Chapter 9
This woman—this beautiful, maddening woman—got me in ways I hadn’t thought possible.
She never treated my anxiety like a flaw to fix.
She treated it like a language she wanted to learn.
Where others saw weakness, she saw tenderness; where I spiraled, she steadied.
Somehow the pieces of me that felt too jagged, too much, became something useful in her hands.
We built strength out of each other’s cracks, proof that even broken things can hold weight when they lean together.
Her pulse fluttered beneath my thumb. The fog in her eyes made my gut twist, but the hunger behind them? That was real. That was all her. Even in pain, she burned for this—for me.
“Cal, I’m not fragile when I ache,” she whispered, golden-green eyes glittering. “My body may bend, but I am not breakable.”
“You’ve never been fragile,” I said quietly. “You’re the strongest thing I’ve ever touched.” My thumb traced her bottom lip. “But even strong things deserve to be held.”
“I don’t need saving, mon c?ur. I need to be seen.”
I closed my eyes. I needed that too. More than anything.
But even more than that, I wanted to give her what only I could give her. Not just pleasure, not just love, but space to be soft and aching, defiant and desperate, fragile and filthy. To be hers, and for her to be mine.
I wanted to be the arms that held her steady when her own strength faltered. The voice that called her home. The man who knew how to unravel her, not to destroy, but to deliver.
I’d waited ten years for her. Ten years of headlines, podium interviews, scattered glimpses across the paddock of a girl who drove like the devil and smiled like she didn’t know she’d been born a goddess.
I used to think it was a passing fascination, respect and admiration, the kind of thing you carry in secret just to prove you felt something once.
This wasn’t a fantasy; this was everything, and it was so much better than I could have ever imagined.
I looked down at her, golden and wild and too fucking beautiful to be real. “What’s your middle name?” I asked softly, not even sure why the question made my throat ache.
She tilted her head, confused. “Camille,” she murmured.
But it didn’t sound like Camille. In her voice, it came out like Cah-meey. That soft French lilt that never failed to ruin me, the way her mouth shaped it, all round, delicate, and honeyed. Not a single harsh edge, not even in the consonants, and holy fucking hell I about passed out on the spot.
“Say it again,” I breathed, already chasing the sound like it was oxygen.
She smiled, slow and sated and feminine. “Camille,” she said again, slower this time. Velvet and silk and sin.
I swear I felt the name crawl beneath my skin and settle in my bloodstream. My whole body reacted, like it had heard something sacred and didn’t know how to recover.
“Aurélie Camille Dubois.” It came out sounding like a vow. Like destruction. Like it was meant to be carved into my bones and inscribed on the inside of a ring pressed against my pulse for the rest of my life.
Her name didn’t just sound beautiful. It tasted like surrender, the syllables burning like scripture on my tongue. I tasted every letter, and for a heartbeat, I wasn’t just in love with her. I was consumed. This wasn’t just about sex. It wasn’t even about love. This was about devotion. Worship.
And I was about to fall to my knees for her all over again.
Slowly, she sat up, that wild gold hair falling over her shoulder like spilled champagne. Her limbs were loose, graceful in that feline way she had when she was on the edge of surrender. She padded across the room on bare feet, the hem of my shirt fluttering at the backs of her thighs.
Christ, that view alone was enough to make me sin.
And then she opened the drawer. The one that held something she wasn’t supposed to know about yet.
All the air left my lungs when she pulled out the black leather riding crop I’d ordered a couple weeks ago. I hadn’t used it yet, but I bought it because I had imagined her exactly like this. Lips parted, eyes heavy with lust, skin glowing with that flush of arousal coursing through her.
She turned slowly, backlit by the bedside lamp, tits bouncing softly under the red cotton of my shirt. The handle of the crop dangled from her fingers as if it weighed nothing, but the look on her face sent my heart rate haywire.
That wild look. The one that told me she was in as deep as I was. The please, hurt me the way only you know how look.
“I’ve thought about this,” she murmured. “So many times. I didn’t know you bought it for me.” She wet her lips nervously. "But I kept thinking about how it would feel—how you would feel—holding it. Using it on me.”
My lungs refused to cooperate. Every part of me narrowed on her. The crop. Her body. The need bleeding out of her like a confession.
She crossed the room slowly, shifting back and forth on her feet, then climbing onto the bed like a girl walking willingly into the lion’s den.
She knelt, spine straightening, and extended the crop out to me with both hands like she was presenting me with a sword—a holy relic, her version of an offering.
“Utilise-moi,” she whispered. “Use me, Cal. Not because I’m broken. Because you make me feel worthy again.”
My heart cracked clean open. “Comforting you makes me feel worthy too,” I said, my voice barely audible. “That you need me and trust me. So it works both ways.”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “Then show me. Own me. Make me yours again.”
And just like that, the shift happened. That primal instinct raced to the surface, responding to her surrender as if it had been caged too long. My spine snapped straight, blood roaring, dominance clicking into place like a mask I never took off. My cock twitched so hard, it made me lightheaded.
I rose from the bed in a slow, measured manner, every movement calculated as I sauntered toward her. Her eyes tracked me carefully, uncertainty and hunger written all over her as she stayed perfectly still. The space between us was thick with tension so charged it tasted metallic.
I stopped right in front of her, letting the silence speak for me, my gaze never leaving her face. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and anticipation painted her skin with a sheen of sweat. Her hands trembled as she held the crop out with both palms face up.
It shouldn’t have made me proud. It should’ve made me reach for her, ease her burden, take the tension away.
But it didn’t. It thrilled me that even in her discomfort, she didn’t lower her hands. Didn’t break her position. She trembled—but she endured. For me. Because I told her to.
Aurélie tilted her chin down, eyes flicking to my mouth, then my hands.
They stayed fixed there, unwavering, like she was praying for a verdict.
For direction. She didn’t ask with words, but I saw the question in every tight line of her posture.
In the way her fingers twitched, how her breaths caught.
Would I take the riding crop… or punish her for presuming?
I waited one more beat. Just long enough to make her question the ache.
That was submission. That was fucking everything.
I took the crop from her hands, and let my fingers graze hers. It was a barely-there touch, but she shivered from the contact, and her nipples puckered beneath my shirt. She glanced up at me through her lashes, relief flooding her eyes and desire darkening the color in her cheeks.
I nodded once toward the floor. She obeyed immediately. So graceful, so willing, so mine.
“You’re so goddamn beautiful when you kneel for me, baby,” I rasped, testing the weight of the crop in my right hand, tracing the ridges on the handle with my left. Then I reached out and tilted her chin up with the crop. “Look at you, topping even when you’re on the bottom.”
Her breath hitched, lips parting just slightly as I used the crop to trace along her jaw. She bit her bottom lip, hard enough to whiten under the pressure, then released it with a shaky exhale. “Dis-moi,” she murmured. “Tell me how to please you.”
Her thighs shifted slightly, that subtle squirm of anticipation and nerves that drove me absolutely feral.
She wanted instruction; craved it and let it turn her on.
Not because she didn’t know what I liked—no, she knew exactly how to unravel me—but because this was her surrender.
Not simply offering herself, but begging for direction.
Aurélie clasped her hands behind her back, but kept her eyes locked on mine, glassy and desperate.
“Tell me what to do, mon amour. Je veux être parfait pour toi.”
I want to be perfect for you.
“The shirt,” I quipped, tapping her shoulder with the crop. “Take it off.”
She peeled it over her head with slow, practiced grace until she kneeled in nothing but those sinful red lace panties. Her breasts looked full and flawless. Sweat beaded on her temples and collarbone, hair clinging to it. She was a goddamn walking wet dream.
“Good girl,” I praised, circling her slowly, like a predator stalking prey. “You’re a bratty little vixen to everyone else.” I let the tip of the crop drag down her spine, grinning as she shivered. “But so good for me. Always so eager to be ruined.”
When I reached her back, I paused. My gaze landed on the ink just above the curve of her ass, lined up perfectly with the hem of her panties. With her hair falling around her shoulders and down her back, she looked like sin incarnate.
fait au paradis
Made in Heaven.
“So fucking slutty for me, baby, sitting here like this,” I growled. “Made in Heaven. Corrupted by me.”
I wrapped my hand in that wild golden mane, tugging gently until she gasped and rose to her feet. Her spine bowed under the pressure of my grip, breasts heaving, body arching like she needed to be handled. I guided her toward the bed with a hand gripping the back of her neck.