Page 4 of Faster

Luca took her wrists in his hands and looked at her.

She wanted to blush, but she couldn’t manage it.

The way he stared at her body, even though she was sure he’d seen more perfect bodies, made her feel like there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

It was a kind of worship that she’d rarely experienced.

“I was tested a few weeks ago,” she said. She bit her lip, wondering if she should explain further. “We had vaguely talked about a baby this year. But we haven’t—not since then.”

There was the embarrassment. She should have known that her husband was in the mood to have sex. Just not with her. Maybe she should have gotten him high. Or perhaps she’d already been in the process of being discarded, and she hadn’t even known it.

“I was tested this week. Nothing was positive. And fucking my way through Europe as a way to bury my feelings hasn’t been my thing in a while.

” He smiled against her lips, and she wondered if he was joking.

She felt an unearned jealousy, but she wanted to feel him against her more than she wanted to interrogate him.

“It’s not the right time of the month for me to get pregnant.” She had been looking for Ethan so they could “practice” when she’d found him. He’d always gotten horned up by cocaine, and she’d wanted to take that one small advantage from his drug use.

Luca put his hands around her head and pulled her close. “Are you saying that you want me bare?”

If she was only going to get to have him once, she was definitely saying that. She wanted him with nothing between them. If this was only going to happen once, and she wasn’t sure how it could ever happen again, she wanted nothing but him.

“Yes. I want all of you inside me.” She wanted to walk back into the condo she shared with Ethan with his childhood best friend still inside her. It was petty and vengeful, but he’d been negligent and cruel. He had to pay a price, and she wanted a prize.

Luca ran a thumb across her bottom lip. “Remind me never to cross you.”

“Okay.” She bit the tip of his thumb and then sucked it. He pulled it away and then put that hand into her panties. He knew she was on edge somehow, so he homed in on her clit immediately. It was almost more pleasure than she could handle.

“I want you to come first. I need it from you.” His voice was rough and demanding.

She would play that quiet order in her head when she touched herself for a long time afterward.

Every touch—even the way he breathed and the smell of his skin—went inside her memory bank for safekeeping.

Even as her body spiraled toward orgasm.

As soon as they’d made contact, she’d known there would be an explosion. But knowing that didn’t prepare her for feeling like she was flying through the air, weightless, not even bothering to brace for the crash.

They told the drivers to take their hands off the wheel if they knew they were going to hit the wall. It kept their hands and wrists safer from injury during an impact. Right now, there was nothing safe about taking her hands off the wheel and giving over control to Luca.

But she found that she didn’t really care.

The feeling of Cecelia falling apart because of him would never leave Luca.

He wasn’t dumb enough to think they could carry on an affair, so he knew this one night had to last him for the rest of his life.

Maybe it was because she was the only woman he could never have—not really—but Cece’s orgasm made him feel like he was ten feet tall.

Everything happened fast after she came. It was like he’d made her hungrier. She lined up his cock with her entrance in what felt like a flash-forward in time. He was dazed by feeling her, watching her.

“I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted right now.” He wasn’t sure why he said that out loud. He didn’t usually talk a lot during sex. It wasn’t usually quite this intimate. That had never bothered him until now. But, with Cece, he felt the need to share a little more of himself.

She stopped, but kept her soft, little hand on him. He twitched in anticipation. Probably should have kept his mouth shut. “Why would you be insulted?”

He loved the way she cocked her head with the question. “Because I just made you come, and you need my dick right away. No afterglow.”

“I feel like you do after a podium, right now.” She leaned closely and whispered in his ear. “I need more adrenaline. More of a rush. Faster. I won, but I need to win more.”

If he hadn’t been hard enough to cut glass before, her words got him there now. “Take it.”

When she lined him up again, he pressed his hips up, and they came together.

Their sweat-damp skin pressed together, and he felt her everywhere.

Neither of them spoke, but they looked at each other.

He didn’t usually look his partners in the eye while he was inside them.

Again, way too intimate. But he couldn’t get close enough to Cece.

He wanted to crawl inside her skin and never leave.

He wanted more. Faster. All of it. Right now.

And he let himself take more, allowing Cece to press and grind against his pelvis, clutching him tight inside her.

She was soft everywhere, but also impossibly strong.

He let her long, dark hair curtain their faces as he kissed her again.

It felt like silk against his skin, catching against his stubble.

He couldn’t get enough of touching her delicate brown skin, learning the curves of her body, trying to memorize this the way he could still taste the champagne after his first win.

The sweat on her neck was better than that. He wanted to bottle it. Even though he wanted this moment to last forever, he knew it couldn’t. His body was impatient. He needed to come inside her, to mark her as his. Just this once.

He picked her up enough to roll her to the side and on her back. She wrapped her legs around his hips and kept him gripped the whole time. They didn’t talk anymore, and they didn’t look at each other. The intensity of what they were both feeling individually was too much.

All he could think about was her. She was the whole world at that moment.

He hadn’t been fired. He’d never been her husband’s best friend.

He’d never even driven a race car. There was no struggle in the past or even in the future.

He was a rutting beast, and she was his mate.

It was primitive and grotesque and completely ecstatic.

Her third orgasm took him by surprise, and he felt it in his bones. She squeezed him so hard and scratched his back so deeply, he might have scars afterward. It sent him over the edge. He came until he felt empty. Until he felt new and used up at the same time.

It was almost unfair how good it was with her.

How could she do this to him? Why had she given him a taste of paradise that he couldn’t keep?

He’d come to peace with the fact that he’d never have her—that he’d never even kiss her.

It was the blueprint for how he was coming to peace with the fact that his career was most likely over.

Now, he would never know peace. He couldn’t let her know she’d done this to him. It hadn’t been intentional. Not even her fault really. He could have put a stop to this, tucked her into the spare bedroom, or even not let her in the door.

He was the one who was weak. But she couldn’t know that.

So, he smiled down at her, cleaned her up, put her in his shirt and bed, and slept with her until she snuck out at dawn.

Cece walked into her apartment with her body still buzzing.

Satisfaction and shame fought for supremacy beneath her skin.

So much had happened last night that she couldn’t tell which direction was up and which was down.

Although she’d set out for revenge, the way Luca had touched her had turned last night into something else entirely.

By the time she got out of the hired car and made her way up to the penthouse in the clothes she’d been wearing last night—this dress was definitely ruined—she was exhausted.

It was only a few blocks away from Luca’s, but the distance felt so much more arduous because she didn’t know what she was going to find once she returned home.

She opened the door to find that the housekeeper had already been there and gone.

Ethan must have called them first thing this morning.

Either he was disgusted at what he’d done the night before and wanted to remove all the evidence, or he’d thought ahead and had the service come in while they would still be asleep.

She tried to harden herself against the fact that he was always thinking ahead.

She both loved and hated that about him.

When Cece was growing up, she’d hated waking up the morning after her father had a party.

One morning, she’d stepped on a smoldering joint on the floor.

In retrospect, it was a good thing that she’d stepped there—she’d probably prevented her mother’s little house from burning down.

But it had hurt like a bitch, and she’d had a scar for a long time.

Her father had moved out about a month later.

Cece had no idea whether her tearstained face and gasping sobs had done anything to make her mother wake up to the fact that her father was a loser, but she never had to wake up and clean up after her dad’s creepy friends again.

It was too early in Miami to call her mother.

Graciela would know what to do. She’d probably tell her to pack her shit while Ethan was still asleep and get on the next flight to Florida.

A younger Cece would have done it. She could always go home.

But there were enough years between who she was in Miami and who she was now that she hesitated to go back and crawl into her childhood bed.