Chapter 2: The First Touch
The stillness in the suite was absolute, a vacuum sealed against the city’s constant hum thirty floors below. Lando felt the exact moment Lily’s breathing shifted from post-coital languor to something tighter, shallower. Her fingertip, which had been tracing meaningless circles on his bicep, stilled.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice gravelly with disuse.
She didn’t answer for a long moment. He could feel the anxiety radiating from her, a cold current under her warm skin. Finally, she spoke to the ceiling. “What happens tomorrow?”
He knew what she meant. It wasn’t about check-out times. It was about the yawning chasm of their lives. His flight to Monaco for a sponsor commitment. Her 6 AM call time for a music video shoot that would last sixteen hours. The ocean between them, again.
“I get on a plane,” he said, because honesty was the only currency left. “You go to work.”
She turned her head on the pillow, her eyes glossy in the refracted city light. “And then?”
“And then I call you from the airport. And you’ll probably be in makeup and tell me to be quiet because your stylist is doing your eyeliner.”
A faint, reluctant smile touched her lips. “Probably.”
He rolled onto his side, facing her fully. “And then I’ll call you from my flat. And you’ll call me on your lunch break, if you get one. And we’ll do it every day, until I see you again.”
“It sounds exhausting,” she whispered, the confession raw.
“It is.” He didn’t sugarcoat it. “It’s fucking brutal. But it’s the deal. It’s our deal. Unless you want to back out now.” He said it calmly, but his heart was a hammer against his ribs. He was giving her an out, the one he knew she’d been looking for for months. The safe exit.
She searched his face. “Do you want me to back out?”
“No.”
The word was simple, final. It seemed to anchor her. She shifted, moving closer until her forehead rested against his collarbone. “I don’t either. I just… I’m scared of needing you. And then you’re not there.”
He understood. He’d felt that same terror in January, needing her and believing she’d never truly be his. It had driven him to that stupid, spiteful fuck in Dubai, a mistake whose ghost now lived permanently in this room between them. He pulled her tighter.
“I’m here now,” he murmured into her hair. It was all he could offer.
Her hand slid down his stomach, fingers skating through the coarse hair below his navel. His body, spent and satisfied just minutes before, stirred with immediate, unnerving interest. She wrapped her fingers around his softening length, and he inhaled sharply.
“Lily…”
“I want to feel you again,” she said, her voice low, intent. It wasn’t a question. It was a reclamation. As if by taking him inside her body again, she could solidify the uncertain future. “Before tomorrow.”
Her touch grew firmer, stroking him to full, aching hardness. This time, there was no nervous hesitation. There was a focused, almost desperate hunger. She pushed at his shoulder, guiding him onto his back, and swung a leg over his hips, straddling him. The sheet fell away. She was a silhouette against the neon grid of Seoul, her curves etched in light.
She didn’t wait, didn’t tease. Guiding him with her hand, she sank down onto him in one slow, relentless slide. They both groaned, the sensation impossibly more intense now, her body familiar yet still breathtakingly tight. She began to move, a deep, rolling grind of her hips, her head falling back.
He gripped her thighs, watching her, utterly captivated. This was a different Lily. The performer’s control was gone, replaced by something purely instinctual. Her skin grew slick with a fine sweat. Her breaths were ragged gasps that echoed in the quiet room.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice thick.
Her eyes snapped open, meeting his. The connection was a live wire. He sat up abruptly, wrapping his arms around her to keep her impaled on him, and crushed his mouth to hers. The kiss was filthy, all tongue and teeth and shared breath. He fell back, taking her with him, never breaking the kiss, never letting her slip away.
The pace turned frantic. She rode him with a punishing rhythm, each downward slam punctuated by a sharp cry he swallowed. He could feel the second orgasm building in her, her internal muscles beginning to flutter and spasm. He shifted his angle, driving up into her, and hit a spot that made her scream into the pillow.
“Fuck, Lando, right there, don’t stop, god, don’t stop!” she chanted, her composure shattering completely.
He was close, the pressure coiling unbearably at the base of his spine. He slipped a hand between their sweat-slicked bodies, his thumb finding her swollen clit. He rubbed rough, tight circles.
“Come for me,” he snarled. “Let me feel it. Now.”
She shattered. Her body locked around him, a taut bowstring, before convulsing in a series of violent, pulsing contractions. Her scream was muffled against his neck, her teeth sinking into his skin. The painful, perfect clutch of her cunt milked his own orgasm from him. He held her hips down, driving up into her as deep as he could go, and emptied himself with a groan that was half agony, half prayer.
For a long time, she was dead weight on top of him, both of them drowning in the aftermath. Her heartbeat thundered against his. Slowly, she pushed herself up, her arms trembling. In the dim light, her face was streaked with tears he hadn’t felt her shed.
“Why are you crying?” he asked softly, brushing a thumb under her eye.
She shook her head, unable or unwilling to explain. She slid off him, the loss of connection feeling suddenly profound, and padded naked to the bathroom. He heard the shower turn on.
He gave her a few minutes before following. The bathroom was all marble and steam. She was under the rainfall showerhead, her back to him, water sluicing down the elegant line of her spine. He slid the glass door open and stepped in behind her. She didn’t turn.
He reached for the soap, working it into a lather in his hands. He started with her shoulders, kneading the tense muscles there. She let out a soft sigh, her head bowing forward. He washed her with a methodical, tender thoroughness—her back, her arms, the back of her neck. When his soapy hands smoothed over the curve of her ass and between her thighs from behind, she jumped.
“Just washing you,” he said, his voice low in her ear. He did it clinically, gently, with no expectation. It was an intimacy deeper than sex. An act of service. Of care.
He turned her around. Her eyes were red-rimmed but clear. He washed her front, his touch lingering on her breasts, her stomach. He knelt, soaping her legs, her feet. When he rose, she took the soap from his hands.
“My turn,” she said.
Her hands on him were just as careful, just as complete. She washed every part of him, her fingers tracing the contours of his muscles, the old scar on his knee from karting, the fresh bite mark on his shoulder. When she wrapped her soapy hand around his cock, now soft and spent, it wasn’t a sexual gesture. It was a claiming. An acknowledgment. She rinsed him clean.
They stood under the hot water until it began to run lukewarm. She turned it off. He wrapped her in a thick, white towel, then one around his own waist. Back in the bedroom, she dug through a drawer and tossed him a pair of black sweatpants. They were too short, sitting high on his ankles. She pulled on an oversized hoodie, nothing else.
They ended up on the vast sofa by the window, a bowl of grapes between them, stealing glances at the city. The silence was comfortable now, the earlier panic diffused.
“I have to leave at four,” he said, watching a train snake through the lighted districts below.
“I know.”
“Will you be asleep?”
“I don’t think so.”
He picked up a grape, rolled it between his fingers. “That thing you said before. About me doing whatever I want.”
She went very still.
He looked at her. “You have to stop saying that. I’m not going to do whatever I want. I’m going to do what I said I’d do. Which is be your boyfriend. So when you say that, it feels like you’re waiting for me to fuck up. Like you’re giving me permission to hurt you before I even have a chance not to.”
The truth of it hung in the air, ugly and plain. She pulled her knees up to her chest, hiding inside the hoodie. “Old habits,” she finally said, her voice small.
“Break them.”
She met his gaze. There was a challenge in her eyes now, a flash of her usual steel. “You break yours, too. No more hiding. No more Dubai shit. If you’re angry, or lonely, or confused, you call me. Even if it’s three AM and I’m onstage in another hemisphere. You call. You don’t go to a club and let the first girl who looks at you take you home.”
It was a fair trade. A brutal one. “Deal.”
She uncurled slightly. “This is insane, you know that? What we’re trying to do.”
“Completely,” he agreed, popping the grape into his mouth.
A ghost of a real smile appeared. “My members are going to have so many questions. My manager is going to have a fit.”
“My publicist already sent me three drafts of a ‘no comment’ statement.”
They looked at each other and, simultaneously, a laugh bubbled up. It was tense, tinged with hysteria, but it was real. They were two people staring into a logistical nightmare, finding a sliver of absurd humor in it.
Later, in the dark of the bedroom again, they lay facing each other. Sleep was a distant prospect.
“When do I see you again?” she asked.
“Three weeks. The Monaco Grand Prix. You’ll come?”
“If my schedule allows. I’ll try.”
“Try hard.”
She poked him in the ribs. “Don’t be demanding. It’s unattractive.”
He grabbed her poking finger and brought it to his lips, kissing the tip. “Liar.”
She shifted closer, until their faces were inches apart. “Lando?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. For staying. For… all of it.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. So he just kissed her, slow and deep, until her body relaxed into sleep. He held her, watching the digital clock on the bedside table march relentlessly toward 4 AM.
When the silent vibration of his phone finally glowed on the nightstand, he extricated himself with painful care. He dressed in the dark, the city’s eternal glow providing just enough light. He shoved his things into his duffel, his movements quiet and efficient. He paused at the side of the bed, looking down at her. She was curled on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek, her lips slightly parted. She looked younger, unguarded.
He couldn’t stop himself. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her temple. She murmured, her brow furrowing, but didn’t wake.
He scribbled a note on hotel stationery, leaving it on her pillow: You won’t wake up alone. I’m just in the air. Call you when I land. – L
The ride down in the elevator was a descent back into reality. The pristine lobby, the doorman’s polite nod, the black car idling at the curb with his assistant already inside, tapping on a tablet. The door closed, sealing him in quiet leather and privacy glass.
“Flight’s on time, sir. Everything alright?” his assistant asked, not looking up.
Lando stared out the window as the hotel, and the floor where she slept, shrank behind them. The hollow ache in his chest was immediate and physical. It felt like he’d left a vital organ behind in that penthouse.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears. “Everything’s fine.”
But as the car merged into the pre-dawn traffic, speeding toward the airport and the separation that was their normal, he knew nothing would be simple again. The memory of her tight heat, her tears on his skin, the taste of her—it was all a possession now. And he was equally possessed. He pulled out his phone, ignoring the dozens of notifications, and opened his messages. He typed a single line, sending it into the ether, not caring if she saw it now or in six hours.
Already miss you.
The phone buzzed in his hand barely thirty seconds later, just as the first grey light of dawn cracked the horizon. His heart lurched.
Her reply was just an image. A selfie, taken in the dark of the bedroom moments after he’d left. She was holding his note against her cheek, her eyes puffy with sleep but clear, looking directly at the camera. No text. Just the proof she was there, and he had been.
He saved the photo, locked his phone, and closed his eyes. The hum of the tires on the highway became the only sound. The chapter of finally having her was closed. The next one—the hard one, the real one, of keeping her across oceans and headlines—was beginning. And for the first time, the fear he felt was edged not with doubt, but with a ferocious, singular determination.