Chapter 30: Midnight Distractions
The click-clack of her keyboard was the only sound in the warm, lamplit bubble of her writing nook. Words scrolled across the screen, a frantic, beautiful torrent. The scene was almost writing itself—the smell of liniment, the echo of a stadium tunnel, the desperate press of a body against cold concrete. Aurora’s glasses had slid to the tip of her nose.
A calloused thumb swept the hair from her neck. Lips, warm and soft, brushed the exposed skin there. She shivered, her fingers faltering on the keys.
“Don’t stop,” Callum murmured, his voice sleep-roughened. He was a solid, warm presence behind her chair, shirtless in a pair of grey sweatpants. He’d been reading over her shoulder for twenty minutes, silent except for these occasional, distracting touches. “It’s good. It’s… visceral.”
She hummed, a non-committal sound, and tried to recapture the sentence. His hands settled on her shoulders, kneading the tight muscles with a practiced pressure that made her want to melt. She forced her spine straight.
“It’s just a first draft,” she said, more to herself than to him. “It’s probably terrible.”
“It’s not.” His fingers traced idle patterns along her collarbones, dipping beneath the loose neckline of her sweater. “You’re capturing the… adrenaline. The disconnect. How everything outside goes quiet.”
He’d know.
The memory of the actual tunnel, of his mouth on hers and the taste of blood and victory, flashed behind her eyes. She’d spent the last forty-eight hours in a strange haze—half euphoria from HarperCollins, half shell-shock from the raw, public way he’d claimed her. They’d slipped out of the stadium unseen, but the ghost of it clung to them.
His hands slid down her arms, his chest pressing against the back of the chair. He was reading the last paragraph she’d typed. She could feel the slight vibration of his breath against her ear.
He bit her lip, a sharp punctuation of possession. The crowd was a distant ocean. All that existed was the hard line of his body and the stark, terrifying truth: she wanted the fiction and the man, and she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
Callum went very still. Then, in one smooth motion, he spun the chair around. The laptop wobbled. He crouched in front of her, his green eyes level with hers, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. The desk lamp gilded the sharp planes of his face, leaving his eyes in shadow.
“Is that true?” he asked, his voice low.
Aurora’s throat felt tight. She pushed her glasses up. “It’s the character’s truth.”
“Bullshit.” It wasn’t angry. It was unbearably gentle. He plucked the glasses from her face and set them on the desk, blurring the edges of the room. “You’re hiding behind the keyboard, Aurora. You got the message of your lifetime and you’ve buried yourself in here for two days. Talk to me.”
She looked away, at the stack of notebooks, the half-empty mug of cold tea. “I’m scared.”
“Of the book?”
“Of this.” Her gesture took in the room, him, the invisible line between their two houses. “Of that… thing in the tunnel. That wasn’t just sex. That was you putting a flag in the ground. And now the whole world might start digging.Your world. What if they dig up my manuscript? What if they call it a trashy, exploitative tell-all before it’s even finished? What if they say I’m just some fan who fucked a player for material?” The words tumbled out, sharp and brittle with the fear she’d been compressing into keystrokes.
Callum listened, his expression unreadable. He stood up, his tall frame suddenly dominating the cozy space. For a heart-stopping second, she thought he’d walk out. Instead, he hooked his hands under her arms and pulled her up, then sat himself in the warm chair and tugged her down onto his lap.
She let out a little oomph, her balance lost. She was straddling him, her knees on either side of his hips, the soft wool of her oversized sweater pooling around them. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her close, his face buried against her sternum.
“First of all,” he said, his voice muffled by the fabric, “my ‘world’ is a circus of entitled dickheads and gossip vultures. They’re going to say shit no matter what. You can’t control it.” He leaned back, looking up at her. “Second, that ‘thing’ in the tunnel was the best fucking moment of my week.Maybe my month. So don’t you dare cheapen it by calling it a flag in the ground. It was real. This is real.”
He punctuated the last word by sliding his hands under the hem of her sweater, his palms warm and rough against the bare skin of her waist. She shuddered.
“You’ve written enough for tonight, sweetheart,” he murmured, his thumbs stroking the dip of her spine. “You’re in your head. Time for some real-life research.”
He kissed her then, a slow, deep kiss that tasted of late-night coffee and quiet understanding. It was a world away from the tunnel’s violence. This was a deliberate, grounding seduction. His hands roamed up her back, unhooking her bra with a practiced flick before smoothing back down to cup her backside, pulling her tighter against the firm ridge of his erection.
She broke the kiss, gasping. “Callum…”
“Shhh.” He nibbled her jaw. “What’s your character feeling right now?After the tunnel? Is she scared? Overthinking?”
“Yes,” Aurora breathed as his mouth found her pulse point.
“And what does the footballer do?” His hands pushed the sweater up, over her head, leaving her in just her jeans and the open bra. The lamplight painted her skin gold. He looked his fill, his gaze heating her more than any touch. “Does he let her hide? Or does he remind her that the only truth that matters is the one they make together?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He stood, lifting her with him, and carried her the few steps to the worn velvet sofa in the corner. He laid her down, following her, his body a welcome weight. The kissing turned hungry again, a fusion of the tunnel’s desperation and this new, terrifying tenderness. He stripped her jeans and his sweatpants away, and when he entered her this time, it was with a slow, devastating thoroughness that made her cry out, her nails digging into his shoulders.
He moved with a focused intensity, his eyes locked on hers. “Tell me what you’re afraid of,” he said, his voice strained with the effort of his control.
“The leaks… the rumors…” she choked out, arching beneath him.
“Fuck the rumors.” He drove deeper, hitting a spot that shattered her coherence. “What else?”
“That I’m not… good enough.” The admission was torn from her, raw and awful.“For the book. For this.”
He stilled, buried inside her. “Look at me.”
She did. His face was flushed, his hair a mess, his eyes blazing with an emotion that stripped her bare.
“You are a fucking genius,” he said, each word a low, vehement promise. “And you’re mine. They don’t get to have you. Not your talent, not your fear, not this.” He began to move again, a relentless, perfect rhythm designed to wreck her. “Only me. You give the words to them. You give this,” he thrust hard, “to me.”
It was possessive, arrogant, and exactly what she needed. The spiral of fear in her mind blurred, then melted under the physical certainty of him. Her climax built, a tidal wave from her toes upward, tightening her stomach, shortening her breath.
“Callum—“
“I’m here,” he growled against her mouth. “I’ve got you. Let go.”
She did. It crashed over her, a silent, shaking release that felt like flying and falling all at once. He followed moments after, his own groan a ragged thing against her throat, his body rigid before collapsing onto her, spent and heavy.
They lay tangled in the quiet aftermath, the only sound their slowing breaths. The cursor on her laptop still blinked, patiently waiting. The real world, with its publishers and paparazzi, lurked outside the circle of lamplight.
His phone buzzed on the floor, next to their discarded clothes.
He ignored it, nuzzling into her hair.
“It’s probably your agent,” she said, her voice thin.
“It’s always someone,” he sighed. He shifted, pulling the throw blanket from the back of the sofa over them. He propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at her. His expression was serious. “We need a plan. Before the storm hits.”
“A plan?”
“For when they find out. And they will.” He traced the line of her eyebrow. “I’m not hiding you, Aurora. I’m done with that. But we do it on our terms. A statement from me. A carefully timed leak about your book deal. We control the narrative.”
It was strategic. It was the mind of a man who’d lived in the public eye for a decade. It was also a shield, offered to her.
“You’d do that?” she whispered. “Associate your shiny brand with my messy, unpublished novel?”
He smiled, a real, unguarded smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Sweetheart, after what you just wrote? I’m banking on you making me look even better.” He kissed her forehead. “Now go to sleep. Tomorrow, we fight the dragons.”
He settled back, pulling her into the curve of his body. Aurora closed her eyes, listening to the steady thump of his heart. The fear was still there, a cold knot in her stomach. But it was surrounded now, outnumbered by the warmth of him, and by the first, faint flicker of a plan. Of a shared front. She wasn’t in the tunnel alone anymore.