Page 11 of Nitro
I took a breath that didn’t feel like it belonged to me, turned, and walked out. Not fast. Not slow. Controlled. The way you leave a building you wired yourself and didn’t plan on blowing just yet.
Outside the room, The Pit’s noise surged back up—ratchet click, compressor cough, the clatter of a dropped socket bouncing once, twice, three times. The floor felt off by a degree, like I was riding on a tire five PSI low—enough to notice but wouldn’t kill you unless you ignored it.
I scrubbed my hand over my mouth, checked my palm for blood because some part of me was convinced I’d bitten myself and missed it. Then I laughed once under my breath without humor when I saw it was clean.
Out in bay three, Piston looked up from a brake job and squinted at me. “You look like a man who just remembered why he quit smoking.”
“I don’t smoke,” I muttered, grabbing the shop clipboard because it was something to hold that wasn’t the woman I wanted to push up against a wall again.
“Exactly,” he drawled, going back to the caliper with a whistle.
I signed off on a parts receipt without reading it and returned the clipboard to the counter. My hands were steady again, but my head wasn’t. I could still feel her pulsing against my fingers. Hear the hitch in her throat when I’d said good girl and she’d responded like I’d wired a trigger into her bones.
Behind the glass, she hadn’t moved. When she finally did, it was a slow slide down the wall to a crouch, elbows on her knees, hands fisted in the legs of her coveralls. Her head dropped forward, and she stayed there, breathing for a count that got way too close to double digits. When she looked up, her gaze cut to the doorway as if she felt me still looking in her direction. The glare she sent me was pure murder…and pure wreckage.
It took every bit of my control to stalk out of the garage, leaving her breathless, glaring daggers, and looking like the best kind of chaos I’d ever fucking seen.
5
JANA
Iwas good at compartmentalizing my feelings. I’d been doing it since I was six and realized how awful my dad was, only one year after he bullied my mom into sending me for a visit every month. So I should have been fine the morning after my heated encounter with Torin. That was what I kept telling myself anyway. On repeat, like maybe sheer stubbornness would trick my body into believing it.
A good night’s sleep, and I’d be back to normal. Steady. Focused on what I’d come here to do.
Except I dreamed about Torin and woke up gasping his name. Relived him pinning me to the wall and making me come with just his fingers.
My skin still buzzed like his mouth had just left it. My pulse still kicked when I thought about the way he’d warned me that I wasn’t ready for when he stopped holding back.
How he’d demanded that I use his real name. My mom might’ve kept me away from club life as much as she could, but I knew bikers didn’t offer that up to just anyone.
I gritted my teeth and shook my head hard, as though I could rattle the memory loose.
I didn’t want to think about him that way. Or at all.
The distraction was unwanted. But he was already under my skin, like motor oil that wouldn’t wash off no matter how many times I scrubbed. The harder I tried to scrape him out, the deeper he seemed to sink.
And that was a problem. Torin wasn’t the kind of man you could shove back out once you let him in. Once he got through, there was no stopping him. He’d proved that last night.
I’d let him touch me. Craved it like I’d never done before. And I wanted more.
I was irritated that I needed to remind myself that I was here to make a name on the racing circuit. Especially since the cards were already stacked against me as a woman. So I pasted on a neutral expression and squared my shoulders like nothing had happened when I walked into The Pit the following morning.
As though I hadn’t completely unraveled for Torin.
Like my legs hadn’t gone weak the second his voice went rough, telling me to come.
Luckily, the garage seemed the same as always. Engines rumbled somewhere deep inside, music buzzed faintly, and men’s voices rose and fell in casual banter. It was normal.
And I told myself that was what I was too. Just another driver, here to earn my spot. Not the girl Torin had pinned to the wall and undone with nothing but his mouth and hands.
“Morning,” Gauge called.
I flashed him a brief smile. “Hey.”
I lied to myself as I moved through the bays, several other Redline Kings greeting me along the way. Then I doubled down when my pulse jumped at the sound of his voice drifting from somewhere I couldn’t see.
I was fine.
