Page 49 of Turn Up The Heat

The smile that broke over his face swirled around in her belly like she’d swallowed it. “It’s a 1969 Mustang Mach 1.” His eyes followed the lines of the car.

It didn’t take a math wizard to know that those numbers didn’t exactly add up to the sparkling car parts that sat before them. “But these parts look really new,” Bellamy said, peering at the inner workings of the car.

Shane chuckled as if he was thinking of an inside joke. “They are. The engine is a 428 Cobra Jet. I put it in almost three years ago.” He pointed to the pristine engine. It looked like it had just come off the factory line.

Bellamy frowned. “Why go through the trouble of replacing something as big-deal as the engine? When the engine on Holly’s Jetta blew up last year, the mechanic told her to cut her losses and get a new car.”

“I didn’t replace the old one because it didn’t work. I replaced it because this one is faster.” The edges of his lips turned up into a half-smile that Bellamy would bet good money he couldn’t control.

“How fast are we talking, exactly?”

The half-smile became a full-blown stunner, and the sexy, badass grin on Shane’s face kicked her pulse into oh-yeah mode. “The car’s got over five hundred horse power.”

“English, please,” she said, tilting her head over her shoulder to look at him.

He stepped in close, wrapping an arm around her waist and gently pressing her against the car with his body from behind. “It’ll go zero to sixty in the time it takes you to say your name and phone number. How’s that?”

Good. Goooood. That’s so freaking good.

“Better,” she breathed.

Shane leaned into her, his palm firm on her hip, and gestured into the car with his free hand. “So, when you change out the engine like that, you have to make other adjustments, too. To make sure you get the kind of performance you’re after.” He pointed out where the transmission was, and gave her a very basic idea of how everything worked. The intricacies were definitely lost on her, but by the time he was done, she had a pretty simple understanding of where everything was and how it all went together. More importantly, Bellamy had picked up on something about Shane that was ironclad.

He might be hot for her, but he was inlovewith the car.

“So, how does a guy come across a 1969 Mustang Mach 1, anyway? It’s not like you can just pick one up at the dealership.” She looked at the gleaming components under the hood, trying to familiarize herself with the way each one went with the others.

“Well, from the time I hit puberty, I knew I wanted one, so it was just a matter of time. I drove by her on the side of the road six years ago and she had a big For Sale sign in the window. It was the fastest damn U-turn I’ve ever made.” Shane shook his head, chuckling, and Bellamy shifted the angle of her body so they were face to face. Something about his expression was so clean and real that she couldn’t make herself look anywhere else.

He continued, clearly caught up in the memory. “I called the number on the sign and told the guy I’d wait right there for him to show up. Nothing like looking desperate right off the bat, right?” His soft laughter twined together with hers before he kept on. “The guy was hard-up to sell it, but not as hard-up as I was to have it. He gave me a good price because it needed a ton of work, but that was half the reason I wanted it. It wasn’t about having the car; it was aboutbuildingthe car.”

The look on his face had Bellamy utterly magnetized, his stubbly jaw set in certainty. She smiled. “So, you’ve always known how to work on cars, then?”

“I’ve always loved them, yeah.” He nodded. “I taught myself some stuff along the way, but everything I really know about cars I learned from Grady. I never would’ve been able to do any of this without him, although he’ll tell you different.” The respect Shane felt for the man was obvious as he spoke.

“He sounds like a great guy.”

Shane’s dark eyes flared with sudden disquiet, but it didn’t carry over into his voice, gone as fast as it had appeared. “He is a great guy.” He took a step back to close the hood and the conversation, his expression inscrutable.

Bellamy shivered, not from the cold so much as the absence of him close to her body. The look that had been on his face when he’d talked about the car lingered in her mind, and it sent prickles of something hot and familiar through her.

Want.

“Hey, you’re cold. Let me grab your coat. It gets pretty drafty in here.” He started to turn away, and in that moment, Bellamy made a thoroughly impulsive choice.

Yet she didn’t hesitate.

She reached out, catching his forearm in the grasp of her fingers, not letting go. “I don’t want my coat.” Her voice was soft, at odds with the piercing stare between them as she moved in, placing herself so close to him that she could see the lean muscles in his jaw go tight with understanding.

“You don’t,” he said, his eyes dipping to her lips, then back to meet her gaze. It wasn’t a question.

Shane’s eyes hardened over her as she shook her head, her mouth pulling up into a slow smile. It might not make much sense, but there was something about the way he looked at her that made her positively hungry for him.

“No. I want you.”

He didn’t hesitate, either.

They didn’t so much kiss as collide, their bodies and mouths coming together with an unnamed force Bellamy was powerless to resist. Their tongues rounded against one another, both seeking and finding. Delicious, promising heat pushed its way through Bellamy’s body to reach even the smallest places, instant arousal thrumming through her body and heading south.

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