Read Racing to You: Racing Love, Book 1 for Free Online Page B

talking about sex.
    In bed, I alternate sweating hot and freezing cold. I’ve had sex before, but I’ve never felt like this.
    I had one boyfriend in college. He was a good guy, a philosophy major. We had sex a bunch of times. The whole experience was far from spectacular. We broke up when he went to law school. I never loved him, not in the way my favorite poets proclaim, not like the characters in my novels do.
    I want that. Someday.
    My heart cracks a little.
    I want sex to mean something the next time I have it.
    Braker is ignorant of all the things that matter to me. He seems dedicated to his cycling career, which is admirable, but I could never connect with him on a soul-deep level.
    I connect with him on a body level. Holy hell. I want to lick him from crown to foot, and sink my nails and teeth into his ass.
    Argh!
    I burrow my face into my pillow. I have to teach tomorrow.
    Physical satisfaction without emotional interest isn’t something I could ever do.
    But oh, how I wish I could.

Chapter Eight
    I avoid the café the next day. I refuse to see him again until I can do so without blushing. I just sat there when he touched me, his hands on my shoulders, my back, my waist. I let him lick my neck and bite my ear.
    I shiver.
    “Ms. Santos?”
    Aaaand one of my students is answering a question that I can’t remember asking.
    “Enough speaking for the day.” I switch my lesson plan. “You may get a head start on tonight’s reading.”
    If I saw him again, I don’t know what I’d say to him. As long as I don’t have to make conversation with you, because we have nothing in common, yes, I’ll have months of banging sex with your hot bod .
    Right.
    The next day, I succumb to temptation and Google him.
    With no wi-fi in my apartment, I have to do it at school.
    The first headlines are doping accusations against him. Though he’s never tested positive, so they’re all false. I’m so appalled that I nearly cancel the search, until I see images of him.
    Pictures of him with girls and trophies. Candid race photos.
    When he wins races, he speeds across the line, literally roaring with his mouth open, arms in the air and thumbs pointing at his chest. They call him “The Terror”. Some derivative of his name, Terrence, I guess.
    I smash my finger on the mute button when a loud video with thumping techno bursts through my speakers. It’s a YouTube montage devoted to him.
    Students mill in the halls. I pry my eyes from the screen and invite them into the classroom. Formality in French schools forbids them from entering without my permission. Before, it was weird. Today, I’m grateful.
    I ask my class a question about their day’s reading assignment, a question that I know none of them can answer. When they can’t, I tell them to get out their books to re-read it.
    I sit down at the computer again to read more articles on my cyclist.
    I worked so hard for this Fulbright—months and months of applications and essays and scraping together funds. I’m one of only five Americans awarded it this year, and I’m ignoring my students and wasting my time Googling Braker.
    I don’t stop.
    I watch the montage of him pinching a girl’s butt when she hands him a trophy on a podium. He signs his autograph on a girl’s boobs. There’s one where he stops on the side of the road during a race to give some random chick a kiss. I wonder what that feels like.
    His power, his cockiness—he pulls this who-gives-a-fuck attitude, not with anger, but with a broad smile.
    But the suggestions of doping bother me. They do not endear me to the sport of cycling.
    I close the laptop.
    I’m avoiding Paul after the Mardi Gras disaster. And to avoid seeing Braker, I lose the best part of my day when I don’t visit my café. All I have is my students, and my lonely apartment with my lifeless books and cold food.
    I could give in to the growing curiosity I have for this guy who wins bike races like it’s a personal party, who propositions