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CHAPTER ONE

ROCCO

B ullfighting, auto racing, and mountain climbing are the only real sports …’” Rocco said and then paused, distracted by that heart-shaped ass and feeling a little disappointed she wasn’t wearing a dress.

The cue stick slid back and forth between her fingers as she lined up the shot. Then in one fast motion the stick shot back, and Rocco watched the ball drop into the side pocket, leaving only one stripe and the eight ball remaining on the green felt.

She turned around and faced him. “‘All the rest are merely games,’” she said, finishing the quote before sauntering to the other end of the table.

Rocco’s cousin Dario nudged him. “What’s with that quote? Didn’t—”

Rocco cut him off. “Yes. She did. I don’t know why I said it.”

What the hell were Nico Angelini’s words doing in his mouth? What were they even doing in his head?

“I think I know why,” Dario said. “Trouble is, no one else knows. She hit you where it hurts with that first tweet way back when, and you’d rather hit back and make yourself out to be a sexist pig—no, not a pig … What was it?”

“Amoeba.”

“Yeah, well, you’d rather the world think that than know the truth. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t think she was targeting you with that first tweet that started the feud I don’t know how long ago.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rocco muttered.

“Look, there’s no way in hell Nico Angelini knows anything about the special circumstances surrounding your jump from F3 to F1. So how in the hell could she be tweeting about it?”

Those special circumstances were one Carolyn Wickham—the real reason Rocco and Dario had left a swanky New Year’s Eve party and come to this shithole. Rocco had told his cousin he’d wanted a change of scene. What he didn’t tell him was that he’d wanted it because he’d seen Carolyn at the party.

Rocco shifted his feet, unable to keep his body still as he watched the woman glide around the pool table. She picked up the chalk and stared back at him, rubbing the tip of the stick back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back.

And.

Forth.

There was too much fuel pumping through his veins. He needed to be behind the wheel moving at over two hundred miles per hour. Now more than ever, he thought, trying to swallow that fear that had lodged a lump in his throat. There was a real possibility he might not be racing this upcoming season.

He couldn’t accept that. Last season— his last? No. Especially not after the disaster it had been.

Who was he kidding, the last few years had been a disaster.

Ever since he’d left Carolyn’s Formula 1 team, or rather her husband’s, Blue Jet Lightning, he’d been floundering.

And that had provided fertile ground for the doubts and fears that festered in his gut.

If he couldn’t race and get back to that podium, he’d never be rid of the feeling he was a fraud.

He needed to race. He needed it like he needed oxygen.

What he didn’t need was to be standing in a dive bar that smelled of whiskey and sweaty balls on New Year’s Eve—correction: New Year’s Day, now—about to lose a game of pool he’d thought he would win easily.

He watched the woman as she chalked that stick, waiting for the moment she’d purse those luscious lips and blow.

Something about her was unsettling—but not in a good way. Her cheekbones and jaw were too bold, her lips too lush, her eyebrows set too low, and her hair, blinding—platinum blonde cut short and so sleek it looked like a helmet.

But she was sexy. Damn sexy , he thought, feeling the hum of a V6 turbocharged engine vibrating from his loins.

He could feel his body itching to go hurtling down that track. And yet there was something else that kept his foot hovering over the brake.

He stared at those eyes as she chalked the cue. They were cat eyes. When they narrowed, he imagined her pupils tapered like the vertical slivers of a cat. Only he couldn’t see her pupils. The bar was too dark and her eyes were too dark—or at least they looked it to him.

Finally, she put down the chalk, blew on the tip of the stick, and leaned over the pool table as she lined up her shot.

Rocco’s eyes flashed as he stared at that triangle—the small space of flesh at the base of her neck framed by her collarbone.

Most of the women he saw these days were so thin the space collapsed into a deep valley and the collarbone jutted severely, looking like a dry bone in the desert he could snap between his fingers as easy as a chicken wing.

But not this one. This one merely hinted at its presence, like a seductive ripple in a stream left by some elusive creature beneath the water.

He glanced at the guys standing behind her. They were ogling her ass. One of them muttered something to the guy who stood beside him. It was probably something filthy given the lascivious looks on their faces.

Suddenly, the woman’s cue stick zoomed back, ramming the guy who’d spoken right between the legs. He groaned. Hunching over and clutching his package, he fell into the guy behind him and that guy went down as well, causing the guy behind him to drop too.

Dario chuckled. “Like bowling pins.”

The entire bar was lit up with laughter, but she seemed not to notice. As the last guy fell, so did the last stripe, leaving only the eight ball on the table.

Turn the lights back on. Race over.

She had him beat. There was only one shot left, and an easy one at that.

She had pulled back the stick and was just about to make the shot when Rocco had an impulse to hit the accelerator.

“Aren’t you going to call it?” he asked.

Only her eyes shot up. “Hardly necessary.”

She shifted her glance to the lone eight ball sitting squarely in line with both the cue ball and the corner pocket.

A rank novice could hit that shot, and Rocco had seen enough to know she wasn’t a beginner. Although she had faltered here and there when he stood too close and intentionally brushed up against her—supposedly, by accident.

“And hardly interesting,” he said as he sauntered over to her end of the table.

She stood up, and he placed himself directly behind her.

What was that scent? It wasn’t sugary or flowery, and it wasn’t crisp like citrus.

He liked it. His groin definitely liked it.

It was practically viscous—the kind of scent that belonged in the tropics where the sky hung low, pressing on one’s shoulders and against one’s chest; the air so thick and heavy, everything it touched turned lush and green as luxuriant foliage pushed up from earth black as mud.

He placed his lips near her ear. “We could make it interesting,” he said, low enough so that no one else could hear.

Her lip curled as she glanced over her shoulder. “Ah, but what interests you may not be what interests me.”

He grinned. She was a bit of a challenge. And that did interest him.

“All right, then,” he said, “you name it.”

“How much money do you have on you?”

He reared back. He’d thought the conversation was moving in a different direction.

“I’m not sure. I guess—”

“Don’t guess, show me.”

He reached in his jacket pocket, took out a wad of bills, and tossed it on the table.

“Is that all?”

He smirked. “You want to search me?”

She placed the cue stick on the table and turned around.

He hadn’t taken a step back, so she couldn’t do so without brushing up against him.

As she did, a delicious warm fluidity carrying that pungent scent meandered through his body at its own leisure until it felt as though there wasn’t one inch of flesh she hadn’t invaded.

She looked him up and down dismissively. “All right.”

She reached into his other jacket pocket. Finding nothing, he held out his arms, inviting her to search further.

Not taking her eyes off his, she leaned in and reached around him, slipping both hands into the back pockets of his pants.

“Did you just squeeze my ass?” he muttered in a voice that sounded part whisper and part groan.

“No,” she murmured, still searching those pockets. “Would you like me to?”

This is just an act , he thought. Her voice might sound cool, but her body definitely wasn’t.

Her heart had sped up, and she was breathing more deeply.

He could feel both as her breasts swelled against the immovable force that was his chest. He could even feel her nipples, hard as pistons, just begging to be pinched, he thought as he rubbed his fingertips.

And he knew what she could feel down below, pressing into him like she was.

That pungent and exotic scent had slithered to the crankshaft between his thighs and was now weaving its way around it like the vines of some lecherous plant.

He glanced at her lips, slightly parted and barely more than an inch away from his own. She was close enough. If they were alone, he would have.

Again, her hands came up empty. She moved on to the front pockets. He noticed she took her time. He didn’t mind. He was hard as a rock, especially when he felt her fingers brush up against him there .

Is she doing that on purpose?

His heart was pounding so hard it was beating in his ears.

I want to bend you over that pool table. Now.

He fisted his hands, trying to quiet the urge to do just that.

“Your search is very … thorough.” His voice was guttural because the only part of him that had any say now lay south of the equator.

“Anything worth doing,” she said, “is worth doing—”

“Well,” he murmured as he felt her fingers slide the entire length of his shaft.

Something sparked in her eyes like a match just before it caught fire.

He grinned. “Are you measuring me?”

Her hands suddenly stopped.

“That is all you’ve got,” she said, her tone flippant as she pulled her hand from his pocket.

That’s when he caught sight of Dario, arms folded, shaking his head. Rocco knew what he was thinking. We should have been back at the hotel in bed—hours ago.

He turned his attention away from his cousin and back to the woman. “And now for me.”