Page 16 of Nitro
The Pit was humming with its usual chaos—tools clanking, compressors groaning, the smell of burnt rubber and engine oil hanging thick in the air. Florida heat pressed down like a punishment, sweat prickling under my shirt even with the big fans chopping the air overhead. Prep night before a run always made the garage feel tighter than it was, the energy thick with nerves and adrenaline.
I cut through the bays, nodding at Gauge as he barked orders to a couple of prospects stacking tires. My mood was steady—until I saw her.
She was near bay three, standing by one of the prep benches with a bottle of water dangling from her fingers. Her normally loose white T-shirt was plastered to her skin in the heat, and her jean shorts pushed at the edges of my patience. They left too much freckled skin bare—long legs, a slice of thigh showing when she shifted her weight. The light from the overhead fluorescents turned the sweat on her collarbones into something obscene, each drop sliding lower than my control wanted to allow. Her red hair was pulled up in a messy knot, strands escaping like flame that refused to be contained.
And she wasn’t alone.
One of the rookies she’d smoked last weekend—with big shoulders, a cheap grin, and the kind of swagger that came from confusing horsepower with backbone—stood too close, leaning on the bench like he thought his shadow belonged on her. He said something I couldn’t catch over the buzz of a drill, and she laughed. Not like the one she’d given me when I’d muttered something filthy just to see her blush, but it was still sound enough to light a fuse, dragging through me like a live wire.
Jealousy wasn’t an emotion I entertained. The emotion was pointless, wasteful…a distraction. You either claimed something or you walked away. But right then, it hit like a shot of nitrous in my veins, a hard jolt that blurred the edges of my vision. My hands curled into fists, and every part of me screamed to rip that cocky bastard away from her before he mistook her patience for an invitation.
She shifted her weight and tilted her chin in a way I’d seen before. One that said he shouldn’t mistake her politeness for interest, and I knew she was about to shut him down with a line dry enough to sand a door.
But he was clearly too stupid to read the room. His gaze flicked down to her chest. He wasn’t subtle, wasn’t even trying.
Red. Just red. The kind that comes before the blast.
My boots carried me across the floor before the thought finished forming. I didn’t slow, didn’t speak, just reached for her wrist mid-sentence and hauled her toward bay four. Her water bottle hit the bench with a plastic crack, the rookie saying something after us, but I didn’t hear it over the pounding in my ears.
“Hey—” She twisted in my grip.
I ignored her protest, pushed her through the open bay door, and slapped the control. The big steel shutter rattled down hard,cutting us off from the rest of the shop. The grind of the motor and the final slam echoed in the quiet.
She spun on me, her cheeks flushed, and her chest rising and falling fast. “What the hell is your problem?”
My problem was every set of eyes in that garage crawling over her skin like they had any right to it. My problem was that she’d walked out there in shorts tiny enough to make saints lose their religion and a top that clung to every perfect line. I couldn’t stand the thought of a single one of those bastards imagining what I already knew—she was fire wrapped in cute freckles and attitude. And none of them were worthy enough to breathe her air.
“Well?” she demanded again, fire snapping in her green eyes, freckles standing out sharper with the flush crawling over her chest and throat.
“My problem?” I stalked closer, eating the space until her back brushed the cool cinderblock wall. “You out there letting some rookie hit on you. I should spank you raw for making me watch another man drool over you.”
She barked a sharp laugh, her disbelief clear. “Drool? He asked how I tuned my gearing on the straight. That’s it. You dragged me in here like a caveman because I answered a damn question?”
“He didn’t give a shit about your answer,” I growled, bracing one palm against the wall beside her head. My chest almost brushed hers, and the heat pouring off her made it harder to remember words. “He wasn’t looking at your gearing. He was looking at your thighs, Jana. At your tits through that thin little shirt. Every man out there was picturing his hands on you. Picturing grinding his cock against that hot little pussy.”
Her breath hitched, but she didn’t back down. She lifted her chin stubbornly, red hair coming loose from the knot andslipping over her shoulder. “You think everyone is staring at me like that? News flash, Torin—nobody gives a shit.”
I knew she hadn’t encouraged it. She honestly didn’t even see it. Iknewthat. But at that moment, logic was nowhere to be found.
My hand shot down, under the hem of those shorts, her bare ass filling my palms. Soft. Round. Fucking perfect.
I squeezed hard enough to make her gasp and yanked her against me. Her petite but incredibly alluring tits collided with my chest. My cock surged against the tight press of her stomach, thick and unignorable. Then I gave one cheek a sharp slap before cupping the soft flesh again.
She gasped, but I cut in before she could say anything. “They all give a shit,” I snarled against her ear, my breath hot on her skin. “Every single one of them was imagining this—their hands on your juicy ass, their cock grinding right here.”
I rolled my hips forward once, deliberately dragging my hard length against the heat at the apex of her thighs. Her lips parted, a broken sound slipping free before she caught it.
My smile lacking humor, I grunted, “But here’s the part you need to get through that stubborn, pretty little head—no one gets to look at you that way. Like they’re picturing you naked and bent over. And no one fucking touches you but me. You’re mine, Jana.”
She shoved at my chest, her breath coming fast. Her voice was ragged and angry, but also laced with something she couldn’t hide. “So what then? You imagine you see some guy flirting with me, and you’re gonna spank me in front of everyone? That’s your plan?”
My low and dark laughter came straight from my gut. I gripped her ass tighter and hauled her higher so she had to cling to my shoulders to stay upright. “No. I’ll drag your sexy little assinto the nearest private place and fuck you so hard you forget every other man who ever looked at you.”
Her throat worked. For a heartbeat, the fight burned brighter in her eyes. Then they flickered in a way I recognized from the track when a driver decided to take the inside line and risk the paint. She stepped into me instead of away, her voice soft and dangerous. “You think I belong to anyone?”
“To me,” I said. No joke under it. No out.
Her glare could’ve burned me alive. Her freckles stood out fierce against her flushed cheeks, green eyes sparking like flint. And fuck if that fire didn’t turn me harder and hotter, until every thought boiled down to one need—get her naked, get inside, and make sure she never forgot who owned her body.
