I turn on my heel and head back to where I came from. My chest aches and tears burn in the backs of my eyes. The lump in my throat feels like it’s a boulder.

  I go into my office in the hospitality suite, needing a moment of reprieve. Even a second where I can text Riggs and explain.

  But I startle when I look up from my phone and find my dad sitting behind my desk. His head is angled to the side and his eyes are locked on me.

  “Yes?” I ask cautiously.

  He doesn’t speak right away, and I despise the sinking feeling in my stomach that comes with his silence. “It’s hard having to deal with employees when they’ve become friends, isn’t it?”

  I stare at him, blinking, as if the action is going to make me comprehend what he said that much quicker. “You set me up.” Disbelief and hurt mars my tone.

  “No. I thought it was important for you to understand that this is a business. First and foremost. It puts food on people’s tables. It creates jobs. It creates an escape from the daily grind for so many others. I learned this lesson the hard way. I lost a lot of friends because they couldn’t separate work and personal.”

  “So, what? You think Riggs and I are friends and so that was going to put him in his place and stop our friendship?”

  “No,” he says the word slowly. “I think you needed to be reminded that you are a Moretti first and foremost. You needed to show everyone that you knew that. It was a hard thing to do, but no doubt you just earned the respect of every single person in that garage.”

  “Every person except for Riggs.”

  He twists his lips and meets the challenge in my glare. “He’s a big boy. He’s been chastised by worse. He’s good, Cam. He’s cocky and skilled and one hell of a fucking driver, but he’s also selfish—”

  “As we expect all drivers will be.”

  “Don’t look now, Camilla, but your friendship is apparent.”

  I grit my teeth to prevent myself from saying anything more.

  He made his point.

  And there’s no way he’s going to even entertain mine.

  He rises from my chair, all tremors from earlier absent. He sees that I notice. He realizes that I know he just played me.

  “Good job.” It’s all he says as he nods and heads out of my office.

  I stare at his back until I can’t see him anymore before sinking into my chair and having a pity party of my own.

  My duties drag on way longer than I want them to. It doesn’t help that every time I check my phone, Riggs hasn’t responded to a single text of mine.

  At the first available opportunity, I head back to the team hotel and go straight for his room.

  But housekeeping is in there when I get there.

  He’d already checked out.

  He left without letting me say a word.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Riggs

  Did I change my flight and head home without the team or the accommodations it booked?

  Yep. Sure did.

  Have I ignored every text and phone call and smoke signal that Camilla has tried to send my way?

  Again, yes.

  Is there a reason I’ve headed to my flat through the back entrance for the past two days so I don’t have to pass hers and accidentally run into her?

  Fuck, yes.

  Yeah, I did the proverbial crime, but my crime gave Moretti enough points to at least keep them in contention for a higher finish in the Constructors Championship than they’ve had in five years.

  Fucking ridiculous.

  No doubt Wills, Junior, and Micah are sick of hearing me bitch about it. The fact they stopped answering my texts today—when they always answer them—says as much.

  But fuck, man. It still irks me forty-eight hours later. Still eats at me. Still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

  “The quickest way to see your way out of a ride is to not listen to your race engineer’s direction. That’s your second warning, Riggs. And as you know from your contract, there are only three warnings before the contract is terminated and you’re out of this team. Are we clear?”

  Are we fucking clear? Yes. I know the contract. I know the rules. I acted on impulse.

  Something you know all too well about, right, Camilla? Isn’t that how the two of us got ourselves into this mess? On your impulse to kiss me?

  Christ.

  She hurt me.

  Fucking hurt me when that’s something I don’t allow to happen. It’s something that can’t happen because I never let anybody in.

  But I let her in. Obviously. And now I feel more fucked than anything, and I’m not quite sure what to do about it.

  I turn the corner to head to my front door and Camilla is sitting there. She hastily stands the minute she sees me. My feet falter momentarily but fuck it, right? It’s my door. My flat.

  I stride up to it and the thought crosses my mind to pick her up and physically move her out of the way, but I don’t. My glare says enough for me.

  She doesn’t back down.

  And damn it to hell. I may be angry but she’s fresh-faced with no makeup, hair pulled up in a pile on top of her head, and a tank top on when she doesn’t wear tank tops in public . . . and I hesitate.

  “Do you want to do this out here in the hall?” she asks, shoving her hands on her hips and taking a battle stance. “Fine by me. Let’s go.”

  I growl. It’s the best I can do. People in our building know who I am now, and no doubt would enjoy selling something juicy to pay for their next years’ worth of rent.

  She moves just enough that I can unlock my door before storming in behind me and slamming it at her back.

  I pace to the far end of my place. My bags from the last race are still in a pile on the floor because yes, I’m acting like a spoiled, rotten brat.

  And I don’t fucking care that I am.

  She hurt me.

  And now I wish I hadn’t let her in.

  “Riggs.” My name is a plea. A question. And pretty much every fucking thing in between that I don’t want to acknowledge.

  “What?” I turn to face her. Arms out. Anger front and center.

  “I had to. I was doing my job.”

  “A marketing manager giving a driver a warning? Berating him in front of the entire fucking crew? Last I checked, that wasn’t in your job description.”

  She has nothing to say for that and that means she’s not telling me the whole truth about something. Should I care? Should it bug me? Fuck if I know.

  “Cat got your tongue, Moretti?”

  “I did what I had to do.” Her voice is quiet. Resolute.

  “Really?” I scoff. “You called me out in front of every fucking person in that garage like I was an errand boy who fucked up instead of a driver who just kept you in the game.”

  “You’re goddamn right I did,” she shouts.

  Her bark back surprises me. “Why?” I ask.

  “Why?”

  “Did I fucking stutter?” The expression on her face—pain, hurt, apology—almost gets to me. Almost. “Or do I need to repeat the question?”

  I’m being a dick. I don’t care. She was a dick to me. Turnabout’s fair play.

  “My boss asked me to deliver the warning,” she says.

  “You mean your daddy?” I hold my hands up in mock apology and chuckle like the prick I am. “Oh. My bad.”

  “Don’t be that way.”

  “What way? Trying to understand why my—” girlfriend. Girlfriend? What the fuck, Riggs. “You acted that way.”

  “What? Professional? Impartial? Putting a driver in his place for basically saying fuck you to management? You were in the wrong, Riggs. You were the one who fucked up.”

  “And you’re the one who made it personal.”

  “No, I didn’t. I did my job, as you should have done yours. And I couldn’t be soft on you.”

  “And why’s that? So you could prove you were the big man on campus? Congrats. Mission accomplished. Half the crew are pissed at you and half the crew think you’re a bitch. Looks like a win-win to me from where I stand.”

  “Fuck you,” she grits out.

  “Yep. Sure. Fuck me.” I move. My hands. My feet. Needing to abate the anger and the thoughts in my head. The ones that tell me I’m so pissed because she means something to me. Because I want her to. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “Why, Camilla? Fucking why?”

  “Because if I hadn’t, then every fucking person in that garage would have looked at me and seen right through me. They would know that . . . You know what? Never mind.”

  She goes to turn around, but I have my hand on her bicep and her body spun around to face me. “Know what, Camilla? That we’re fucking? Yeah? So?” I shake my head, trying to think straight when I want to kiss her. When I want to fuck away the hurt that I put in her eyes. “I fucking finished on the podium, and it wasn’t because I did what was right, so what makes you think it’s right or wrong when it comes to being with you?”

  She stares at me, chest heaving, jaw clenched, shoulders rising and falling—hurt radiating. She opens her mouth to talk and then shuts it.

  And then from one beat to the next, my lips are on hers. I pour every ounce of hurt and anger over her dress-down into the kiss. Every iota of confusion over this sudden realization that I’m falling for a woman where there weren’t supposed to be strings.

  There’s a stunned shock at first.

  Then the floodgates open and we’re a mix of hands gripping and teeth nipping. Of clothes being discarded and hushed commands.

  “Hurry.”

  “Quick.”

  “I need you in me.”

  “I need to fuck you.”

  There is no foreplay. Not testing to see if she’s ready for me. The week has been painful enough. The only salve to the hurt is being buried inside her. Is feeling her give for me. Is knowing she needs this as much as I need her.

  I need her.

  To taste her.

  To feel her.

  To fuck her.

  We fall backward on my bed, her breast a pillow of bliss as she falls on top of my chest. “Riggs.” It’s breathless. Desperate. Just like I am.

  “On your knees,” I say, this sudden need to put myself back in control of this relationship. To right our boundaries. To let her know I control her fucking pleasure, not her controlling me.

  “What? I don’t—”

  “On your fucking knees. Crawl up here. Sit on my face.” Her eyes startle wider. Yeah. You heard me right. My hands go to her hips and guide her over my shoulders. “I’m going to fuck your pussy with my tongue. And then I’m going to fuck you good and hard with my cock.”

  “I . . . what if you can’t brea—oohhhhh,” she calls out as I bury my face between her thighs, my nose and lips and chin coated instantly with her arousal.

  Fucking heaven.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I say when I feel her tense and try to sit higher up. I use my hands on her waist to hold her down onto me. “I’ll come up for air when I’m goddamn good and ready. But right now, fucking drown me.”

  She emits a half sigh, half yelp as I dive back in for more of her sweet velvet. She bucks on my tongue with my nose hitting her clit and my chin hitting her arse. It’s fucking glorious.

  Every goddamn lick. Each fucking suck.

  I work her over until she’s drenching my face. Her pussy swells and grows wetter.

  Her body becomes tenser.

  And when she cries out my name, her fingers are gripping my hair and yanking on it, and her orgasm’s gripping my tongue and drowning me in the best fucking way possible.

  It’s her hiccupped sighs that do me in. Almost as if she isn’t sure how to take pleasure like that. To own it.

  She gasps when I guide her hips down one more time for one last taste. But I can’t last another goddamn second. My cock is so fucking hard, my balls ache fiercely.

  Within seconds I have her flipped over; her gasp turns into a laugh—but both are eclipsed by the growl I emit when I bury myself in her with one swift push.

  I see stars. Immediately. Without question.

  They fucking align so goddamn fast that I don’t think. Can’t. All I focus on is how good she feels, how her tits jiggle with each slam into her. How her pussy is so fucking slick and tight. How our bodies fit together.

  And how, with those sex-drugged eyes, she looks at me with way more than lust.

  But it’s too much to think about right now when all I care about is this ache building at the base of my spine and the pressure in my lower belly.

  I pick up the pace. Over and over. Again and again. Her eyes stay on mine the entire time. Owning me.

  Urging me.

  Pushing me over the goddamn edge just like her body is.

  And when I come, I’ve never had an orgasm hit me harder.

  Or with more impact than I’ve ever felt before.

  One thing’s for sure, whatever this is between us, we sure as shit know how to kiss and make up.

  At least there’s that.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Camilla

  My heart doesn’t stop racing and for so many more reasons than just the physical.

  I stare at the ceiling and try to process the past thirty minutes.

  Hell, the past few days.

  The incredible highs. The stomach-churning lows.

  And then the way I felt when I finally saw Riggs. The all-encompassing need to make things right again. To apologize, even though he was in the wrong. To clear the hurt and anger and something else I couldn’t quite place from his eyes.

  His hand finds mine and he laces our fingers together. It’s the simplest of actions but the quiet reassurance—that we’re okay—relieves the pressure remaining in my chest that the sex didn’t ease.

  “My dad,” I say and then hesitate.

  “Those are definitely two words no man wants to hear after having sex.” He chuckles and presses a kiss to my shoulder.

  He shifts in the bed, his head on his hand, but the silence only exacerbates the weight of his stare on me.

  “Talk to me, Moretti,” he murmurs, his lips still pressed on my skin.

  I struggle with the start to my confession and the words that normally would follow.

  I can’t break my promise to my dad. I can’t be the one to tell his secret. But at the same time, Riggs means enough to me that I need to make him understand. I need him to see that what happened in the garage wasn’t a power play on my part.

  That there was a reason behind it.

  In the same breath, the last thing I want to do is lie. I opt for a partial truth. Enough to try and mend this fence but not enough to tear the one down that’s protected me my whole life.

  “My dad had a health scare,” I say. “It was enough that he realized he needed to start thinking about Moretti Motorsports beyond him.”

  “And so he called you back home,” he says quietly.

  “In so many words. Marketing is my focus, but he’s also determined to teach me every aspect of the business.”

  “As in reprimanding drivers.”

  “As in he wanted to teach me a lesson.”

  “What lesson would that be?”

  “That sometimes it’s hard to be friends with employees. That there are a whole lot of people depending on their paychecks.”

  Riggs flops on his back, his sigh emanating through the entire room. His silence eats up the space but there’s also resignation that I’m not sure I understand.

  “I was faster. My sector times. My overall lap times. Erikkson was fading. I could see Halloran in the distance, and he was within my realm to reel in.” He pauses. “I’ve had to prove myself my whole life. Prove that I am Ethan Riggs’s son, that I drive like him, but that I’m not him. It’s a constant balancing act. I know it wasn’t right in terms of Team Moretti, but I saw a lane to prove this and I took it. Did I fuck up? Yeah. Reprimand made, but point made on my end too. Moretti wants their crew to know the team backs them, but I deserve the same.”

  I don’t speak. I don’t approve or condemn his reasons for what he did.

  Personally, I understand them, but this is the part where I listen without action. Being a driver on an F1 team means you listen to your engineer. Period. They know what they’re doing. They see the bigger picture. They know the cars inside out. But I suspect I don’t need to tell him this. Hopefully, he’ll see past the reprimand, past the podium, and see the bigger picture. That will take him from being a great driver to being an exceptional F1 driver.

  “I got word from my agent before the race that Maxim is looking better than expected. That . . . my time might be limited.”

  “I’m aware. I found out just before the race too,” I say, not wanting him to think I was hiding it from him—although I do have every right in my position to do so.

  “I don’t know, Cam. Maybe what I did was a desperate attempt to prove to everyone that I deserve to be at this level.”

  I squeeze his hand and shift so that my head is on his shoulder, my hand on the steady beat of his heart, and my leg hooked over his. A silent show of support without betraying the lines in the sand my last name has drawn for me.

  We settle into a comfortable silence, our confessions our apologies.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Riggs finally asks.

  I close my eyes a beat and then shift suddenly so that I’m straddling him. He laughs as I dip my mouth down and meet his.

  “I think we’ve done enough talking,” I murmur against his lips.

  “Is that so?”

  I crawl my way down his torso, my lips kissing their way as I go. My eyes never leaving his.

  “Are you complaining?” I ask as I take his tip to my lips and kiss it.

  “No. God, fucking no.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Camilla

  Riggs’s handsome face fills the screen, his smile front and center. “Hi there.” He gives a salute. “Back for another round of Am I the Arsehole. I know we took a break last week and posted a race Q&A, but your complaints were heard. Loud and clear. So . . . back to our regularly scheduled program.” He shifts the phone some. “This AITA comes from someone with the last name Gasket. Love the name, dude.” He gives a thumbs-up while I eye my phone screen warily. If this isn’t a post directed at me, I don’t know what is. “Gasket’s question is as follows: Hey, Riggs. Am I the arsehole for lying to my mates about having to go to a work function when all I want to do is hang with the girl I’ve been seeing?”