Flying Gold Read online

  He shudders, pressing his body harder against mine, and he bites my lower lip. A rush of heat sings through me. Roughness, pain—that brings me out of my head, into my body again. I laugh. Damn, he was right. This is better than driving fast.

  “Hold still,” he murmurs against my mouth as I squirm, and that just makes me squirm more. One large hand clutches my ass and my shoulders press into the wall. His erection feels huge, pressing against the neediest, hungriest part of me.

  “Make me.” I glare at him, and the conversation we have with our eyes is more than a simple eye fucking. It’s a renaissance. Ten years ago, sex was a different conversation. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we learned, together. Those people, that relationship, they’re dead and gone, but in the dark, in this angry, hurting place, a part of that is reborn.

  We know what we can do with these bodies of ours. We know how to use each other just right. I see the moment he understands, and the moment, just a split second later, when he accepts it for what it is.

  “I’m going to make you feel good, Ani, but I can’t read your mind. If I hurt you—”

  “If you do a single damn thing I don’t want, I’ll make you stop.” My voice startles me—angry but breathless.

  “Promise?”

  I nod, arching against him, grinding my swollen pussy into him.

  This time, when he presses his lips to mine, one hand comes up and clasps my throat. It’s rough and hungry, and oh so goddamn right.

  His other hand pushes my skirt up and shoves my panties aside, cupping me low, sliding through my wetness, but not penetrating.

  “Ask for it,” he hisses in my ear, nipping the sensitive lobe and sending another shudder through my body. Oh god, I want it. I want it so bad, it’s all I can do not to grind down onto his hand.

  Instead, I snarl at him. “Fuck you.”

  He grins, looking sexy and almost feral in the dark, only a hint of moonlight reflecting off his glasses. The hand between my legs drops away, and the touch on my throat gentles, turns from a claim to a caress. He frames my face with both hands, brushing hair from sweaty skin. I’m dizzy with wanting as he kisses me again.

  It’s a seduction, this kiss. A reminder of how good it felt to be his, and a promise that ten years have honed that chemistry we had to a knife’s edge.

  I can’t separate this from the memories, and I don’t want to, because he remembers too. He remembers how to woo me with his hands, with his mouth. He remembers what I like. He scrapes his fingernails across my collarbone on the way to pull down the front of my dress. He bares one breast, toying with the nipple, twisting and teasing, while the other hand cups my jaw and throat again.

  “Please,” I mumble into his mouth. “Matt—”

  He pulls back, meeting my gaze. We stare at each other, chests heaving, while his fingertips on my breast continue their sweet torment. My eyes drift closed and I find my words.

  “Bite me.”

  He chuckles low in his throat, then his teeth graze my collarbone, not quite a bite, but not a kiss either. He does the same on the other side, then bites the swell of my breast. I drop my head back against the wall, letting out a rough moan. My mind isn’t racing anymore, but my heart is, and other parts of me, parts I thought I didn’t care about, are waking up too. My breasts are heavy, nipples puckering under his attention. My pussy is wet and aching.

  “Touch me.” I shove his hand between my legs and hold my breath.

  “Ani,” he murmurs against my throat, then he’s kissing me again, rougher this time, and as his tongue strokes against mine, one finger slides through my wetness and finds my clit.

  Sensation overload. I buck against his hand, and he stills, cupping me again until I start squirming. Then he rubs a single circle around my clit and it’s enough to bring heat rushing to my face, flushing my whole body with arousal and impatience. It feels so good, so very good. How can such a small touch contain so much?

  The orgasm takes me by surprise, shuddering through me so hard my teeth click against his and my knees wobble underneath me. But he’s got me, and somehow he knows just how to soften his touch, just how to bend his own knees to keep me on my feet, just how to kiss the swell of my cheekbone which is wet with sweat and tears.

  “Matt?” I quiver against him, and he drags his lips from my face so he can see me, so he can hear me.

  “Don’t stop.”

  Matt

  Don’t stop.

  The words catch fire in the air between us as she pulls me down for another kiss. She’s wild in my arms, a writhing live wire of sensation. I slide my fingers back inside her, and she’s swollen and wet, still rocking against my hand. My cock is like an iron bar between my legs, but I ignore it, trailing my lips down the side of her throat, biting the firm flesh of her shoulder.

  She whimpers and shakes, her hands bunching in my shirt. “Off,” she pleads, so I pull it off, and she runs her hands over my chest, taking my measure, squeezing and then—oh fuck. She scratches her fingernails across a nipple, and the pain and pleasure sing through me together. I groan, leaning forward and chasing her mouth with my own.

  Her gaze catches mine in the low light. “I want to fuck.”

  My head drops to my chest, a groan tearing through me. “Ani—”

  “Make me feel more, Matt.” Her voice breaks on my name, and tears start slipping from her eyes. “Help me.”

  I sink down to my knees, shoving her skirt up and her panties aside. I look up at her, and a tear breaks away from her face and hits mine.

  “Help me,” she pleads again, pushing my face to her pussy.

  What if this is all we get? What if this is the only chance we have to be together like this? I lean my forehead against her belly and inhale the sweet smell of her, then use the fingers still buried inside her to tilt her toward me. Her knees buckle, and I dive in.

  Heaven. She tastes like heaven.

  Her clit is swollen and slippery against my tongue, and as I circle it and suck at it, her hands tighten in my hair. Need rushes through me, so I drop my other hand to my lap and squeeze myself before using it to slide her leg over my shoulder. This is for her, not me.

  Her hands tighten and release rhythmically in my hair, like a cat kneading. I want to make her purr. When a press of my tongue in a certain way makes her gasp, I do it again, and again, until she starts riding my face. I’ve never wanted anything in my life the way I want to kneel here at her feet. I feel drunk with my own desire, but denying it to serve her, being used by her, makes it even sweeter.

  “Matt.” She tugs at my hair, but I don’t stop. I curl my fingers and my tongue, and I squeeze the ripe peach of her ass with my other hand.

  “Matt!” She pushes me away from her body, and my heart lurches in disappointment. “I want you to fuck me.”

  The words take a moment to penetrate the fog of desire and denial wreaking havoc on my senses.

  “Where?” I glance around, suddenly aware we’re in a parking lot, secluded, behind a gate, yes, but still a parking lot.

  “Follow me.” She takes my hand and leads me behind a row of cars, pulling her keys out and opening the door to the backseat of one.

  “Ani—”

  “Get in.”

  I slide into the backseat. After a flurry of motion, something—her panties—drops to the seat next to me, and then she’s straddling me, opening the fly of my jeans. I close my hands over hers. “Do you have protection?”

  She shakes her head. “Do I need it? I can’t get pregnant. I have an IUD.”

  I swallow, embarrassed to be this deep with her before having this conversation. Obviously, she doesn’t think—or care—that protection is as much for me as for her. I tell myself it’s the first, which makes it even harder to admit that I haven’t been as careful as I could have been, that she shouldn’t just trust like that.

&nb
sp; “Yes. I get a physical every year, I get tested for stuff, but I’m not—” I glance away. “I’m not sure. So yes, we need it.”

  “Wait here.”

  She disappears, and a light flickers on in the building, then turns off a moment later. She slides into the car beside me, taking my flagging erection in hand.

  “Tyler leaves a gym bag at work,” is all she says before her lips close over the head of my dick.

  It’s pure torture and heaven all at once. Heat and wetness surrounding me while her hair spills like silk across my stomach. My breath catches, and I hold it, scared that I’ll come if I even breathe. Her tongue curls against the most sensitive spot, and I’m hard as a rock when she pulls away and smiles.

  I watch, mesmerized, as she rips open the condom packet, and I groan as she rolls the latex down over me, then licks and nibbles her way up my chest to kiss me.

  I bury my hands in her silky waves of hair as she straddles me once more, her skirt pulled up. She doesn’t break the kiss as she reaches down and guides me inside the tight heat of her body.

  “Ani...” I mumble into her mouth as my hips thrust upward.

  “Hold my throat again, like you did outside.” She undoes the buttons of her dress, freeing her breasts, and I grip one of them, plying my thumb over the hard tip, and then do as she demands.

  The effect is immediate. She arches her back, gasping, and she rides me faster. Pleasure seizes me, along with a heady sense of power, as she grinds down on me, using me. How can being used make me feel like a god? Her lips part and her throaty moans rumble against my palm. I drop my other hand from her breast to her clit, and I rub there where our bodies are joined.

  Heat and need are churning in me, every rock of her hips sending me that much closer to orgasm, but I’ll be damned if I come before she does. I rub harder, faster, and I press my thumb against the sensitive spot between her jaw and her ear.

  She cries out, shuddering, and I lose any tenuous grasp I have on control as she comes around me. I grip her hips in both hands, surging up into her as she braces herself against the ceiling of the BMW and rides out her orgasm.

  A handful of thrusts and I’m right there with her, pleasure racing through my veins in a heated rush. I shove her down on me, one last rough thrust, and I roar like the blood in my ears.

  She sinks down on me, her chest heaving, her hands running over mine as if she’s checking to make sure I’m for real.

  “Ani,” I whisper, and her fingertips find my lips. I kiss them gently.

  “Thank you,” she whispers back. “I needed that.”

  And then she laughs, the sound like sunshine here in this dark car, stinking of sex and desperation, but maybe like redemption too.

  I kiss her fingertips again.

  “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter Eight

  Matt

  Friday afternoon and a rare day off finds me spending $50 on an Uber up to Royal. It’s been a week and one day since Tiffani and I screwed around in the backseat of her BMW. We haven’t spoken since. I texted her the next day, asking if we could talk and she replied in very clear terms that there was nothing to talk about.

  I knew. There was something in her gaze that night, some spark of defiance that told me not to get my hopes up, but damn, I just wanted to know she was okay.

  “You oughta buy a car if you’re going to keep coming up here.” Tegan raises an eyebrow at me as I swing by the parts office to say hello.

  “Did that already!” I call over my shoulder on my way to Tiffani’s lift. Duke—the shiner long disappeared now—raises his chin in a wary greeting and Ven waves from by the tire stand.

  I mean to say hello, I honestly do, but when I see Tiffani’s ass in the air over the front end of the Chevelle, my voice dies in my throat.

  Damn. When I finally manage to drag my eyes away from her gorgeous body, Duke looks like he’s about to take a tire iron to my face, and I blurt out the first safe thing that comes to mind. “Am I at a disadvantage because it’s an automatic?”

  Tiffani glances up at me from under the hood, rolls her eyes, and goes back to what she was doing. “No. Stay off the internet. The internet can’t teach you to drive, and most of the dudes on car forums are talking out their asses anyway.”

  “I know how to drive, Ani.”

  “It’s not like driving on the street. I’ll take you out to Tate Field and give you some pointers, but the bottom line is, you drive for the car you’ve got. You don’t just push your foot to the floor and pray.”

  “Gee, I was thinking that was a winning strategy.” I hate it when she talks to me like I’m stupid.

  She stands up and stretches. “You’re not an experienced racer, correct? So the automatic will actually help you off the line. You just watch the tree and don’t cross the line too soon.”

  Right. “And then what?”

  She shrugs. “If you don’t disqualify off the line, stay in your lane, watch your RPMs, and shift if you need to.”

  Raising a car on the lift next to her, Duke stifles a laugh. “Cold, Tiffani.”

  She wipes her hands on a rag and looks me in the eye. “He wants to play race car driver, I’m going to keep it real. This is a big, mean car with a big, mean engine. It takes a steady hand and nerves of steel to push its limits on the track.”

  “I can do that.” I swallow, sudden images of crushed cars rattling through my head.

  “We’ll see. You want to take it for a practice run?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Good. I set up and packed your parachute this morning. Tegan’s gonna bill you for that.” She tosses me the keys, then turns and closes the hood. “Let’s go.”

  As we drive down Old Holly Road out of town, she keeps glancing over at me, and I know that glance. She wants to say something, but she isn’t sure how to bring it up.

  That look and I? We have history. She’d been looking at me like that for weeks before I kissed her the first time. She’d also been looking at me like that for a while when she told me she got into SCAD. I’d already committed to Columbia. As to what the look might mean now? Under the circumstances, I’m not sure I want to know. I don’t want to let her stew in it either, though.

  “What’s up?” I finally ask.

  “It’s stupid.” She shakes her head.

  “What’s stupid?”

  “Demolition Derby.”

  What the—?

  “I wouldn’t call it stupid, exactly.” I raise an eyebrow at her. “I mean, it’s not The Fifth Element, but I’ve seen worse entertainment.”

  She laughs. “Tegan buys junk cars all the damn time, usually to harvest for parts. She’s really into restoration, right? But sometimes she’s harvested what she could, and it will still run—a little bit. So she derbies them.”

  Of course she does.

  “Anyway, there’s a small-scale derby event going on the first week of April at the North Georgia Spring Fair. I thought you might enjoy the spectacle.”

  “Are you asking me out?”

  “No. Bring a friend. A girlfriend even. It’s not a date. Just watching my sister trash a car.”

  “Tegan’s a lesbian, right?”

  Tiffani’s eyebrows shoot up. “Has your mom been gossiping again?”

  I shake my head. Not Mom, and I’m not about to confess to my Facebook stalking. “Nah, I just get a vibe. Anyway, my friend Elspeth is gay too. Maybe I’ll bring her. She’d like Tegan.”

  “You’re not setting up my sister with your friend.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because what if they do like each other? Then I’m stuck with you. Ew.” She keeps a straight face for a long moment, but out of the corner of my eye, I see her lips flicker.

  “At least you get to drive my car,” I say as we pull up to the gate at Tate Field. “Now go unlock t
he gates.”

  Tiffani

  Part of me wants this to be a disaster. For him to decide he doesn’t want to race after all. A much larger part of me can’t fucking wait to see how the car performs.

  Matt looks nervous as hell when I hand him a helmet—one of the ones used for track tours—but he takes it gamely.

  “Hold on, I’m gonna go turn on the tree and hose down the track.” I let myself into the tiny control building and turn on the power to the tree, setting it up to time only the one lane. The hoses are close to the start line, so I turn on the water and get the area before the pre-stage good and wet while Matt watches from next to his car.

  “You know how this works?” I ask him after returning the hose to its reel.

  “In theory.” He scratches the back of his neck and stares at the wet track.

  “Drive through the water a little bit—don’t sit right on the wet spot, just get your tires a little juicy, okay?”

  “Uh huh.” He swallows.

  “You’ll go ahead and perform your burnout before you pre-stage. You remember how to do a burnout?”

  He should; I taught him. He nods.

  “All right. When your tires are good and hot, ease up to the pre-stage line, the first set of white lights will come on. Ease up to the stage line, the second set comes on. Once the stage lights are on, you have five tenths before the green lights come on—those are timed down over three ambers.”

  He nods again. “Okay.”

  “If the red light comes on, you crossed too soon. You’re disqualified.”

  “Right.”

  “Show me what you got.”

  He pulls on the helmet, then pulls it back off. “When do I deploy the parachute?”

  I grin. “Just before you cross the finish line. Like, right before. Have you ever used one before?”