Black Flag (Racing on the Edge)

by Stahl, Shey

  His brow furrowed as he repeated, “Slut mothers?”

  “Your sister and Alley,”

  Picking up the midnight blue nighty, he asked, “Do I get to see this tonight?”

  Holding it up, his smirk appeared over the top peering at me with excitement.

  “If you’re good,”

  “Mmm...” he came to stand behind me. When his erection pressed against my ass, all my will power almost caved. “How about I see it now,” he growled in my ear, his tongue darted out kissing my neck. “I can’t wait. I don’t like waiting for anything.”

  “Ain’t that the fucking truth,” I turned and slapped at him trying to get away but giggling. He picked me up, my legs instantly wrapped around his waist.

  “Looks like this is going to be getting in the way more and more...” A lopsided grin formed as he looked down at my belly rubbing against his.

  “Sorry.” I mumbled dropping my legs from around his waist. “My pants are getting tight too.”

  “I think it’s adorable.” He replied kissing my forehead. “You look sexy.”

  I rose up on my tippy toes to kiss his lips until a knock at our hotel door interrupted us. “Get dressed bitches. It’s time to PARTY!” Spencer yelled from the other side of the door.

  Jameson smiled. “Later?”

  I kissed him once more. “Later.”

  We got dressed. Jameson was wearing dark jeans and a black Simplex Racing shirt pared with his white Puma shoes I loved. I decided to wear another one of my little summer dresses he loved because it was the only article of clothing that was comfortable anymore. I chose a black and white one to match Jameson with my white flip-flop sandals.

  Emma would be proud, aside from the flip-flops.

  As I expected, when I walked out of the hotel room of the Bellagio Hotel, Emma was smiling widely appraising my outfit.

  “When did you get that?” she asked feeling the soft material.

  “Last week sometime,”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled walking toward the hotel elevators. Jameson and Spencer hung back talking with Van.

  When we reached the restaurant in the lobby, Alley was already drinking. Against Spencer’s wishes, Lane flew back to Washington with Andrea and the Lucifer twins. Charlie and Jimi were taking shots and Nancy, with wide eyes, was lighting some drink on fire. It was apparent it’d been a while since everyone had relaxed. And after Richmond, it was needed. One good thing, old Casten was back home. Imagine if he were here too?

  Unfortunately, it was supposed to be my birthday party and I couldn’t drink.

  Damn you little baby.

  I rubbed my tiny baby bulge. “Don’t worry—mommy still loves you.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Jameson asked placing his hands on my waist standing by the table at the Olives restaurant inside The Bellagio.

  “The baby,” I leaned back into his chest.

  “Mmmm,” he craned his head forward kissing my bare shoulder; his lips lingered there as he spoke. “How’s daddy’s little racer doing?” his hands moved forward cradling my stomach.

  “Good...I do miss drinking though.” I stuck my bottom lip out. “It’s my birthday party and I can’t even drink.”

  I turned in his arms to look up at him; his green eyes sparkled.

  “Sorry, honey.” His smirk returned. “We could go have sex, would that make you feel better?”

  “Umm...actually, it would.”

  Jameson chuckled glancing around at the table.

  “Come on.” He whispered pulling me back toward the elevators leaving Alley and Emma to yell after us.

  “We’ll be right back!” Jameson yelled back with a careless shrug.

  “Sure they will.” Charlie told them.

  Once inside the hotel, Jameson was intense.

  Slowly he laid me on the large bed and flipped my dress up.

  “Don’t move.” He instructed ripping his shirt over his head and then dropping to his knees at the edge of the bed.

  Fingers, hands, tongue, and lips worked in perfect unison and had me a shuddering in less than a minute...He was good. His deburring skills were legendary.

  Jameson yanked his jeans down in one fluid movement and leaned back on his heel, jerking me off the bed to straddle his hips, my legs resting on either side on him.

  His left hand reached between us and slipped himself inside, “Oh god Sway.”

  “Mmm...” I moaned wrapping my arms around his neck, his lips returning to mine.

  Bouncing around on his lap had me realizing where all those bacon cheeseburgers were going.

  To confirm, I looked behind me to see my ass jiggling like a Busta Ryhmes music video.

  So embarrassing.

  Jameson noticed and turned my head, forcing me to look at it. “Pay attention.” He panted out.

  I could tell he was moments away from his release by the tensed expression and lust hooded eyes. That alone distracted me enough to focus my attention on him because Christ almighty, his “O” face was breathtaking. No lie.

  When his strong hands gripped my jiggle wiggle ass, I was distracted again and looked behind me. This time my dirty heathen was too far gone to care. His head fell forward against my shoulder. He let out a delicious groan jerking underneath me. His hands come up wrapping around the back of my shoulders and pushed me down on him once more. I could feel him pulsing inside biting down on my shoulder, crying out at the force of his orgasm. I try to get a look at his face but his head was buried in my neck.

  It upset me a little because I loved watching his contorted expression.

  Giggling that this whole escapade lasted less than ten minutes, I ran my fingers up and down his back as his breathing slowly returned to normal.

  “What were you looking at?” Jameson asked once he could breathe normally again. “You seemed to be paying a lot of attention to it.”

  “My ass...it’s huge.”

  “It’s not huge, honey. I happen to like your ass bigger.” His eyebrows waggled. “It shakes now and goddamn is it sexy.”

  I slapped his shoulder. “You would.”

  He just laughed as I climbed off him and looked around for my underwear.

  “Damn you!” I held up my shredded underwear. “What the fuck—how do you do this every time?”

  He just shrugged. “I didn’t think I pulled on them that hard.”

  “Well, you did.” I reached around in my suitcase for another pair.

  “Jameson five. Sway three?” I’m not sure it was meant to be a question but the way he said it, it came out like one.

  “No, no, that’s not fair! We didn’t keep track last week.”

  He shrugged reaching for the door handle once I pulled on some new underwear. “Looks like you have some ground to make up for then.”

  When we got back to the table, most everyone was ordering their meals and drinks when Jameson decided to gain himself a comfortable lead in our race with each other.

  He chose dirty talking in front of his family.

  So, while looking over the menu, he leaned into my side throwing his arm around the back of my chair.

  No one noticed but when he started talking, they took notice.

  I could feel the warmth of his body in contrast to the cool restaurant. It reminded me of our time in the hotel room moments ago.

  “Sway?” he whispered low with a gravely baritone that was a fine representation of our time just moments ago. As though I needed yet another reminder he was in control of this. “Have I ever explained to you how engine builders check a cylinder head for warpage?”

  Oh Jesus, he was going to do this here? In the middle of a restaurant with his family?

  He was trying to win the battle that’s for sure.

  Tommy, sitting across from me, choked on his beer and then started laughing knowing exactly what Jameson was doing.

  I couldn’t focus enough to respond and he went in for the win. “You see honey, the cylinde
r head is the hottest part of the engine and reaches thousands of degrees. Cast iron and aluminum metals used in cylinder heads flex under the high temperatures in a race causing warpage and the head bulges.”

  He was trying to kill me. Quickly, to hide any outward arousal from being noticed, I squeezed my thighs together. Jameson grinned knowing he was now in the lead with a comfortable cushion.

  “When this happens, it’s necessary to break the engine down back at the shop and measure the specific tolerance. You start by removing the cylinder head, clean it and make sure there is no carbon in the cylinder head combustion chambers. When the cylinder is cleaned, you place the cylinder with the combustion chamber facing up in a wide jaw vice. Then, you take a ruler and a feeler gauge in between the bottom of the ruler and the head surface working the gauge along until it slides in.” he smiled, I wasn’t. “Then, on the gauge, it will show a number that will allow the maximum thickness that will enter the gap—”

  With heavy breathing, I started a bout of coughing. I couldn’t take it any longer with words like inserting and feeler and thickness. It was too much for a girl with my hormones.

  Jameson, the overly confident ass, let out a giggle. “What’s the matter honey? Can’t handle it? I was just about to tell you how I find out the highest thickness an engine will allow.”

  Emma, a little drunk by now, leaned over the table with wide eyes. Before speaking, she chugged Aiden’s beer. “My god, that even got me going and he’s my fucking brother!”

  Aiden stood to shove Jameson’s shoulder nodding in approval. “Thanks man!”

  Jameson laughed again finishing his own beer, completely satisfied with himself. “I win.”

  Emma turned toward Aiden. “Let’s go cowboy.”

  That was the last we saw of them for a while.

  “That was not cool,” was all I said to him for a good thirty minutes.

  Jameson, needing to redeem himself after that stunt, knew the one thing I would appreciate more than a gift would be him singing for my birthday. I loved his singing voice. It had the perfect combination of rasp and smooth velvet.

  When he got up to go to the restroom, I didn’t think anything of it. But when I heard his raspy velvet voice flowing through a microphone, I blushed and hid my face against Alley’s shoulder.

  “Oh my god,” I mumbled as he stepped out from the kitchen of the restaurant holding a microphone to his lips with a crooked grin to sing one of my favorite songs of all time by The Beatles, Something.

  His baritone carried throughout the restaurant causing everyone to turn and listen to his resonant tenor. He had the perfect voice for this song, letting his voice do that drawn out raw crackly whine at the end of each note.

  He smiled, finally standing before me.

  Jameson dropped to his knees, just as he had done in the bedroom earlier, the burn from my cheeks crept across my entire body. Throwing his head back, he belted out the lyrics with such emotion everyone cheered.

  I watched as the muscles in his neck strained. He looked up at me and his free hand came up to cup my cheek softly while he continued to serenade me as his voice dropped lower.

  Tears flowed freely, as I was one pathetic in love pigizzle. Jameson brought the microphone back to his lips. “Happy Birthday, honey,”

  Leaning forward, I wrapped my arms around him, crying as he slipped a black box onto my lap.

  “What’s that?” He’d already proposed so it obviously wasn’t that.

  “Open it.” His eyes sparkled mirroring the enthusiasm beaming from me.

  Curious as to what it was, I opened it to find a beautiful platinum heart locket. I smiled and looked inside to find a picture of us when we were eleven at the track sitting on the front of his sprint car. On the other side was a scripture in Italian. “What does it say?”

  “It’s says: To seeing past the speed.”

  I started crying again because I knew exactly what that meant and why he chose it. Jimi always told him, “It’s hard to see past the speed when you’re going two hundred miles per hour.”

  To Jameson, it meant a hell of a lot more than just racing as it was his entire life. He couldn’t see past the speed for the longest time and then when he did, he saw me for what I really was in his life.

  He settled beside me and thankfully stopped the dirty talking and singing. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take tonight.

  The rest of dinner passed quickly. Charlie and Jimi took turns taking shots. I was a little worried that Charlie shouldn’t be drinking that much but every time I suggested he stop, he blew me off and continued drinking.

  Alley was beginning to let loose. Since she didn’t have to worry about Lane, and Jimi and Nancy were around, she was finally able to relax without feeling like a babysitter.

  After a while, Aiden and Emma were missing, which I assumed they went back up to their room like Jameson and I had done but I couldn’t be sure. There was plenty of shopping to do in Vegas and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if she was forcing Aiden to tagalong.

  Nancy was sipping her fire drink all the while keeping an eye on everyone. Spencer and Jameson played some retarded drinking game with Tequila, bad idea.

  And there I was, drinking my water, boring.

  “Where’s Emma?” Alley asked taking Jameson’s seat next to me since he was consumed by the silly game.

  “Not sure—why?” My eyes shot to Jameson when he shoved Spencer and barked, “You fucking cheated asshole,” loud enough for the entire hotel to hear.

  “We should go find her.”

  “Why?” I asked. “She’s with Aiden.”

  “No she’s not.” Alley scrunched her eyebrows together shaking her head. “Aiden is with Tommy at Treasure Island.”

  “Oh, well hell...let’s go find her.”

  I went over to Jameson and told him where I was going. He wasn’t pleased.

  “No, I don’t think so,” was his firm response. “You’re staying by me tonight.”

  “Jameson...I’ll only be a minute.”

  He insisted Van follow us, which I agreed to. It was actually nice to know I was safe with Van nearby. Van Lambert, the bodyguard Phillip hired was fucking huge. He reminded me of some professional body builder. You know the ones that couldn’t put their arms down or wipe their own ass because their arms were so fucking stout? Yeah, them.

  An hour later, we finally found Emma in a boutique trying on wedding dresses.

  Between everything since the proposal, I hadn’t had time to think about what kind of dress I would wear. By the time December came along, I’d probably be huge. Might as well wear sweat pants.

  Emma spotted us as she twirled around in a floor length flowing gown. “Oh hey, look Sway.” Her blue eyes sparkled like Jameson when he was racing. “You should get this one!”

  “Why are you trying on wedding dresses?” Alley asked snickering. Everything was funny to her tonight.

  “For Sway. I’m planning her wedding.”

  Alley looked at me, confused.

  “You are?” I asked smiling at her on the pedestal she was perched on, swirling and twirling. I knew Emma would be perfect but the fact that she assumed I’d let her do it, was funny to me.

  “Well...yes, she didn’t exactly say I could but...I want to.” Her smile was so sincere I just nodded. “Ekkkk!” she squealed. “So what do you think?”

  “I’m never going to fit in that come December.”

  “December? Why not now? We’re in Vegas.” She motioned around like we didn’t know. “Do it tonight!”

  “I want to get married on my mom’s birthday, December fourth,”

  “Oh...” Emma looked down. “I wanted a wedding tonight.”

  “Then you get married.” Alley suggested taking a drink out of her mini bar collection of alcohol in her purse. At least she was prepared. “Although...” she paused squinting at the bottle from her last shot in her hand, “that might be a little too spontaneous for Aiden.”

  “Yeah,�
� her face fell slightly as though she had already considered that. “Aiden would have to propose first. I don’t think that’s going to happen.” She carefully took the dress off and placed it over the chair dejectedly.

  “Have you asked him what his intentions are?” I rubbed her tiny shoulders feeling like a mother from 1950 at the use of the word intentions.

  “No. He told me he wants to marry me but he hasn’t proposed yet.” Emma shrugged losing interest in the wedding planning. “Let’s go find the boys.”

  When we made it back to the restaurant, nobody was left at our table. Scanning the room, I looked for anyone we knew.

  “Ms. Sway, they’re at the Fontana Bar now.” Van said from behind. I was amazed how he was able to keep track of everyone without leaving me. He was like some kind of CSI spy, or an ex-Navy Seal.

  “Oh, okay.”

  I turned to walk out when a short blonde peppy girl stepped in front of me.

  “Oh my god! You’re Sway, like Sway Reins! Jameson Riley’s girlfriend...fiancée!” she corrected waving her arms around “You’re his fiancée! I saw the proposal on TV. Oh my god! Can I see the ring?” she held her hand out. “I’m Tori by the way.”

  Before I could show her, the tiny girl grabbed my hand. “OH MY GOD!” she screamed bouncing to the point I was actually worried about her brain knocking around inside her skull that much. “It’s soooo beautiful!”

  I couldn’t figure out if she was actually crazy or just obsessed with Jameson like everyone else. Maybe she was related to Dana?

  Van stepped forward protectively and eventually we made it away from the crazed girl.

  I was not prepared for what was waiting at the Fontana Bar when we arrived, not prepared at all.

  Jameson was on the bar, literally on the bar, standing, holding a bottle of Tequila up in the air over Charlie, who is lying down on the bar. I’ve never seen that side of my dad and I was actually a little concerned. It made perfect sense to me now that Andrea took advantage of him.

  My thoughts ranged from, “Should he really be drinking this much?” to “Isn’t it harmful in some way?” But then I just settled on the fact that he was in fact dying of brain cancer. Surely this couldn’t be doing anything worse that what’s already been done to him.