Chapter 205 Callum
callum
The world could have my lap times and my headlines. The heartbreak, the hangover, the hope—that stayed here, barefoot on the tile with my family. –Aurélie
The first thing I registered was weight.
Warm, heavy, familiar. Draped across my chest like she’d tried to merge with my ribcage in her sleep.
The second thing was the ache in my cheeks.
Smiling. I’d actually smiled enough last night that the muscles hurt this morning. That had to be some kind of personal record.
I cracked one eye open. The bedroom was dim, all soft grey light leaking around the edges of the curtains.
The ceiling fan hummed lazily overhead. Somewhere beyond the terrace, waves rolled slow and steady against the shore, the sound threading in through the cracked patio door we’d forgotten to close.
Aurélie was sprawled half on top of me, half on the mattress, one leg flung over my hip, the hem of her black romper bunched damn near indecently high.
Her hand was splayed over my sternum, fingers curled in the faint patch of hair there like she’d anchored herself on purpose.
Her ring glittering faintly in the low light.
My fiancée.
Still hadn’t gotten tired of that word.
Her hair was a disastrous mess of salt-tangled strands everywhere, one stubborn lock stuck to the corner of her mouth.
She’d drooled on my shoulder at some point.
My neck had that faint crick you only got from sleeping in one position too long because you refused to move the girl on top of you in case you woke her.
I’d never felt more content in my life.
The villa was making noise now. Soft, subtle, but there if you listened. A cupboard closing. A quiet curse in Italian. The hiss of the coffee machine. The muffled thump of someone shuffling through the living room.
We’d gone to bed late, sometime after one in the morning.
My memories of the end of the night were a blur of sand and laughter, Ivy threatening to sedate Marco for real if he didn’t shut up, Lucy humming one line of a song and then clapping a hand over her mouth like she wasn’t allowed, Kimi being exactly as unnerved by the tide as he pretended not to be.
And Aurélie, curled into me and telling our group that she was terrified and marrying me anyway. Something in my chest gave that same painful little crack it had given on the beach, right behind my breastbone. The one that felt like a stress fracture finally deciding to heal.
I slid my hand down her spine, fingertips skating over warm, bare skin between her shoulders where the romper didn’t cover. She made a sleepy noise at the back of her throat, burrowing closer like I was a pillow and a life raft, all in one.
“Scale, mo chridhe,” I murmured, voice rough with sleep, my lips brushing her hairline. “Half-asleep edition.”
She hummed, barely conscious, the sound vibrating against my chest. “Nine,” she mumbled. “Nine and three-quarters because you’re warm.” She shifted just enough that her thigh slid over my hip. “And because I can feel you.”
I bit back a groan. My hand slid down the curve of her spine, over the small of her back, until my palm cupped the perfect heart-shape of her ass.
Warm, soft, entirely mine. It was far too easy to picture how she’d feel if I rolled us, dragged her under me, pushed into her slow and lazy until she was sighing and sinking further into our bliss bubble.
The image hit so hard my hips almost jerked.
Get a grip, Fraser. She just said she can feel you.
“Dangerous combination, mo chridhe,” I muttered into her hair. “We have sand in some very… x-rated places. I’m trying to be respectable.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” she whispered, her smile curling against my skin. “You wake up hard for me and then expect me not to brag?”
Something in me purred at that. Possessive, greedy bastard that I was.
I lay there for another minute, letting myself catalogue it all.
The weight of her. The faint ache in my legs from the hike yesterday.
The ghost of red wine on my tongue. The sting of scratches along my shoulders from where she had clung to me, drunk and stumbling back inside before we collapsed on the bed and fell asleep.
Eventually, the need to pee and the distant sound of Marco and Ivy bickering forced my hand.
“Auri,” I murmured, giving her hip a gentle squeeze. “If we don’t move soon, they’re going to eat all the carbs and blame us for their hangovers.”
She made an incoherent noise that sounded like both protest and agreement, then burrowed closer, nose pressing into my throat. “Five more minutes,” she rasped. Her morning voice was wrecked, all gravel and French honey. “We’re on holiday.”
“Sexcation,” I corrected automatically. “And we smell like Naxos red and the beach.”
“And happiness,” she mumbled into my skin. “Don’t forget happiness.”
Christ.
I stroked my hand up her back, feeling each little knot of tension I’d started to unkink, and leaned down to kiss the crown of her head. “Come shower with me,” I said softly. “Rinse off the sand. Then we can go pretend to be responsible adults in front of our friends.”
Her lashes fluttered against my chest. “Hmm. Do I get to lean on you and let you do all the work?”
“You’re describing my ideal morning,” I said. “Come on, mo chridhe.”
It took effort, but I managed to untangle her from my body without dropping her on the floor. She sat up slowly, hair a halo of chaos, romper creased and hitched from sleep. The ring on her finger caught a stray shaft of light and flashed, obnoxious and perfect.
She looked at it for a second, the faintest smile tugging at her mouth, then looked at me.
“Hi,” she said, soft.
“Hi,” I echoed. “Come on, before they kill each other fighting for caffeine.”
She snorted and let me pull her to her feet.
The bathroom was cool tile and pale stone, the big walk-in shower taking up half the far wall. I turned the water on and let it run until steam curled in the air. Aurélie leaned against the counter, eyes half-closed, watching me like she was too tired to be subtle about it.
“You’re staring,” I said.
“Admiring,” she corrected, voice lazy. “There’sa difference.”
“Mm.” I stepped close and hooked a finger under one strap of her romper, pulling until it slipped off her shoulder.
She shrugged out of it. Her waves were tangled around the other strap, and something in me went very still and very, very pleased at the fact that I was the one who got to undress her like this. “Lift your hair, Mrs. Almost-Fraser.”
“That’s not my name,” she protested automatically, but she obeyed, gathering her hair in her free hand until it pulled free of the strap and baring the long line of her neck. It made it easy to tug the other strap off her shoulder and peel the fabric down her body.
I kept my eyes mostly on her face. Mostly. I was hungover, not dead. And those fucking tan lines, herwarm goldlen skin, the fading bite marks on her hips I’d put there myself. Yeah. Definitely not dead.
She shivered in the cool air, then reached for the hem of my T-shirt, pushing it up with determined little hands. “Your turn,” she muttered. “Equal nudity.”
“Bossy,” I said, but I let her strip me, because I was weak and in love and there was no universe where I was saying no to her hands on me.
We stepped under the spray together. The water was hot enough to sting at first, then sink into our sore muscles like an apology. She tipped her head back, eyes closing, water running over her face and down her throat, tracing every place I’d kissed this last week.
I reached for the shampoo and squeezed some into my palm, then gently worked it into her hair, fingers massaging her scalp. Her whole body melted. She sighed so deeply it felt like a release, the tension draining out of her limbs as she swayed closer.
“Mmmm, I’d marry you for your hair-washing skills alone,” she murmured. “Everything else is just… bonus features.”
Part of me wanted to laugh. The other part wanted to keep this moment gentle and fragile.
I bent and pressed a slow kiss to her wet forehead, then another to the bridge of her nose, her cheeks, the corner of her mouth.
Nothing hungry. Just soft, lingering touches that made her lips part on a small, helpless sound.
She opened her golden-green eyes, hazy and content, and lifted her hands to my shoulders, sliding them around my neck.
We drifted together until her front was pressed to my chest, water beating down our backs.
I kissed her properly then—unhurried, lazy, the kind of kiss you only had time for when you weren’t already braced for impact.
And fuck, that was the best feeling in the world. I’d spent my whole life speeding and racing, and now I craved more than anything to slow down and stay still.
She tasted like sleep and last night’s wine and something sweet that had nothing to do with either.
My hands settled at her waist, thumbs stroking idly at the dip above her hips. Even that felt different this morning. Less like trying to hold us together through a storm, more like… memorizing the feel of peace.
“Scale now?” I murmured against her mouth. “Shower edition.”
She hummed, forehead resting against mine, eyes still closed. “Ten,” she whispered. “Definitely ten.”
A slow, deep satisfaction rolled through me. I kissed the corner of her mouth again, then reluctantly stepped back before my self-control got ideas.
“Good,” I said, reaching for the conditioner. “No fainting in the shower. I’d never live it down.”
“You’d catch me,” she said easily.
“Every time,” I answered.
We moved around each other in a sleepy rhythm.
Washing, rinsing, trading soft, distracted kisses whenever we passed within reach.
Every brush of skin sparked awareness, but it stayed quiet and banked.
There’d be time for feral later. Right now, it was enough to exist together under hot water, alive and whole—stupidly in love while our friends nursed hangovers in the next room.