12 Barcelona

12

BARCELONA

PHAEDRA

I blame the stupid fucking banana for my breakdown.

I ask Inge if I can stay behind and rest in one of the bedrooms, because of (fake) cramps. She ushers me into bed with a cup of herbal tea, then comes back minutes later, offering a plate containing a sandwich and a banana.

“The potassium is good for cramps,” she assures me, pointing at the fruit.

After she gently pulls the door almost closed, I lie on my side staring at the plate, listening to the chattering and footsteps as the group leaves. It’s a relief not to have to go. Too much smiling, pretending I’m not frozen with terror inside. For that matter, I can’t take much more of watching Alfie’s cougar wife slobber over Cosmin.

The tender buzzes away, and silence descends. I stare at the plate on the bedside table, thinking about my dad.

Chondrosarcoma in the base of the skull. Massively rare.

He FaceTimed me a few days ago to deliver the news. I knew it was bad when I opened the call and my mother was on-screen as well, not just leaning into the frame in passing to say hello like we usually do.

She’s not interested in racing—the main focus of Mo’s life and mine—only in the “stuff” Emerald has provided. So I never know what to talk with her about, and we’re a little awkward. Mo is “my person,” and Mama is Aislinn’s—they’re far more alike, the kind of people who use hair spray, count calories, and iron their clothes.

More like Natalia, I guess. It hurts to think about her right now too.

When Mo brought up the coming transition during the call and wanted to discuss business—whether he might offer Klaus the chance to buy the Morgan family’s 60 percent, or whether I should become “head honcho” when Dad “crosses the bar”—I slapped my hands over my ears like a little kid and shouted, Don’t!

Not being able to talk with Nat has made everything harder. I realized I was equally in the wrong because I also hid something from her—I didn’t tell her about the kiss in Santorini with Cosmin. So I broke down and texted her the week after the Chinese GP, and twice more since then.

No reply. Looks like she wasn’t bluffing about being sick of me.

On the team, only Klaus and Reece know about Dad’s cancer. And Klaus has been odd—stiffly courteous or terse in a way I’m not used to. I’ve always claimed I don’t want special treatment due to being the owner’s daughter, and I guess this is what that looks like. Yay.

I know there’s a chance his shift in mood toward me is because he and Natalia are cozy now, and she made me sound like a monster. But I also wonder if my father’s illness is bringing back, for Klaus, the pain of losing his wife, Sofia.

I’d been hoping to have a heart-to-heart today on the boat and talk it all out, but no such luck. I’ve never felt more alone.

But back to the freak-out over the banana…

When I was a little kid and traveled with Dad and our NASCAR team, despite spending my days in an earsplitting environment, I was afraid of thunderstorms. Whenever there was a storm at night, I’d fall asleep to him singing that “Yes! We Have No Bananas” song. It made me laugh, and I’d relax. Worked every time.

I want to be little again. I want to be happy.

I want to feel something other than numb or terrified.

I allow myself the luxury of a messy, all-out sobfest, alternating between blubbering and hoarse whimper-singing.

“ We have an old-fashioned toh-mah-toe… ” I croak through tears. “ A Loooooong Island poh-tah-toe… ”

The cabin door sweeps open, and I shriek. I grab the first thing handy, throwing it at the intruder before scooting back against the pillows, arms knifed out like I’m doing kung fu.

The banana bounces off Cosmin.

“Why the fuck are you here?” I shout.

“I could ask the same.” He picks up the bruised fruit and hands it to me before sitting on the bed. “I assumed you to be at the picnic.”

“I’m not in a picnic mood,” I mutter, swiping tears and tangled hair from my face. Holding the banana on my palm as if it were a dead pet, I feel my lips tremble. “You ruined it.”

“It was you who wielded this formidable weapon,” he replies with a hint of a smile. “Shall I look in the kitchen for another?”

I throw it at him again. “It doesn’t matter!” I wail. Curling on my side, I turn away and cover my eyes. “ Everything’s ruined!”

I mewl out small miserable noises and the bed shifts as Cosmin scoots closer. I feel a warm hand on my hip, resting there as if anchoring me. The mattress dips as he lies beside me, fitting his body against mine.

I stiffen. “What are you doing?”

“Comforting you.”

“I don’t want your stupid comfort. You’re not the right person.”

“This is true.” He works an arm under my neck and the other loops around me. “But I am the right now person. It will have to suffice.”

He smells really good, damn him.

His hands are large. I’ve looked at them plenty of times, but still, I turn one over, pressing my thumb into the palm, prodding the firm muscle there, following the arc pointing to his wrist. His arms are bare, shirt rolled to the elbows like mine.

He’s wearing tailored linen shorts, so his knees touching the backs of mine are skin-on-skin warm. His hard chest shifts against my back as he breathes, and a flutter of something electric goes through me.

“Cosmin…”

“Hmm?”

I tip my ass subtly against him. “How long is everyone going to be gone?”

“Long enough that you can cry all you need to and sleep.” He holds me closer.

I turn over and crumple a pillow beneath my neck, watching him. He does the same. He’s not wearing the expression I imagined. I’m waiting for a sly grin, a raised eyebrow. But he only combs a bit of hair away from my face.

“I look like shit,” I tell him.

“Nonsense. You’re lovely.”

The threads of black in his blue-gray irises are like road maps. There’s a faint vertical dent in his full lower lip and I remember what it felt like to kiss him. It might’ve been the last time my heart beat hard for any reason other than anxiety.

It’s kicked up now in a rhythm like someone executing a few cautious shimmies on the dance floor, but afraid to let go entirely.

I edge my feet toward him, and he gives my ankles a space to tuck between his. The arrangement is natural, like a thing we’ve done for years. I toy with a button on his shirt, freeing it from the hole.

His eyes narrow. When I slide a finger into the shirt’s placket, he scoops my hand up and delivers a kiss to my knuckles before placing my hand on my own hip and giving it a pat.

“You’re good at two things,” I tell him, “and I’ve only seen you do one of them.” Reaching for his shirt front again, I flick another button free. “I need the other one now.”

“You’d be angry with us both tomorrow.” He skims a finger down the bridge of my nose. “Also, I’m good at more than two things.”

I close in and kiss him. For a mortifying moment his lips don’t move, but as I’m about to pull back—my cheeks hot with embarrassment—he opens and touches my upper lip with his tongue. His hand slides into my hair and draws me closer as the kiss intensifies.

I suck his lower lip and give it a nip, and he lets out a soft groan just before the hand that was in my hair drags down my back and splays over my ass, holding me in place as he presses his pelvis against mine. I equally want to push my ass back into his hand and shamelessly mash my crotch against his, so I end up sort of doing both, and the undulation makes Cosmin pull in a gasp through his nose.

“I don’t think this is what you really want or need right now,” he insists.

“Bullshit.” I twist open the rest of the buttons on his shirt. “And you want it too.”

“Of course I do.” He responds to my next kiss with a faint moan, then pulls back and looks at me seriously. “But we both know why it’s a bad idea, no?”

“It’s a great idea.” I give his lower lip a small bite. “I want you to make me feel good for twenty minutes—that’s all I ask.”

“You’re worth more than that.”

“Cool.” I part his shirt and stroke his smooth, rock-hard chest. “I’ll take thirty.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He traces my cheekbone with a knuckle.

I brush his hand away like a gnat. “You’re a total man-whore twenty-four seven, but now that I’m asking for it, you’re getting all emo?”

“Fiery girl. So intense,” he murmurs with a pensive smile.

“Here’s intense for you: I want you to fuck the life back into me ,” I demand through clenched teeth. “Then we can forget it happened. Are you game or not?”

The look in his eyes goes savage. He rises on an elbow. The hand he still has on my ass digs in hard enough to hurt, but dear God it’s wonderful to feel something, anything.

“It’s not a game ,” he growls an inch from my lips.

I reach between us and jerk open the fly of his shorts. The fabric of his boxer briefs strains across a cock huge and hard enough to make me weak in the knees. I yank the elastic away from his skin, plunging inside and grabbing him with a single possessive jerk.

His eyes glitter. “ No. ”

“You mean you’re not going to fuck me?”

My harsh whisper is somewhere between furious and taunting. I expect him to pry my hand off that massive hot steel piston and walk out, but instead he kisses me so passionately I accidentally bite my own lip and taste blood.

“I mean, draga mea,” he tells me, pushing my skirt up, “that we’re not going to forget it happened.”

The next minute could best be described as “a tussle,” in a way that I previously thought was purely for artsy nineties films where people hate-fuck, and there’s no soundtrack aside from angry panting and the noise of thread popping as clothes are wrenched out of the way.

Ardelean is a goddamned beast and it’s exactly what I want. Everything else in my life mercifully blurs like scenery outside a white-knuckle car ride as we claw our way to operational nudity—close enough to get at the parts we need.

The oxford shirt I’m wearing hangs from one arm and my bikini top has been whipped off and tossed. My skirt is twisted at my waist, panties torn free at one side—forcefully enough that the fabric left a welt on my hip. Cosmin gasped an apology into my mouth when I yelped, and my reply was something like “ I don’t fucking care—get your cock in me. ”

He rises to his knees on the bed, and I wrestle off what he’s wearing from the waist down as we kiss in a frenzy. He collapses on his back to kick his clothes free before springing on me like I’m a prey animal. I thump against the wall while reclining, and Cosmin cradles my head in a way that feels too sympathetic—any tenderness now might bring my sorrow back in a smothering avalanche.

“Don’t be nice,” I snap, lunging for his mouth again.

He makes a noise of assent and I’m relieved he understands. Grabbing the backs of my knees, he hauls me toward him. Two long, hard fingers thrust into me, and he pauses, watching my face. I think he’s testing to see how deep I am, and a wicked smile curls on his lips.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs.

How did it used to annoy me when he said that? It’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

I splay my legs and grind on his hand. His fingers stroke inside me, faultlessly rubbing my G-spot, and a deep, sweet ache spreads. With his thumb he lightly strums my clit. I’m getting so wet the bedspread is going to be wrecked.

“Are you fertile?” he asks. “If so, there are other ways I can please you.”

“No. I have the implant.” I’m impatient to feel his cock in me, and I arch against him. “Don’t slow it down, don’t slow it down. Keep the momentum, Legs. Let’s do this.”

With his free hand he captures my foot and presses a kiss to it. “Rapacious girl. You’re so used to giving me orders. Do you want to put on a headset and tell me what to do by radio as I fuck you?”

His fingers slide out of my pussy. He takes off his shirt and reaches for a pillow, tapping my hip to lift so he can place it beneath me. He kneels between my thighs and pulls me over his lap, reclined with my legs spread.

“You’re made for me inside,” he says, his eyes dark with lust.

Grasping himself, he slides back and forth through my lips, and I bring my knees up and wriggle closer, desperate to be filled. He pushes in a few inches, then withdraws, aiming the head of his cock—now drenched in my wetness—at my clit, drawing slick circles around me. Two fingers of his other hand glide back into my pussy and I twitch in invitation.

“So deep inside, but so tight,” he murmurs. “You can take all of me.”

“I fucking need it. Don’t be a tease.”

“I’m going to watch you come first.” His fingers inside me are doing something that feels like a figure eight, slow and hypnotic. “You made it clear you want to use me.”

My eyes lock with his in alarm, but there’s no bitterness in his expression. He takes my hand and wraps it around his cock.

“So, use me,” he concludes. “I’m your toy.”

I’m stunned at how unashamed I am. We’re strangers in this respect, and something about that risk is thrilling. At the same time, I’m oddly at ease. Though the porthole windows are small, it’s broad daylight and we can see each other down to the last freckle and scar. My legs are smooth, but my girl bits are only trimmed—strawberry blond, lighter than the hair on my head.

“Your little pink cunt is perfect,” he tells me, as if he knows I’m self-conscious about not being shaved.

His delivery is surprisingly not lascivious, but falls somewhere between matter-of-fact and affectionate, and I’m pleasantly shocked he uses a word I never do.

I hold him in place and churn my hips to slide him against me. My clit is throbbing—it feels like every bit of blood in my body has converged between my legs. Cosmin’s gorgeous eyes are low lidded, studying me. His plump lips are parted, helpless in thrall, trapped by the sight of what I’m doing. I feel stunningly powerful.

“How are you so confident I’ll come?” I can’t help taunting him.

I’m keeping a poker face, but holy hell, I’m nearly there already. A mischievous part of me wonders if I can discreetly get myself off and pretend I didn’t, just to deny him the satisfaction of pleasing yet another woman in an endless parade.

Hand wedged between us, he adds another finger and sweeps my tight, wet walls, massaging and watching my face for feedback. “Because, draga mea, I know how responsive to input you are.”

My insides pulse as if trying to swallow his fingers, and I whimper, the peak creeping closer. My knees tremble as I scale the final approach, and I relax them.

“Ah, sweet one,” he says with a knowing smile. “Trying to hide it from me. That’s your plan, yes?” He opens his slippery, probing fingers, stretching me inside.

My breath is coming in tight little gasps now. “You don’t always win…”

It’s a relief finally to let myself enjoy how hot he is, and my gaze devours him. His shoulders are golden epaulets of lean muscle, the tilt of his head on that strong but elegant neck is arrogant in a way that turns my blood molten.

His tongue touches his lower lip and those stormy eyes narrow. “No. But something tells me I will today.”

His fingers withdraw and he splays them against the outside of me, pressing into my pubic bones on either side of my labia. I gasp as a rushing feeling descends—not just the onset of orgasm, but something else.

What the actual fuck is that? It’s as if everything settles into place, like landing gear on an airplane.

My eyes go wide, searching Cosmin’s face. If there’s ever a time his cocky smile is welcome, this is bizarrely it—that smug tilt of his full lips sends me over the edge. A whoosh of something heavy and gorgeous, inevitable, with the gravity of a roller-coaster plunge, rides in on the wake of the regular orgasm I’d expected.

The gearhead nerd part of me dimly thinks of the word “turbocharged” and the overwhelmed woman part of me cries out, writhing against his hand as I drop back and fling my arms out to grab the bedspread.

Before the spasms pass, he stretches on top of me and fills me with his cock. I let out a surprised noise almost like a bark of laughter, a joyous “Ha!” and whip my arms around him, seizing his ass with greedy hands, forcing him closer.

“Yes—oh God, that … pleaseyesohmyfuckinggod,” cascades out of me, delirious. “Do it hard,” I order him. “I don’t want to feel anything but this .” There’s no part of me that isn’t grabbing him like the last parachute in a plane going down.

His hands wring my hair, and the pain is sharp but delicious. He’s holding me in place, his hips slamming in an exquisite arc—not just chasing his own lust, but in a motion clearly engineered to herd me toward ecstasy again.

His tense breaths carry a hint of a growl each time we collide. There’s nothing tender here, no mercy in the way I buck against his thrusts, the way my nails rake him, the unintelligible raving that spills from my bruised lips, right along with the sweet juice he’s gouging out of me with his perfect cock.

Whatever witchcraft he’s used on my pussy is working, because I’m probably a half minute from another climax, and that has literally never happened during a missionary fuck. I’m not sure if it’s his imposing size, the slight curve that seems to hit everything just right, the smell of his skin, the savage music of our mingled groaning and panting, the smacking of sweaty skin.

Through my fog of arousal, a flutter of anxiety appears like a lighthouse in the distance, the dim warning beam telling me: This sex is too good not to want it again. I’m doomed. I don’t realize I’ve babbled it aloud until Cosmin slows, fixing me with a fevered look.

He crushes my mouth with his, and the sore spot I bit earlier flares.

“You’re right,” he says. “We’re both doomed. I claim this castle, and I will write my name in every fucking room of you.”

The words storm past the walls in my heart with the same heat I feel in the blissfully aching territory below the skirt rumpled around my waist.

Cosmin grasps my wrists and locks them over my head, and my legs encircle his waist just so I can keep holding him. The words I want to say are hiding behind my kiss-ravaged mouth. Yes, absolutely fucking yes , we’re going to do this forever . But I’m as scared from the neck up as I am turned on from the neck down. Wanting him this much is terrifying.

How did I ever think we could do this casually?

Electric tremors roll up my thighs like warning thunder and my eyes squeeze shut. I thrash my head to the side, my hair a tangled pool beneath me.

He shifts gears with my body, using the same unerring timing he has behind the wheel, grinding against me slow and steady and slick, with almost the motion of wiping fog off a mirror.

I feel his lips touch my earlobe, biting it, then saying quietly, “Closing your eyes won’t conceal you, sweet girl. I’ll find you anyway.”

My eyes snap open, and I can feel I’m glaring, my face doing something unexpected and possibly homicidal.

“Fuck you, Ardelean.” I drop my trembling legs to the bed as a lush warmth blooms from a pinpoint, right where he’s rubbing me. There’s no reeling it back. It opens into a chasm that drowns me in sudden pleasure. “Fuck you!” I cry over the white roar of climax.

“ No ,” he throws back at me. “Fuck us !”

He releases my wrists and his arms move behind my neck, holding me hard like a rag doll as he pounds into me, saying against my neck, “ Us… us… us…! ” with every thrust. My insides are soft and twitching with aftershocks.

With a broken, stifled cry that’s half euphoria and half like grief, he buries his face against my neck and tenses, shoulders rigid, arms like cables around me. I can feel him jerk and pulse inside me, and instinctively I smooth my hands down his back and clutch his ass, pulling him closer in that moment, greedy to claim every bit of him.

His hot breath gusts against my neck, and he’s murmuring something in what I assume is Romanian. The same series of words, three times, each sentence a little quieter until he sighs, kissing my shoulder and lifting his head to search my face.

There’s no way I look good—I was crying before we even started this insanity.

He shifts half off me, propping up on one elbow, and a pang of loss ripples through me as his body withdraws. Usually I have all the afterglow tenderness of a nineties gangsta rap song and can’t wait to eject a guy the second he’s done, but as the heat from Cosmin puddles beneath me, his absence feels lonesome.

Clarity returns, and I realize what I just yelled at him. A shiver of mortification falls. I cover my eyes with a hand. “Sorry for cursing at you. I don’t know why I got angry.”

“I understand.”

His lips brush mine, and I keep my eyes open purely for the enjoyment of seeing him. This close to his face, now that we’re not tearing each other apart, I can see his simple details—the delicate skin of his eyelids, the dampness of the raw-honey-colored hair at his temples, the way his cheek dimples as he lifts one corner of his mouth in a smile that I’d almost think was shy if he weren’t a narcissistic douche-canoe.

He kisses me again, whispering something so quietly I doubt it’s even meant for me.

“ What? ” I whisper back.

He runs a thumb along my shoulder. “You’re so beautiful.”

“I’m going to have Doc Bartosz check your eyes so you don’t put my fucking car into a wall.”

He bites my shoulder, laughing, and pulls me against his chest in a little-spoon embrace. Sprawling an arm out, he grabs a pillow and tucks it under our heads. His heartbeat against my spine is slowing already, owing to his conditioning. He traces my engine tattoo with a fingertip.

“It was my hope to see this today,” he says, “but the manner in which it happened was unexpected.”

“Ford flathead V8, in honor of the first thing I rebuilt entirely on my own when I was a kid. Ten years old. I’d already rebuilt a Slant-6 and a Chevy small-block with Mo, but the flathead was all me.”

His lips on the nape of my neck send shivers across my skin. “I wish I could have known you then, as a child.”

“I’d have just told you, ‘Buzz off, little towheaded fucker.’”

“You still do,” he teases.

I close my eyes and laze into the strange-yet-familiar feeling of Cosmin kissing my tattoo. Thinking about working on engines with my dad, the pain returns, a jab that sinks in deep.

“Mo’s dying, Cos.”

I can’t believe I’ve said it in plain words—a statement, not a question—let alone to the Randy Rookie.

His arms tighten around me. “I’m so sorry. He’s a good man.”

“Did you know?”

“When we were on Santorini, I determined he was ill. This morning on the bus, I understood the extent of it.” He rubs his lips feather-light against my neck.

This morning on the bus seems like a million years ago. I glance at the paper cut on my finger, as if it might be healed, proving the time between before-Cosmin and now-Cosmin must be longer.

Eerily, he says exactly what I’m thinking.

“Only a few hours have passed.” He draws my hand back and kisses the paper cut. “But, like the old song: What a difference a day makes , no?”

Another wave of fear dashes over me. Did I really let Cosmin Ardelean in, or was he always here?

I turn over to face him. I wonder if he assumes my frown owes entirely to sorrow over my father’s illness, or if he can read me so well that he knows I’m freaked out about the sex.

I rush in with words before he can see too much.

“Do you believe in an afterlife?”

His gaze angles away. “I cannot say I have belief , but I have hope. Not only because the thought of seeing my parents again is pleasing, but… I would like to think my uncle is in Hell.”

Cosmin is so unguarded right now that a shimmer of tenderness sneaks up on me despite my efforts to repress it.

“He hurt you?” I venture.

“He hurt my sister far more. That I will not forgive.” He pulls me close, as if afraid to make eye contact. “I did not know the extent of it until after my uncle died—Viorica kept the worst from me.”

My hand is on Cosmin’s waist, my thumb sliding along a ridge of muscle, and I can’t believe how natural it feels to be with him like this. The vibration of his low voice, where my ear rests against his chest, seems as much a part of me as my own heartbeat.

He combs his fingers through my hair. “She’s a better sister than I deserve. A truly excellent person.”

I think of Aislinn and am envious of Cosmin’s admiration for Viorica. Aislinn and I have never been close. I was gone for most of every year when she was little, and either harassed or ignored her when I was around. As adults we have nothing in common.

Remembering that Cosmin’s bond with his sister owes much to having been raised by an abuser, I feel guilty for my envy. My childhood was overall a joy. The image of my father’s smile comes to me, the sound of him saying Oh, my chickadee in his quiet drawl…

He’s leaving me. I’m going to be alone.

How will I do this without him?

I can’t be dating one of the drivers if I head the team. If my father passes the mantle to me, faultless professionalism is expected. He trusts me. I could never risk destroying his legacy.

And if Klaus buys Emerald? The indulgent “uncle” of just a few weeks ago might have gently reprimanded me or even turned a blind eye to a little mischief—especially if he’s breaking the rules by dating a journalist—but Team Principal/full owner Klaus Franke would likely fire my ass. Part of me already has a paranoid suspicion his recent emotional distance could be seeding the ground to force me out.

I peek at Cosmin—his eyes closed, relaxed—and anxiety over what I’ve done sweeps in on a wave of post-orgasmic clarity.

Oh God. How do I undo this disaster?