Carter
Chapter seventeen
The heavy door of the sauna slams against the wall as I shove it open.
I’m out of breath, my lungs burning from more than just the sudden wave of dry heat.
Now, I’m vibrating with the fallout of a weekend I can’t quantify, trapped in the expensive confines of the very sport that dismantled my own family.
It’s been hours since we arrived back, and the irony is a bitter taste in the back of my throat: the more I try to claw my way out of racing, the deeper I seem to be pulled into the center of its most dangerous gravity.
Dominic is here, quiet and deliberate in the steam. He doesn’t even flinch at the noise.
"You were listening to my dad," I say, the words tumbling out before the door even clicks shut behind me.
My hair is a mess, and I know I look frazzled—completely undone by the wreckage of the race.
"I saw it on the telemetry. I saw it in the way you took that turn. You were winning. Why did you stop?"
He doesn’t answer. He’s sitting on the bench, his back against the cedar, elbows resting on his knees.
He doesn't move, doesn't even look up at first, just stares at the floor as the steam curls around his bare shoulders. He’s a statue in the stillness, while I’m the one vibrating with a nervous energy I can’t shake.
The stillness in his posture is worse than if he’d shouted. It feels like he’s intentionally sucking all the air out of the room.
"What did Luka say?" he asks, his voice low and scraping against the quiet.
I blink, the sudden shift in subject catching in my throat. "What?"
"On the pit wall." He finally lifts his head, his gaze heavy and pinning me where I stand. "Mid-race. I was hunting the gap, and I looked over and saw you. You were smiling at something he said. What was so funny that you couldn't keep your eyes on the race?"
"What are you talking about?" I demand, my brows knitting as I pull my arms tighter across my chest. "I’m asking you about the sector. I'm asking you why you threw away a podium for a compromise that didn't actually exist."
"And I'm talking about you," he counters, still not rising, yet somehow managing to make me feel like he’s looming over me. "Because today, while I was hitting the apex, I didn't hear Landon. I didn't hear the tires. I heard your voice in my head."
I freeze. "What?"
"I heard you," he repeats. "So I listened. I listened to what your dad was telling me. I stopped forcing it. I stopped being selfish."
The word hangs between us, as heavy and stifling as the steam-saturated air.
"Then why did you stop?" I demand. My voice is sharper than I intended. "If you were being 'unselfish,' why did you let him take the line? Why did you throw it all away?"
Dominic doesn’t answer with words.
He unfolds from the bench, a slow, predatory movement that sends the air in the sauna swirling, suddenly too hot to draw into my lungs. He closes the distance in two heavy strides, pinning me into the narrow gap between his chest and the wall.
He leans in, one hand falling against the wood paneling beside my head with a muffled noise that vibrates through my skull. He’s so close I can feel the closeness of him like a second pulse, but it’s the frantic, heavy thud of his heart against his ribs that makes my world tilt.
The rhythm is off-kilter, a mirror to the uneven misfire in my own chest. My eyes widen, my gaze snapping to the frantic pulse visible in his neck.
It’s unexpected. Startling. For all his practiced arrogance, he isn't nearly as steady as he wants me to think —at least not in this moment.
He slides a heavy, muscled knee between my thighs, pressing upward with a slow, agonizing deliberation.
My breath hitches—a sharp, broken sound that echoes off the small space—as I’m forced to widen my stance.
The contact is firm, unyielding, and the friction of his skin against the inside of my leg sends a jolt through me that has nothing to do with the temperature of the room.
"You want the truth?" he rasps, his face dipping until our foreheads almost touch.
I can't find my voice. My heart is a frantic rhythm against my ribs, and the air between our lips is charged, electric, and dangerously thin. I can only nod, my eyes locked on his as the string between us pulls to the point of snapping.
"The truth is, I’m tired of trying to find a version of me that isn't a disappointment," he says, the words a low vibration against my skin. "I tried to be the person you asked me to be. I tried to be 'better' for once."
"And?" I whisper, the word barely making it out.
"And it didn't work," he says, his gaze darkening as he presses his knee just a fraction higher, demanding all of my attention. "Because I am selfish, Carter. I have always been selfish."
My breath catches, my back pinned so tight I can feel the wood of the wall biting into my spine. My lungs feel like they're filled with lead. "And now?"
Dominic doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he shifts his weight, his leg moving with a slow, grinding friction that makes it too easy to lean into. Before I can find my footing, his hand slides from the wall to the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair as he pivots me toward the bench.
It’s one fluid, forceful motion. I hit the seat, my legs splaying out as he looms over me, boxing me in with his arms. The closeness is agonizing now, but it’s the look on his face that makes me feel like I’m burning from the inside out.
He doesn’t look angry anymore. He looks predatory.
His eyes drop, tracking the heavy, rhythmic rise and fall of my chest, then lowers to where my shirt is clinging to my skin in the humidity. A slow, devastating smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth—the look of a man who has just seen exactly how much I want the mistake he’s about to make.
"Look at you," he mutters, his breath a hot, steady brand against my lips. "You can tell yourself you hate me all you want. You can call me a mistake and a disaster until you're blue in the face, and you wouldn't be wrong."
He lets out a shaky breath that scalds my skin, his face so close I can see the golden flecks of fury and want in his eyes.
"But your heart is trying to kick its way through your ribs just to get to me right now."
He doesn’t look away. His thumb drags slowly, firmly, over the center of my chest, pressing just hard enough against the fabric of my shirt to make me feel the weight of his hand.
"You’re vibrating," he rasps, his voice dropping to a gravelly low that settles right over my frantic pulse. "And we both know it’s not the heat. So tell me—are you going to keep lying? Because selfishly? I want you. Right now."
He doesn’t wait for my answer. His hand slides down from my chest, his fingers splaying wide before he grips my breast firmly over my shirt.
I hiss out a moan, the sound echoing sharply against the room as my back arches instinctively. Dominic’s eyes flare with a quiet, predatory approval.
"You don’t exactly have a glowing character reference," I manage to choke out, my fingers curling into the wood of the bench until my knuckles ache.
"I’m not asking you to believe I’m a better person than I am," he rasps, his thumb grazing over my nipple, catching the peak through the lace of my bra and the cotton of my shirt.
He watches my head fall back against the wall, a low hum of satisfaction vibrating in his chest. "I’m asking if you want me anyway. "
I hold his gaze, forcing my eyes open even as the charged air in the room tries to drag them shut. I look at the arrogance, the exhaustion, and the sheer, stubborn pride that makes him the nightmare he is.
"You’ve been a disaster," I tell him, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. "You’re arrogant. You’re exhausting. And you make everything ten times harder than it needs to be."
He nods once, his grip tightening over my skin just enough to remind me he isn't letting go. "I know."
My throat works as I swallow. I should get up.
I should let the door slam behind me and go back to the pool house where it’s cool and safe.
But his other hand has found the bench between my legs, his thumb beginning a slow, torturous trek along the hem of my shorts, occasionally dipping beneath the fabric to brush the sensitive skin of my inner thigh.
"That doesn’t make this smart," I mutter.
"No," he agrees, his voice dropping to a gravelly silk. "It just makes it honest."
My eyes flick to his mouth and back. I’m fighting every rational thought I’ve ever had about myself and the danger of being with a Formula One driver, but the dual friction of his thumbs is winning the war.
While his hand over my breast maintains a heavy, possessive pressure, it’s the other thumb—the one tracing slow, agonizing circles against the hem of my shorts—that is currently dismantling me.
It’s a rhythmic, relentless distraction, dragging my focus away from my brain and down to the ache simmering beneath my skin.
I lift my chin, trying to reclaim some shred of the analyst he hates.
"Then honestly," I say, my voice steadier than my pulse, "why did you lose the race?”
"I told you," he says, his hand finally sliding fully inside the leg of my shorts, his knuckles brushing the heat of me. "I got distracted."
"That seems to be happening a lot lately," I breathe, my eyes fluttering as his thumb begins to work slow, rhythmic circles against the dampness of my underwear.
"It's the only thing that feels real lately," he counters. He watches me, his gaze tracking the way my breathing has hitched into shallow, fractured gasps. He keeps the pace agonizingly slow, teasing the edges of what I want until I’m vibrating with a need that’s bordering on pain.
Then, just as I’m about to lean into him, he stops.
He doesn't pull his hand away, but he goes perfectly still. His fingers are still buried deep inside the leg of my shorts, his knuckles heavy against my thigh and his thumb resting right against the racking ache he’s created.
The sudden lack of motion is a shock to my system. One second I was climbing toward a peak, and the next, I’m suspended in a agonizing vacuum. I open my eyes, dazed and searching, only to find him looking at me with a terrifyingly sharp focus.
"So," he says, his voice a hard edge in the steam. "Are you willing to accept selfish? Are you willing to be just as much of a disaster as I am?"
I nod, a small, involuntary movement, but his smirk returns—dark and demanding.
"No Shortcut," he murmurs, his thumb twitching once—just enough to make me jump. "I need words."
"Yes," I snap, the word broken and desperate, all my professional armor finally stripped away. "Yes. I want selfish."
He doesn’t give me a second to breathe. The moment the "yes" leaves my lips, his hand moves with a sudden, predatory intent. He hooks his fingers into the edge of my lace and shifts them aside, finally finding the slick, sensitive heat he’s been weaponizing against me for the last ten minutes.
He drives two fingers inside me with a blunt, demanding force.
I cry out, the sound of his name ripping from my throat as my hips jerk upward, seeking the contact even as it overwhelms me. He doesn't pull back. Instead, he braces his other hand on the bench behind me, caging me in completely, and begins to move.
He doesn’t rush it. He works me with a rhythmic, punishing precision, his fingers curling deep inside me while his thumb maintains a steady, heavy pressure against my center.
Every stroke is a deliberate claim, a slow-motion wrecking ball to the last of my composure.
He keeps his gaze locked on mine, his eyes dark and dilated, watching every flicker of pleasure and ruin that crosses my face.
"That’s it, baby," he rasps, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that I feel deep in my chest. "Give it up. Stop trying to analyze it and just take it."
I’m falling. My hands fly up to grip his shoulders, my nails digging into his skin as I try to find an anchor in the storm. The steam in the sauna is thick enough to drown in, but the only air I want is the hot, ragged breath he’s exhaling against my lips.
He picks up the pace, his thumb working in tight, ruthless circles that send waves of blistering electricity crashing through my hips.
I’m vibrating, my thighs trembling against his arm as the tension reaches a screaming, unbearable peak.
I can feel the exact moment I lose the ability to think—the moment Carter the analyst dies and only this version of me, the one belonging to him in the fever, remains.
"Dominic," I sob, my head thrashing back against the wall. "Please."
"I’ve got you," he murmurs, his voice possessive and thick with a dark sort of pride. He shifts his weight, his free hand moving to cup the side of my face, his thumb stroking my cheekbone with a sudden, unexpected tenderness even as his knuckles press hard against the soft curve of my hip.
"Mine," he claims, leaning in until our foreheads touch. "All that noise in your head... shut it down, baby. Just feel me, Carter."
The snap is violent.
It’s a blinding fracture that starts in my core and shatters outward, leaving me breathless and raw.
I gasp, the sound swallowed by the crook of his neck as my body seizes in a climax so intense it feels like it’s rewriting my DNA.
I cling to him, my fingers digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders as the tremors rack my frame, dragging every last bit of defiance out of me until I’m completely spent.
Dominic doesn’t move. He just holds me through the aftershocks, his arms wrapping around me with a crushing, possessive force. He tucks his chin over my head, his heartbeat a steady, heavy thud against my ear—the only sound in the room other than our synchronized, ragged breathing.
He’s still a disaster. He’s still the most arrogant, frustrating person I’ve ever met, and I’m still the one who has to find a way to make sense of his brand of wreckage.
I spent years promising myself I’d stay clear of the orbit of men like him—men who live for the asphalt and the adrenaline—yet here I am, coming apart yet again beneath the Formula One driver I was never supposed to let in.
The reality of it hasn't changed. He’s still a risk, and I’m still a fool.
But as the steam curls around us, the restless, frantic energy that’s been clawing at my chest for three thousand miles finally goes quiet. I’m not pacing anymore. I’m not analyzing the data or looking for the exit. I’m just here.
And for now, selfishly, that’s enough.