Page 6 of Heart of the Race

SIX

T he cab stopped in front of my house, and when he got out, my whole body suffused with warmth as I stared at the man.

And just like that, it was official.

Even if we spent the rest of our lives on opposite ends of the earth, I still had no business dragging any poor, innocent man into the devastation that was the remains of my heart. I had given it to Varro when I was too young to know better, and there it would stay. Nothing to be done about it. Graham was right. I needed to be loved, but there was only one person I wanted that from, and I was looking at him.

“Hey,” Varro called over to me as he walked up to the white picket fence, opened the gate, and then closed it behind him, his eyes never leaving mine the whole time.

“Isn’t my house awesome?” I threw out just to be saying something.

“I like that you have a yard.” He smiled, stopping to look around. Even close to downtown, the homes, because the neighborhood was old, had decent-sized front yards. So where I was, on the porch, sat a good fifty feet back from the sidewalk and under the wide overhang from the roof. We didn’t get a lot of traffic on my street, which was nice. “Did you put the cobblestones in, or were they here when you moved in?”

“I did it.”

“Nice. You did a good job.”

“Well, the contractor did, right?”

“Sure.”

It was weird. It felt odd, stiff, static—we were having the most polite conversation ever. All at once I realized I had to return us to normalcy.

“So what the hell is going on with you and your head mechanic?” I volleyed playfully.

His smile was instant, firing his eyes, and I could tell he was thankful we were talking like we always did.

“What brought him all the way here to me?” I added.

“He doesn’t know I got a job offer yet,” he answered, closing in, garment bag in one hand, huge Louis Vuitton duffel in the other. “And he was worried about me racing again without you there.”

“I see. And when do you plan to tell him what’s really going on?”

“Any second now,” he said as he sat down close to me on the top step, putting his two articles of luggage on the step below him.

We were silent, just the two of us sitting together.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said, rolling my head sideways to look at him. “Why didn’t you just tell him about it as soon as you got it?”

“Because for one, it means the job, if he wants it, will be a lot different than the one he has now. He wouldn’t work for me anymore. He’d work for my new employer.”

“And for two?”

“When I first mentioned it to him, he thought it was too dangerous.”

I snorted out a laugh. “You got a job offer scarier than what you do now?”

“Potentially,” he hedged.

“Jesus, doing what? Riding your bike through a mine field?”

“Test driving.”

“So, close, then?”

He laughed softly.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“Last month. We all heard that this guy, Archer Del Toro, was gonna build a new bike.”

“Okay.”

“But it’s a joke, right, nothing serious. Word on the circuit is that he’s a playboy. Fast bikes, faster women, you get the idea.”

“Sure.”

“Thing is, though,” he said as he leaned all the way back against the concrete, hands clasped behind his head, long, hard muscled body stretched out beside me, “everything changes when we see Klaus Stein walking around the paddock with him, talking to guys and then checking the pit.”

“Who’s Klaus whoever?”

“He’s the bike designer behind innovations in?—”

“No.” I stopped him. “Don’t dazzle me with examples of stuff I have no clue about. He’s a bike builder from Germany with a name like Klaus, right?”

“Yeah.” He grinned up at me.

“Like, one of the top in the world?”

“Uh-huh, he’s totally respected by MSMA.”

I didn’t care what that stood for. What was important was what the conversation was building to. “And so what does this have to do with you?”

“Well, since I can’t be racing all over the world anymore because I’ve got plans for us, I made sure I was there, in Del Toro’s face, the next time I saw him.”

“Plans?”

“Yeah,” he said, rolling his head to his bent elbow as he reached for me.

I took his hand and relished the strength and warmth, the electric tingles running through my body from just a simple touch.

“I told my manager before we parted ways that I don’t want to ride competitively anymore,” he explained, his voice gruff.

My stomach fluttered. “Why not?”

“I need a job with more of a set schedule, so you’ll know when I’ll be home so you can plan your life with me in it.”

I nearly swallowed my tongue. “You tell me you love me on the phone, and now you just expect to move in?”

His gaze was on our fingers lacing together. “Yeah.” He wasn’t really listening to me. The hooded eyes, the trace of a smile; it was our skin together that had him so entranced.

I didn’t even want to move; I was so afraid I would startle the exotic creature and he would run away. I exhaled as the world slowed and everything fell away except the two of us.

“You look tired.”

He didn’t say I was wrong.

“You’re not sleeping.”

“I haven’t slept since you left,” he replied, sliding his hand up to my wrist.

I mirrored the action, having to slide closer to him, pressing my hip into his side and twisting my upper body so I could look down at him. He had beautiful forearms, strong, with roped veins I found very sexy.

“So… tell me about the guy,” he ventured.

“That was subtle.” I chuckled.

“Brian.”

I looked down into his face. “Nothing to tell.”

“What does that mean?” His gaze lifted to meet mine.

“It means that he wanted me to pick between him and you.”

He nodded. “And you told him to go fuck himself.”

“It’s done.” I left it at that. “He also said that I’m basically dead inside.”

Sitting up quickly, he turned to face me. “You? Dead inside? He’s obviously never seen you bounce in your chair over three scoops of rocky road.”

His eyes were so dark, so warm, and having him close sent twinges of sizzling heat through me.

“You don’t think that, do you?” I checked.

“No,” he promised, leaning close. “You fight with me at the drop of a hat. Dead is not the adjective I’d use.”

My eyes filled fast.

“No,” he soothed, putting a hand on my cheek, stroking gently before smoothing his thumb over my bottom lip.

“V?”

“Does it have to be a whole thing?” he inquired, never moving his fingers from my face.

I was fairly certain he was speaking Mandarin or ancient Greek, some language I didn’t understand at all.

“I mean…” His eyebrows pinched over his nose even as he traced his thumb along my jaw. “Can it just be I’m fuckin’ sorry for being blind all the way back to high school when I screwed all the girls instead of jumping you in your bed in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t begrudge you the girls, or the women when you were older,” I allowed. “All those experiences and relationships make you who you are. I get that.”

“I didn’t know, Brian. I didn’t know I loved my best friend. I was too stupid to figure it out. It only made sense after you left.”

The when didn’t matter to me, just the truth he knew now .

“Am I gay if I only want to sleep with you but not any other guys?” he asked.

“You like to sleep with women too,” I reminded him. “So no, you’re not gay, you’re bi, since you’re saying you like me along with women.”

“There won’t be anyone else anymore.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“Okay,” he said after a second, sliding his hand to the back of my neck. “But does it have to be a thing?”

“I have no idea what that means.”

He didn’t answer, instead simply eased me forward, leaned in to meet me, and sealed his lips over mine.

I had kissed him a thousand times: on the cheek, shoulder, even brushed his mouth accidently once with firm purpose. But never had I opened for him and allowed him to know the yearning, the famine for his touch that lived in me.

The press of his tongue, the taste of it, made the ache deepen and burn. I seized on the wanting, on the desire, and claimed what I’d always hoped would someday be mine. It didn’t matter if he pulled away or shoved me off or even hit me. All that mattered was the precious moments I had to drink in his attention—his breath, his kiss—and that I would finally know what it felt like to have everything I ever wanted.

I could live a lifetime in just a few heartbeats of time.

But he didn’t pull away, and the first voracious, starving kiss became another, and another. He cupped my face in one hand and tangled the other in my hair as he held me close and didn’t let go until we both had to have air. Our lips parted just enough and then fused once more, harder, rougher, deeper, tongues sliding together as I was devoured.

I met him eagerly, forcefully, made him feel my ravaging hunger so he’d know, so there could be no mistake. I was demanding, dominating him like I never did, my hands in his long thick hair, tugging at his clothes, crawling over him, pushing him back and pressing him down.

My reward for being brave, for not letting the moment pass, was his surrender. I had him flat on his back under me; I mauled his mouth, licking, biting, sucking. I slid my hands under his sweater onto his hot skin as I slowly rocked my ass over the hard bulge in his jeans. The undulating motion as I kissed him brought a moan from deep in his chest. A sweeter sound I had never heard. When he shoved me back, the first thing I noticed was his dark, wet eyes, the blown pupils hotter than I could have ever imagined.

“For fuck’s sake, Brian,” he complained, interrupting my thought. “Why didn’t you just take me?”

“It wasn’t my place to take, it was yours to choose. And what did you mean, does it have to be a thing? What’re you talking about?”

He made a noise in the back of his throat. “I mean, do we have to talk about it for ten years before we go to bed?”

The way he stared up into my eyes, I seriously could have stayed right there, straddling his hips, for the rest of my life. God, I loved him.

“Bri?”

I shook my head just a little so I wouldn’t cry. “What’re you talking about? I don’t have to talk about every little thing.”

It was a whopper of a lie.

“I hope you don’t turn to stone right here, as big a lie as that is.”

I bent over and kissed him again, because he was letting me and I wanted to do it, just in case I was having the best, most realistic, most vivid dream ever.

He smiled when I pulled back and licked his lips.

“So.” He cleared his throat, settling his hands on my thighs, clenching and unclenching his grip as he gazed up at me. “Is this place everything you hoped?”

“What do you mean?” I sat back to look down at him.

“It was time that you had what you always wanted and needed. Your whole life couldn’t just be about me.”

It took me a moment. “You stayed away on purpose.”

“Yeah.” He nodded and reached up to knot his hand in my sweater and draw me back down to him.

“Why?” I put my hands down on each side of his head. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I knew if we talked, I’d ask you to come back on the road with me.”

“So?”

“So, if you didn’t, I’d be crushed, and if you did… were you supposed to give up on all your dreams for me?”

“Oh,” I whispered, getting it suddenly, the reason for the silence between us. “That’s why you didn’t visit or call or… you were thinking about me.”

“I do that on occasion,” he said huskily, moving his hands to my hips. “Think about you.”

“Varro.”

“In fact,” he said as he pulled me down so our foreheads touched, “I think about you all the time.”

He did? “You do?”

“I do. I was coming to tell you.” He tilted my head back and pressed his hot mouth to my throat, kissing and sucking. My whimper came out deep and low as my eyes fluttered closed. “And I was going to go alone back to the Isle of Man because the job offer is contingent on one more successful run of?—”

“I hate that race.” I shivered, only partly from his closeness.

“And I love it.” He chuckled, kissing my nose and then my closed eyes. “But I need you there with me, because it’s dangerous, and now I have something to lose, and that kind of scares me to death.”

Lulled by the heat rolling off him, his warm hands on my skin, the rumble of his deep voice, it took a few seconds for his words to register. I jerked back, and he groaned as my weight pressed down on his hard, swollen erection.

“Please, Brian.”

“Varro.”

“Last time, I promise. We’ll go, and then we’ll come back and live together in your sweet little house. I’ll still have to drive, but I’ll come home.”

My mouth was open, but no words were coming out.

“We can get a dog.”

“Varro.”

“I know you need a home, baby. I do. I’m gonna be that, I swear.”

I was going to pass out. “You don’t want me. You just want a babysitter.”

“No,” he growled as he sat up, grabbed hold of my ass, and yanked me onto his lap.

I gasped as he caught my bottom lip between his teeth and bit down gently, then harder, sucking it into his hot mouth.

My bucking against him could not be helped; the coursing sensations annihilated me. I had waited my whole life to be where I was right now, clutched tight, his hands digging into my flesh.

When he leaned back, I caught his look, the sweetness in it.

“We need to talk,” I managed to get out.

“After,” he whispered. “Can you get up now and take me inside and show me your bed?”

“It doesn’t have to be that,” I said, because I wanted him to be sure.

“What do you mean?”

God, what was I even saying?

“Come here,” he said warmly, hands on my face as he drew me forward. He smiled against my lips. “Do you want me?”

“That’s the stupidest question ever.”

The laugh lines around his eyes crinkled, and I saw the curl of his beautiful mouth, the full lower lip, the thinner upper one.

“You kiss everybody the way you just kissed me?” he wanted to know.

“Another stupid question.”

“Okay,” he said, and just then I got that he was nervous too.

I stood up slowly, not wanting to spook him, and picked up his duffel. “Follow me.”

“Have been all my life.”