She Who Dares (18 page)

Then she remembered that she was naked, and all the old, familiar demons came abruptly back to life. She dug her elbows into the mattress and tried to manoeuvre her body upright, but all her bones seemed to have disappeared. She was as floppy as a toy rabbit.

Nic tugged at the sheet instead, but it was tucked hotel-tight under the mattress and didn’t give an inch. Her heart kicked up. She wouldn’t let this be spoiled. She wouldn’t. Her t-shirt lay in a crumpled puddle on the floor and she grabbed at it with shaking fingers, fumbling uselessly at the hem.

Then the bathroom door opened and Sebastian strolled out, shamelessly naked. ‘I don’t remember giving you permission to get dressed,’ he said, stretching his arms above his head.

He moved towards the bed and took her hand, pulling her up against him and locking his arms around her. ‘Come and look at the shower,’ he said. ‘It’s massive. You could probably have an orgy in there.’

Light from the bathroom spilled bright and unapologetic into the room. ‘Sebastian, I…’ Heat and desire warred with sheer panic as she desperately tried to put together an excuse, all the while hating herself for trying to find one.

He used his tongue to stop her from talking, lifted her up so that her feet rested on top of his, then walked her into the bathroom. Darkness gave way to light, so much light. And mirrors. Long, spotless mirrors that saw everything.

All the strength she’d felt when she’d stared at herself in that changing room mirror and told herself that hers was a body that deserved to be loved disintegrated. His hands skimmed her sides, caressed her bottom, and the touch was so very exquisite, so tender, so much more than she deserved. She pressed her face against his bare chest, tasting the salty warmth of his skin and desperately tried not to cry.

‘Hey,’ Sebastian said. ‘I know I’m good, but I’m not that good.’ His fingertips explored her bottom again, then up on to her right hip. And stilled.

And Nic felt her heart stop. He touched the rough lines with his fingertips then bent to one side and she knew he was looking. Her head swam, and she felt dizzy and sick. When he set his hands to her shoulders and turned her she had nowhere to hide.

He straightened up and looked her straight in the face. ‘Where’d you get those scars?’

Nic did her best to avoid his gaze but he was having none of it. ‘Accident in the garage,’ she blurted out. ‘Years ago.’ She wrapped her arms around herself, squeezed her knees together, but it was all too little, too late.

‘Don’t lie to me.’ His tone brooked no argument. He pointed to her hip. ‘This is the reason you like the dark, isn’t it?’

Nic swallowed. It was as if the temperature in the room had plummeted a hundred degrees but her skin felt like it was on fire. Her knees shook. She gripped her sides more tightly as she tried to figure out another lie, a better one. Any way to escape. Anything but the truth. But she knew he deserved nothing less than that. ‘I…I made them,’ she said finally. She shrugged. ‘It’s no big deal.’

‘What do you mean, you made them?’ he asked slowly.

‘Me, a razor blade and a whole lot of self-pity.’ She tried to laugh but it wouldn’t come. She’d held that secret in for so long, almost as if she’d lived a dual life, and her insides were raw from the effort of letting it go.

‘You cut yourself.’ He said it carefully, just as carefully as she’d slashed her flesh. ‘Why?’

‘Like I said, I was pathetic and I felt sorry for myself.’

‘It’s not pathetic,’ he said, cupping her face in his hands. ‘Why, Nic?’

More truth? Could she give him that? She took a deep breath, then let it all go. ‘I started when I was fourteen. Stupid teenage stuff. My mum had just married Ella’s dad. Everything was upside down. I just…I got so stressed and I felt like I couldn’t cope. Ella was so perfect, and I was a mess. One day I was in the shower, getting ready for school, and I saw the razor, and I cut myself with it. It was never supposed to be anything, Sebastian.’ She choked on a sob. ‘But it made me feel better. So I did it again. And again.’

‘What stopped you?’

‘Six months ago, a cut got infected. I had to go to the GP for antibiotics. I was so terrified that someone would find out that I haven’t been able to do it since.’

‘Princess,’ he said. ‘Someone should have found out. Someone should have known.’

‘What, that I’m a total screw-up?’

‘No. That you’ve been in that much pain.’

Nic wrestled herself away from him and turned to inspect the shower, squeezing her eyes tightly shut until the tears backed off. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said flippantly, wanting all of it to just go away, not wanting to feel this. She twisted a couple of knobs, sending water blasting from the plate sized shower head and the walls, then fiddled with the dial until the water was a notch above comfortable. Fat droplets pounded her head, her shoulders. The tiles were silver and gave her an oddly warped view of her naked body, like one of those mirrors at a fair.

Was that how she felt about herself? Warped and strange and weird? She didn’t know any more. She turned around and stared at Sebastian. ‘Do I turn you on?’

He shoved the hair back from his face. ‘Is that a trick question?’

‘No. Just…just answer it.’

‘Yes.’ He was watching her warily, as if she made him afraid. Hell, she made herself afraid sometimes.

‘What I did to myself….’ she said, then stopped. When she started again, her voice almost broke. ‘It’s disgusting. How can you look at me and not see that?’

He stepped into the shower then, testing the spray with his hand. There was plenty of space, but he had no trouble filling it. ‘Because I look at you and all I can see is how incredible you are. And then I get a hard on, and the whole thinking thing gets a bit difficult.’ He tipped his face up into the spray. His erection poked her in the belly. He looked down at it.

Nic looked down at it too. She slid a hand underneath and let the thick length rest in her palm. ‘What scares me most of all is that sometimes I miss it. I don’t do it, but I think about it.’

‘Princess,’ he said, ‘you’re breaking my heart, here.’ He touched her hip, circling his fingers over the rough patch of ruined skin. Then his mouth was on hers and he was inside her, and he made love to her as the water ran and the glass steamed up and she sobbed out year after year of shame. And when they were done, he dried her skin, soothed every inch with lotion that smelled of vanilla and wrapped himself around her under the black sheets.

And for the first time in a long time, Nic didn’t feel like damaged goods.

The engine growled as Sebastian waited on the start line, waiting for the voice in his ear to tell him he was good to go. Next to him his co-driver, Vin, gave him the thumbs up. The edge of nerves was sharp, the kick of adrenaline fierce. Twelve miles, one hundred and fifty-six turns.

It was familiar yet alien, and he’d waited so long to be back here. A fortnight ago he couldn’t think about anything else. Now all he could think about was Nic. They’d slept tangled together, waking only to make desperate, hard love to each other, and every time she’d reached for him Sebastian had felt her pull him in a little deeper.

And he hadn’t tried to resist.

The voice of the team boss came through his earpiece, barking instructions about the second turn, warning him of dirt on the track on the straight. It filtered through into his subconscious as it always did. His hands tightened on the wheel, waiting for Vin to give the command.

Then he slammed the accelerator to the floor. The BMW shot forwards with such greedy eagerness that Sebastian couldn’t hold back a grin. He knew someone else that greedy for him. The first curve came easy and he held the line, pushing the car round with an ease that came from years of practice combined with ridiculous natural skill.

He’d always been great behind the wheel, and couldn’t remember ever wanting anything else, ever needing to be anywhere else, until now. Nic Sinclair had changed something inside of him not just with her body but with the things she said and the way she saw the world and the way she made him feel. Her strength, her determination overwhelmed him. She’d conquered a fear he couldn’t even begin to comprehend, and all he wanted to do now was keep her with him.

Second corner. Third. A crackle over the radio, and Sebastian upped his speed. He’d made his decision and now that it was done, it wasn’t difficult to block out everything apart from the car and the course.

Halfway up now and the air was starting to thin. Nothing to do here except increase his speed, hold his nerve, and shoot the BMW into the mouth of the next corner. As he hit maximum speed it felt like flying. But it wasn’t enough, not any more.

Sebastian took the final three corners with professional ease, skirting the very edge of reckless. He didn’t care about the clock anymore. He wasn’t sure what he cared about other than getting back to Nic. Every minute he wasn’t with her was a minute wasted. He’d already wasted far, far too many of them chasing women who he had no connection with just to avoid his own company. The finish line rushed towards him, but he didn’t cut his speed. Not until he was way past it and saw Nic.

She stood off to one side, wearing a pair of those tatty cut offs with one of his t-shirts draped over the top and those bright red boots, talking to one of the mechanics. God, she was beautiful, and she had the guy hanging off her every word. Talking shop no doubt, Sebastian thought wryly as he rolled the car into the bay. Only problem was, she didn’t seem to have realised yet that having legs like that and being able to dismantle an engine made her a real life Lara Croft. And there were a lot of geeks round here.

Sebastian undid his harness and then extracted himself from the car before pulling off his helmet and the fireproof balaclava he wore underneath. Nic dashed over, threw her arms around him and pressed a kiss to his mouth that started off sweet and ended up
somewhere far south of that. Something else he’d have to talk to her about, he thought to himself. But not yet. Not whilst her tongue was gently stroking his. She dropped her heels, beamed up at him. ‘Did you see the time?’

‘No. How’d I do?’

‘You’ve got eight seconds on Pepperard. Falco is up next, but he’s got no chance. His car isn’t up to it, even if he is. They’ve got a major problem with the electrics.’

‘And you know this how?’

She raised one shapely eyebrow. ‘I asked.’

‘Did you now.’ She was perfect. She was so perfect it made him ache, and when she’d described herself as disgusting it had all but broken his heart. He never wanted to see her cry ever again and he never wanted her to feel so alone, so shattered that she resorted to hurting herself to get through it. Sebastian unzipped the front of his jumpsuit, scratched his chest, then settled his hand possessively on Nic’s behind. ‘I’m done here,’ he said to the mechanics. ‘Take a look at the steering before tomorrow, will you? I think there’s a slight pull to the left.’

There wasn’t, but the job was big enough that they’d have to start immediately if they didn’t want to work late into the night. ‘But you’ve got another run,’ Dave, his chief mechanic pointed out.

‘There isn’t time, not if you’re going to get the steering sorted for tomorrow.’ Sebastian pointed out. He took Nic’s hand and led her across the paddock, then into the one storey building that housed offices and changing rooms. He told her not to wander off as he nipped off to shower and change and wasn’t surprised when she took no notice of him and he found her in the plush lounge chatting to his boss.

‘It’s weird,’ she said, after they’d said their goodbyes, ‘but no-one here seems to think I’m weird.’

‘That’s because you’re not weird,’ Sebastian said impatiently as they made their way over to their hotel. He wanted her to stop talking. He wanted her under him. He wanted her to understand what she was doing to him, what he felt about her. With every step they took, he worked up his courage a little more.

‘Sebastian,’ she said, taking his hand and tucking herself in beside him as the revolving door moved round and they nipped into a space, ‘I’m a mechanic. A girl mechanic. I can’t cook, or sew, or do anything with make-up. I’m not girly or flirty. Most people find that a bit odd.’

‘Most people are fools,’ he said. ‘I think you’re bloody fantastic.’

The door spun and tipped them out. Sebastian all but dragged her across the lobby and into the lift. The doors slid shut and he thumbed the button for their floor, then he turned to Nic. With one quick move he had her pinned against the back wall of the lift and his fingers inside her top. He stroked the back of his hand over her left breast until her nipple became a firm little bump. ‘Talk to me about engines.’

‘What?’

‘Say ‘exhaust manifold’.’

Her lips were parted, soft, pink, inviting. ‘Exhaust manifold,’ she whispered, eyes huge and dark.

‘See?’ he whispered back, taking her wrist and placing her hand over the bulge in his jeans. ‘You’ve made me hard.’

She made a little noise in the back of her throat, somewhere between a whimper and a moan and Sebastian loved it. He needed to show her the truth of this, of what was
between them, needed to make her understand. This was more than just a fling. It was more than sex. It was rapidly becoming everything.

The lift jerked to a halt and the doors slid open. Sebastian set his hands to her waist and lifted her, shifting his hold to her bottom. ‘Wrap your legs round me,’ he instructed her as he stepped backwards out of the lift. She clung on to him as he walked along the corridor that led to their suite, laughed when he had to prop her against the wall as he fiddled with the pass key. Sebastian pushed open the door but didn’t take her in, despite the fierce urge of his body and the denim cutting into his erection. ‘Are you happy?’ he said, stroking the hair back from her face.

She touched his cheek, and he turned his head and pressed a kiss to her palm. Her hands settled gently on his shoulders. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Yesterday, when we…you cried.’

‘I know.’

‘I want to make it right, Nic.’

‘I don’t think you can. I don’t think anyone can. It’s just something that’s in me, Sebastian. Something I have to deal with.’