Page 33 of Heart of the Race

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.”