Page 88 of Broken Breath
My body fuckinglit up. One second, I was pinned between a tree and a French menace, and the next, I wassoaked through my boxers.
I know my body, even if nobody else has ever touched me like Luc did. I’ve figured out on my own that getting off sometimes helps with pain by loosening the tension in my muscles.
But privacy is a luxury I don’t get, not when I’m living in a damn bus with Dane, where every creak in the floorboards carries, and the shower is barely big enough to sneeze in.
So, I haven’t done anything to take the edge off since Luc lit the fuse, and now the ache he left behind is still burning in places I didn’t know could ache so fiercely.
It was hot.Stupidhot. Just like Delacroix himself. The kind of heat that makes your brain shut off and your hips press forward all on their own.
He waspossessive,and the way his body pressed into mine like he wanted all of it, like…
I shift on the table.
No.Not going there.
Breathe, Alaina. Concentrate on the pain.
And yeah, there’s plenty of that. Whoever said diamonds are a girl’s best friend clearly never met Naproxen.
I slept in the goddamn driver’s seat of the bus last nightandthe night before. Curled up with a blanket over my head and spine propped against the gear stick, which let’s be honest, was dumb as fuck considering how I hurt on a normal day after sleeping in a bed, but Dane is still sick and quarantined to the back of the bus.
And, of course, that thought loops me back to Finn becauseheknows.
Heknows.
He hasn’t said a word, though. Not after the tire was fixed, and we were stuck again for the rest of the drive over here, and not since.
And then there’s Mason, who’s apparently still mad at me. Sure, he helped change the tire, but he didn’t look at me or acknowledge me in any way. Not even a ‘hey.’ It’s all fucked.
Luc, Finn, Mason.
Me.
But I don’t need them, hell, I don’tneedanyone.
Except Dane.
I’m here to ride, win, and finish what I started, and that’s it. I shouldn’t even talk to them or worry about them talking, not talking, oranything else, to me. I should stop letting them hang around me and only talk to Dane. Maybe Piper. But that’s it.
Piper chooses that moment to press into a knot just above my hip, and I actuallymoan.Like, out loud.
She laughs. “Thought you said this was hell.”
“It is,” I mutter into the table. “Keep going.”
Piper moves to my lower back, knuckles dragging heatinto the muscles along my spine. I flinch when she hits a tight spot near the scar on my left side.
“Jesus,” she mutters. “How are you even riding like this?”
I grunt into the padded table. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s notnothing,Alaina,” she says hesitantly. “I… I watched your crash. On TV, when it happened.”
I hold my breath, my newly loosened muscles all tensing at once.
Oh.Oh.
I thought she just figured out I was a girl, not that I wasAlaina Crews.Guess the missing dick was only half the giveaway.
