Page 25 of Faster

Chapter Seventeen

Liam should have gotten someone else to join them on his plane. He could have made up a reason for one of his three assistants to fly back with them. It was a bad idea to be alone with her. She probably thought he was a lecherous old man with the way he looked at her.

But he couldn’t stop his gaze from dipping down to her lips, wondering if they tasted like candy or just looked like they did.

He was so attuned to the way her expression changed with every emotion that he noticed the way her eyelids dipped when he’d called her a “good girl.” He hated himself for the thoughts he had after that.

But he wanted to spoil her, give her everything.

He wanted her in ways that would be wrong, even if she didn’t drive for the team he owned and ran.

Some people in the sport would say this was why they didn’t have women drivers for decades.

They were a distraction, but Liam had no one to blame but himself.

He’d noticed her when his son was dating her.

He’d been thinking about her and the way she would feel against him since she was nineteen years old.

The plane was way too quiet, because he could hear her tossing and turning in the bed in the back.

He should put his headphones on and crank them all the way up, but he didn’t.

He thought about her lean curves rolling around in his sheets and clenched his fist on the armrest to keep from grabbing his dick.

The flight attendant wouldn’t bother him until mealtime, and she’d probably enjoy the show.

He hadn’t given her any reason to flirt, because he didn’t sleep with his employees, no matter how much he wanted to.

He should have been reading emails from the team, reviewing technical information and telemetry from the race so he could give them cogent directions on how to develop the car in Micaela’s direction.

She was the future of his team, and she shouldn’t be the future of his erotic fantasies.

He flipped on his phone and looked through the contacts. He needed a list of women he could contact when he landed, women who might help him forget about the one on his private plane.

He heard her moving again, and he barely kept himself from opening the door and telling her to go to sleep immediately. Being alone with her was going to drive him crazy, and he could never let it happen again.

And then he heard her make a sound. She’s asleep.

Probably just dreaming. It sounded like a moan, but it couldn’t be.

Maybe it was just a sound in the engine, and he was simply imagining things.

But then he heard the sound again. And his seat belt was off.

He was standing, and then his hand was on the doorknob.

He was in the bedroom at the back of the plane before he could think about it too deeply. Maybe if he just looked at her while she was asleep, he could remember how young she was. How innocent. How she was his employee and his son’s ex-girlfriend.

But her eyes fluttered, opened, widened to the size of saucers.

He opened his mouth to say something, but what the fuck could he actually say?

That he’d heard her moaning and came to check that she didn’t need him to make her come so she could go to sleep.

Because that’s what the feral part of him had wanted to do.

Liam had always been in control on the track. He’d always had a cool head. A smooth operator that some assumed didn’t act on his emotions. He’d had them, but they’d been locked down.

He’d been a twenty-five-year-old race car driver, raising a toddler son alone.

The money had helped, but there was no amount of money in the world that could alleviate the awesome responsibility of being solely responsible for the health and well-being of a little boy.

He’d never been young because he’d never been allowed to be.

He’d been totally focused on giving his son everything he needed.

He’d turned everything else in his life off in favor of his responsibilities.

And now, he was standing here, thinking about throwing it all away to touch a woman that was too young for him, and off-limits in every way he could imagine.

He couldn’t even speak his son’s name inside his mind right now because of the way he was thinking about fucking his ex-girlfriend, his teammate, his rival. Where the fuck was Liam’s loyalty?

It had been extinguished with a lust he couldn’t get ahold of. He gripped the doorframe as though it was a lifeline, but he was drowning.

“Is everything okay?” She was breathy, and her voice was sleepy. Her lips a little swollen and a crease on the side of her face from the pillow. She was totally rumpled and imperfect, and she wasn’t wearing a bra. He should not be seeing this.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” His mouth was dry, and his voice sounded strained and raspy to him.

Her low laugh gripped him by the balls and tugged. He nearly groaned from the pleasure of it. “Because my boss is in the room staring at me like a weirdo. Seriously, what’s wrong? Did I get a penalty and lose P1?”

Of course she was worried about the race. Why else would he come barging into the room where she was sleeping? Something had to be wrong.

He shook his head. “No. Nothing like that. I just—”

Her gaze dipped to his crotch again. At this point, he was so used to having a hard-on around her, he didn’t even think about it. He willed it to subside but being in the same room with her aged that part of his body down to his twenties at the very least.

“You just what?” She licked her bottom lip, and he let out a sound that was a cross between a moan and a growl. She smiled at him, as though she knew every thought in his head and wasn’t turned off at all by how perverted they were.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t dare. He was holding on by the very thinnest of silk threads. He was a few milliseconds away from losing all control, and they both knew a few milliseconds could mean everything.

But it was clear to him, as she got out from under the duvet and crawled toward the end of the bed, toward him, that she was going to press her luck.

She was going for the gap in his self-control.

She stood up on her knees, and he allowed himself to look—just look—at her.

Her pajamas consisted of a flimsy tank top that made her nipples seem almost lewd.

And a pair of panties that might have seemed modest on anyone without the same hard-won muscle tone.

There was a muscle in her hip he wanted to bite down on before he licked between her thighs.

He could smell her arousal now that she was this close. He’d memorized the way she smelled, sweaty and full of adrenaline, after the race. It was almost the same now, except different.

She ran her fingers through her messy hair and bit her lip again. “I feel the same way, Liam.”

“You couldn’t—”

“Shut up.” She paused, seeming shocked she’d said that to her boss, but then she continued. “I can’t get to sleep at night without touching myself and thinking about you. Whatever sounds you thought I was making back here were for you.”

“You did that on purpose? To see if you could lure me back here?” Such a naughty fucking girl. He really ought to take her over his knee. He wondered if she would like that. “What did you think was going to happen if you did that?”

Micaela shook her head and took a deep, quivering breath. “I didn’t know, but I had to try.”

“Why?” He wanted to know why she’d decided to seduce him now. Was she not that into him and trying to use his attraction to her to get a leg up in the team? Or did she really feel the same clawing ache he felt whenever he was anywhere near her? Whenever he thought of her?

He couldn’t move, because he didn’t trust himself not to reach between her legs and test out whether she was wet and desperate for him. “Why do I think about you every time I touch myself?”

He nodded. His mouth completely dry.

“I have no idea. I know it’s not because you’re my ex’s dad.” She stepped off the bed and her body was just inches from his. “I know it’s not because you’re my boss. Both of those things would lead me to run far away.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” He did want to hurt her, but only in ways they’d both like.

And only if she begged. He had the distinct feeling she was the kind of person who needed to push through some pain to feel any pleasure.

He’d seen her smile on the Instagram she’d posted after doing a VO2 max test. He’d thought about it later, in the shower.

He’d wondered if she would smile like that after taking his cock down her throat.

“I don’t want to hurt you either. And I know this is messy.”

It was his turn to laugh. “This is more than messy. This is a disaster waiting to happen.”

“It is.” She looked down and pressed a hand against his chest. It burned him through his shirt. He closed his eyes. “But I feel like when you didn’t make sure that we had a chaperone on this plane, you committed to the move. There’s no pulling out now. We’re fully spinning towards the wall.”

“But—” He could argue all he wanted that he’d thought he had more self-control, but that would be him lying to himself. And though he might be questioning his own integrity right now—really whether he controlled his own fate at all—he wouldn’t do that.

“If I kiss you, you’re going to kiss me back.” She was right. “And I want to make sure that you know it was my choice. I want this just as much as you do. And I want you to promise me that you won’t hate yourself for it.”

“I won’t just kiss you back, Micaela.” He shouldn’t have said her name. It made this dream of a moment more real. “I won’t be able to stop touching you unless you want me to, and you won’t want me to.”

She cocked her head to the side and trailed a finger of the hand that was on his chest across the skin right above the collar of his shirt. He had to lock his knees. “I won’t want you to? Why not?”

“Because one kiss will be all it takes to tear you apart if you feel the same way about me that I do about you. You’ll need more, thinking it will put you back together.

And then, we’ll fuck. We’ll tell ourselves that it will only be once, but we’ll know that’s not true.

Both of us are drivers. We’ll always push the limit. ”

She grabbed the lapels of his shirt and pulled his face close to hers. “I don’t see a problem with that.”

He could see a million, but he didn’t pull away when she kissed him.