Page 76 of Flat Out
Because, yes, he was explaining brake traces and suspension rebound rates like a man possessed, but all I could see was Callum Fraser in a backwards cap, curls stubbornly escaping, hisbrow furrowed in concentration as if he was trying to solve the riddle of the universe.
My insides fucking melted.
I propped my cheek against my fist and just… watched him. His lips moving, the way he bit the inside of his cheek when something didn’t make sense, the little furrow between his brows when he compared my photos against the notes in his hands. He had a single grey hair near his temple that caught the light when he tilted his head to the side, and he’d let his facial hair stay a little longer because he “loved how it made me squirm and left marks on my skin”. Possessive fuck.
He was beautiful when he was angry. Beautiful when he was obsessive. Beautiful when he was mine.
“See? The migration curve’s logged flat again here—” He looked up, catching me staring. “What?”
I blinked, heat rushing to my cheeks, but I didn’t even try to hide it. “Nothing,” I said softly, my lips curling. “You’re just… devastatingly hot when you’re being a genius.”
His grin cracked wide, wolfish, and my mouth ran away from me before my brain caught up. “So hot it makes me… how do you say…drool from the heart?”
His brows shot up, then his shoulders shook with a laugh, the sound dragging heat straight between my thighs. “Drool from the heart?Christ, baby. Leave it to you to invent poetry when you’re flustered.”
I slapped a hand over my face, groaning, but he just caught my wrist and tugged it down, eyes gleaming. “No, don’t hide. I love when you fuck it up. It kills me.” His free hand squeezed my thigh under the table, and he bent back over the papers like nothing had happened, except the smirk tugging at his mouth betrayed him.
“Distracting me won’t change this,” he continued, voice low but amused. He shoved one sheet closer to me. “These numbersprove it wasn’t incompetence. They’re too neat, too deliberate. Someone wanted you fighting the car.”
I skimmed the sheet, though my mind was still stuck on the way his locks poked through his cap. “Mm,” I hummed, trying not to look completely lovesick, “and yet all I hear is ‘you were right, Aurélie, you’re brilliant and resilient and I worship the ground you walk on.’”
He huffed a laugh, shaking his head, curls bouncing. “You’re impossible.”
“And you love it.”
His hand slid higher on my thigh, grounding me. “Yeah,” he murmured, eyes on the paper but voice thick with certainty. “I do.”
And there, with sabotage spread between us like crime scene evidence, food on the way, caffeine sweating down the glass, I realized something that made my eyes well with tears.
We weren’t just fighting this sport anymore. We were fightingfor each other.
I tried.I really did. But the more Callum explained, the less I could focus on numbers and curves and columns of data, and the more I could only see him.
The way his jaw flexed when he bit down on his pen. The little furrow in his brow as he scribbled notes in the margin. The flex of his muscles under his polo every time he shifted.
For a moment, I pictured what it would be like to be his teammate, and I could hear him talk like this all the time. Sittingside by side in engineering briefings, his knee brushing mine under the table as he explained telemetry in that low, lethal voice. The two of us walking track together, trading strategies, sharing every secret of speed and defense and overtake methods until the rest of the world never stood a chance.
I thought of the fanfiction—the infamousRed Flagged and Red Lace, the newer fics where readers had written him fucking me against the cockpit of my car or pressed against a wall in full view of the paddock—and the ideas they gave me for public sex had desire racing through me so fast I got lightheaded.
Calm down. Focus. Look at the numbers.
Don’t imagine him tying you up by your wrists again. Don’t imagine him pressing you down into the mattress, spanking you raw until you can’t sit the next day. Don’t imagine him blindfolding you, spreading your legs, and making you count each stroke of his belt until you broke and begged for mercy.
Jesus Christ.Focus, Aurélie. Focus on the fucking sheets.
I shifted in my chair and pressed my thighs together. The friction made me bite my lip, and a gush of arousal soaked my panties. I shouldn’t be this wet. Not here. Not when we were talking about a very serious, life-threatening manner.
But God help me—I was.
Damn him. He made me this way. I had never been overcome with lust like this before. My body had never been this responsive, this trained and in tune with someone. I knew, wholeheartedly, I belonged to him, that I was made for him, that I was created to be loved by him.
Callum’s head lifted, eyes narrowing. He caught me. Again. I didn’t bother looking away. I couldn’t, not when the blue of his eyes flared with heat and his dimple made an appearance and?—
“Focus, mon cœur.”
He set the pen down, and one second I was staring at the neat black ink across the setup sheet, and the next, he was tugging meinto his lap, back against his chest, trapping me there like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Before I make you drool from the heart for real,” he murmured, his voice dark velvet against my ear.
His knees wedged between my thighs, solid and unyielding, so my legs were forced apart, reducing the friction on my clit. His arm circled my waist, the other dragging a sheet closer on the table. “You need to understand exactly what they’ve done to your car.”
