Page 90 of Close Contact
Callum
Actually, no. Probably not. Not with the way you sounded last time.
I still hear it in my dreams.
I’m one more night without you from those turning into wet dreams.
Mon Dieu.
This man needed to be locked up. This was diabolical. Puretorture.
I coughed, or maybe I choked. One of the two, I wasn’t sure, because all I could suddenly think about was all the filthy sex we’d had and how uncontrollably primal it was between us.
Kimi turned in his chair to glance at me, one eyebrow raised. “You alright, Dubois?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, so as not to disturb the presentation. “I was just thinking about sector three.”
He didn’t press me, but the corner of his mouth twitched like he knew I was bluffing. He probably did. My face felt ten thousand degrees too hot, which meant I was probably flushed. As soon as he turned back around, I opened my camera app and confirmed my cheeks were red.
Fuck me.
Across the room, Callum was sitting far too composed, with one ankle resting on the opposite knee, face unreadable as he leaned back casually. Ugh. How annoying. Next to him, Marco was leaning forward with his forearms on the table, looking like he was actually taking this seriously, eyes glued on the screen.
Before this debrief started, Callum and I were called into a meeting room with our PR crews and team principals. They laid it all out for us how things would be from now on:
“There’s not enough focus on the sport anymore. The press isn’t talking about your driving or this rivalry like they were earlier in the season. They’re speculating on the what-ifs of a relationship we can’t confirm or deny. It’s distracting from your performance, and frankly, from the entire championship battle.”
They’d handed us identical packets of new protocols like they were a set of commandments. I grimaced as I skimmed. No more joint interviews, no shared appearances, no physical contact, lingering glances, or proximity in shared zones. No media days overlapping, no sponsorship events between our teams, nothinghighlighting our rivalry anymore. Not even staying in the same hotels.
Absolutely zero acknowledgment of two people falling hopelessly in love.
And I knew in my brain this was the right call. For both our sakes, for our careers, for our focus. But damn, this was going tosuck. They were taking away every opportunity for us to see each other during race weeks.
According to them, this was “just until things settled.”
Right. As if headlines gave a fuck aboutsettling.
My phone buzzed again.
Callum
Bet you’re wet under that skirt right now.
I bit my lip to stop the smile before it could form. I didn’t move, just schooled my reaction to appear as nonchalant as him. I tapped out a quick reply with one thumb beneath the table.
Bet you’re hard under the table.
No more than ten seconds passed. He was too fucking good at this, and that was suspicious.
Callum
Come find out.
I set my phone face down on my bare thigh and focused on the screen ahead again. All things said, I really did need to pay attention. It was the only way I’d get ahead in this world, and I needed as much ammunition as possible.
A slow-motion playback of the contact I’d seen before the safety car was deployed flickered by, and I caught sight of my car carefully navigating the wreckage. A steward standing next tothe representative who’d been speaking the whole time stepped forward and said something about aggressive defending. A driver in the back of the room grumbled about consistency. It sounded like Morel, and it probably was based on the grumpy tone.
That fucker could burn in hell.
