Page 63 of Handle Me

The day was alive with an energy that thrummed through me like a live wire. Lola and I had parted ways hours ago, but even as I settled into my new home, my thoughts kept returning to her. The breathy sound she made on the verge of climax, the way she could go from ice-cold queen to sexy-as-hell spitfire within moments, how it felt when she looked at me with those wide, willing eyes. I had spent all of forty-eight hours in Lola’s presence, and one thing was clear: I was in trouble. I thought I was taking a break from racing and distracting myself with a no-strings-attached flirtation. I was wrong. Lola Bishop was not a distraction. She was an obsession.

“You sure about this?” Brex asked me, drawing me from my thoughts.

I shook my head slightly to clear the steam from my brain. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have left the car here yesterday. I wasn’t thinking.”

“That will happen when you’re distracted.” Brex grinned over his shoulder, flashing me his pearly whites. “How was the tea party?”

I bit back a laugh at the secret code we’d stumbled upon regarding my forbidden relationship with Lola. “Best tea party I’ve ever been to.” I shifted in my seat, leaning closer to the front seat’s center console. “Remind me why I can’t sit up there with you. I feel like a dick back here.”

“Do you really want to be on every tabloid in the country?” he asked.

He had a point, but still. “Maybe the new baby will be a distraction.”

Brex’s shoulders tensed, and I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t wish all that fucking attention on anyone.” Especially a fucking kid. I was a dick.

“Don’t be,” he said quickly, his eyes watching me in the rearview mirror. “It’s just the way it is.”

“Does anyone ever stop to think maybe it shouldn’t be?” I mused, sliding back in my seat with a groan.

“Now, you really sound like your brother,” Brex teased.

Part of me wanted to ask him more—about Alexander, about the hints he’d been dropping that maybe things weren’t so perfect for my royal family members. But Brex was a company man, and I knew he wouldn’t tell me, even if he was nice.

“Shit,” he said under his breath. “There’s even more of them now.”

When we’d left the hospital, I’d been astounded by the number of people filling the streets surrounding the hospital. There were press and reporters everywhere, but most of those swarming the streets were simply citizens with banners and signs and flowers. I might have thought it was impossible to fit any more people safely around the hospital, but the crowd apparently didn’t. They’d crammed closer together, and there wasn’t an end to the onlookers in sight.

“I’m guessing that it’s pointless to talk you out of this,” Brex said.

“It’s a Ferrari,” I responded. I didn’t need to say more.

“Somehow, that makes it worse.” He maneuvered us past the security blockade set up to control the hospital’s private entrance. “I guess there’s no point in telling you to keep a low profile.”

“Low profile and Ferrari don’t really go together,” I said, tacking on, “but I’ll try.”

“I’ll follow you back to Kensington once you’re in your car,” he informed me as he pulled into the car park where I’d left my car yesterday.

I blew out a stream of air, hesitating but finally asking, “Do you have to?”

“Do I really have to answer that?”

That was answer enough. Like it or not, it seemed I had a new personal bodyguard. “My own security, a sexy publicist—I can see how this whole royalty thing can go to your head.”

“Careful, or you won’t fit that head of yours in that car.” Brex whistled as he studied the Ferrari, which, thankfully, looked untouched.

I snorted and climbed out of the backseat. Pausing, I gestured for him to roll down his window. “Mind if we go home the long way? I need to stop for something.”

“More condoms?” he guessed. Since he was the one who’d driven Lola home, I couldn’t exactly lie.

But I wasn’t about to tell him that she’d let me go bare, that I’d pumped her full of me, and that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How good she felt with nothing between us. How undeniably we fit together in every way.

“Nah.” I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I just thought maybe I’d get her flowers.”

I waited for him to laugh, mock me or rib me like my pit crew might do back at the track. Instead, he nodded solemnly as though he deeply approved of this gesture. “There’s a shop in Kensington, around the corner from your place. I can go inside.”

But I shook my head. “I need to do this myself,” I said in a strained voice.