FASTER LONGER.

Take Me... #3.

by Colleen Masters.

Prologue.

Harrison Davies' home in London, the weekend of the Luxembourg Grand Prix...

The air is heavy with aromatic steam, rising off the bath like a thick cloud in the flickering candlelight. I pad across the cool tile floor, moving across the cavernous room to the stately marble bathtub. Harrison sits on the edge of the inlaid tub, trailing his fingers through the hot water. Not a st.i.tch of clothing obscures his perfectly balanced, deliciously built body. His tattoos stand out against his tan skin in the dim light, scrawled as they are across his firm chest, broad shoulders, and sculpted arms. I let my eyes wander down along the hard panes of his chest, the rippling expanse of defined abs, the perfect muscular v of his hips...and of course, that gorgeous length between his legs that I've come to know so well.

"Siena Lazio," he says, swinging his bright blue eyes my way, "Are you checking me out over there?"

"Shamelessly," I smile.

"You still like what you see?" he asks, opening his arms wide.

"More than ever," I tell him.

"Come on over here, would you? The water's great," he says, standing up.

I always forget how staggeringly tall my man really is. I'm a statuesque lady myself, and Harrison still has nearly a foot on me. He turns and steps into the huge marble bath, sinking down into the steaming water. I would not have pegged Harrison Davies for the candles and bath salts type when we first met, but he continues to surprise me every day. My man can go from devil-may-care bad boy to sensual lover as quickly as his F1 car goes from zero to two hundred miles per hour. I can only imagine what other secret elements there are to Harrison, sides of him that no one but me will ever know.

I shrug off my white silk robe, letting the soft garment pool at my feet. Harrison's gaze rakes along the length of me, leaving a warm glow in its wake. I never feel more beautiful than when Harrison's eyes are on me. Whether I'm stark naked, draped in PJs, or rocking a slinky evening gown, he still looks at me like I'm absolutely perfect. I never thought I'd be lucky enough to find a man who looks at me that way-like there's not a part of me, inside or out, that he would ever change. And yet here he is.

"How the h.e.l.l did I manage before I met you?" Harrison asks, his voice low and husky.

"Funny, I was just wondering the same thing," I say, moving toward the tub. I sit down on the edge of the wide, deep basin and swing my legs around. A little shudder of pleasure rolls through me as I lower myself little by little into the water. It's the perfect temperature, and scented with sandalwood. And of course, it doesn't hurt that my gorgeous lover is already there waiting for me.

"You really have this romantic evening thing down to a science, don't you?" I ask, sidling up to Harrison.

"This is actually pretty uncharacteristic," me laughs, pulling me toward him, "I usually prefer a few too many c.o.c.ktails and a good game of pool to aromatherapy and bubble baths. But for you, my dear, I'm happy to make an exception."

"Does that make me exceptional?" I ask, placing myself between his legs. I press my back up against his firm chest and let my head lean back onto his shoulder. Harrison wraps his strong arms around me, pulling me close.

"You are beyond exceptional, Siena Lazio," he whispers, "You're more than I could have ever dreamed to hope for."

"You're not too shabby yourself," I grin, turning to plant a kiss on his tattooed pec.

We lapse into silence as Harrison runs his hands down my lean arms, sending up a spray of goose b.u.mps wherever he touches. His hands move all along my body, over my hourgla.s.s waist, my hips, my smooth legs. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, luxuriating in the feel of his hands on my skin. As hard as I can, I try to commit this moment to memory. I don't think I've ever been happier in my life.

"We could stay like this," Harrison says quietly, bringing his lips to my throat. "I could quit racing. You could quit PR. I've got more than enough money to last us until enough time has pa.s.sed for me to write my memoir."

"You know that's impossible," I tell him, bringing my hands up to tangle in his blonde hair, "You could never stop racing. Not if you tried. It's one of the reasons I love you, that dedication. And there's no way in h.e.l.l I'm going to let you domesticate me."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he says, nipping at my ear.

With a little gasp, I let my hands fall to his muscular thighs. I can feel him swelling against me, and I can't resist. I spin around to face him, wrapping my legs around his waist. My fingers glance against his hardening desire, stroking him stiffer by the second. He lets a low moan escape his throat as I wrap my fingers around him, working my hands up and down along his sensitive flesh.

"I don't want to talk career strategy with you, Harrison," I say, keeping my eyes trained on his handsome face.

"What would you prefer to do?" he growls, eyes bright.

In reply, I inch ever closer to him in the water, grasping his rigid length in my hands. I align myself perfectly against him and pull myself forward, drawing his hard c.o.c.k into me inch by inch until he's filled me up entirely. I tighten my legs around the small of his back, letting my b.r.e.a.s.t.s balloon against his hard chest.

"Oh..." he groans, "I think I prefer this too..."

I grind gently against Harrison's staggering member, pressing myself down onto him again and again. He bucks slowly into me, cupping my b.r.e.a.s.t.s in his strong hands. For once, we're in no hurry. Here, alone in our little bubble of privacy, I can ride Harrison all night if I want to. It's the ultimate luxury for us, a little peace and quiet. And I intend to savor every sweet minute of it.

Our moans rise and entwine in the steamy air, bouncing off the bathroom tiles. If there's a heaven somewhere, bet it looks very much like this.

Chapter One.

Back To Reality.

The next morning...

The mob of reporters and photographers is growing by the second outside of Harrison's Kensington home. My back is pressed against the oaken front door, which Harrison slammed shut just moments ago. I'd gone outside to fetch the morning paper and found myself face to face with dozens of ravenous media types. I've always been excellent in front of the press, it's my job, after all. But today, just now, I froze like a deer in the headlights. An extremely conflicted and guilty deer, I might add.

Harrison is pacing back and forth in front of me like a mad bull just waiting to be set loose from his pen. I don't think I've ever seen him as angry as this. His every muscle is wound up like a spring, and his jaw pulses furiously. In the week since the Moscow wreck, Harrison's gotten his strength back and then some. We've been getting down to a lot of rather sensual healing, after all. But now, in this livid state, that regained strength is almost scary. I've never felt threatened by Harrison's power before, but I've also never really seen him mad.

"They can't be here," he mutters, shoving his hands through his sandy hair. "This is my property, dammit. They can't just show up here hoping to score some f.u.c.king photo op. I bet they'd scamper off pretty quickly if I went out there and broke someone's nose. That would send a message, alright."

"You've got to calm down, Harrison," I say, "I know it's s.h.i.tty, but we need to play it cool. Don't do anything that you're going to regret, here."

"Calm down? Play it cool?" he scoffs, turning that powerful body to face me, "We've been found out, Siena. All these weeks we've spent together, the life we've been building away from prying eyes...it's all over. They've got our story in their grimy hands now. It's all over."

"No," I say, closing the s.p.a.ce between us, "Don't say that, Harrison. Look, we knew that this was going to happen one way or another."

"Did we?" he demands.

"Unless you expected to keep me as your secret mistress for the rest of our lives, yes," I insist, getting heated myself. "That wasn't your intention, was it? To keep me on the sidelines for the rest of our relationship, treating me like some perpetual booty call?"

"You know it was never like that," he snaps, "Don't you put that on me."

I hurry around Harrison toward the kitchen. For some reason, my first impulse is to carry on as if none of this is really happening. The French press has been sitting right where I left it. Funny how one minute you can be putting coffee on for your perfect lover, and the next you can be watching your life unravel before your eyes. Well, perhaps funny isn't exactly the right word, after all...

"You'd like it black, yes?" I ask crisply, pulling two coffee mugs down from the cabinet.

"How can you be thinking about your cup of morning joe at a time like this?" Harrison asks incredulously, storming into the kitchen. "Everything's going to s.h.i.t, and you're going to play house?"

"I'm trying very hard to keep my head on straight," I tell him, pouring out two steaming mugs of coffee, "One of us has to stay-"

I gasp as Harrison swipes his powerful arm across the counter in one furious motion, sending one of the mugs soaring through the air. It smashes against the wall, spraying coffee and shards of porcelain everywhere. I stare at Harrison, my mouth hanging open in shock.

"What the f.u.c.k-?" I sputter.

"Stop telling me to keep calm," Harrison says, his voice deadly quiet, "I've just been discovered to be having an affair with the sister of my rival in this championship. Our life together is spread across the biggest newspaper in the country. You won't say two words that aren't out of a PR handbook. And I'm scared to death that I might lose the only person who has ever meant a G.o.dd.a.m.n thing to me. So please, for the love of G.o.d, Siena-"

"I'm sorry," I whisper, throwing my arms around his broad shoulders, "I'm scared too, Harrison. I have no idea what we're going to do."

"Neither do I," he admits, "But we're going to do it together, aren't we?"

"Of course," I tell him, holding onto our embrace for dear life.

We stand there for a long moment, locked in each other's arms as the growing crowd of press clamors and shouts beyond our front door. If I close my eyes, I can almost remember what it was like just hours ago-when it seemed that Harrison and I were the only two people in the world. I'd give anything to wind the clock back just that much.

"Jesus..." Harrison groans, pulling back ever so slightly, "Siena, I have to be at the track in an hour. McClain wants me to start training with the new car today. What the h.e.l.l am I going to do?"

"You're going to go to the track," I tell him, planting my hands on his hard chest, "You're going to show up for work and do your job. You're not going to let these gossip mongers throw you off your game. Promise me that much."

"I promise," he says, sinking down onto one of the kitchen stools.

"Good," I say, "That means I can do my job, too. I know this was sprung on us in a rather different manner than we expected, but we can get control of it."

"I can't believe someone would do this," Harrison says, shaking his head, "What could they possibly want, the people who are after us? Who the h.e.l.l do you think sent that punk kid to spy on us this whole time?"

"I have no idea," I say, sitting beside him, "For a while I suspected Charlie. And that Shelby girl. But I just can't see either of them masterminding something like this. What could they have to gain from raking us through the mud?"

"This is too big to have come from either of them," Harrison says, "Whoever's behind this wants something a lot bigger than our attention. But what?"

"We'll figure it out," I a.s.sure him, "But right now, you need to get to the track. I'm sure that the McClain management will want to have a word with you."

Harrison nods grimly and gives me a deep, searing kiss. I take his face in my hands, cradling his strong scruffy jaw. Whatever h.e.l.l we're about to go through, at least we'll be tackling it together.

He says goodbye and throws on his leather jacket and Ray Bans. There's no back entrance to the house, and he's forced to walk back out the front door. I watch through the living room curtains as he makes his way outside, igniting a storm of flash bulbs and raised voices. I have to give him credit, the man knows how to play it cool-most of the time. He drives through the crowd, parting the reporters like the Red Sea. Without missing a step, he wrenches open the door of his car and slips inside, speeding off down the quiet residential street. I'm all alone in a house that has only just started to feel like a home, surrounded by rabid reporters, and trapped in a world of trouble.

"I guess the course of true love never did run smooth," I mutter, heading back to the kitchen, "Not even for a professional driver."

Wearily, I make myself another cup of coffee to replace the one that's currently drying on the wall. If I'm going to even begin to think through this mess, I'm going to need a little caffeinated fortification. As I wait for the water to boil once again, I spot today's paper on the countertop where Harrison discarded it. I know that I shouldn't read anything that's come out about us. But I'm filled with dread and morbid curiosity, wondering what the press has to say about my very private relationship. I pour myself a cup and settle down before the paper, taking a deep breath to steady myself.

Here goes nothing.

I spread the front page out on the counter, rolling my eyes at the saccharine headline: "Romeo and Juliet of Formula One Tangled in Tawdry Tryst".

"They could have done without the alliteration," I murmur, letting my eyes wander down to the photos above the front page crease.

A half dozen photos of me and Harrison are laid out in a surreal collage. There's a snapshot of us in Barcelona, staggering back up from the beach where we'd gone to be alone. Then there's one of us from Monte Carlo, just before we snuck off together to make love in the backseat of Harrison's car. And a racy picture from Budapest of us drunk and kissing as Harrison hails me a cab-my very short dress revealing far too much of my anatomy for my taste. Another from Moscow, of us kissing pa.s.sionately in the hotel garden. Finally, at the center of the collage, there's a seemingly innocent Instagram picture of me and Harrison with a few of our F1 friends. This last shot is unlike the others. It's posed, not candid. Innocuous enough at first glance, but not when surrounded by the rest of the racy shots. Why don't I remember when it was taken?

"Oh my G.o.d..." I mutter, recalling suddenly. I know exactly when that picture is from. Shelby snapped it weeks ago, before things with Harrison had even heated to a boil. I remember thinking that her insistent photo-snapping was strange. She forced Harrison and I into the frame together. Is this proof that she really is behind all this? Was I right in pegging my brother's curvy blonde companion as the blackmailer all along?

"Let's just see what else we can discover," I seethe, ripping the paper open to our headliner of a story. "Oh, perfect..."

There, right on pages one and two, is a gigantic whopper of an article, peppered with even more photos of me and Harrison in various states of tipsy undress and giddy love. I brace myself and begin to read.

All is Fair in Love and F1:.

Harrison Davies' Secret Affair with Ferrelli Princess Siena Lazio.

"There's that freaking 'p word' again," I mutter. Why is everyone so adamant about painting me as a helpless princess? I notice right away that there's no by line attached to this story. No author has set their name to these allegations. No small wonder-I'm sure I wouldn't want to tangle with both the McClain and Ferrelli legal teams. I go on to see what my anonymous tipster has to share with the world.

-- Formula One racing has always been a hotbed of drama and intrigue. Tempers flare, engines rev, and empires are built and destroyed with the wave of a flag. And that's just on the track. But this year's world championship is shaping up to be the most intriguingly scandalous compet.i.tion this reporter has ever witnessed. And while there are many threads that make up the tapestry of this particularly engaging melodrama, one is sure to take the world by storm-the romance between McClain's new rock star driver Harrison Davies and Team Ferrelli's own favorite daughter, Siena Lazio.

They could have at least mentioned that I have an actual job on the team. Of course there's no mention of the fact that I'm Ferrelli's Director of Public Relations, and a d.a.m.n fine one at that. I suppose the story is much juicier if I'm some cloistered maiden that Harrison's stolen away from her ivory tower. What a load of bull.

-- The affair between Davies and Lazio seems to have started up at the onset of the championship season. The two were seen in each other's company for the first time in Barcelona, the site of this year's first Grand Prix. From the evidence that has been unearthed, it would appear that things got hot and heavy between the lovers rather quickly. This is hardly surprising where Harrison Davies is concerned. Though Davies stayed out of the F1 spotlight as a younger man, ostensibly training in private, his womanizing is legendary among the people who knew him before he was famous. Davies went through a string of high-profile girlfriends during his early-to-mid-twenties, infamous in London social circles as a serial heartbreaker. Add to that his penchant for club-going and whiskey, and Harrison is hardly the settling-down sort of man.

Siena Lazio, on the other hand, seems to air on the side of being a goody two-shoes when it comes to romance. There is no evidence of an active love life in Lazio's past, though many in the F1 community always expected her to pair off with Charles Spano, son of Ferrelli's long time manager Augustus Spano. Perhaps it is the gaping difference in Davies' and Lazio's romantic experience that has close friends so very concerned for them.

What close friends? I think to myself. The only person that's known about me and Harrison on my side is Bex. And there's no way she said anything to some grubby reporter. And what's all this about my total lack of a love life? Just because I've never been the type to sleep around, doesn't mean I'm a d.a.m.n prude. I try to tell myself not to take the story personally, but how can I not? This is me and Harrison this author is talking about. This is my life.

-- Though the romance between these young star-crossed lovers has been blossoming since the earliest days of the tournament, they've made it a point to be discreet. Or at least, they've tried to be discreet. But a slew of photographic evidence exists that paints a very clear, very scandalous picture of their heated affair. But though the romance was meant to stay under wraps, Siena Lazio's older brother Lorenzo Lazio seems to have been made aware of their burgeoning love. We cannot say definitively when it was that Enzo learned of this affair, or whether he purposefully caused the wreck on the Moscow track out of spite for Harrison Davies, but the timing is extremely suspicious. Both drivers were suspended from the Luxembourg Grand Prix for reckless driving, but perhaps the Moscow wreck was more malicious than reckless.

"s.h.i.t," I mutter. If the F1 officials take that rumor seriously, Enzo could get a lot more than a slap on the wrist. Attacking another driver on the track is punishable by far more than a one race suspension-he could be disqualified from the whole season. And if that were to happen...I don't know how he would ever forgive me.

-- But the fact of this affair is only the tip of the ice berg where this scandal is concerned. There are more questions here that need to be answered.

The first, of course, is whether this little romance is legitimate or a ploy on either McClain or Ferrelli's side. It's very possible that Siena and Harrison are trying to gain traction for their respective teams by throwing off the competing side. It doesn't seem likely that Siena is trying to distract Harrison from his training, as they met before he was even made head driver. But then again, McClain's former senior driver Maxwell Naughton's early tournament crash was very suspicious. How could a veteran driver have spun out on a simple practice lap? Perhaps Naughton's accident was not an accident after all. This reporter doesn't mean to suggest that there was any foul play per se, but at this point we cannot rule out any possibilities.

Of course, the far more likely scenario is just the opposite. No one would be surprised if Harrison Davies turned out to be using Siena Lazio to mess with her brother's head. After all, a bad boy party animal like Davies doesn't just change his ways out of nowhere. Why would a man with a reputation for womanizing suddenly go monogamous just as his star is rising? Perhaps he realized that Enzo Lazio would come after him, should he start up a fling with Siena. It's entirely possible that Harrison Davies has been baiting Enzo Lazio into attacking him from the start, employing Siena as a human trap. It would be a shrewd strategy, if a devious one. The Lazio family has always been extremely tight knit, and an offense against one Lazio is an offense against the entire line.

The latter explanation seems tragically more likely. A reliable source has released a line of text from a personal email that Harrison Davies sent the week he allegedly started seeing Siena Lazio. "It's in the bag," the email reads, "Time to do what I do best. She's going to get me my first place t.i.tle yet".

I stare at the words on the page, unwilling to take them in. Harrison can't have said that about me. I know him. He wouldn't use me against my own brother. All these weeks, I've seen nothing in him but sincerity and pa.s.sion. He's a driver, not an actor. I'd be able to tell if he was leading me on. Wouldn't I?

-- But that's not all. Not only does Harrison Davies appear to be setting Enzo Lazio up by wooing his sister, she may not even be the only woman in his life. The picture at right shows a very different side of Harrison Davies' love life-a much blonder side.

My hands begin to quake as I swing my eyes toward the picture in question. I feel the air leave my lungs as I feast my eyes on the most unwelcome sight I could imagine. There, in a small thumbnail photo, is Harrison locking lips with a gorgeous, leggy blonde that I'd know the sight of anywhere. Shelby has her arms thrown around Harrison's shoulders-the very shoulders that I've clawed in ecstasy and clung to in anguish. This can't possibly be true...How could he do something that low?

-- Sources date this photo back hardly a few weeks. It seems that Siena might be less of a lover and more of a p.a.w.n to Harrison Davies. If his heart actually belongs to Shelby Vaughn, the woman pictured here, what does that mean for this story? Details are still coming out, of course, but this reporter is committed to unraveling this sordid tale. Our F1 drivers are more to us than just athletes, they are examples and heroes to so many across the world. It's always terribly disappointing when a professional driver behaves so disgracefully, and the public deserves to know if such behavior is occurring.

There is one other aspect to this complicated web of deceit and l.u.s.t that the public should be made aware of. It's very possible that all of this-the affair and counter affair, the cheating and the lying-has been a cover up for an even bigger omission. There is a hard truth about the Lazio family that might be even more upsetting to some readers than the affair between Harrison Davies and Siena Lazio.

A source within the Ferrelli camp has leaked the news that Alfonso Lazio, father of Siena and Enzo, once a world champion driver himself, may be keeping a secret of his own.