Something about me has been keeping track of him the entire time we’ve been in here—some sort of sixth sense that seems to always know exactly where he’s standing. I can’t count how many times I’ve glanced up at him across the room, only to catch him watching me too, before I lower my head again, my cheeks burning.

If he’s waiting for me to crack, though, I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. This is a business arrangement, nothing more. I might have slipped up yesterday—slipped up, fucked up, fucked him against this very car—but today is a new day. A fresh start. Today, I will keep my head screwed on straight, and I won’t succumb to my baser desires.

Even if he’s the first man in years, or maybe ever, to make my pulse jump so hard and fast just by stepping closer to me. Even if every time I catch his eye, I feel a tightening behind my navel, a gut-deep sensation, like he’s got hold of something vital in my core, and he’s tugging me toward him, magnetic as gravity.

“She looks good,” he says now, his voice a low hum, a vibration that I can feel throughout every inch of my body.