Chapter 18 - Callum #2
“Get in the car, baby, before I decide I’d rather have you for dinner instead.
” The gravel in my voice was downright possessive.
I grabbed her hips and ground my cock against her.
I wanted her to feel how goddamn hard I already was.
That despite the anxiety, I wanted her—this, us—more than anything else.
She gasped but didn’t move away. Her hands curled into my dress shirt. “Merde…” she whispered, breath stuttering. “You’re—this is—no. I am not—”
I hummed. “Your tongue always gets tangled when you’re flustered, baby.
You forget your English. Forget your French.
Almost as if you can’t decide what language to fight me in.
” My hand moved to her throat, just claiming as I pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her lips.
“Want me to remind you what language your body speaks?” I dragged the flat of my tongue along the edge of her jaw.
“I can translate the way you tremble, baby.”
Her breath hitched—barely—but I felt it. Her muscles tightened, her throat bobbed, and her knees wobbled for just a heartbeat before she caught herself.
Then her hands pushed at my chest. “You don’t get to have me after that.”
I crowded closer, letting her feel just how much restraint I was holding onto. My pulse was a fucking war drum in my ears. My body was alive again—every nerve on fire, every instinct screaming to mark, to claim, to take.
“You can hate me later, Aurélie,” I murmured, dragging my knuckles along the sharp edge of her jaw. “Right now, you’re going to do as you’re told.”
Her glare sharpened. “Sex isn’t going to fix this, Callum!
We have bigger issues—” She cut herself off with a scoff, letting go of my shirt, tears glittering in her eyes.
“You fucked up.” She poked my chest with a perfectly polished finger.
“You stood there and talked about your future like I didn’t exist in it.
Like I was just… temporary.” Her voice broke, and she leaned back against the car, putting space between us that I hated.
“You made it sound like you had a whole life planned without me. Like I was just a chapter you were ready to close.”
All the air left my lungs in a beat.
“And for a second, Callum,” she continued, “I believed it. I believed you didn’t love me at all, because that’s how you made me feel. In front of everyone.”
Something shattered inside my chest.
I opened my mouth—helpless, wrecked, wrecking—but nothing came out at first. What could? How the fuck was I supposed to explain the kind of love that made me want to destroy the world just to keep her safe… when I’d managed to hurt her worse than anyone?
“Auri…” My voice cracked, low and hoarse. “I—fuck. I never meant to make you feel that way. Not ever. But if you think I don’t love you…” My teeth ground together, fury and desperation bleeding through. “Then you don’t know how goddamn deep you live in me.”
She blinked, that storm still warring behind her eyes.
And then she yanked me forward by the belt loops.
My hips slammed into hers, rough and unforgiving. She caged me in with her rage; I caged her in with my body. Both of us were breathing like we’d barely survived the last round, already starving for the next.
“You arrogant, possessive, control-freak bastard,” she hissed. “You don’t get to make me want you like this.”
“Keep pushing,” I growled, low and lethal, my mouth grazing the curve of her cheek. “See how far I’ll let you run before I drag you back.”
“You think you can distract your way into forgiveness?”
I gripped her chin gently, but firmly, tipping her face toward mine. I pressed a soft kiss to her lips. The fact that she didn’t pull away was progress. “I don’t want forgiveness. I want you. All of you. Even the angry parts. So shut your pretty fucking mouth and listen to me.”
Her eyes flared—wide and wild—just as I dropped my other hand to the back of her knee and hitched it over my waist. Her bare thigh slid up the side of my body, hot and trembling.
Skin to skin. The slit of her dress fell open, baring her to the cool air and the hard line of my cock straining against my slacks.
Her breath hitched. She arched, and her nipples brushed my chest, visibly hard through the thin fabric of her dress.
Her pupils blew wide, and my cock twitched so hard I nearly lost it.
My blood roared. I could taste her skin already, feel the phantom drag of her nails down my back, her cunt pulsing around me while I drove into her.
I didn’t stop.
“You’re not getting away from me that easily, Aurélie. You wanted a man who’d fight for you? Good. Because you’ve fucking got one. It’s not always pretty, but it’s real. I’m real. And I’m not going anywhere.”
I let go of her chin, returning to brace it beside her, not giving her space to bolt. Her chest rose and fell in shallow bursts. Her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat. She didn’t look away.
“You don’t own me, Callum.”
Fuck. I saw red, but not from fury. It was heat. Pure, blinding heat. It blurred my vision and made my body ache with restraint. It made me want to fuck the defiance right off her tongue.
My hand slid up her thigh under that sinful black dress, until I reached the cleft of her ass.
I gripped it hard enough to bruise. Her leg twitched, and the tiniest whimper escaped her.
The intoxicating scent of her arousal hit me like a punch, and her nipples—already peaked—visibly tightened beneath the fabric, brushing my chest again, driving me fucking mad.
“Say it again,” I snarled. “Tell me I don’t own you. I fucking dare you.”
She gasped, half from shock, half from the sudden shift in air. Then her eyes narrowed. Her voice turned syrupy, venomous, and bratty as hell. “Why? So you can play caveman until I’m too cockdrunk to remember how mad I am?”
Oh, she really wants to fight.
“You’re right,” I said, voice shaking with restraint. “I don’t own you. But I own this mouth. And if you don’t shut it, I swear to God, Aurélie—”
She jerked her face out of my grip. “Swear to God, what? You’ll fuck me quiet? You’ll punish me until I behave?”
“I’ll spank your ass so hard you won’t sit right for a fucking week—”
“How fucking dare you use our sex life against me right now?”
That was it. The scream. Not loud, not dramatic, but entirely ragged, sounding as though it had been ripped out of her chest, leaving something bloody behind.
And I lost it.
I dropped my hands and stepped back like I’d been slapped. Of all the things she could’ve said to me… that cut the deepest. First the comment about not knowing if I even loved her. And now this? Thinking I’d use her body against her?
“That is not what this is,” I growled, voice cracking. “And you fucking know it.”
She threw her arms out like she couldn’t believe I was serious. “You dropped that bomb in front of everyone. You humiliated me. And now you think you get to be possessive? Controlling? You think you still get to fucking touch me?”
“I don’t think,” I bit out. “I know.” My voice was shaking with fury and heartbreak and the sharp edge of desperation that came when you were fighting for something you weren’t even sure they wanted anymore.
“Because you’re mine. And I am yours. And one argument doesn’t rewrite the whole goddamn story. ”
“Oh, that’s rich—”
“You don’t get to judge the ending before I’ve told you the middle, Aurélie.”
Her mouth opened. Shut. Opened again.
I felt like a live wire, frayed and sparking, standing in the middle of the goddamn valet loop with staff pretending not to stare. I could feel the judgment coming off them in waves—and worse, the pity.
“You’re mad? Good.” My voice fractured, then built again. “Be mad. Be fucking furious. But don’t you try to twist this into some neat little narrative where I’m the villain and you’re the martyr. Just because it’s easier than believing that I meant what I said.”
I exhaled, the sound rough and ragged. Yanked my hands through my hair and then shoved them into my pockets to keep from reaching for her again. Every instinct I had was screaming to grab her, to pull her into me, to kiss her until she remembered everything we were.
But I didn’t.
I just stood there.
And she didn’t say a word.
The silence cut sharper than anything else. All the usual ways I got through to her—none of them were working. She was quiet, withdrawn, distant in that terrifying way that said she wasn’t angry anymore. She was hurt. And maybe I really had fucked things up so badly this time it couldn’t be fixed.
Something hollowed out in my chest. That space I’d carved out for her, the one she’d filled so completely, felt like it was collapsing in on itself.
“Get in the car, Aurélie,” I said finally, voice flat with resignation. “Or don’t. You either fight for us or you walk away. The choice is yours.”
Still, she didn’t move or respond. She just stared at me, her gaze unreadable. Then, slowly, she crouched down to pick up her purse—the one I hadn’t even realized she’d dropped—and that’s what broke me.
The panic flared again, my heart splintering at the edges. Because I knew. I knew in that moment that this was the end, and it was my fault.
Proof I was better off staying the machine. The man behind the wheel who controlled the outcome with precision and speed. Not the man who let his heart get tangled in something he couldn’t fix.
Proof that my parents’ pain hadn’t been a cautionary tale, it had been a fucking prophecy. I should’ve just kept my head down. Raced until I couldn’t anymore, or until I died.
At least then, I could’ve given the world one last win.
One last reason not to call me a complete failure.
Instead, I let her in. Now I was watching her slip through my fucking fingers, and not for the first time because I couldn’t stop self-destructing.
It didn’t matter how many times I tried to chase her down if she’d made up her mind.
She would go on without me. We’d be just rivals again, and nothing else. She would dominate the sport, probably change the world.
And one day… she’d fall in love with someone who didn’t break her the way I just did, who didn’t make her feel small in front of a crowd.
She’d get married. Maybe start a family with that person. I would watch it all from the sidelines, regretting my life choices and hating myself.
And to her, I’d just be a memory. A mistake. Background noise. The man who let the only thing he ever truly wanted walk away.
Because that’s what I did.
That’s who I was.
The fuck up. The flame out. The one who wasn’t enough to be loved—not by his own mum. Not by a father who only showed affection after a podium finish. And not by her, the woman who’d seen all of me and still couldn’t stay.
The woman I loved.
The one who got away.