[Soren’s POV]
The model's name is Katarina. Or Kristina. Something simple and symmetrical that I've already half-forgotten by the time we reach her hotel room.
This tells me everything about my state of mind and nothing I want to hear.
She's stunning—objectively, empirically stunning. Long legs, nice tits and slim silm silhouette, sharp collarbones, a smile that could sell anything from perfume to pension plans.
She laughed at my jokes at the sponsor event, touched my arm, leaned in with all the right signals. Safe. Familiar. The kind of woman I've been sleeping with since I was sixteen.
Bodies interchangeable, the script so rehearsed I could perform it with my eyes closed.
I kiss her against the door of her room, and she tastes like prosecco and lip gloss—sweet and uncomplicated. Her fingers work my shirt buttons with practiced eagerness, and I slide her dress off her shoulders, letting the fabric pool at her feet.
She's beautiful beneath it. Lace bra, matching underwear, skin soft and warm and entirely, devastatingly wrong.
Sluta. Stop.
I guide her toward the bed because movement is easier than thinking. She pulls me down, wraps her legs around me, and her hands are everywhere—my chest, my shoulders, trailing down my stomach with light, careful fingers.
The touch is gentle, tender even. The kind of softness women think men want, and normally I'd perform gratitude for it. Tonight my skin registers it as insufficient.
Not enough pressure. Not enough demand. Not enough force.
My mouth finds her neck and she arches into me, moaning softly, her nails grazing my back in delicate lines that barely register. Her body is all curves and yielding warmth, and when I settle between her thighs the geometry feels wrong as well.
Too open, too accommodating, my hips searching for resistance that isn't there.
I reach for the condom, familiar choreography, and she watches me roll it on with heavy-lidded eyes and whispers, "I've wanted this all night…"
My brain, the traitorous organ, supplies a different voice.
This isn't one of your hookups, Lindqvist. You don't get to run the playbook.
Rough. Commanding. A voice that didn't whisper—it demanded.
I push inside her and she gasps, pulling me closer, her ankles locking behind my back. She's wet, warm, everything my body should recognize as pleasure.
I thrust and she moves with me, fluid and willing, her moans soft and breathy against my ear. "Yes, like that, that's so good…"
The encouragement should do something. It always has before. Still, I'm cataloguing differences I don't want to notice—her moans are too high, too performative, pitched for my benefit rather than torn from her involuntarily.
Her body moulds around mine instead of fighting for its own space and she runs her fingers through my hair gently when what I'm chasing is a fist that pulls.
I increase the pace, trying to outrun the comparison. Her back arches, breasts pressing against my chest, and I bury my face in her neck to block out everything except sensation.
Skin against skin. Friction. The mechanical pursuit of release.
"You feel incredible," she breathes, and my cock twitches—not at her words but at the ghost they summon.
Stop performing.
Nico's voice, rough with authority, his hand gripping my jaw hard enough to bruise. The memory hits my bloodstream like a shot of adrenaline, and my hips snap forward hard enough to make her cry out.
Fan!
Hell, my body is responding to the memory more than to the woman beneath me.
I finish with my eyes shut, chasing a weight that isn't there, a resistance that doesn't exist, the phantom impression of hands that grip rather than caress. The orgasm is mechanical.
She curls against me afterward, warm and satisfied, murmuring something about doing this again. I wait until her breathing evens out, extract myself without waking her, and dress in the dark with the efficiency of someone fleeing a crime scene.
The Stockholm dawn is three hours ahead of Monaco when my sister Maren calls. I'm in the taxi back to the team hotel, watching streetlights blur past, and her name on the screen feels like a detonation I can't defuse.
"Tell me everything." Her voice carries that particular editorial sharpness she gets when she's building a story. "P2 and P3? After years of you two trying to murder each other on track? The paddock is losing its mind!"
"The car's improved. Setup changes, tyre strategy…"
"Spare me the press conference version, Soren, I watched the press conference." A pause, then her tone shifts—curious, probing. "I saw the team photos, by the way. The ones from the shoot when Nico joined."
My hand tightens on the phone. "And?"
"You two look different together now. More intense." She lets the word settle. "The early photos were hostile, and these new ones are... something else. The photographer captured something and I can't quite—"
"They're promotional photos, Maren. They captured whatever the marketing team paid for."
My voice comes out too sharp, too defensive, slicing through her observation with a force that has nothing to do with photography and everything to do with the panic detonating behind my ribs.
The silence on the line is devastating, and I can practically hear her journalist instincts clicking into place.
The snapped response, the disproportionate reaction, the brother who's suddenly treating a casual observation like an accusation.
"Okay," she says quietly. Not pushing, but not retreating either. Just noting. "I'll be covering the next race. We can catch up then."
She hangs up, and I sit in the taxi knowing I've revealed far more than any honest answer would have.
Three days pass. Three days of sleeping badly and jerking off to memories I immediately delete from conscious processing.
The team PR event is held in Apex's hospitality suite—branded backdrops, ring lights, the particular desperation of a midfield team trying to generate social media engagement.
I'm nursing a sparkling water when Astrid materializes with her clipboard. "Soren! Elise Laurent is here—lifestyle influencer, two million followers, and she adores you."
"Astrid, I'm not really…"
"She's sponsored by three of our key partners. Henrik wants cross-platform visibility." She steers me by the elbow toward a blonde in a designer dress. "Elise, this is Soren. Soren, be charming."
Elise beams. Beautiful in the way expensive things are beautiful—polished, precise. "I've been dying to meet you. I watched your Monaco race four times."
"Four times?" I slip my arm around her waist, let the old machinery engage. "That's either very flattering or very concerning."
She laughs—bright, easy, the kind that photographs well. "Your overtake on lap twelve was incredible. The way you just committed to the gap…"
"Most people say that's my best quality. Commitment to questionable gaps."
The cameras flash and I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, lean in close, and perform the golden-boy routine with aggressive enthusiasm that borders on desperate.
Every gesture calculated to broadcast a version of myself I'm no longer certain exists.
Then I feel it before I see it—that specific weight of being watched by someone who sees through every layer. I look up and find Nico leaning against the far wall, arms crossed, observing the display with an expression of amused contempt.
Not angry. Not jealous. Just entertained, the way you'd watch someone try to convince a room the sky is green while standing next to a window.
Our eyes lock. The PR event, Elise's warmth against my side, the cameras—everything compresses to a single point of contact across thirty feet of crowded room.
Nico's mouth moves, forming one word with deliberate precision—no sound, just the shape on his lips, clear and unmistakable.
Liar.