#Rev (GearShark #2) (17 page)

I liked him beneath me. It made me hungry… It made me want a lot more than mouth to mouth.

In what was slowly becoming a signature move, I ripped my mouth free, grasped his chin, and pushed his head back so I could kiss across his jawline and suck down his neck.

Drew’s fingers delved beneath the waistband of my jeans and kneaded into my flesh. I came back to his mouth, licking past his teeth and rubbing both my lips fully against his.

“Cancel dinner,” he quickly said before letting me take his lips again. “Let’s stay in.”

I groaned and, without lifting my mouth, I fished a hand into my pocket to try and find my phone.

He ended up trying to help me, except I don’t think he was helping me at all. He kept finding something that was
not
my phone. Damn, his hand felt good. I loved the way my skin seemed to ripple every time he brushed against my dick.

It was like throwing a pebble into the center of a lake. The waves it created stretched far and wide across the surface.

Thought left my brain. I forgot about my phone. Need hammered throughout my body and made me drunk. My hips thrust into him and would have kept the rhythm, but his palms settled on my hips and he pulled his mouth from beneath mine.

“Frat boy,” he groaned.

“Forrester,” I replied.

“Someone’s at the door.”

I stilled and looked down. “What?”

Drew smiled and tugged my lower lip with his fingers. “Someone is at the door, big guy.”

“Big guy?” I laughed.

“Would you rather I say little guy?”

I was alert and amused enough now to hear the insistent knocking on the door in the other room.
Damn.
Had it already been twenty minutes?

I shoved off Drew and stood. My cock was practically bursting out of my jeans. “Little clearly doesn’t apply here.” I gestured to my fly.

“Maybe I should text Braeden, tell him size matters.”

I laughed out loud. “He’d probably ask for pics.”

On my way to the door, I adjusted myself, trying to conceal the fact I was sporting some serious wood. Thankfully, I was wearing my Wolves T-shirt and it was a little big, so it hung low enough to cover what needed covered.

Joey’s wild, curly hair was the first thing I saw when I pulled open the door. “Took you long enough,” she said and stepped around me into the room.

“Come on in, Joey,” I said dryly.

“Where’s Drew?” she asked, swinging around to look at me. Her eyes widened. “What the hell happened to your face?”

“How many laws did you break on your way over here?” Drew drawled, stepping into the room. I noted his hard-on was also effectively concealed.

Before Joey could turn to steal his attention, our eyes met, and they held a lot of promise for later.

“You’ve been ignoring my texts!” she exclaimed. But regardless of how “mad” she was, she went straight in for a hug.

“What’s this about dinner?” Drew asked, avoiding her words and wrapping her in a bear hug.

Joey was dressed casually in a pair of black leggings and some kind of tight, hot-pink tank with a black cropped T-shirt over it. Curves, that’s what Joey was… all curves. Her dark, wild curls practically attacked Drew.

When she pulled back, her eyes bounced between us. “Change of plans,” she announced. “Instead of meeting with my father in the morning, we’re meeting him for dinner tonight.”

“What?” Drew’s eyes widened, and I watched him try to bank his shock.

“
We’re
meeting him?” I questioned Joey but still kept an eye on Drew.

“You asked for this meeting so you could tell him, didn’t you?” She waved her finger between me and Drew. “About you two.”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re here.”

Joey nodded once at his reply, like it proved what she already knew. “Well, I want to be there. And talking about it outside of his office is better. Too many gossip hounds.”

“So you want to have dinner at a public restaurant…?” I drawled. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that didn’t seem like the brightest idea.

“Nope,” she said. “Let’s go. I’m driving.”

“Where are we going?” Drew asked.

Joey gave us both a dazzling smile. “Home.”

And here we were, at another first.

Not only were we going to his home, but we were going to be openly admitting we were in a relationship to the man who had every ounce of ability to make or break Drew’s racing career.

Drew

Gamble’s house wasn’t a house. Joey’s “home” wasn’t really.

It was a freaking estate.

With gates. And security.

Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were snipers hiding in the well-manicured bushes.

The second the yellow Skyline pulled up to the large wrought-iron gate, a security guard stepped out of a small white hut and up to the car. Joey rolled down her window and called a greeting.

The guard smiled and opened the entrance so she could drive onto the grounds.

The place was of course hella nice, but honestly? I expected it to be more austere, almost untouchable. Of course, the entire residence bespoke of wealth, but it wasn’t as arrogant as one might assume.

“It’s a Colonial Revival style house,” Joey said, taking the liberty to give a brief “tour” as we pulled up. I’m sure the way Trent and I stared out the windows was all the interest she needed. “This one my father had built to resemble a nineteen-thirties Bel-Air estate.”

The entire house was white and sprawled out before us. The middle of the home was one large square building with a two-story portico at the front and huge white columns that stretched up to a balustrade roof. There was an imposing front door with an impressively large chandelier hanging above it.

Coming out on either side of the main building was another wing, also white with lots of windows lining the front framed by black shutters. The roofline was traditional and dark but was accented with small dormers rising out of the top in a row across the entire home. Each dormer had a darkened window in the center.

The driveway stretched right up to the wide, white front steps. On either side was immaculate landscaping and small trees, which gave the home the feeling it had been there a while.

Joey parked right near the stairs and cut the engine.

“He knows we’re coming?” Trent asked.

“Definitely,” she replied. “I told him I wanted to be at the meeting and asked if maybe the housekeeper could make my favorite dinner.”

“Joey,” I teased, “are you a daddy’s girl?”

“Let’s just say he doesn’t often refuse me,” she replied and got out.

I was nervous. How could I not be? I thought I had all night to kind of get used to the idea that I was coming out to Gamble.

Just because I was determined to not hide how I felt about Trent didn’t mean I sometimes didn’t want to. Opening yourself up to harsh judgment is never easy. No one wants to be scrutinized and stereotyped based on the way they feel or the life they lead.

And let’s face it; my career was on the line.

Just because Joey accepted T and me didn’t mean her father would. He was older, “old school.” In my mind, trying to gain acceptance from someone who was older, more set in their ways and beliefs, and had grown up in a less open-minded time in America was sort of like trying to milk a cat.

What if he rejected me? What if the disgust on his face was so transparent it was impossible to deny? What would it do to me?

To Trent?

I told myself to suck it up. I was doing this.

As we walked up the wide steps, I felt Trent’s stare. I glanced at him.

Behind Joey’s back he mouthed. “You okay?”

I nodded.

There was no butler or maid that answered the door. We didn’t ring some gonging doorbell and stand there forever to wait to be granted entrance.

Instead, Joey flung open the door and walked right in. “Dad!” she yelled through the broad, fancy entryway. The floors were black-and-white marble, there were classic white statues lining the walls, and a black chandelier lit the space.

It was quiet in here, but really, I didn’t expect it to be loud. As far as I knew, it was only Gamble who lived here and possibly Joey.

“You live here or over at the apartments by the track?” Trent asked, looking around.

“Here,” she said. “There’s really no point in having an apartment. This house is so big, and my room is on the opposite side from my dad’s.”

She motioned for us to follow her out of the entry, passed a sitting room, and continued down a wide hall to an open wooden door. “He’s probably in here,” she said as she went.

I just concentrated on making sure my shoes didn’t make a squeaking sound against the really clean floors. That would be embarrassing.

“There you are,” Gamble’s deep voice came from inside the room.

Right before I could follow Joey over the threshold, Trent’s hand snagged mine. “You ready for this?” he whispered.

“Are you?”

He gave my fingers a light squeeze before releasing me. “Yeah.”

“Drew!” Gamble said when I stepped in. The room was what I would call a gentleman’s study. All polished wood paneling, heavy furniture, and a large fireplace. There was a desk on one side, but it wasn’t the focal point. I actually really appreciated that because it spoke volumes about the man standing in front of me.

Yes, his work and business was a large part of his life. But there was more to him than that. His job wasn’t everything. If it was, his desk would be huge, it would be front and center, and the atmosphere in here would be stuffy instead of comfortable.

I think it would be hard for a man like Ron Gamble to do anything but intimidate people. That seemed like a heavy cross to bear.

Sort of like falling in love with your best friend.

There was so much room for misinterpretation. For assumptions.

“Scotch or whiskey?” I asked, gesturing to the glass in his hand.

“I’ll get you some whiskey, son, but you’re gonna have to drink it out of a baby bottle.”

Trent laughed.

Joey rolled her eyes and finished crossing the room to give her father a kiss on the cheek. He smiled at her warmly, and it was just another flash of the man behind the image.

Joey glanced at me before going over to pour herself some scotch. Clearly, in this house, whiskey was for pansies.

Is this why she expertly took control of this meeting? Setting it up in the evening, after traditional business hours and in Gamble’s personal home? Was she trying to show Trent and me there was a whole other side to Gamble people rarely saw? Was it her way of telling me without saying the words that he just might understand more than I thought?

Trent went across the room before me and held his hand out directly to Gamble. “Thanks for meeting with us.”

Gamble shifted the glass into one hand and offered the other to T.

“A meeting is overdue,” he said. “Joey, pour the men a drink.”

“Women’s rights,” she reminded him, sipping out of her own.

“Hospitality,” he rebutted.

“Yes, sir.” She moaned and set aside her glass to pour two neat glasses of scotch.

I sidled up to her and leaned close to her ear. “That’s a good girl.”

“Screw you,” she said fondly and shoved the glass at me.

I chuckled and sipped at the dark liquid. It was smooth all the way down.

“Have a seat.” Gamble gestured to the seating options around the fireplace. There were several leather club chairs, a couch, and a few other options of chairs with wooden frames.

I sat in one of the club chairs, and Joey sat on the couch. Trent sat nearby in another of the leather chairs, while Gamble took up one of the wooden-framed ones.

Frankly, I wondered if it made his ass sore. Looked uncomfortable as hell.

“As I said…” Gamble went on. “I’m glad you called. I wanted to give you an update on the new division and give you a schedule of some of the preliminary races. Also, a few endorsement deals have come in, so you’ll need to look those over, Drew, and see if any of them are a good fit.”

“You can send that stuff to me,” Trent said.

Gamble nodded. “Once you decide, I’ll have my legal team make sure the deals are solid. Also, because the preliminaries are being scheduled, we need to get some kind of driving schedule down so you’ll be ready. We also need to talk about the car you’re going to be driving and assembling a pit crew to travel with you.”

“I need a pit crew for preliminary races?” I asked. How big were these events going to be?

“Maybe not as full of a crew as you’ll need once the actual racing season starts, but I’d never send you to qualify without a team to troubleshoot your car.”

“I want to be on the team,” Trent said.

Gamble nodded around his scotch. “That’s a given.”

It was all so real and so goddamn exciting. My racing career was literally blooming in front of my eyes. It was everything I always wanted.

“And of course, we need to discuss your salary. You’re not going to be able to hold on to your day job much longer. I’m going to need you here to train.”

No more day job? No more neckties, staring at the clock ‘til five and dragging my ass out of bed so I could get there on time?

Hells yeah.

I found myself grinning, like one of those big stupid grins people wore on lame-ass TV commercials, but I couldn’t help it. Life was falling together.

Or was it?

My grin vanished with the thought.

“Before we get into all of that, I need to make sure I’m still the racer you want,” I said.

The glass in Gamble’s hand lowered toward his lap, and his eyes belayed some surprise. “And why would you think I changed my mind?”

“You haven’t yet. But you might after I say what I came here to say.” Tension built low in my stomach. It sort of felt like it was chewing up my insides and making them ache. Around the glass, my palm was sweating, and I griped harder because I was worried the drink would literally slip out of my grasp.

Please don’t let my career slip out of my grasp either.

The words were right there, lodged in my throat. I wanted to say them. I wanted to boldly tell him I was in love with Trent, but the syllables were sticky, thick, and clung to my esophagus like a bad case of mucus.

You could hear a pin drop in the few seconds that followed my words. Everyone was waiting with bated breath.

As I struggled, Trent cleared his throat. “Drew and I are in a relationship.”

All the air in my lungs whooshed out silently. The pressure in my chest and the thickness in my throat suddenly let go.

I didn’t even look at Gamble. I was too compelled to look at Trent. He spoke so calmly, so matter-of-fact. He could have been reading a grocery list. I admired that so hard. I loved him for it.

He glanced at me, and the single connection I felt when our eyes met was all I needed. I wasn’t giving up a life by admitting my relationship.

I was gaining one.

Amazement, the kind that made you feel gobsmacked and woozy, gripped me. It wasn’t Gamble’s reaction to Trent’s admission I was even concerned with. I hadn’t even looked at him yet. The first person in this room I sought out was my person. It proved everything I needed to know.

I was gonna be okay.

I swung toward Gamble and relaxed back into the leather. “Trent and I aren’t just friends. I’m in love with him.”

Gamble calmly looked between us. His eyes gave away nothing. His face gave away nothing. He sipped his scotch. Joey fidgeted on the sofa.

I kept my eyes trained directly on him. I wouldn’t let his silence unnerve me. I wouldn’t let it make me doubt myself.

There was no doubt.

Trent was it for me.

“I see,” Gamble said after a moment. “And how long has this relationship been going on?”

“Only a few weeks,” I replied. “It’s new, but that doesn’t mean it won’t stick. This isn’t a phase.”

“You knew about this?” Gamble addressed his daughter.

She nodded. “It was obvious when I was in town, driving with Drew.”

“And what do you think about these two?” Gamble asked.

God, the man had a fucking poker face. It was virtually impossible to know what he was thinking.

Joey didn’t seem alarmed, though, so I told myself to chill the fuck out.

“They’re real,” she replied simply. “I like real.”

He nodded as if he heard what she didn’t say.