Chapter Eight #2
He’s fast. I knew that factually, I’ve read the articles and seen the highlight clips that pop up on the news, but watching it in person is something else entirely.
Hongjoong takes corners at angles that look suicidal from where I’m sitting, the car’s body tilting as it hugs the curve, tires squealing, and then he threads through a gap between two other cars that doesn’t look wide enough for a bicycle let alone a racing vehicle, slotting into the space with a confidence that makes my breath catch.
On the straights he accelerates with recklessness that has my heart climbing into my throat, the car eating up the distance so fast the other vehicles seem to fall backward around him.
The crew members around me are tense and focused, eyes on their monitors, calling out positions and lap times into their headsets, but I can’t look away from the track itself, from the small bright shape of Hongjoong’s car carving through the field.
The adrenaline of it is intoxicating even from the sidelines.
My pulse races with the engines, my hands grip the railing until my knuckles ache.
I forget entirely about the plug, about the slick, about everything except the next turn, the next overtake, the gap closing between Hongjoong’s car and the leader.
When he makes his move on the final lap, pulling wide on a turn and then cutting inside with a burst of speed that slots him into first place, I’m on my feet without realizing it, both hands on the railing, leaning forward as the cars barrel toward the finish line.
Hongjoong crosses first and the crew around me erupts, people jumping up from their seats, shouting into headsets, clapping each other on the back, and I find myself grinning, caught up in the energy of it.
Then the plug shifts brutally with my sudden movement and my lower back spasms, a sharp twinge that shoots down through my hip, and I sit down hard and awkwardly, gasping, my face contorting as I try to make it look like I’m just winded from the excitement and not dealing with a large piece of silicone rearranging my insides.
I grip the armrest of my seat and breathe through it, blinking the spots from my vision, and when I look up I can see Hongjoong in the distance stepping out of his car to the roar of the crowd, his helmet tucked under one arm, his hair sweat-damp and wild where it’s been flattened by the helmet, the top of his racing suit already unzipped to his chest. He raises a fist to the crowd and the cheering swells, cameras flashing, his crew rushing toward him.
I bite my lip watching the image of it, thinking that for how utterly annoying Hongjoong is, he does look good out here.
Like he was born for this. Radiating that same magnetic energy that always drew people to him, even back when we were teenagers and he was just a loud rich kid with a big laugh and a bigger ego.
He hasn’t changed, not really. He just found a bigger stage.
The crew sweeps me along with them toward the winner’s circle like a current.
I let myself be carried, falling into step beside the young woman with the headset who chatters excitedly about Hongjoong’s final lap time and how it shattered some kind of track record.
I nod along and try to look like I understand the significance of the numbers she’s throwing at me while focusing most of my concentration on walking normally with the plug still seated firmly inside me, every step a fresh reminder of its existence that sends a dull pulse of friction through my core.
The winner’s circle is a raised platform at the end of the pit lane, surrounded by a crush of people, cameras, team officials in suits, sponsors holding branded banners, photographers jostling for position behind a rope line.
I hang back at the periphery where the crew clusters, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against a concrete barrier as Hongjoong climbs the podium steps.
Someone hands him a trophy, a heavy-looking thing of polished metal and dark wood, and he hoists it with one hand, grinning as flashbulbs erupt in a staccato barrage that turns the air white for a split second.
Sponsors crowd in on either side of him for photos, men in expensive suits shaking his hand, clapping his shoulder.
Hongjoong works the crowd with the effortless magnetism he’s always had, laughing and nodding and saying the right things to the right people while cameras click and whir.
I watch from the sideline with my arms still folded, my hip cocked against the barrier, a warm feeling growing in my chest. Pride, though I have no right to it.
He’s not mine. This isn’t my life. I’m here because he’s paying me to be available when he wants to fuck, and the suit fitting and the race invitation and the car are all just accessories to that arrangement, perks of the job.
I know this. I repeat it to myself as I watch him up there under the lights, golden-haired and sharp-jawed and incandescent with the high of winning.
I tell myself that the warm ache spreading behind my ribs is just residual adrenaline from the race and nothing more.
The ceremony wraps up and Hongjoong steps down from the podium, handing the trophy off to a crew member without looking, already scanning the crowd.
His gaze sweeps past the photographers, past the sponsors still lingering with their business cards, past his own team members trying to flag him down, and lands on me with heat-seeking accuracy.
Like he knew exactly where I was standing the entire time.
Like he was looking for me before he even stepped off the platform.
He cuts through the crowd in a straight line, people parting around him or getting shouldered aside without ceremony, still in his racing suit with the top unzipped to his sternum and his undershirt dark with sweat, his hair a mess of damp blonde strands falling across his forehead.
He doesn’t slow down as he reaches me. His hand fists the front of my jacket and he yanks me forward off the barrier, and then his mouth is on mine, hard and urgent, tasting like salt and the metallic bite of adrenaline, his lips slightly chapped from the dry air inside the helmet.
The kiss is brief but forceful enough that my back hits the concrete barrier and I grab his forearm to steady myself, my other hand coming up instinctively to grip the collar of his racing suit.
He pulls back just enough to speak, his eyes bright and wild with post-race energy that’s rolling off him in waves alongside his pheromones, which have spiked to a level that makes my knees feel unreliable.
“Come with me,” he says, his voice is rough, hoarse and gravelly from shouting into his radio during the race, barely contained.
His hand closes around my upper arm and he’s pulling me away from the crowd, steering me across the paddock with long strides that I have to half-jog to match.
My face is burning and I’m acutely aware that at least a dozen people just watched that kiss, crew members and photographers and god knows who else, but Hongjoong doesn’t seem to care in the slightest, his grip firm on my arm as he navigates between trailers and equipment carts toward the far end of the garage complex.
He stops at one of the auxiliary bays, a smaller garage unit set apart from the main pit area, and punches a code into the keypad beside the rolling metal door.
It grinds upward and he ducks under it before it’s fully open, pulling me in after him.
Inside, the space is lit by overhead fluorescents that hum faintly, painting everything in flat white light.
A single car sits in the center of the concrete floor, a sleek racing model in the same red-and-black livery as the one Hongjoong just drove to victory, polished to a mirror shine, probably a backup or display vehicle.
Hongjoong releases my arm long enough to grab the chain on the inside of the door and haul it back down, the metal clanging against the concrete floor, then he flips the lock with a decisive click.
When he turns back to me his eyes have that look, pupils blown wide and dark, the sharp brown of his irises reduced to a thin ring, his jaw set with tension.
He advances on me and I back up instinctively, one step, two, until my ass connects with the hood of the parked car and I have nowhere else to go.
The metal is warm through my pants, residual heat from the garage lights or maybe just the ambient temperature of the space, and I brace my hands on it behind me, palms flat against the smooth painted surface.
I let out a breathless laugh because the absurdity of this situation isn’t lost on me. “Does winning always make you this horny?” I ask, tipping my chin up to meet his eyes.
Hongjoong plants both hands on the hood on either side of my hips, caging me in, and leans down until his mouth is close enough that I can feel his breath on my lips.
“No,” he says in a low register that makes my stomach flip.
“But knowing your sweet ass has been plugged and waiting for me for the last two hours does.”