Thrills and Spills (Not Quite Eden Book 3) Read online

  I slowly unclenched my jaw. “Phew, that was terrifying!”

  His eyes drifted to a huge tower where people seemed to be shot up into the air. I grabbed his arm and groaned – “Oh no…”

  After the second ride I somehow managed to neglect letting go of his hand. After the third one we were walking along with one of his arms across my shoulders, and one of mine around his waist. It seemed completely natural.

  “Guess we need to go and check the Beast into a caravan site,” he said.

  “Just a few more minutes walking along the front,” I pleaded. “I never get to go to the seaside!”

  We walked along in the dark cool air leaning into one another. The sea on the other side of the wall sucked and hissed on the sand. When he stopped, turned round to me and bent his head to kiss me, I only hesitated for a moment, and then I put my arms around his neck and responded.

  But once docked in at a caravan site and setting up the bed in the small sleeping area in the van, I began to feel anxious. This was the first ever time I’d spent any extended time alone with him because despite months of working with him on cars, sitting at meals with his family and numerous outings to race meetings (which had quickly upped to two race meets most weekends once they realised we were in a race against Quinn up the points table), we had always been in the company of others. And the couple of times I’d stayed over in the van with them at more distant venues, there’d always been Jo and his Dad in the van with us. And Pete was a worrying nine years older than me.

  Pete had laid out the double mattress and the duvet. I left my tee-shirt and underwear on so I wouldn’t have to undress in front of him and slipped under the duvet. He did the same. Once there he reached over to me and pulled me closer to him. He could tell I was tense.

  “Hey relax,” he said. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want.”

  “What will your family say?” I asked awkwardly.

  “They’ll send up a cheer and say, ‘at last what took you two so long?’”

  “How will it affect our working relationship?” I persisted.

  “It won’t,” he promised. “We’ll agree to keep that professional at all times.”

  His large rough fingers stroked my cheek then he cupped his hands round my face and kissed me again. I tensed at first, then relaxed and responded to him, then found myself tensing rigid again the moment his hand ran up my back under my tee-shirt.

  He let go of me straight away. “No worries, Eve. We need to get plenty of sleep for the race tomorrow.”

  I was looking nervously at his face, looking for signs of anger, but he just smiled kindly at me and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “Night, Eve.” And then he turned over and went to sleep.

  In the morning it was as though nothing had happened. He acted just like he always did normally, and neither of us touched each other, even accidentally. I wondered if he thought my refusal was to the whole idea of a relationship, rather than just to sex.

  It was harder work at the track with only two of us. We got the scrutineering over with then Pete took me up onto the stands to get a good view of the track to point out a few of its quirks to watch out for. I wasn’t used to the circuit however, and was beginning to get a preference for shale over tarmac and so I didn’t race particularly well. I scraped into the Final via eighth place in my heat, and then in the Final decided to have a bit of fun by waiting for Pete to pass me, then nipping in behind him and sticking to his back bumper like glue.

  “Why did you do that?” He queried afterwards. “It’s dangerous to just follow one car – you’re not looking out for problems brewing up ahead.”

  “I didn’t feel particularly motivated today, so I just decided to see if I could keep up with you, and check out if I could glean any hints from the way you were driving.”

  He frowned. “You need to keep your mind on the goal, Eve, you’re not allowed any off days. Dad would give you a talking to!”

  I sighed. Yes maybe I needed the fear of one of Paul’s bollockings to keep me ramped up.

  “And you can’t just give up on driving hard at any meet where Quinn’s absent,” he finished abruptly.

  I stared at him in surprise then felt heat suffusing my cheeks. I didn’t want him to be right about my lack of interest in the races today, but I had a horrid feeling he was onto something.

  “So shall we shoot back tonight, or have a more leisurely drive tomorrow?” He asked casually.

  “I don’t have anything to get back for, and I would so love to go on the beach for a bit tomorrow,” my eyes pleaded with him like a child. “I never get to go to the seaside!”

  His eyes warmed up in expression as he met my appealing gaze. “I’m not taking a bucket and spade with us, mind, however heavy you go on the emotional blackmail!”

  The fish and chips had been so good last night that we made the same choice again, but this time ate inside at the tacky white plastic tables, and ladled on the ketchup.

  Then we went down on the beach and walked along the sand. The moon was large and nearly full and sending a luminous path across the sea. Pete took my hand again as we walked along and we kept stopping to kiss for increasing lengths of time. I realised that he’d offered to drive us home tonight to give me an opt-out clause to avoid embarrassment. He’s so kind, I thought, and kissed him a bit harder.

  We drove the Beast back to the caravan park and used the showers. Clean at last of our day, we got under the duvet in tee shirts again, hair still a bit damp, and carried on where we’d left off. It seemed that my subconscious mind had been working away during the day, and his calm response to my refusal last night, and entirely neutral behaviour today had filtered into my emotions in such a way that I suddenly felt completely confident to be alone with him.

  He took my tee shirt off and stroked and kissed me gently all over. His fingers were rough, his face was rough but his lips were soft. He smiled at me and gently parted my legs. I lay still and let him, but I’d started to shake. I didn’t mean to, but it just happened.

  “Are you ok?” He asked concerned.

  I nodded. “It’s just that – well – you’re my first and I guess I’m a bit scared.”

  He stopped straight away and lay back down beside me and held me against him. “I didn’t realise,” he said. “I should have done I guess, you’re only seventeen, but you hang out with all those boys so…” He tailed off. Then he looked me in the eye and said, “Honestly, Eve, you don’t have to do it, I mean that. You can say ‘no’ if you’re not comfortable with it. I don’t want you to regret it after.”

  I was silent while I thought about it. “No, I want to. You’re kind. I trust you.”

  He smiled, but he was still holding back. “Are you on any sort of contraception?” He inquired.

  I shook my head.

  He frowned. “I haven’t any condoms with me, I wasn’t planning anything like this…”

  “I could take the morning after pill,” I suggested. “I can go to a pharmacy on Monday.”

  “Are you comfortable with that?” He queried cautiously.

  I nodded. I was worried that we’d have gone right off the boil with all this talking about the practicalities. But Pete wasn’t so easily put off. He gave me a gentle kiss then said, “So just stop me if you need me to, ok?”

  I nodded.

  He went back to stroking me all over and kept smiling at me reassuringly. When he touched me first between my legs I was shocked at the sensations that went through me and bit my lip to stop myself showing it by gasping or something. I wanted to stay in control. When we got to the point of him actually going to do it I started shaking again. “It’s ok, Eve,” he reassured me, “But I’m going to have to shove hard now and it might hurt…” He seemed to really struggle to get in and had to help it with his hands. “Shove really hard it seems,” he observed breathlessly.

  It hurt so bad I had to put a fist to my mouth and bite hard on my knuckles so as not to cry out. He saw my eyes screwed tigh
t in pain and panted, “Sorry Eve, sorry.”

  Afterwards, he held me tight and said, “I hope that wasn’t too awful for you, you looked like it was really hurting, but you were really tight and I was struggling to get in.”

  “It’s ok,” I said in a small voice, avoiding his eyes.

  “What did it feel like?” He asked anxiously.

  Like having the small of my back poked out with a broomstick handle, I thought. But I couldn’t tell him that. He was clearly feeling bad enough about it already.

  He stroked my back soothingly and suddenly I found myself beginning to cry.

  “Oh God,” he said despairingly. “This is going well!”

  I tried to stop myself. “Sorry,” I murmured, catching back on a sob and wiping at my eyes. He held me tight and kissed me quiet.

  “Eve, can I ask you something?” he said at last, once I was calm again. He sounded awkward, and I tensed up again.

  “It’s just that I was my first girlfriend’s first as well – and-” He hesitated. “And it didn’t feel quite the same when I was inside you. I mean, you were tight, but there wasn’t the barrier there I was expecting that I would have to push through. I mean – I know Mum says that sometimes little girls break their hymen when they’re riding horses and so forth – but I just needed to ask..?”

  “Oh God!” He said as I began to cry again. I turned away from him, curled up into a foetal position with my arms wrapped around myself and sobbed in an uncontrollable storm. He put his arms around me and pressed his body close from behind. “Hey now, hey now,” he kept saying. “What’s happened to you Eve? Tell me…”

  “A guy from work raped me,” I sobbed at last. “He put some sort of drug in my drink so I couldn’t do anything then took me back to his place and raped me…”

  “Shit Eve,” he was appalled. “And that was your first ever experience? And he was one of the guys from the garage? Christ, Eve!” He had gone rigid with anger. “If I could get hold of him I’d punch his lights out!”

  “You already have punched him,” I told him choking back the tears. I wiped roughly at my face with the back of my hand.

  He turned me back round to face him. “Not that arrogant piece of shit at Sheffield that time?”

  I nodded.

  “Fuck! No wonder my hackles went straight up the moment he approached you! I wish I’d punched him a few more times now I know what he did to you! But you were so upset I thought I must have thumped one of your ex-boyfriends or something.”

  I shook my head. “No, I was just horrified that he’d found out where I was.” I remembered back to the incident with a shudder. “And then he started threatening me. And then I was shaken by the fact that you took one look at him and reacted instantly to defend me without even knowing what it was about. And don’t you dare go and telling your Mum or Jo! No-one knows except my best friend Jaimi, you now, and Entwistle…”

  “Entwistle?” Pete’s eyebrows raised sharply.

  “I was forced to explain to him why I was walking into his office and handing my notice in out of the blue. He sacked him instantly. That’s the only reason I’m still working there…”

  Pete’s mind was working overtime now, going over things. “So was this about the time you fainted at our place and were in such a mess? When you had those bruises on your arms?”

  I nodded.

  “So that’s why Mum wouldn’t leave you alone,” he realised. “I bet she’d guessed…”

  I said nothing. I lay exhausted in his arms. But the tension had gone out of me.

  “I promise I won’t say anything,” he said. He leaned up on one elbow and looked down at me, at first with a concerned frown and then with a serene seeming tenderness. “I’m really touched now I know why you needed to be so sure you could trust me…”

  “I know I can trust you,” I repeated. “You’re really kind.”

  Next morning I woke up as he reached over and pulled me to him. I snuggled sleepily against him and felt calm and safe. Soon we were having another go. With the worst of the trauma out of the way things went a bit better. I wasn’t keen on the wet sensation of it running out of me after. Pete had put a towel down under us because he said he didn’t want his Dad finding stains on the mattress. But even after going to the loo it was still trickling occasionally out into my underwear as we were on the beach. We sat in the sand and took off our shoes to paddle in the cold sea and jumped back from the waves, and ate ice cream. But all the time I felt conscious of a sensation down there like he was still inside me. I leant into him as we walked along together, feeling a bit confused and not quite present.

  As we drove home he had one hand constantly on my knee and I reached out and rested my hand on his bare neck. He smiled in response, without looking at me. We pulled into a motorway service station and he leant over to kiss me. After an intense five minutes he pulled away and looked meaningfully at me.

  “What? Seriously?” I said, laughing at him.

  A few minutes later we were in the back of the van again with the bed pulled down.

  We went into his family’s old farmhouse and Sue invited me to tea. I shook my head. A snuffly Jo came in to join us for a coffee before I left. “How’d it go?”

  We reported back on the race meeting and Pete teased me about being such a child about being at the seaside, and all the time Sue and Jo were looking searchingly at us.

  Pete saw me out. “We’re keeping them guessing,” he smiled. “Did you see the way they were looking at us? I reckon right now Mum’s saying to Jo that if we haven’t managed to get it together this weekend then she doesn’t know what else to do short of locking us in a room together and not letting us out until we do!”

  I got astride my bike and turned the ignition, the engine throbbing into life.

  “Shall we put them out of their misery?” He suggested and he leant one hand flat on the seat of the bike and held the back of my head with the other and kissed me thoroughly. “Any curtains twitching?” He asked.

  “Yup,” I affirmed. Jo was whisking out of sight as I looked over.

  Back at the flat, Quinn asked me in a slightly jealous sounding tone of voice, how things had gone at the Skegness track.

  I shrugged and went into my room and lay on my bed feeling drifty and spaced out.

  A few minutes later there was a tap at the door. “Eve?”

  “Door’s closed, Quinn,” I said firmly.

  He was forced to retreat.

  At work Jo raised her eyebrows at me.

  “Shut up!” I said.

  “I’ve said nothing yet,” she said.

  We got our overalls on.

  “No letting this distract you from your last few races now,” she warned. “If you keep your concentration up then you can beat him, I know you can!”

  I realised that neither Pete nor I had made any suggestions about when we’d next meet up. We were so used to our calendar revolving around the cars, it didn’t seem normal to meet in any other context.

  Whilst I was down at the ladies gym that I attended, working out on the weight training machines, I received a text. wat RU doin 2nIt?

  I texted back down gym til 8. But nothing arrived back. I showered at the gym just in case. A few seconds after I’d walked back through the door of the flat, the bell rang and it was Pete on the door. I pressed the buzzer to let him in then ran down the stairs to meet him halfway. We smiled at each other wordlessly for a moment then started snogging in the darkness.

  We walked back into the kitchen holding hands and he sat at the table while I made coffee. Between each move I came back to him and we kissed. Eventually Quinn came in and found me sitting on Pete’s lap on the chair, kissing. He stopped short.

  “Hi there McGinty, Pete,” he directed pointedly at us.

  We ignored him and continued with what we were doing.

  “Hi there Quinn, so nice to see you,” he muttered grumpily as he went to the fridge and jerked the door open to see what he could scavenge.


  We removed ourselves to the settee, and I sat on Pete’s lap there and we continued where we’d left off.

  Kes came in. “Are those two an item?” He inquired after a bit.

  “Well either they’re an item or someone’s superglued them together by accident,” Quinn said sarcastically. “Get yourself a room,” he flung loudly at us.

  Kes laughed. “Taste of your own medicine Quinn! Now you know what we feel like when we have you and one of your females permanently plastered to one of the walls here…” There was a short pause. “Do I know him?”

  “Shouldn’t think so, some racing bloke. Guy who lent her his car for the season. Can’t see what she sees in him. Unless this is the rent due on the car.”

  “God Adam, you’re being really bitchy all of a sudden, what’s got into you?” Kes sounded a bit shocked.

  “Well she refused to sleep with either of us, so what’s he got that we haven’t?”

  “Thing is Adam, I never wanted to sleep with her,” Kes reminded him. “We were just going out together to keep you shag-crazy Quinns off our backs!”

  I removed my lips from Pete’s and stuck my head over the top of the settee. “What’s this? Stream of consciousness?” I disengaged myself from Pete’s arms, “Come on Pete, we’ll finish our coffee in my room.”

  As we headed for my room I heard Kes teasing Quinn, “Now it’s your turn to go and turn the music up real loud. Now you’ll find out what it feels like for the rest of us!”

  Once in my room Pete shook his head. “How do you survive living with them?” He marvelled.

  “Tune them out,” I said. I heard the radio being turned up loud in the kitchen and knew I could trust Kes to put some more on in his room if necessary. Pete smiled at me and began to undress me. I was hungry for him to touch me. I wanted to cling so hard to him that I melted into him and became one. I felt almost faint and empty inside. Ripples were running through me like liquid. And he’d only just started to touch me. I gripped him tight.