Page 27 of Challenge Me

I would have objected if his mouth had not closed over the back of my neck, his tongue hotter than his engine as he dragged it slowly over my exposed skin. His teeth followed, catching lightly against each slight bump of my spine. The contrast between hard and so, so soft made me shudder.

I gripped the edge of his frame, grease smearing beneath my fingers and gathering under my nails. My knees weakened. Ghost’s arm tightened around my waist before I could fall.

“There,” he murmured again. “Now you’re getting your hands dirty.”

His teeth pressed into my shoulder. I gasped, my body arching involuntarily. The movement pushed my hips backward toward him and my chest more firmly against the heated metal.

Ghost ground against me once, slowly. The thick pressure of him dragged between my thighs through my clothes, making my breath catch.

“Next.”

I looked over the engine, searching for something I could name. I was eager to impress him, which was its own fresh humiliation, but I could at least be correct. I stared into the tangled machinery, trying to focus past the haze spreading through my body.

“The battery,” I managed. My finger traced the black box, dirt smeared beneath my fingers and gathering beneath my nails.

Ghost hummed approvingly. “Good.”

His praise came with another reward.

His hand slipped lower, cupping the shape of my erection through my trousers. He did not stroke, content to hold me, feeling how hard I had become. Heat rushed into my face, and Ghost laughed softly against my shoulder.

“If you want more,” he said, “you’ll have to learn.”

Gods be merciful. I was willing to learn anything if it meant Ghost kept going.

I looked back into the engine bay. My hair was still trapped in his fist. My mouth still tasted of oil and metal.

Whatever this was—a punishment, a reward, a humiliation ritual—it was working.

I hated that.

Ghost’s fingers tightened a little, and my knees buckled; Ghost caught me before I hit the grass, hands locked around my hips, hauling me back against the hot engine bay like I was another loose part he intended to tighten into place. He pressed me against the car with enough force to make the suspension shift. “Pay attention,” he muttered.

“I am paying attention,” I lied. I was not. My attention had fractured into useless, glittering pieces. One piece was trapped in the heat of the engine beneath my chest. Another on the taste of soot still bitter on my tongue. Another on the grease staining my fingertips, worked deep under yesterday’s perfect French manicure.

Then his hands disappeared.

The sudden absence made me feel cold.

“Why did you stop?” I asked, before pride could intervene, even offering a tiny whine at the sound of the trunk opening and then closing at the far end of the car before Ghost returned at last, kneeling behind me and unzipping his bag of brand-new tools.

He reached in and withdrew a large wrench, its metal catching the last light of the setting sun, bright and heavy in his hand. He watched me as he dipped two fingers into a tub of mechanical grease and dragged them slowly along the handle.

I could have run.

“Ghost?”

The thought came and went.

I did not.

Of course I didn’t, not even as Ghost’s greased hands loosened my pants, dropping them to my ankles. I was a fool, apparently, watching my own car prepare a toolbox like a butcher choosing knives. Dumb decision, but I was craving something new, and a spirit with a metal wrench the length of my forearm and a tub of mechanical grease was definitely new.

“This,” Ghost said, “is a wrench.”

“I know what a wrench is.”

“You know the word.” He dragged the cold metal along the inside of my thigh, leaving a slick of grease behind. “You don’t know the weight. You don’t know the feel.”