Chapter 81 Callum
callum
The world sees the champion. I see the man who crawled across the gym floor just to touch me. And I think I’m already in too deep. –Aurelie
My heart was still pounding. Not from the sprint here—though, that probably didn’t help—but from the way Aurélie fucking unraveled for me. Right here on the goddamn gym floor.
Still on my knees behind her, I pressed my face to her back and exhaled hard. Her skin was damp and flushed, her ponytail mussed from where I’d gripped it. I was pretty sure I’d come harder than I had in years—right in my fucking shorts. I winced.
“God,” I groaned. “I didn’t think this through.”
She glanced at me in the mirror, lazy and smug. “You mean the part where you sprinted across Monaco like a madman, broke into my hotel gym, and jizzed in your pants?”
“Exactly that,” I muttered. “I was in such a rush, I didn’t grab anything. Not a change of clothes. Not even a towel.”
She snorted. “There’s definitely a suspicious wet spot on your crotch, Fraser.”
I groaned again, collapsing backward on the padded gym floor onto my back. I stared up at the ceiling and the harsh fluorescent lights, contemplating how I got here with this woman. “They’re gonna think I pissed myself.”
“Honestly?” She turned and adjusted the waistband of her hot pink shorts, then leaned forward and cocked her head with faux pity. “You kinda give off that energy. Like the kind of man who’d stress-pee before a race.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me?”
“You know, you’ve got that frantic, I-might-leak vibe sometimes. You’re so intense before a race. Like a pressure cooker with thighs.”
“A pressure cooker with thighs?!”
Smirking, she reached out and pushed up the hem of one leg of my gym shorts. I glanced down, watching her fingers trace my tattoo, and all I could think was, this tattoo was meant for you all this time.
“Yeah, but like, slutty thighs with dramatic tattoos,” she teased, biting her plump lower lip, and Jesus Christ, this woman was going to be the death of me.
I shot upright. She shrieked with laughter, bolting backward on her hands—but not fast enough. I lunged at her, and we went down in a tangle of limbs, her laughter echoing off the gym walls as I tickled her sides mercilessly. “Take it back!”
“Never!” she howled.
“You’re going to regret this.”
“No, I’m going to pee!” she gasped, writhing under me.
“Then we’ll match!”
We wrestled like idiots, limbs flailing, breathless from laughter and lust and whatever the fuck this spell was between us.
She was quick, slippery from the sweat coating both of us, hellbent on escaping, but I was stronger and smug as hell when I finally pinned her.
She wrapped her legs around my waist and rolled her hips, twisting us with a giggle that turned into a soft gasp as she flipped us and ended up straddling me again—only this time, breathless and glowing with joy, not just sweat.
Her hair stuck to her forehead, her chest heaved, and her smile was so beautiful it nearly knocked the wind out of me.
My eyes traced over the messy golden ponytail cascading around her shoulders, over her tits that were barely covered by that tiny sports bra, down to the large wet spot over her pussy.
Fuck me, that was unbearably hot. I glanced at the mirror behind us, and when she leaned forward with a devious look on her face, I could see the stain from my cum spread across her ass.
I swallowed as some inherent, primal need coursed through me to claim every inch of her and fill her with my release just to watch it drip out of her pretty little cunt.
I reached up automatically, resting my hands on her hips, and just looked at her, forcing my thoughts into safer territory.
She was fucking radiant. Tousled and laughing and blushing slightly from the post-orgasm haze.
I wanted to commit this version of her to memory.
“You make me feel young,” I said before I could stop myself.
She blinked. “You’re not even old, Fraser.”
“Yeah, well…” I swallowed, smiling softly. “You make me feel like a teenager again, giddy and reckless. Like everything’s happening for the first time.”
Her teasing faded to something quieter. “Yeah,” she murmured. “I feel that too.”
“I mean, I didn’t even date as a teenager. I didn’t have the time. I was always traveling, always chasing something. I didn’t make time for… this. For anyone, really, but myself.”
“You still made time to fuck around, though,” she teased, but her voice was light, not accusatory, and so very French.
God, I would never get tired of hearing it, and I lived for these private moments with her.
She folded her arms on my chest and leaned on them, our faces impossibly close.
So close I could count the freckles sprinkled across her nose, just like the ones I’d traced across her back in Imola.
I’d memorized them like constellations on a star chart.
She shifted slightly, and even in this quiet moment, my body responded to hers like it was second nature. And it was, because at some point she’d become my gravity, my fire, my everything.
That little movement was just enough that my cock, apparently still feral for her, twitched against her thigh as if it hadn’t just blown its load in my shorts mere minutes ago. I was done for. Absolutely hopeless and completely gone for her. And yet, I was ready to do it all over again.
I smirked. “Yeah, because I could and it was easy.”
She shrugged, tracing her fingers over my chest, over my embroidered driver number—17—up on my right shoulder. “Why are you telling me this?”
I looked up at her, watching the way her lashes fluttered. “Because I don’t want to fuck this up.”
Aurélie tilted her head. “I don’t think you could.”
I exhaled hard. “You say that like it’s simple.”
“It is,” she said. “You showed up when I needed you the most. You ran here just because you wanted to see me. You don’t hide how you feel. All of that means something to me.”
My throat tightened. My chest, too. She had no idea what she was doing to me, what her words did, how she was changing every piece of me so I belonged to her.
“I just…” I shook my head, using the feeling of the floor beneath me to ground me just a bit more.
“I didn’t grow up with this stuff. People didn’t make space for me—this world barely made space for me.
My parents loved me, but they were always busy with their own agendas or fighting.
My dad wanted me to go further than he ever did, so he had me practicing every second I wasn’t in school.
My mum worried constantly for my safety.
They didn’t get it, not really. I felt like a burden more than a gift. ”
She shifted to sit up a little and smoothed a hand over my chest, fingers splaying over my heart. “You weren’t a burden. Your parents’ views were the burden. Your dad pushed too hard. Your mum pulled too tight. Their mistakes—that’s not on you.”
I swallowed hard. “They’re good people.” I paused to think about my parents, their thick Highland accents, their kind eyes and warm smiles, and how much better things got when I left home and my career took off.
“We lived in a small village outside Edinburgh. Nothing fancy. I just wanted out so badly, I didn’t stop to figure out where I was going. ”
“You made it somewhere. Actually, you made it to the pinnacle of this sport and are considered one of the greatest of all time,” she said. “And now you’re here, with me.”
I stared up at her, overwhelmed by how fucking right that felt. And maybe how she didn’t judge my humble beginnings despite her own privileged one wasn’t lost on me, either. “No one’s ever really seen me before,” I said quietly.
“I see you,” she whispered.
My hand cupped her cheek. “I know.”
The moment stretched. It was intimate and quiet, but somehow still heavy as I wondered what this deep, soul-altering feeling inside my chest was whenever I was around her.
So I did the only thing I could think to do.
I flipped us, grinning like a bastard as I pinned her beneath me and started tickling her sides again, because fuck, I wanted to hear that girlish, carefree giggle from her again.
“Callum!” she shrieked through laughter. “You little shit!”
“Just making sure you still think I’m young and full of energy,” I teased. She laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe, wriggling under me as her face reddened. I looked down at her and knew without a doubt that I was completely and utterly gone for this woman.
And I never wanted to come back.