Work Me Up

He gives me another one now, still with that amused grin dancing around his sexy as fuck mouth. Looking at that mouth, I can’t help wondering what it would feel like to have his face between my thighs. His tongue buried deep inside my pussy, where he put his fingers yesterday afternoon.

“Show me,” I say, more so that I have an excuse to turn back to the car door than anything else. Because if I keep staring at him right now, so close to me, the heat from his body radiating against my side, hot enough to reach out and touch, I’ll lose my shit.

He dips the paintbrush into the color we mixed together, which to my eye looks pretty damn close to the rest of Betty. But when he raises the brush and paints a tiny little streak on the edge, down near the bottom and some of the worst dents that I pulled back into shape, it’s too light. A cherry red where the rest of the car is more burgundy.

“Crap,” I say, biting my lower lip.

“It’s not a big deal,” he says. “We just need to try the mix again.” He sits back on his heels. “Why don’t you see if you can correct it.”

I press my lips together for a moment, to hold in my protest. Part of me hates when he does this. Makes me correct all of the mistakes we make, as if I know what the hell I’m doing. But another part of me, a bigger part, appreciates it. Because I do learn a whole lot more this way than I would if I just watched him do the job all himself and didn’t have a hand in participating myself.

So, I tug the paint cans back toward myself and uncap them, dipping the mixer in to try to swirl the colors together. “You know, when I think about car mechanics working in garages, I never really think of them as doing this kind of stuff,” I comment, as I add a little darker red to our batch, then swirl it together. “It’s almost like art.”

“Cars are a type of art,” Antonio replies softly. “Looking at someone’s wheels can tell you a lot about who they are as a person.”

I shake my head, because thinking about cars makes me think about my own lack of one, which in turn makes me think about why I don’t have one, which makes my hand shake so hard that I have to set the paint brush back down to run a hand over my face, drawing in a shaky breath. Another.

Antonio frowns. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I lie through gritted teeth. I wave a hand in front of my face, latching onto the first excuse I can come up with. “Just the… the fumes and all.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” Antonio jumps up, his arm brushing against mine as he goes, and I almost blurt out something embarrassing, like asking him to stay here with me while I get through this breathing jag. But then he’d ask what’s really going on, and he’d know it’s about more than just paint fumes, and anyway, he’s already halfway across the room now, turning on some sort of enormous fan that starts to blow across the garage, sucking all the air from the room.

By the time he comes back to my side, I’ve recovered my senses, at least enough to sit back on my heels and look relatively normal as he joins me.

“It’s important to ventilate when you’re working with paint,” he explains, pointing up at the fans. “As well as some of the greasier components. A lot of chemicals in here.” He smirks, then. “Sometimes I forget how used to it all I am.”

“Sorry,” I murmur, my temples starting to throb a little. Maybe the paint fumes really are going to my head, in addition to everything else I have going on. Great. Just what I need.

“We can take a break if you want,” he says.

And with everything racing in my mind, all the memories that I want to escape from—and all the cars parked around me, endless reminders of it, especially this one with its scraped up door and its damaged parts—all I can do is nod.

Antonio extends a hand. Before I can think better of it, I place mine in his, and let him pull me to my feet. He does it so easily, like it’s hardly any effort to lift me at all, even though I know, what with all the curves I have, I don’t weigh as little as some girls might.

When we make it to our feet, Antonio keeps hold of my hand. Part of me knows I should tug it free from his grip, push him away. But I can’t bring myself to do it. Not when his touch feels so grounding right now, such a potent, much-needed reminder of where I am. When I am. Of what’s in the here and now, where I need to reside, to keep my brain from flying off into past memories.