Chapter 6 My Best Friend Would Be The End Of Me!

"We didn't do anything," I said quickly, snapping my gaze to the dashboard.

She let out a loud, disbelieving laugh. "Right. Sure. You just vanished into the dark with a human brick wall, and your jacket is missing half its buttons. I wasn't born yesterday, Nora."

"I am serious," I insisted, my voice tight and defensive. "We just talked."

"Uh-huh. Pull down the visor."

"What?"

"Pull down the visor and look in the mirror, you terrible liar."

I hesitated, my fingers gripping the edge of my seatbelt. But my hand eventually reached up, pulling the sun visor down and flipping open the tiny illuminated mirror.

I stared at my reflection and swallowed hard.

She was right. I looked like one of them. My jacket was rumpled and pulled off one shoulder. The neckline of my shirt was stretched. My hair was tangled in wild, erratic waves from where his large, rough, grease-stained hands had gripped the roots. And my mouth—god, my lips were a bruised shade of red, visibly parted and swollen from the dominant force of his tongue. I looked like anyone else who had just been bent over a motorcycle and thoroughly handled.

I snapped the visor shut, the mortification instantly flooding back into my chest.

"We kissed," I admitted, keeping my voice low, hoping she would drop it. "That's

it."

"Just kissed?" She glanced at me, her perfectly lined eyebrows raised high. "Because the way you were breathing when you yanked me away from my boyfriend, it looked like you were running from a crime scene. Did you panic?

Did the Mercer princess get a little too close to losing her V-card to a street thug?"

"I didn't panic," I snapped, my bruised ego flaring. I hated being called a coward. I got enough of that bullshit from the engineers

at the academy. "And I wasn't going to have sex with him."

"Then what happened?" She pressed, completely merciless. "Because clearly, something snapped."

I crossed my arms over my chest, sinking lower into the heated seat. I didn't want to say it out loud. Saying it out loud made it real. It made me confront exactly how stupid, inexperienced, and out of my depth I had been.

"I dropped to my knees," I muttered, the words barely audible over the hum of the tires.

Suddenly, she slammed on the brakes.

The Audi jerked violently, the tires screeching against the asphalt. The seatbelt locked across my chest, throwing us both forward for a split second before she hit the gas again, correcting her speed on the highway. Thankfully it was empty.

"You did what?" She shrieked, her head whipping toward me. "Nora! You didn't even know his name! And you went down on him right there?"

"I tried to!" I yelled back, my face burning so hot I felt like I had a fever. "He challenged me! He called me a pampered track princess and said I

didn't know how to handle anything outside a country club. He pushed my buttons, so I got mad and wanted to prove him wrong."

She was staring at the road, her mouth literally hanging open. "Okay . . . okay. Oh my god. And? Was he huge? Did you blow his mind?"

"No," I groaned, pressing my hands into my eyes, wishing the seat would swallow me whole. "He unzipped his jeans, and he had a

piercing."

"Shut up!"

"I'm not even joking. A ring right through the flesh," I confessed, the words spilling out in a humiliated, breathless rush. "I froze. I had no

Idea what I was looking at. But I didn't want to back down, so I went for it anyway, and because I had absolutely zero fucking clue what I was doing, my teeth caught on the metal. I bit him, Chloe. He literally yelped and had to pull me off."

For five agonizing seconds, the car was dead silent.

Then, she exploded.

She threw her head back and cackled, banging her palm against the steering wheel. She laughed so hard she started wheezing, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

"It isn't funny!" I hissed, grabbing the door handle and half-wishing we weren't going sixty miles an hour so I could roll out into traffic.

"It is the funniest thing I have ever heard in my entire life!" She gasped, wiping a tear from her eye, struggling to keep the Audi in its lane. "Oh my god. The untouchable Nora Mercer, the girl who rejects elite F1 playboys every single week, finally breaks her streak and immediately takes a chunk out of a biker's dick."

"I hate you," I muttered, turning my burning face toward the window.

She kept giggling for another two miles, occasionally letting out a snort before she finally sobered up as we approached her house. She reached over and squeezed my shoulder.

"Hey. It's fine," she said, her voice softening slightly. "Guys, down there are animals. He probably thought it was kinky. I bet if you go back next week, he'll let you try again."

"I am never going back there," I said flatly.

We pulled into the brightly lit, heavily guarded underground parking garage of Chloe's luxury high-rise. The security guard at the booth recognized the Audi, nodding respectfully and lifting the boom gate. We parked, took the elevator up to the penthouse, and locked the door behind us.

The transition from where we left to where I was most comfortable in gave me severe whiplash.

She headed straight for the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water, leaving me alone in the hallway.

I walked into her bathroom and shut the door.

The marble was cold. The lights were overwhelmingly bright. I gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, leaning forward to stare at my reflection one last time.

I am never going back there.

That was what I had told Chloe. That was what my brain, heavily trained in risk assessment and corporate preservation, was screaming at me to do. My father’s words echoed in my head—I was an elite driver. I had a legacy to protect.

But even as the logical thoughts formed, my body betrayed me.

I turned on the cold water, splashing it against my flushed cheeks, but it did nothing to cool the fire burning under my skin. The humiliation of my clumsiness was heavy, yes. But beneath the embarrassment, a completely different, deeply terrifying sensation was humming through my veins.

I closed my eyes, water dripping from my chin, and all I could see was him.

I squeezed my thighs together, a knot of heat instantly curling deep in my stomach. My breath hitched, my chest rising and falling rapidly in the bathroom.

Sure I was terrified of him, sure I despised his arrogance. But as I stood alone, gripping the sink until my knuckles turned white, I couldn't stop the intrusive, breathless thought from completely taking over my brain.

I wondered exactly what that piercing would feel like buried deep inside of me.