Chapter 20
Fia
The press conference was tying my stomach in knots.
The Austrian conference room was packed with chairs, all facing two long tables draped in white. Each seat at the tables was marked with a name card.
My name was at the end, thank god. The only thing positive out of all of this was that I was the least important person here.
But I was still in the line of one of the four cameras.
The worst part? If Zolt was asked anything, I had to do the talking. He was under strict orders not to risk English.
Livie had given him a stern look and said, “Only answer the questions. You are a professional today, Zoltán, and other people, other than Fia, can speak Hungarian.”
Point made.
But she shooed him away and took me to the side. She hadn’t told me much about her pregnancy, but I was genuinely concerned she had to be carrying twins with how her stomach had popped in the last month.
“Are you okay?” she whispered, looking me over for anything to prove her doubts.
I knew immediately what she was referring to.
I’d asked our team co-ordinator to book me a room in the hotel instead of staying at their Airbnb. Zolt had shrugged, saying if he had his way, I’d be spending minimal time anywhere other than his trailer.
We’d practically been living in each other’s pockets.
After Dad’s birthday party, I’d managed my time carefully.
Luca and Everly always slept in. Mum would normally go for a coffee with her friends after getting my brothers to school, and Dad was the earliest riser.
So I woke at the crack of dawn and watched the morning news with him, eating French toast and chatting about our days.
Before going to see Zolt.
“Yeah, I’m all good, just really nervous,” I said, wringing my hands. “I just thought it was about time I got out of your hair. I want to start making my own friends here and… sometimes the Airbnbs mean I don’t get to socialise much with people my own age.”
If I said that to Everly, she would probably be offended. She wanted to be forever young.
Livie knew that wasn’t the case.
“Of course,” she said with a smile. “When I started here, I must have gone out every other weekend. It would be nice for you to spend some time with some of the grid girls. But if you ever want to stay with us, Fia, you’re never in our hair.”
“Thank you.”
That same awkwardness that I wouldn’t have dreamed of a few months ago came back.
And she became all business. “How are you feeling about today? Prepared? You and Derek went through Zolt’s answers, didn’t you?”
His publicist had helped make Zolt toe the line with the questions he answered.
I nodded. “Still feel really nervous though. I’ve had so many nervous wees.”
She laughed and guided me back into the conference room.
Thankfully, it was still empty. Our steps echoed on the wood floor.
“Here,” she said and gestured to my seat before plopping a water bottle next to the sign of my name.
“We have fifteen minutes until people start arriving. Give yourself the time to decompress.”
I thanked her again and started to sip on the water. I wouldn’t have ever had to do this in the hospital, but this wasn’t exactly a rarity in StormSprint. This was my job.
Sometimes live on TV.
My stomach knotted tighter.
It wasn’t that big a deal. I knew the report — and Zolt — better than anyone.
I was the best person for letting the world know what he wanted to get across.
I wanted the world to know what he’d fought through to be where he was, what he had to cope with every day.
He pretended his headaches didn’t exist. He smiled and nodded despite the tightness in his body, the invading bolts in his collar and spine. The scars that mapped his skin.
Although I’d rather keep them to myself, tracing them with gentle fingertips, dragging soft kisses at their seams.
Think of the devil, and he shall appear.
Zolt walked in with a bright, beaming smile, as if the sole purpose of this conference wasn’t to expose his trauma. “Hello, beautiful.”
“Hey,” I said and tried to smile back, but I felt it falter at the edges, wobbling until I had to bite down on my bottom lip.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting in his seat next to mine and stroking my shoulder through my white shirt.
I shook my head. If I told him how scared I was, he might think I’d falter. And this was important.
What he thought of me was important.
“Baby,” he said, and my heart stopped.
We were in so deep.
“I’m scared,” I blurted. “To be on TV.”
He gave me a small smile and stroked back my hair, his other hand falling to my thigh. “You’ll be sat right here by me. No one will say anything bad about you. Remember, even your words here aren’t your own. If you say something wrong, it was a direct translation from me.”
“That’s not—”
“That’s how it will be,” he said. He was always so ready to take the fall for me.
He looked over the empty room, and my stomach lurched at all of the empty rows of chairs in front of us. They would be full of questioning reporters in ten minutes.
“We’re as prepared as we can be,” he reassured me. “Which tells me you just need a distraction.”
I cocked a brow, but his hand travelled under the hem of my shirt dress.
“Zolt,” I argued, but he hushed me.
“Say you don’t want me to take your mind off things,” he demanded. “Say it, and I’ll put this cute little dress back as I found it.”
His eyes were my entire vision. When I didn’t speak, he grinned, and his circling fingers inched further up my thigh. “No one is here, Zsófia. Those cameras, our mics, they’re all off. People aren’t scheduled to come in for ten whole minutes. And my girl deserves to feel good.”
His girl. Fuck.
“Don’t you, kis szemtelen? You want me to make you feel good?”
I nodded before I could stop myself. My words were stuck in my throat.
His finger brushed up my slit over my panties, and when I clenched, he laughed, his breath on my throat. “Watch the door.”
I stared at the mahogany door and the silver handle. I scanned each window to check that the blinds were down.
We were safe.
And my heartbeat was erratic as his touch slid beneath the lace of my underwear.
“It feels like you’re ready for me. And do you know what else you’re ready for?”
He ran lazy circles around my clit, getting closer and closer. His husky voice was in my ear. “Fia, what else are you ready for?”
“The—the conference.”
“Exactly,” he said, and every time he spoke, shivers ran down my spine. “You’re the most intelligent person I know. You know Hungarian. You are Hungarian. You know me. You’re becoming a part of me.”
My breath broke at his words, and when his fingers finally ran over my clit.
“You know everything you need. You’re going to do amazing, aren’t you?”
He slipped his thumb to my clit, and circled my entrance with his fingers. “Aren’t you, Zsófia?”
The door was still closed. We were so far from it. No one was coming in, and I needed him. He was becoming a part of me, too.
“Yes,” I whispered, dragging my eyes from the door to him.
He tickled around my entrance, running his two fingers there. “Say it.”
“I’m going to do amazing,” I told him.
“Atta girl,” he said in English and drove two fingers into me. I jerked and gripped his arm as he threw his palm to my mouth. “Now, normally, I love those sounds you make, but right now? Do you want to get caught?”
I shook my head against his grip, but when he pulled away, I wasn’t sure I could hold back the moan from my building orgasm. I sucked his fingers into my mouth as I rode his hand, and he chuckled, telling me I was such a good girl.
My orgasm ripped through me, and I collapsed in my chair, holding onto him as he whispered in my ear.
I expected him to stop as my breathing settled, but he went back to my clit, strumming it until wet sounds filled the platform.
“Zolt,” I breathed.
“You’re coming to my trailer tonight,” he said. “Or I’m tracking you down. We’re not done.”
I nodded, my hands falling down his side.
Just as the door opened and the press started to come in, the camera men went to the cameras. My stomach lurched, and whatever expression was on my face made Zolt smile weakly before continuing to finger me.
“Zoltán,” I said under my breath.
The sheet on the table in front of us would hide our activities, but how obvious was where his arm was placed?
“Stop panicking,” he said. “Breathe. Calm.”
So I took a deep breath, watching each of them come in, talking and laughing with one another.
“They’re just people,” he reminded me. “They want the information you have. You’re the winner here. You give what you want, you keep what you want.”
“I give what I want,” I repeated.
“And nothing more.”
Even he wasn’t reckless enough to continue fingering me when Yvette came to sit beside him, followed by our team director. He patted the skirt of my dress back into place and then, to my absolute horror, lifted his fingers to his mouth and sucked on the ones that had been inside of me.
I froze in shock, and he laughed, leaning into my ear, “Yummy.”
My mouth hung open before I forced myself to gather my sanity as the rest of the panel sat, and the head of StormSprint tapped his mic.
“Good morning, we want to thank you for coming today. We know there has been a lot of speculation about Zoltán Farkas’s medical clearance, and to put your minds at ease, we are releasing some of his medical reports, with his blessing. ”
Zolt nodded, and cameras flashed.
“The report will not give you every detail,” he continued, “because, frankly, that’s his private life. But we’re hoping it will stop some of the intrusive questioning our team and Zoltán have been receiving.”
I looked up at him, wishing his hand was still on my thigh to have some connection. People were messaging him directly?