“They think I don’t belong on the track, G.” Who knew a single letter, like a gesture, could transmit such an insult. “They think I don’t belong here.” My chest heaved. Vicious words lapping around my brain. “Does that sound familiar to you?”
I cocked my head and glared at him.
I was focused. Eerily focused. It was the only way I caught the subtle widening of his eyes, like the wind rustling the leaves.
“Kacey…” he warned with a low voice.
“From the moment I met you, all you’ve said was that I didn’t belong,” I spat, not caring how the inches disappeared between us. “From the second you saw me, a woman driver, going to drive a famous Gallagher creation. You don’t think I can do it, you’ve made that clear. You don’t think I’m good enough. That I don’t belong here. That I shouldn’t be here. You didn’t want me here.”
Anger made me not care that I should be thanking him. Anger made me want to shove away everyone who thought Kacey Snyder was out of place. Especially the ones who had the nerve to tempt me before telling me to my face.
“Dammit, lass, that’s no’ what I—”
“That’s what you said,” I yelled, putting myself directly within burning distance from his gorgeous face. “From the moment I met you, you insufferable, insulting Irishman, you told me—”
“Because you had a damned injured ankle!” he roared, silencing me. “No one belongs on the track like that. It’s fuckin’ dangerous as it is without bein’ handicapped.”
I shook my head with a pitiful laugh. “And after that? You didn’t even want to ask me to visit Claire, that’s how much you hate me.”
“I don’t hate ye,” he growled, his lip curling into a snarl. “I just—”
“Wait, let me guess… you just don’t want me here,” I scoffed, my smile painfully splitting my lips.
I needed to get away from him—away from the pull that tied me closer to the man who would leave me hanging.
His face turned to stone, fire bursting in his eyes and, even if no one else could see it, lust-laden smoke filling the slim space between our faces.
“You can say it,” I said more quietly. “Just say it, Garret.” This time it was more like a plea. “Tell me I don’t belong here again… just like they did—”
I cried out, my weight spinning on my uninjured leg until I was pressed against the back of the garage door, the metal clanking like a battle cry.
He didn’t hold me. Not like before. And not like those men.
His hands planted on either side of my face, imprisoning me as his face dipped closer, breathing fury, fire, and something far more dangerous.
Need.
My lips parted, but the breath lodged in my lungs wouldn’t release.
“I’m no’ like them, lass.”
“No,” I admitted tremulously. “You like to let me in—let me close to your warmth—before you burn me.”
His restraint tipped and wavered like it sat on stilts.
“Just say it, Garret,” I pleaded with a broken whisper. “This is that moment. The moment I’ve let down my guard because you fought off three men to protect me. The moment I’ve tried to escape because all I want is to know more of you—to give in to whatever this need is that races through my veins. The moment where there is nothing else I want…nothing but you.”
My eyes burned with frustrated tears. My cheeks burned with embarrassed heat. And my body burned with a need I knew wouldn’t be fulfilled.
“Tell me I don’t belong again.” I shivered. “Tell me you didn’t ask me to meet her because I’m a pretentious and emotional little girl.”
But instead of the familiar abrasiveness he usually applied to my raw and reckless heart, his head dipped in defeat and he stepped in closer, our bodies just barely touching.
“I didn’t ask ye to come because I knew I’d been cruel ta keep ye away. I didn’t deserve ta ask ye fer this. And even if I did… it woulda meant havin’ ta admit I didn’t know what ta do with ye, lass,” he rasped savagely, his breath waging war against my senses as it heated my skin. “Is that what ye wanted ta hear?”
My body downshifted, everything slowing even as my desire burned hotter.
My tongue tried to wet my lips but it was useless, my mouth was dry—shocked dry by his words.
“I didn’t ask ye ta come because I want ye with a power I canna justify, lass. It snuck up on me. It laid traps I never saw comin’ and took down my best defenses in a blink. It started a damned war inside me, Kacey, and I’m so fuckin’ tired o’ fightin’ it.”
Oh, God.
My pulsed hammered, my heart revving into the red with each ragged confession.
“You don’t have to fight me,” I whispered, hesitantly lifting my palms to the heat of his chest and letting my fingers curl into the fabric.
Because I was tired of trying to fight him—to fight off how I wanted him.
I just wanted the freedom to want him.
To crave him.
To have him.
The low rumble of his chest brushed against the tips of my breasts, making them swell and ache painfully with the need to be touched.
I didn’t know the last time I’d felt like this—the last time I needed anything more desperately than to be behind the wheel and out on the track.
“I do,” he replied even as his lips drifted to mine. “Because if I don’t, there’ll be nothin’ left of me… nothin’ but savage, incineratin’ lust.”
“Garret…” My eyes slid closed, his name an apology from my lips as I pressed them against his.
I understood what he meant. But I’d rather be burned up by whatever this was than burned out by the effort to stop it.
I’d rather be consumed.
His lips were hot and firm, dry wood waiting for the spark to set their kindling alight.
I was the spark.
Garret groaned, the sound was what I imagined the slow-motion breaking of stone to be—the strain of one of the hardest substances beginning to fracture under a force that couldn’t be stopped.
And then he finally split.
His lips parted and his tongue speared into my mouth like the hottest poker, stoking the beginnings of the fire into a full-fledged conflagration.
I whimpered as his mouth tore into mine. This was nothing like the taunt of restraint he’d left on my lips. If anything, this kiss sought to obliterate any trace of those words from my flesh.
Restraint was a lie.
There was only this—raw, ravaging revolution.
The door vibrated against my back as he flattened me against it, his body hot and flush along mine.
My mouth was branded over and over again. Each lick… each swipe… made new marks of rough need against my flesh. He tasted of whiskey and luck, burning my tongue with the knowledge that I’d never find this again—like the end of a rainbow, beautiful, magical, and ready to disappear.
So, I clung to him, twisting the damp fabric of his tee into my fists, I pulled the muscled wall of his chest flush against me. But it didn’t ease any ache. And I needed more.
Dragging in air, his scent infused my lungs—wild and fresh like the wilderness, intricate with both earth and spice. It drugged me with an icy-hot need that burned straight down to my core, heat drenching between my thighs.
My head pressed against the unyielding metal of the door as I rolled my hips against him, the rod of his erection pinned between us, burning a trough in my stomach.
With a deep growl, his hands left their posts on either side of my face, imprisonment no longer needed for the woman who was a willing prisoner. The determined grip of his fingers landed in the flesh of my ass and, in the next instant, my weight was lifted off the ground and distributed between the cold metal and molten man.
Instinctively, my legs wrapped around his narrow waist, spurring a gasp from my lips when it nestled the hard length of his cock against my core.
Wanting him… easing that want… it was nothing compared to this.
Thin
layers of fabric that separated us.
It was like being on the track. A few feet of metal, a few inches of padding, and a fine layer of plastic… flimsy amounts of protection against immeasurable danger.
His teeth found my lower lip, biting and sucking on the flesh as I began to grind myself against him. Hard and uncoordinated. He was so hot. So close. Finally. And I couldn’t function.
He pushed against me, my mouth forced wider since my head had nowhere to go, and his addictive assault went deeper. The way his tongue stroked harshly along mine left his mark in every corner of my mouth. I moaned loudly as the rough drag of the weapon that spurned me so coldly now ravaged me with velvet-coated fire.
I sacrificed air to keep my lips pinned to his. I sacrificed sanity to cling to these precious seconds behind his walls.
There was an instantaneous and explosive danger that came with being this close to Garret Gallagher—with leaving my body so vulnerable to something that could destroy it.
But I couldn’t stop myself. There was an obsession built into my DNA, desperate for the high—desperate for him—that I’d take any risk.
I bucked against him. He could be rough, but so could I.
“Yer playin’ with fire, lass,” he warned with a low, threadbare voice, rocking his hips slowly into me, taunting me. Taunting us both. The thought of this happening with flesh on flesh—flesh in flesh—releasing a strangled cry from my lips.
“I’ve never claimed ta be a civilized man.” His mouth scraped against my jawline, biting his words into my flesh. “I work on machines. Metal and dirt and grease. It’s on my skin. In my blood. I dinna do fancy fucks. I fuck like I speak. Infrequently and punishingly.”
I shuddered at the vulgar slip of his tongue against my ear. One more rough warning as he ground his cock against me hard to make his point, pleasure and pain spiraling through my clit and exploding like a firework.
My mouth opened wider, the thick length so close to where I needed him, and black spots flickered in my vision. “I’ve never done fancy, Garret,” I murmured, sliding my fingers up the back of his neck and into his hair, pulling his head back so my desire-hazed gaze could find his. “I’ve always preferred fire.”
“Ye sure about that? I beat three men ta the ground withou’ battin’ an eye,” he reminded me roughly, sealing his mouth over mine in a punishing kiss before adding with a low, deep brogue, “And I willna think twice about fuckin’ ye against this garage door. No’ with how I feel. No matter the blood and dirt on my hands. No matter what noise ye make. And no matter who hears ye scream, lass.”
My core clenched violently, releasing a new rush of heat between my thighs, soaking through my underwear and jeans. I arched against him, desperate for more. Desperate for the friction to ease the ache he created.
“Garret.” He might have words, but I didn’t. Not anymore. Between unsteady heartbeats and heavy breaths, I only knew his name and nothing else.
Then again, his name from my lips had always meant more than most things.
With one hand firmly under me, his other hand began to slide up my side, and I couldn’t stop my breath from faltering or my skin from erupting into a sea of goosebumps as his fingers climbed over the aching swell of my breast.
His lips ate away the small moans that bubbled up from my chest as his hand closed over my breast. His grip was firm and demanding—deliriously demanding.
I wriggled against him, needing more of everything as he began to knead my flesh in his palm.
“I knew ye’d feel this way, lass. All soft and lush,” he rasped with a broken ache. “Fuck, I bet yer skin is pure white silk—silk I want ta mark, silk I want ta bite and taste.”
“Garret,” I gasped his name as he found my nipple through the fabric and tugged, rocketing me toward an orgasm that was almost within reach.
“This is why ye dinna belong here,” he growled, his hand working over my breast as though it was a gift from the gods and the last thing he’d ever touch. “Because all I can think about when I see ye, lass, is that I want ta dirty yer perfect body and make ye mine.”
His feral groan rumbled low, emotion echoing in the emotionless space around us. It shook and rumbled through my body, practically making my senses give way to the orgasm hardly held at bay.
But then Garret froze—every part of him unmoving except for his thumb that seemed unable to stop its tempoed swipe over my hard nipple.
And then I heard it too—the noise and the rumble that lingered after his groan had ceased.
Gravel crunched under truck tires outside.
“Voigt is here,” he rasped, able to see through the small windows at the top of the garage door.
Panting, neither of us moved, drowning in unquenched lust.
I lingered in his gaze, the one brimming with the dark, angry promise he’d been about to fulfill.
The engine shut off outside and broke the moment between us.
Quickly unwrapping my legs from around him, Garret set me down and made sure I was steady on my feet—a proven struggle for me—before turning away. I folded my arms over my chest, watching the muscles on his back move as he adjusted his erection in his pants just as the door to the garage was thrown open.
“What the hell, Garret.” Renner cursed, his face red and flustered as he approached us. “Jack just called me, said you assaulted three of his patrons in his parking lot!”
When Garret came after me, the bartender must have called Renner to let him know about his mechanic’s anger management issues.
As though belatedly realizing my presence, the older man shook his head and let out a long, weary sigh.
“Can you give us a minute, girl?”
I looked to Garret, desire still sparking like a live-wire between us. But there was no promise that this would be finished—and all that need balled in my stomach and dropped like a stone.
He hadn’t ended it this time, but it had been ended.
And that was enough.
Clearing some of the thickness from my throat, I knew I should walk away and not get involved. But I had no restraint—not when I was about to be the reason Garret was in trouble.
Approaching my frazzled, red-faced boss, I ducked my head and murmured, “It was because of me.” I made sure to find his gaze before continuing, “They attacked me first.”
My chin ducked, a feeling of weakness rushing through me like a chill. I didn’t want to talk about what was said or done—it didn’t matter. Renner now knew everything he needed to.
I couldn’t look at Garret again as I beelined for the apartment, each step whispering that this was for the best.
That I’d been about to screw my mechanic against the garage door, rain-soaked, and his hands covered in the blood of men he’d beaten to the point of alarm for harassing me.
It was for the best.
It was wrong to continue this—to continue to want him.
But I’d never been good at staying away from what people said was wrong for me.
Restraint wasn’t part of my personality when it came to something I needed.
And Garret?
The need I felt for him was rooted deeper than the marrow of my bones.
Garret
I SHOULD’VE LEFT WHEN VOIGT was done reaming me a new asshole.
I stared down at my cracked knuckles, the blood dried in the crevasses creating shadowed scars barely visible in the dim light that filtered in from the windows of the shop.
I should’ve left because I wasn’t gettin’ any work done now.
The Aeroscreen had been delivered earlier. It sat waiting in a box in the middle of the shop floor—my project to tackle tomorrow. But right now, I couldn’t think about anythin’ except her.
“What the hell were you thinking, Garret!”
It hadn’t even been a question. Voigt’s assumption was that I hadn’t been thinking—that I still wasn’t thinking.
Granted, the direction of his anger was markedly different after Kacey mentio
ned why I exploded on those men.
He was still angry after that. And I was still cursed at. But, in his mind, my fault was going too far with my punishment.
And my maintained belief was that I hadn’t gone far enough.
It was that protective rage which came over me that I was still trying to douse from my blood.
I fisted my hand again, breathing through the tight soreness that came with the motion.
Seeing Kacey at the hospital—seeing her with Claire—and seeing Claire’s excitement changed something inside me, something I’d been able to deny and justify up until that moment.
No matter what she did, what she said, I clung to my belief about Kacey Snyder based on the limited knowledge I had because I wanted to hate everything about this sport, the people in it, and everything they took from me.
But at every turn, she challenged me. She forced me to rethink the picture I’d painted of her.
And I didn’t want to rethink. I didn’t want to feel. I wanted to stay just as cold and harsh and predictable as the metal machinery I worked on. And just as lonely.
She stumbled into my well-oiled plan with a broken ankle, hair just as fiery as her personality, and a smile that sapped the strength from my anger, as she incited every part of me to revolt.
The parts that missed cars and racing.
The parts that told me whatever life I had left was only to make sure my niece was okay.
And the parts that wanted her somethin’ fierce—that craved her like an engine needs fuel or a body needs blood.
Forget the racing world, Kacey Snyder was craftin’ a goddamn revolution inside my body.
My body broke from its restraint. My desire broke from my reason. And something else… something else crashed against the confines I’d created for my life… something that whispered damned enticingly that I deserved more.
My head lifted from where I let it drop as the shower upstairs turned off. I’d been waiting for her to be done—waiting because I needed to finish what was started earlier.
Grunting, I shifted in my seat, my cock still semi-hard against my jeans. Damned traitor.
That wasn’t what needed to be finished.
My insufferable ass needed to apologize because I was wrong about her, and I’d been too stubborn to admit it.
Revolution: A Driven World Novel (The Driven World) Page 17
