Goal

Chapter 61: Elevator Reunion

The silence after Callum’s text was absolute. Aurora had stared at her phone, the steam from the bathroom still curling around her, and felt the world tilt. She didn’t look. For three days, she didn’t look. She wrote terrible pages, drank too much coffee, and jumped every time a car slowed outside her house.

Then the invitation came. A last-minute slot at a literary festival in Milan, a panel on modern romance. Her publicist, a woman vibrating with newfound zeal, called it “fortuitous timing.” Aurora called it escape. The flight was a blur of anxiety. Milan was a cacophony of sound and light that did nothing to quiet the hum in her veins.

The bookshop was an ancient, elegant space near the Galleria, smelling of old paper and expensive espresso. Her signing table was dwarfed by a towering display of her novel, the cover feeling suddenly alien to her. A line snaked through the philosophy section. Most faces were kind, curious. Some held her book with a peculiar avidity, their eyes darting over her shoulder as if expecting a shadow to materialize.

She signed, she smiled, she answered questions about craft while feeling like a fraud. Every flash from a phone camera made her flinch.

“Do you find real-life inspiration for your love scenes?” a woman asked, leaning in with a knowing smile.

Aurora’s pen stilled. “I think all writers draw from the emotional truth of their experiences,” she said, the practiced answer ash in her mouth.

She was scribbling her name for a teenager when the air in the shop changed. It wasn’t a sound first, but a pressure, a collective inhalation from the staff near the entrance. A few heads turned. Then the whispers started, sharp and sibilant, cutting through the quiet bookshop murmur.Nordskov. È lui.Cazzo.

Her heart stopped. She didn’t need to look up. She felt him. A current in the air, a magnetic pull that straightened her spine and drained the blood from her face.

Callum moved through the shop like a shark through calm water. He wore dark jeans, a simple black sweater, sunglasses tucked into the collar. He looked ordinary and utterly, devastatingly famous all at once. His expression was neutral, but his jaw was set, his green eyes fixed on her with an intensity that scattered the crowd before him.He stopped at her table. The line parted around him.

“Aurora,” he said. Her name was a low vibration in the sudden quiet.

“Callum.” Her voice was a thread. “This is a surprise.”

“Finished early. Thought I’d come see an author at work.” He picked up a copy of her book from the stack, thumbed the pages. The casual act was a performance, and everyone was watching. “Can I steal you? There’s something I need to clarify about the ending.”

Her publicist materialized, eyes wide. “Of course! We were just wrapping up.”

Aurora stood on unsteady legs. He offered his hand, not for chivalry, but as a claim. She took it. His grip was firm, warm, anchoring. He led her past the murmuring crowd, past the clicking phone cameras, toward a discreet door marked ‘Staff Only.’ A security guard—his, she realized—opened it, revealing a stark, concrete service corridor and a freight elevator.

The door thudded shut behind them, muffling the world. The elevator was old, a cage of scuffed steel and greasy cables. He hit a button for the top floor, then turned to her.

The calm façade shattered.

In one motion, he pinned her against the cold mirrored wall of the elevator, his body a solid line of heat against hers. His hands caged her face, his thumbs rough against her cheeks. “Did you read it?” he demanded, his voice raw.

“No.”

“Good.” His mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss of greeting, but of possession, of desperation, a punctuation mark to a week of silence and scrutiny. She tasted the faint trace of coffee, the sharp edge of his fear. Her hands fisted in his sweater, holding on as the elevator jerked upward.

He broke the kiss, his breathing ragged. “I’ve been going out of my mind.”

“I know,” she whispered, her lips swollen. “Me too.”

His hands dropped, sliding down her sides, over the simple wool dress she’d chosen for the event. He gripped her hips, grinding her against the hardening line of his cock, making her gasp. “Fucking photographers at the training ground.Questions. That fucking article.” He yanked the hem of her dress up, bunching it around her waist. His fingers hooked into the lace of her panties. “Everywhere I looked, I saw your face. Not the one they printed. The one from the shower.”

He tore the lace, a sharp sound in the metal space. The cool air hit her skin, then the hotter press of his palm. He cupped her, his fingers sliding through her slickness with a gruff, approving noise. “You’re soaked. For me?”

“Always for you.” The admission was torn from her, a primal truth.

He unfastened his jeans with a ruthless jerk, freeing himself. He was thick, flushed, eager. He nudged at her entrance, his eyes locked on hers in the mirror. There was no preamble, no gentle easing. He drove into her in one deep, punishing thrust, filling her so completely she cried out, the sound echoing off the steel.

“Fuck,” he groaned, his forehead dropping to her shoulder. He was hot and hard inside her, a staggering reality after days of digital ghosts. “Missed you so fucking much.”

He began to move. Short, deep strokes at first, a reclamation. The elevator clanked and shuddered, its ascent a disorienting counter-rhythm to his hips. Her cheek was pressed against the cold mirror, fogging with her breath. She could see their reflection—her dress rumpled around her waist, his powerful body moving over hers, the stark hunger on his face.

“Look,” he commanded, his voice a hot rasp in her ear. “Look at us.”

Her eyes fluttered open. In the blurred mirror, she saw herself being taken, her own desire reflected back at her, raw and unadorned. It was obscene.It was perfect. He hooked an arm under her thigh, hiking her leg higher, changing the angle, hitting a spot that made her vision whiten.

“Callum!”

“That’s it,” he growled, his pace turning frantic, desperate. Each thrust was a hammer blow driving out the fear, the distance, the headlines. His fingers bit into the flesh of her thigh, sure to leave bruises. His other hand was tangled in her hair, gently pulling, keeping her where he wanted her. The scent of them, sweat and sex and her perfume, filled the small, rattling space.

She felt the coil in her belly tighten, a wire drawn to snapping. His rhythm fractured, his control slipping. He was mumbling against her skin, a stream of filth and endearments. “You feel like heaven. Gonna come inside you. Need to feel it. Claim you right here, fuck the world.”

His words, the relentless drive of his cock, the surreal danger of being caught—it all fused into a lightning strike of pleasure. Her climax ripped through her, a violent, shuddering wave that clenched around him, pulling a ragged shout from his throat. He pushed deep, held her there as he emptied himself, his body taut against hers, a final, shuddering thrust that echoed the elevator’s shuddering halt.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the hum of idle machinery. He softened inside her, but didn’t pull away. He kept her pinned against the mirror, his weight a comfort.

The intercom crackled to life, a voice asking in Italian if everything was alright.

Callum reached over, hit the ‘Door Open’ button. They were on a stockroom floor, deserted, boxes stacked to the ceiling. He gently withdrew, turning her to face him. He smoothed her dress down, his touch now tender. He used his thumb to wipe the smudge of her lipstick from his mouth, then carefully dabbed at the corner of her lips.

“Your glasses are fogged,” he said softly.

She took them off, wiped them on the hem of his sweater. When she put them back on, the world cleared, and he was just Callum again, his eyes soft, his hair messed from her hands. The fury was spent.

“The team,” she started, her voice hoarse.

“They know,” he said, tucking himself away, fastening his jeans. “Coach saw the article. Had a word. They’ll be dickheads about it, but they’ll fall in line.” He pulled her into a proper hug, his chin resting on top of her head. “I don’t care anymore. Let them talk.”

She clung to him, the adrenaline receding, leaving a deep, trembling exhaustion. “I’m scared,” she whispered into his chest, the admission finally voiced.

“I know.” He kissed her hair. “So am I. But we’re in it now.” He took her hand, lacing their fingers. “Come on. My car’s downstairs. Let’s get out of here.”

He led her toward a service stairwell, away from the crowd. As they descended into the quiet, cool dark, the echo of their coupling still seemed to hang in the air around them—a secret, furious answer to everything the world had thrown at them.