Please. Please. Please…

I rest my head on the steering wheel then try again. Not going to cry in a public parking lot. Nope. Whatever the problem is I’ll fix it. I undo my seatbelt and pop the hood, then get out and take a look.

Oh, shit. There’s a big, big problem under the hood.

It’s called an engine. I know nothing about them. However, there’s a great many things I know nothing about but still manage to take care of. I search for a dip stick and slide it out. There’s an oily line right below MAX.

That means good I think.

I stick it back where it came from, and keep looking. From what I’ve seen in movies there should be a radiator that takes water. Maybe my old girl needs a drink? I stretch over the engine trying to figure out what I’m looking for.

“Need help?” The coarse rumbling voice, knocks up my spine.

I jerk, spinning around and lose balance. A steadying hand takes the top of my arm.

I blink against the sun, vision flooding with an image of a devil.

Must have a concussion…

I come face to face with the wickedest smile I’ve ever seen. More to one side than the other and twisted as though there’s a joke I’m not in on.

It’s the guy from the restaurant.

My pulse shudders out of beat. Calm down. He’s just being polite. That smile is obviously at my expense—not carnal like it seems.

“Need some help with that?” He has another cigarette, dragging on it in a way that has me feeling it as an itch in my own chest.

“My car won’t start.” Neither will my heart apparently.

He drops the smoke and grinds it into the crushed rock with the tip of his boot. There’s tattoos running down his left arm swirling on the back of his hand and fingers.

“Then aren’t you lucky that I’m a mechanic.” His gaze moves from the ground, up over me then to my face with such deliberateness, that the luck I feel has nothing to do with his occupation.

My tongue darts between my lips. I’m not entirely sure how I’m supposed to respond to that.

“Hop in and try starting the engine again.”

I swallow. The way he phrased that. Does everyone just do what he says? I walk around the car and drop into the driver’s seat, and reach for the key.

“When I say,” he calls out.

A smirk tweaks my lips. Lucky for the hood between us. When he says—bet he likes everything like that.

The engine purrs to life.

A laugh rushes out of me.

He fixed it.

“Thank you so much.” I slide out of the driver’s seat and I don’t care if he’s one of the meanest looking men I’ve ever seen, he’s a freaking angel.

“She should be okay for now.” He levels his gaze at me. “But if she does this again I want you to call me immediately.”

Call him. The way he says that, with the emphasis on the call me, makes heat break out over my face.

He’s a mechanic. That’s why he wants me to call. Not because he seems to look at me a little too long. Linger a little too close.

“Do you have a business card?” My voice is a few octaves higher than it should be, and my face gets hotter.

He pat’s the pockets on the back of his jeans. “Not on me.”

He steps in closer. I stumble and my back hits the pick-up truck parked next to my car. My skin prickles. It’s been so, so long, since a man has affected me, my system doesn’t know how to respond appropriately. I feel my pistons firing, blood rushing away from my brain and streaming to my core.

“May I borrow your cellphone?”

I blink, trying to concentrate under the rush of his closeness, then hand it over.

He dials a number then a thumping ringtone sounds from his pocket.

My tongue flicks between my lips again. His gaze slams to my mouth. The heat in me bores to my bones.

My heart beats fast. He hangs up, his eyes narrowing a fraction, and he’s still looking at my mouth. Must have something in my teeth. Because he’s looking at my mouth like it has his full undivided attention.

He hands back the phone. “Now you have my number so you can call me.”

So you can call me. Not so I can contact him if my car won’t start again. I imagine a different context. One where I have his number and call him just because I can.

When I’m up at midnight transcribing notes my boss makes on his Dictaphone, feeling like I’m about to have a brain bleed, I’d call him then. When the loudest sound in my apartment is the sound of a mosquito. When I fall in bed so late and exhausted and still can’t sleep.

When my thoughts are dark, and fantasies darker.

I’d call this man then.

“Thanks.” My chest gives a thud. “What do I owe you?”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a Mechanic. So, what do I owe you?”

He gets that smirk again. Wicked, dirty thoughts flood me. Ways in which he could make me reimburse him.

He’s trouble.

“I tell you what.” His eyes get a little softer. “I’m off the clock so how about a hug and we call it even?”

My jaw seems to unhinge.

Hug him?

* * *

A hug.

I should feel like an asshole. Such an innocent thing. Something she'd give grandma. Her eyes flare round and surprised. What did she think I’d ask for?

 This is how I want her to feel with me—comfortable and non-threatened. Even though there’s a wolf in grandma’s house today.

Come closer, baby.

My ribs knit together. I’m not going to be able to pull this off. The itch to touch her worms into my muscles. I almost can’t take it.

The memory of how she felt once upon a time is so vivid in my mind I can practically taste her sixteen-year-old cherry on my tongue.

And she doesn’t seem to possess the slightest recognition for me.

She steps in toward me and it's all I can do not to flash my teeth and give myself away. My gaze slinks down to where her irresistible tits fill her blouse.

She stops right in front of me, as though she's afraid to make first contact. I have no such resistance, but go slow for her sake, wrapping my arms around her and splaying my palms on her back.

But not squeezing.

Not grinding into her how I want.

She's so soft and warm and the effort to hold back makes my biceps twitch. Her scent envelops me. Coconut shampoo and something fruity. Reminds me of summertime at night. I'll never see a Pina Colada in my life again and not get hard.

She lifts her hands and holds my sides.

I lean down to her ear. “If you're going to pay me in hugs, then you’re going to have to actually give me one.”

Her back rises against my palms like she's gasped but I don’t hear it.

She wiggles closer, and wraps her arms around me too.

Fuck me.

Sweat gathers on my forehead and there's no way she doesn't feel the hard on brushing her stomach.

Then she rests her cheek on my shoulder and her body relaxes. The edge on my lust softens. It’s the way she does that, sink against me, like she actually needs this hug. Makes me wonder how long it’s been since someone held her.

Makes me wonder if she remembers me after all.

She lets out a tiny sigh.

My guts clench.

She pushes back, but at the same time clutches my t-shirt. “Thanks again.” Her face flushes so deeply the pink creeps down her neck. “I don’t know your name?”

“Mike.” My voice almost breaks on the lie. The memory of her flushed this way once, when I was buried inside her, making her come, is a cannon ball inside me.

And she can’t even remember my name.

My teeth grind. That’s okay, though. I’m going to remind her, and when I do there’s no chance she’ll ever forget it.

“Well, thanks Mike, you’re a life saver.” Her smile buries into the side of her cheek the way it has in all my dreams.

“You’re welcome.”

She tucks her hair behind her ear and gets in her car.

I shut the door for her as though I’m a gentleman, then lean back on my pick-up and watch her leave.

She pulls out of the parking lot and I climb into my pick-up, and follow.