Chapter 12 #2
I blinked at him as he turned to grab a bottle of water on the nightstand, stunned by the softness of the moment, until something wicked overtook me.
I tilted my head, blinking slowly and feigning innocence.
“Well, well. Poetic Callum is gracing me with his presence, I see. What a far cry from Daddy Dom Callum—”
He’d just taken a sip of water, but the second those words left my mouth, he spit it out, choking and spluttering, spraying both of us in a light mist of “The World’s Finest Water”. What a waste.
“Christ, Auri—” he wheezed, swiping at his chest.
I cackled, fully feral now. “You’re lucky I didn’t say Daddy Dom Cal, CEO of making me beg.”
He froze like I’d physically short-circuited him. His hand hovered in midair, water bottle half-forgotten, eyes wide as his ears turned an adorable shade of pink. “I swear to God,” he muttered, blinking fast like he was buffering. “I will literally bend you over the nearest surface.”
The threat made my stomach flip violently.
My face warmed in that helpless, hopeless way it always did when he got like this—hot and wrecked and pretending he wasn’t proud of himself.
I bit my lip, then hummed low in my throat.
“I could’ve moaned it in French, you know,” I murmured, voice suddenly sweet and sinful.
“Whimpered Papa dominant right into your ear and taken a spanking with the hands that ruin me. All while you command me in the voice that makes me cry.”
He set the water down like he was preparing for his own funeral. Then he just… stared at me. Blinking. Processing. Dying slowly in real time.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it,” I said smugly, watching his pupils dilate.
“You’re unhinged,” he whispered, still recovering, but his grin gave him away as he reached for me again. In one swift motion, he rolled on top of me, pinning me to the mattress with his weight and a stupidly romantic look on his face.
“Fuck it,” he said, brushing a strand of hair from my face. “Let’s get married right now. I’ll call Ivy. I’m sure she’s ordained. We’ll do it in the hallway. Or in the elevator. Or hell, the bathroom downstairs—”
I snorted, hands braced on his chest. “Slow down there, mon Casanova catastrophe.”
He tilted his head to the side, and for once it felt nice that he was the one not understanding me. “My what?”
“Casanova,” I repeated sweetly. “Because you’re charming, stupidly hot, and you talk a big game about seducing me in elevators.” I propped myself up on my elbows, our faces close together now, and dropped my voice. “Catastrophe… because you destroy me every time. And you know it.”
He chuckled like a man on the verge of spontaneous combustion. “Does the idea of marrying me seduce you, Aurélie? Because you’re looking at me like it does.”
Merde. I could never hide myself from him. He knew me too well.
I’d been thinking about it more and more as of late, in the moments between the chaos, when I had a moment to breathe. When we weren’t fighting a war or fucking each other or falling apart—when we were just us—I’d fantasize about it. The ring, the vows, the intimacy of just our loved ones.
Pink peonies, of course. A sea of them. A romantic ceremony at sunset, as all beginnings start at the end of one life to join two.
A man who looked at me like I was his entire fucking world.
And a white dress, not because it symbolized innocence, but because it symbolized him.
Because he was possessive enough, traditional enough, to want me in it.
And I wanted to please him. Of course I did.
For me, it wasn’t about the tradition. It was because when I wore it, he’d see I was his—by choice, by vow, by fire.
I wouldn’t be a virgin in white, but a goddess in it. Sacred. A holy figure at the altar. And his eyes would say exactly what we both already knew.
I was divine. And I was his. Forever.
“Tempting,” I purred, all faux-innocence.
“But I’d rather not debut my wedding dress with your handprints on my ass.
I’ve already done that once. Now the world knows who I belong to.
” I dragged my bottom lip through my teeth before releasing it, loving that his eyes tracked the movement.
“And God help me, I do want to marry you someday.”
“Careful,” he rasped. “You talk about marrying me in that voice, and I’ll have you in the stairwell and the elevator.”
“You asking me that in your sex voice is unfair,” I murmured, squirming under him. “But yes. I might let you marry me. If you ask properly.”
“You’re trying to kill me.”
“Non, mon amour. I’m trying to marry you in a stairwell, apparently.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Au fait… je fais du cinq et demi.” By the way… I wear a five and a half. Another pause. “And I prefer antique settings, oval cut, platinum band. Not that I’ve been looking.”
He made a strangled sound at the back of his throat, somewhere between a groan and a laugh, and buried his face in my neck like he needed a moment to survive me.
His nose skimmed my collarbone, his breath warm against my skin, and he muttered something about how he was going to consummate the marriage the second I said I do.
“Maybe once you win your fifth title, mon c?ur.”
“Or you win your first,” he countered, eyes soft—so soft it made my heart hurt. That painfully earnest hope in his expression. Like he believed in me so completely he didn’t know how to question it. Like loving me had become his favorite fact about himself.
And I wanted to bottle this version of him—the one who dreamed with me, rooted for me, worshiped me—and keep him safe for the rest of my life.
“Whichever happens first,” I murmured.
For a second, we just stared at each other, our chests rising and falling in perfect sync.
My lips parted on a sigh as I reached up to trace the line of his jaw, and he leaned into it like he couldn’t help himself.
His lashes fluttered, and for a beat he just…
breathed me in. Like I was the victory lap after the checkered flag. Like I was home.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“I love you more,” he said back instantly.
We kissed then, like we were sealing a deal. Like it meant something.
Because maybe it did.
His mouth slanted over mine, slow but still hungry in that way he always got when we’d barely finished one round before already needing the next.
My fingers tangled in the hair at the base of his neck.
He groaned, low and rough, like he’d never get enough of me.
The weight of his body on mine was grounding, anchoring, the kind of pressure that made me feel wanted down to the marrow.
And underneath it all, I was dizzy with need. Drunk on this man. My heart ached with how much I wanted him—not just like this, not just in bed, but in boardrooms and boring breakfasts and post-race chaos. The good, the bad, the boring, the challenging. I wanted him everywhere.
We broke apart, breathless, smiling like idiots.
He grinned, dropping a kiss to the top of my head. “D’accord. So back to your outfit dilemma. What are you thinking?”
Oh, right. That. I forgot that was where this conversation started.
“I’m thinking of asking Ivy to go get me something.
I’m too high-profile, and all these bruises will just cause more speculation than I want to deal with right now,” I said, already grabbing my phone from my side of the bed.
“Because she owes me for that time I helped her escape from a date with that Swedish billionaire after Barcelona.”
“You say that like it’s a normal sentence.”
I raised a brow. “Too soon in our friendship for international scandals, maybe. But that’s what happens when a woman seduces her way into the paddock with a fake press pass just to get close to me. I saw potential and chaos and I took the risk.”
“And now you’re stuck with her.”
“I’m stuck with all of you,” I said fondly, already typing out the message to Ivy. “Which, unfortunately, means I have to call in my chaos favors sometimes.”
It took Ivy less than twenty minutes to respond. Apparently, she’d already been out “running errands,” which I thought meant scouting what paparazzi were circling the hotel. She promised to bring options. Which… should’ve been my first red flag.
Because when there was a bang on the door only an hour later, it wasn’t just Ivy.