Page 51 of Start Your Engines

“Fuck off. You don’t care about the team,” he scoffs. I roll my tongue around my mouth. I want nothing more than to smack the sneer off his face, but that won’t help. “Apart from a particular boss. You always were protective of her. It didn’t pay off that day you smashed her hand, though. Crasher was supposed to have an accident, yet you saved her and stopped her racing. And then we convinced her you did it on purpose.” He cackles.

“Why did you do that?”

“Payback for all the times you got in my way in races. And because we could.”

My fist itches. I want to shove it in his ugly face.

“Save yourself for the track.” I bare my teeth. “She’ll fire you if you keep acting like a dick.”

He laughs, his face creasing like I’ve told the funniest joke. “She’s a puppet, and her dad pulls the strings. He wants people to buy the team, and guess who’s looking for a new investment?”

My whole body tenses. I don’t like that future. I need to walk away, yet I’ve had enough of Antoine not taking responsibility for his actions. “You’re drunk and rambling. Maybe if you put more effort into racing and less into being a shithead with a complex about having a female boss, you’d get a podium yourself.”

“I will be in charge of this team, and I’ll make Senna get on her knees and show me exactly what she’s willing to do to keep her job.”

I grab him by his designer shirt and shove him against the wall. “You don’t speak about Senna like that. If you say anything like that to her or about her again, I’ll make you pay.”

“You’ve got some issues you need to work out. I know exactly who you should work them out on, but she’d rather have someone with class like me. Someone her daddy respects.” He cackles. “Why would she desire a bit of rough with issues like you? She’ll never want you, Dane.”

I draw back my fist to hit him, but a shout freezes my hand.

“Put him down,” Senna bellows. “I thought we’d dealt with this. Antoine, go. I need to speak to Connor.”

Antoine walks away, winking at me. I give him a death stare over Senna’s shoulder.

“Oi, Dane,” Senna says, pushing me against the wall. In her heels, she’s nearly the same height as me. Her dress shimmers, and I want to hold her and keep her still, but she shoves me again. “What the fuck was that?”

I shrug and roll my eyes. She grabs my jaw and holds it. There’s a fire in her eyes that gives my body all the wrong ideas. Her fingers burn my skin, but she doesn’t let go.

“Was he right?”

I don’t know how much she heard. I hope that she heard Antoine say he caused her crash, but I can’t answer. Is she referring to me wanting her? I’ll deny it forever if I have to, because she can’t know. I won’t have her ignoring me because she thinks I want to fuck her. Her eyes pinch as she attempts to decipher my thoughts, but I remain quiet.

“Do you want to work out your issues with me to prove something?”

I clench my jaw, and she lets go as if I’ve confirmed her fears.

“So this friendship we’re trying to resurface was you were proving you were the big man, and I was what, another silly fangirl who praised you?”

I shake my head. I try to speak, but her body is so close to mine it’s like her heat fills my veins while her anger has me on the edge of falling. “It was never about proving something.”

“Then what was that hug about? Why have you stared at me all night? I thought…” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”

Goose pimples cover her arms, and she stares at my lips and then licks her own.

“What do you want from me, Senna? Do you want a friend? Because I can be a friend.”

She sighs, and her breath whispers against my lips. I should stop this conversation. I should be protecting her, not trying to seduce her. She’s my best friend’s little sister. Yet I hold my tongue desperate for her answer.

“Were you staring at me because you hate Antoine? Is this about being better than him? Because when I look at him, there’s nothing, but when I look at you, I…”

As she swallows, I fixate on her throat. I run her hair between my fingers, and my body comes alive as her pupils dilate, and she lets out a sigh that ghosts my lips.

“What happens when you look at me, Coults?”

She leans into me. I hold her hip, and she stares at me with this need that is like a drug injected straight into my veins.

“When I look at you, I want you.”

---