My knees shook. “Thanks,” I gulped.
“Do I need to introduce myself?” he asked, a teasing glint in his eyes saying he didn’t take himself that seriously.
“No, I know who you are.”
“Nonetheless.” He still had my hand. “I’m Seven.”
“Nice to meet you, Seven.” His eyes bored into me, and I had to focus on staying upright under his piercing dark eyes.
God, he was intense.
“Pleasure is all mine, Autumn.” If an alpha male lion could speak, his voice would be Seven’s. Dark, deep, rough, commanding. He gestured at his car. “Ready to go?”
“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
He pulled up the passenger door, and I realized he’d never actually let go of my hand after kissing my knuckles. “In you go.”
I had to get low, way, way low to get in, and doing so without letting my hem ride up to my hoo-ha was challenging at best; I felt Seven’s eyes on me the whole way. No polite looking away for him, no sir. I finally managed to half fall into the seat, tugged my hem lower with a little shimmy of my hips that he definitely noticed and appreciated: once I was in and settled, Seven lowered the door into place.
Holy shit, what an interior. The steering wheel looked more like something you’d fly a jet with, featuring a dizzying array of knobs, switches, and buttons all over the front of it. Instead of a dash display, there was a large black screen standing above the steering column, and another large touchscreen display for the infotainment center. A row of switches ran up the center column, with a large knob above that. Everything was black carbon fiber with yellow accents.
Seven slid into the driver’s seat, pushed a button, the motor turned over with a jet engine snarl. The heads-up display screen read “Hennessey” and the infotainment screen read “Venom F5.”
“This is…a hell of a car.”
He grinned. “Ain’t it? It’s a Hennessey Venom F5—they only make a few every year. This one is special, though. Lots of custom touches all over it.” He gunned the engine, and my seat vibrated with power, a vicious snarl behind my back.
“Yikes, that sounds…dangerous.”
“Fastest production vehicle in the world, baby.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “Better buckle up.”
I clicked the belt into place, held my purse on my lap, and offered an uncertain smile. “All right, I’m buckled.”
“Hold on.”
He pulled away from the curb, around to the street, paused to let a handful of cars pass, and then when there was an opening in traffic, he gunned the engine and twisted the steering wheel. It felt like being hit in the chest by a gorilla—I was pressed back against the seat by pure G-force, tires howling. I couldn’t move, could barely manage to catch my breath, couldn’t find anything to hold on to so I gripped the gold chain of my YSL’s strap until my knuckles hurt. He drove like a madman, albeit a very talented one—weaving through traffic as if this was a chase scene in a Michael Bay flick. At one point, he even bolted into oncoming traffic to get around a slow-moving SUV. Both hands on the wheel, aviators in place, a shit-eating grin on his face, he was both completely focused but somehow utterly relaxed. We came to an intersection, a green left turn light, and he slid from the far right to the left turn lane in one swoop, and the nose pivoted to left while the tail swung out, tires screaming in a drifting turn that had me grasping at the ceiling, the doorframe, anything—I’d have screamed, but I still hadn’t caught my breath.
“Holy shit holy shit holy shit!” I finally squeaked. “You’ve proved your point, it’s fast!”
He laughed, a rumbling snarl. “Not trying to prove a damn thing, sweetheart,” he drawled. “Just driving the car like it was designed to be driven.” He smirked at me with a quick glance. “Trust me. I was trained how to drive by professionals. You’re safe as houses, babe.”
“Doesn’t feel safe—WATCH OUT FOR THAT TRUCK!”
He just laughed, tapped the brakes and snaked around it, earning honks of outrage and more than one middle finger. “What truck?”
We were already past it, topping a hill, and then he finally slowed to a more moderate—and legal—pace.
“Is that how you impress all the girls?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at him. “Scare the piss out of them by driving like a maniac?”
He just nodded. “Yep.”
“And it works?”
“Usually.” He eyed me, that cocky smirk on his face still. “Did it work on you?”
“I don’t know. I’m still trying to gather my wits.”
“Your wits are back there a ways, I think,” he said. “Saw ’em in the rearview mirror.”
“Hysterical.”
Another of those rough, wild grins. “So, Autumn. What do you do?”
“I’m a luxury real estate agent.”
“Nice. Any good at it?”
I laughed at the question. “You don’t stay in the luxury market for long if you’re not.” I glanced his way. “Feels a little lopsided, here. I know a lot about you, and you don’t know anything about me.”
He flicked a glance in the rearview mirror; I followed his gaze and saw a police cruiser behind us, lights off, trailing at a distance, clearly waiting for him to pull another stunt. “I see you, five-oh. I ain’t doin’ nothin’. Not anymore, at least.” Back to me, then. “You think you know a lot about me.”
“So what I think I know isn’t true?”
“Not sayin’ that. But some of what’s out there is true, some of it’s false, some of it is taken out of context, and some of it is true but exaggerated.”
I noticed he was very carefully going exactly the speed limit, but the way his thumb was tapping against the steering wheel gave the impression it took a lot of willpower to do so.
“So what’s one lie?” I asked.
“That whole story where I beat up that actress’s boyfriend? That was a flat-out lie. I never met the woman, and certainly never beat up her boyfriend. For one thing, I don’t date chicks who are with someone. Not my style. I like ’em single and ready to mingle. For another, that wasn’t even me in the photo—it was doctored. Also, I was in Europe for a match when that was supposed to have happened. Some sites have debunked it, since, but once the article is out there, the damage is done.”
“So you’ve never…dated…anyone who wasn’t single?”
He shrugged. “Not knowingly. I hooked up with this chick once who conveniently neglected to mention she was engaged. She was high profile, so was her fiancé, but I don’t follow that shit. I ain’t got time for gossip about who’s fucking who.”
“Adelaide Montgomery,” I said, remembering the buzz about it at the time. “How could you not know Adelaide was engaged to Zeke?”
“I don’t even know who that Zeke doofus is,” he growled. “Hell, I barely knew who Adelaide was. It was at a party in Paris after a match, I was buzzed on painkillers and Cristal, and it was dark. I recognized her the next morning, in the photos that had been taken of us. But at the time she was just a hot, willing body.”