Erin McCarthy - Full Throttle

“What kind of beer would you like?” he asked her.

“I’ll take a Guinness.”

“That’ll grow hair on your chest. I’m impressed,” he said with a close-lipped smile, his eyes assessing her.

She laughed, a sound of pure relief that she hadn’t screamed out a marriage proposal. Yet. “That hasn’t been the result for me, thank God. I like dark ales. When I’m feeling really sassy, I like a good Irish Car Bomb. Jameson dropped into Guinness is a taste like no other.”

“Now I’m really impressed.” Rhett put his keys on the scratched-up bar top and said, “I’ll do one if you do.”

Uh-oh. “Are you daring me?” How could he have figured out already that was her weakness?

“I’m definitely daring you. In fact, I double-dog dare you.”

Damn it. He was either psychic or Eve had been telling tales.

Shawn slapped her purse on the bar and said, “I’m in.” No matter that she hadn’t eaten dinner and, on an empty stomach, was very likely to get snookered from whiskey at the end of such a stressful day. She could not turn down a dare.

Rhett grinned and flagged down the bartender. “How competitive are you? Think you can drink it faster than me?”

“Oh, I know I can.” Hell, she had paid half her living expenses in college from bets on how fast she could shoot a beer. “It’s all about opening up the throat to take it all down,” she told him confidently.

His eyebrows shot up. “Now that’s a mighty fine talent to have.”

Oops. That did sound a little sexual. Shawn felt her cheeks heat. “Don’t be rude.”

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

“You were thinking it.”

“Thinking what?”

Damn it. He was good at this. He wasn’t going to say it, that they were both thinking about her giving him a blow job. Neither was she going to say it. “Just take your drink.”

He gave her a slow grin as the bartender set the glasses with the Guinness down on the bar in front of them, three-quarters full. A shot of Jameson was next to each glass, waiting for them to drop the shot glass down inside the Guinness. “On the count of three.”

Shawn picked up her shot of whiskey and let it hover over the Guinness, which she held in her right hand. From experience she knew to throw back with her dominant hand. Her coordination was better. She eyed Rhett as he counted, making sure he wasn’t going to cheat.

“One,” he said, and for some reason she shivered.

There was something about the way he stared at her. It was like he could give her an orgasm with the sheer force of his will, just from the intensity of his gaze. She shifted uncomfortably.

“Two.”

Shawn licked her lips, her hand shaking slightly. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She was trapped by his eyes, which were such a deep green they were almost emerald. He was . . . arresting. That was the word for him. It threw her off her game and she felt her wrist slacken a little, her girl insides warming in arousal.

“Three.”

Shit. He had gained an advantage by being sexy. Shawn dropped, lifted, drank, the sting of the whiskey masked by the smooth maltiness of the ale. She opened the back of the throat, let it all flow down, and slapped her empty glass back on the table while she finished swallowing.

Rhett was a few seconds behind her.

“Ha! I was first!” Not that she was one to gloat or anything. Much.

“Wow,” was the bartender’s opinion. “I’ve never seen a woman drink a car bomb that fast.” The bartender was big and brawny, covered in tattoos, his beard enveloping the bottom half of his face in bushy salt-and-pepper hair. Shawn took it as a serious compliment.

“Thanks.” She beamed a little.

“That was impressive,” Rhett agreed.

“Well, you were no slouch yourself,” she said, wanting to soothe his ego a little. “But I might have forgotten to mention that I supplemented my income in college from bets over how fast I could down a car bomb.”

Rhett’s eyebrows rose. The bartender laughed.

“You’ve got to appreciate a woman who can shoot whiskey.”

“Well, my grandfather’s name was Jameson. It seems disrespectful not to be able to handle his namesake, you know what I mean?” Shawn suddenly felt melancholy. God, she missed Pops.

The bartender fist-bumped Rhett. “You’re a lucky man, brother.”

“Not yet, but I’m hoping,” Rhett told him.

“Ah. Well, good luck.” The bartender winked at Shawn. “Make him work for it, hon.”

Except the truth was, she needed Rhett Ford more than he needed her, so she wasn’t going to be forcing him to dance on a string. If anything, it was about to be the other way around. Or more like her crawling on the floor for him with a gag ball in her mouth.

Oh, God. There were going to have to be some ground rules on this fake marriage thing. Which she really needed to discuss with him. Her palms started to sweat, the liquor heating up her extremities. In her mind, one way or another, it was already a foregone conclusion. That’s how she was. She made a decision, and everyone else needed to fall in with it. Somehow she didn’t think Rhett Ford was the falling-in type.

Not having any idea how to reply to the bartender, she cleared her throat, wishing she were like Eve, who was never at a shortage for words.

“Where did you go to college?” Rhett asked her as the bartender moved on to other customers.

Not that Milt’s was jumping. There were only a couple of guys in their fifties at the end of the bar. Good. Fewer witnesses when she asked Rhett to marry her and he started laughing.

“I went to the University of South Carolina.” Then, because it would be expected, and because she already had a slight buzz from the whiskey she added, “Go Cocks.”

She expected Rhett to laugh or make a crack in return. It’s what people did whenever she referenced USC’s mascot, the gamecocks. It was funny. Juvenile humor, yes, but funny. It was the only legitimate way to say “Go Cocks” in a conversation in public ever.

But Rhett didn’t laugh. In fact, his eyes darkened. “Say that again,” he told her. It wasn’t a request, it was a demand.

Shawn felt her face and chest burn, from the alcohol, from desire. “What?” she asked him, bewildered. “What do you mean?”

“Say ‘cock.’ I want to hear you say it.”

It could have been a creepy request. But somehow it wasn’t. It was just a complete and total turn-on. It was the oddest thing to her, that all Rhett had to do was look at her, his gaze trained on her and only her, and he commanded her full attention. Commanded her.

“Cock,” she whispered, licking her lips nervously.

“Louder.”

“Cock,” she said more confidently, aware of how he subtly shifted toward her, his body firm and masculine, his knee brushing hers.

He made a sound, in the back of his throat, that told her what she’d just said was as effective as if she’d gripped his cock itself with her hand. Her nipples beaded, and she realized that he might be younger than her by more than a couple of years, but he was fully mature and in control of himself and his desires. Possibly more so than she was.

It was so sexy, so hot, that she did exactly what she had been hoping she wouldn’t. She blurted. Instead of approaching him with a business proposition, the words just spilled out of her mouth like ice water on a flame.

“Will you marry me?”

RHETT blinked at Shawn. All the blood had gone south to his cock just watching the dirty word roll off Shawn’s plump lip, so maybe he was at less-than-full mental capacity, because he could have sworn she had just asked him to marry her. Which could not be what she had said. Hell, he’d had to talk her into a beer.

“What?” he asked, wanting to shake his head and rattle it into a reset like they did in old-school cartoons. “What did you say?”

Shawn blushed. She looked down at the bar, fiddling with her empty Guinness glass. “See, here’s the thing. I need a husband. I’m offering money. Are you interested? A business deal, pure and simple.”

He was not following her at all. “Why the hell would you need a husband?” This wasn’t the fifties. If she was knocked up, no one was going to think anything of it. It couldn’t be for any sort of tax advantage. God knew, she was better off being single if she wanted a break from the IRS, so he didn’t understand.

Her eyes finally met his, and she looked emboldened, determined. The shift was dramatic, and it had his body responding again. There was something so damn sexy about her, vulnerable yet strong at the same time.

“Let’s just say that if I don’t get married, I’m going to lose something that means a lot to me. It’s ridiculous, but there it is. I’ll give you a hundred grand if you stay married to me for a year.”

Rhett actually felt his jaw drop open. A hundred thousand dollars? Was she serious? That was more money than he could ever hope to see at once. While he had made a decent living on Evan’s pit crew, he’d taken a pay cut to switch to Eve’s crew, and he’d be lucky if he made five grand off his dirt track racing this year. There just wasn’t a lot of cash at this level, and he wasn’t expecting to win right out of the gate. He was aiming more for breaking even on his car and expenses. A hundred grand. Damn. That was a lot of cheddar.

But he shook his head. “I need more details. That’s a lot of money, and this doesn’t seem above board to me, Shawn. I don’t want to get involved in something illegal. Or be some sort of pawn to make a boyfriend jealous.”

Now it was her turn to look surprised. “I would never involve you in something like that! Either of those things! I wouldn’t ever do anything illegal. Hell, I don’t even jaywalk. And I am not the kind of woman to play games in relationships.”

She looked so indignant that Rhett instantly trusted what she was proposing was something that, while not exactly typical, wasn’t sketchy either. “So then tell me what it really is.”

Shawn sighed. “I guess I can’t expect you not to have questions. I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that. But the thing is, I’m desperate. I’m not sure if you heard, but my grandfather died in November.”

She paused, jaw working, he suspected both from grief and from struggling to find the words for what she needed to say.

“I’m really sorry, Shawn. That must be very difficult.” His own grandparents were all still miraculously alive, and he knew he was fortunate in that regard.

“Thanks.” She ran her finger around the rim of the glass, slowly, methodically, her nails painted a rich, ruby red that surprised him.

He would have expected something more natural, clear polish or a pale pink. The image of those red nails on her pale flesh popped into his head. He wanted to see them splayed over her breasts, trailing down her belly to bury inside her hot, moist inner thighs. Rhett cleared his throat and shifted on his stool. He needed another drink. Preferably with ice he could pour down his jeans to cool him down.

“Pops owned the track and ran it for forty years. I’ve been working there since my midtwenties. It’s my . . . life.” She looked pleadingly at him, as if she were begging him to understand.

He did understand the love of racing, but he still didn’t understand what she was getting at. “You love racing. I get that, Shawn. It’s my life, too.”

She nodded. “I assumed the track was left to me. Or at least a portion of it, so that I would continue to run it as operating manager. My father hasn’t been around since I was a kid, and my mother hates everything about racing. My brother is an optometrist, go figure, and he was never big on being a Hamby anyway. So it was always me and my grandfather, playing in the dirt, as he called it. But it turns out he didn’t leave me the track free and clear. His lawyer read his will to me today, and it seems the only way I can inherit is if I’m married.” The grimace on her face showed him exactly what she thought of that.

“Are you serious?” Rhett could see why she was having a bad day. “Why would he do that?”

She gave a bitter laugh. “I guess he thought I was devoting too much time to the track and racing. He wanted me to settle down and breed, like a good girl.”

Oh, yeah. That was bitterness. He couldn’t exactly blame her. “Jesus. And I thought my mother was bad, always dropping hints about how I should get married sooner than later.”

“She does? But you’re only twenty-five.”

“I know. But she thinks that I should be married and have a baby by now, like she did. You have to start early to rack up nine kids, you know. She’s always on my case about it, giving me advice in front of my whole family.”