Page 68 of Knot So Fast (Speedverse #1)

I watch her take the first corner, all precision and controlled aggression, and feel something shift in my chest. She drives like she does everything else—with a confidence that borders on arrogance but is backed up by genuine skill.

By the third lap, she's found the racing line, avoiding the worst of the cracks, dancing the car through corners with a fluidity that makes me wonder what else she's been hiding.

When she finally pulls up at the far straight, killing the engine as instructed, I'm already walking over. The silence after the engine dies is massive, broken only by the tick of cooling metal and our breathing.

"That was—" she starts, but I'm already there, hands braced on either side of her through the open window.

"You've driven before," I say. It's not a question.

"Maybe," she admits, and her smile is wicked. "Maybe I have a few secrets of my own."

"Is that right?"

"Mm-hmm."

The space between us crackles with possibility.

Then she's reaching for me, fingers curling into my shirt, and I lean down to meet her halfway.

The kiss is immediate and desperate, all teeth and heat and the kind of hunger that comes from wanting something you're not supposed to have.

Her nails catch at my jaw, just sharp enough to sting, and I growl into her mouth in response.

"Get in here," she demands against my lips, and who am I to argue?

I'm through the window and pulling her across the gear stick before either of us can think better of it.

She ends up straddling my lap, one hand braced on the roll hoop for balance, the other tangled in my hair.

The car is too small for this, the steering wheel digging into my back, the gear stick threatening to impale us both, but neither of us cares.

Her mouth tastes like coffee and possibility. My hands find the hem of her shirt, sliding underneath just to feel the heat of her spine, the way her muscles move under skin. She makes a sound that's half gasp, half laugh when my fingers trace the waistband of her jeans.

"Someone could see," she breathes, but she's rolling her hips against mine in a way that suggests she doesn't actually care.

"No one comes here," I assure her, catching her throat with one hand while the other pins her hip in place. "It's just us and the ghosts."

She kisses me again, harder this time, like she's trying to prove a point. Her teeth catch my bottom lip, and I respond by tightening my grip on her throat—not enough to hurt, just enough to remind us both that this thing between us has edges.

"Caspian," she gasps, and the way she says my name makes me want to do extremely inadvisable things in this barely-functional Lotus.

But then a sound cuts through the morning air—the low rumble of an engine that doesn't belong here.

I go still, every instinct screaming alert. Through the dusty windscreen, I see it: a blacked-out SUV creeping along the access road. It slows as it passes the far gate, windows too dark to see inside, then continues on. Too slow. Too deliberate.

"What?" Auren asks, sensing the shift in my attention.

"Nothing," I lie smoothly, helping her climb back into the driver's seat. "Just thought I heard something. Come on, let's head back. I'm fucking starving."

She laughs, the tension breaking. "Language, Mr. Thorne. What would your sponsors think?"

"That I'm human after all," I reply, but I'm memorizing the SUV's plates as it disappears around the bend. Monaco registration. Late model. The kind of anonymous vehicle that could belong to anyone—or everyone.

"Are you seriously telling me you eat burgers?" she asks as we walk back to the pit area. "Actual, grease-dripping, terrible-for-you burgers?"

"What, you thought I survived on protein shakes and the tears of my enemies?"

She's pulled out her camera—the Canon G7X Mark III we bought her last week after she mentioned wanting to document things properly. The morning light is perfect now, golden and soft, making everything look like a movie about better times.

"Stand there," she orders, pointing to a section of barrier where the old Marlboro logo is still visible. "Try to look brooding and artistic."

"I don't do brooding and artistic."

"You literally do nothing but brooding and artistic."

She snaps photos while I pretend to be annoyed, but really I'm watching her work.

The way she moves around to find the best angle, completely absorbed in what she's seeing through the lens.

She photographs the track, the abandoned grandstands, my initials on the wall.

She even makes me sit on the hood of my car, though I draw the line at "pensive gazing into the distance. "

"These are actually good," I tell her, looking at the camera's display. The photos have that vintage quality the camera is famous for, making our morning look like something from the 1970s.

"Don't sound so surprised," she says, but she's pleased. I can tell by the way she bites her lower lip while scrolling through the shots.

We pack up as the morning advances, the sun now properly up and starting to heat the cracked tarmac. As I'm closing the garage where the Lotus lives, she's distracted, trying to get the perfect shot of the way the light falls through the broken roof.

But I see it again—the same SUV, parked now on the hill overlooking the circuit. Just sitting there. Watching.

My pulse spikes, but I keep my expression neutral. I've gotten good at that over the years—hiding the parts of my life that don't fit the carefully crafted narrative. But this is different. This is her safety in question, and that changes the calculation entirely.

"Hey," I call out, casual as anything. "We should go if we want to beat the tourist traffic."

She comes over, camera still in hand, and I rest my hand on her elbow as we walk to the car. Not possessive, just... present. A subtle message to anyone watching that she's under my protection.

"You okay?" she asks as we get in the car. "You seem tense."

"Just hungry," I deflect, starting the engine. "There's a place about thirty minutes from here that does burgers that'll make you reconsider your entire life philosophy."

"I already reconsidered my entire life philosophy," she says, and the way she looks at me makes it clear she's not talking about food.

I pull out onto the road, watching the mirrors. The SUV doesn't follow, but that doesn't mean anything. If they're smart—and they usually are—they'll have gotten what they came for already.

But I push that thought away as we hit the main road.

I lower the windows, letting the morning air whip through the car, and find a radio station playing the kind of classic rock that belongs on a drive like this.

She immediately starts singing along to The Eagles, slightly off-key but with enthusiasm that makes up for it.

"You're terrible," I tell her, but I'm grinning.

"You love it," she shoots back, and she's not wrong.

The road stretches out ahead of us, winding through the mountains toward the coast. She's got her feet up on the dashboard, camera in her lap, hair whipping around her face in the wind.

The morning sun turns everything golden, and for a moment, I let myself forget about mysterious SUVs and whatever game someone's playing.

I glance over at her—at the way she's completely lost in the moment, singing badly to "Hotel California" while the French countryside blurs past—and feel something fierce rise in my chest. It's possession, but more than that.

It's the need to protect this, to keep her exactly like this, wild and free and unaware of the shadows that follow me.

"What?" she asks, catching me staring.

"Nothing," I say, but I reach over and take her hand, interlacing our fingers. "Just thinking."

"About?"

"About how I'm never letting this go," I say, and I mean it more than she knows. "Whatever this is, whatever we're doing—I'm not giving it up."

She squeezes my hand, and we drive on into the morning, the ghost of that SUV already fading in the rearview mirror. But I memorize the plates anyway. BGK-7739. Monaco registration.

Because Caspian Thorne didn't survive this long by forgetting threats. And anyone who thinks they can use her to get to me is about to learn exactly why I'm still here when so many others aren't.

But for now, we have the morning. We have terrible burgers to eat and bad songs to sing and the kind of happiness that feels stolen from someone else's life.

She's taking pictures of our joined hands with that vintage-effect camera, and I'm pretending not to notice the way my chest feels too tight when she smiles.

The abandoned circuit falls behind us, taking its ghosts with it.

But I carry mine with me always—the angry kid who carved his initials into concrete, the son who couldn't save his father, the driver who learned to channel rage into precision.

They're all here in this car, watching this woman sing off-key to classic rock while the sun turns her into something mythical.

"Thank you," she says suddenly, turning serious. "For showing me that. For trusting me with it."

"Yeah, well," I say, deflecting because sincerity before noon is dangerous. "Everyone needs to see where the magic happens."

"Magic," she repeats, amused. "Is that what we're calling it?"

"What would you call it?"

She thinks about it, camera raised to catch the way the light falls through the windshield. "Truth," she says finally. "I'd call it truth."

And maybe that's what this is—the truth of us, stripped of paddock politics and corporate obligations. Just two people in a car, racing toward something neither of us can name but both of us want.

I squeeze her hand again and press harder on the accelerator, chasing the morning into afternoon, carrying her away from whatever threat that SUV represents.

She doesn't need to know about that yet.

For now, she just needs this—the wind and the music and the promise of terrible food eaten with expensive hands.

The rest will come soon enough. It always does in my world. But today, we're nobody and everybody, flying down a French highway with the windows down and our hearts on our sleeves.

Today, we're just us.

And maybe that's enough…at least for now.