[Nico’s POV]
My physio works the knot below my left scapula with her elbow for forty minutes, and by the time I swipe into the hotel suite my shoulders have finally dropped from their permanent residence near my ears.
The corridor is quiet—most of the team is still at dinner, which means the room should be empty, dark and mine for at least an hour.
The moment door opens, sound hits first. A woman's moan, breathy and theatrical, followed by the wet noise of mouths separating.
When I’m in, I immediately see Soren shirtless on the couch, his back muscles shifting under the suite's dim lighting as he moves over a woman I didn’t recognize—pretty brunette, her dress hiked to her waist and one stiletto still on, the other abandoned on the carpet.
Her legs are wrapped around him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, and his hips roll with an almost punishing rhythm that drags loud moans out of her graceful throat.
She sees me first and her eyes go immediately wide, hands flying to Soren's chest, pushing. "Someone's… There's someone—"
Soren doesn't stop when he looks at me over his shoulder before his hand grips her hip, pulling her back against him, and his mouth finds her neck.
"It's fine," he murmurs against her skin, voice low and deliberately steady. "Just my teammate. Ignore him."
She hesitates—embarrassed and uncertain, her flush deepening from arousal to mortification. Soren coaxes her with his mouth, a reassuring hand sliding up her ribs, whispering something I can't hear.
His eyes lift over his shoulder and find mine across the room again.
Deliberate. Aggressive. A challenge thrown down like a gauntlet, daring me to react, to leave, to prove that this bothers me. He's not just fucking her, he's making a point—to himself, to me.
To whatever terrifying thing has been building between us since Monaco.
Que espetáculo. What a show.
My reaction surprises everyone, including myself.
I close the door behind me, dropping my kit bag by the entrance, and walk calmly to the kitchenette. The glass clinks against the counter as I pour water from the filtered pitcher, each movement precise and unhurried.
I lean against the marble, take a slow drink, and watch them over the rim with an expression I arrange into a bored appraisal—the same face I wear reviewing a competitor's telemetry that doesn't impress me.
"Don't stop on my account." My voice comes out level, almost conversational. "I live here too. So if you want to put on a little show, Lindqvist, I'm happy to rate the performance."
Soren's jaw tightens and his hips stutter for a moment—loss of rhythm, brief but unmistakable—before he recovers, driving into her even harder, overcompensating. The woman gasps, gripping his arms, and her head tipping back against the cushion.
She's committed now, too far gone to stop, her body chasing the finish regardless of the audience. I take a slow drink, eyes never leaving them.
"She's trying to tell you something, you know," I murmur, my voice taking on a honeyed quality. "The way she keeps shifting, pressing back against you. She wants you deeper."
The woman whimpers, and I can see the flush deepen across her skin.
She's listening to every word. As well as Soren.
"See how she responds to that?" I continue, setting down the glass with deliberate precision. "She likes being talked about. Don't you, gorgeous?"
She nods breathlessly, and Soren's hands tighten on her hips.
"You're being too gentle with her," I observe, my voice dropping to something almost intimate. "Look at her… She wants to feel it tomorrow."
This time Soren does adjust, his next thrust harder, more demanding, and the woman cries out in pleasure.
"That's it," I encourage, and now there's pure seduction in my tone. "But you're forgetting about her. She's been so good for you, taking everything you give her… Doesn't she deserve a little attention?"
I watch as understanding flickers across Soren's face, his hand moving instinctively toward where she needs it most.
"God, yes!" the woman gasps, and when Soren's fingers find her clit, she nearly collapses from the sensation.
The woman arches hard off the couch, a sharp cry tearing from her throat, her thighs clamping around his hips. Her breathing fractures into staccato bursts, hands scrambling against his back, nails leaving red tracks across his shoulder blades.
Then her eyes find mine, dark with arousal and something like invitation. "You could..." she starts breathlessly, "you could join us, I wouldn't mind."
The air goes electric with possibility. Soren's eyes snap to mine, pupils blown wide, and for a moment I see naked want there—not just for her, but for the idea of me.
Interesting.
I chuckle softly, shaking my head. “Oh, no, gorgeous. That’s all you two. I’m just here for the show.”
Soren drives into her mechanically, his technique now guided by some primal instinct, and the irony is so precise it borders on cruelty—he's fucking a woman while taking commentation from the man he claims means nothing.
She finishes with a shudder that rolls through her whole body, her back bowing, a strangled sound escaping between clenched teeth. Soren's hips keep moving—three more thrusts, four—then slow. Then stop.
His chest heaves, sweat tracking down his spine, every muscle locked in a tension that screams unfinished.
He didn't come.
She lies there breathing hard, flushed, slowly registering the shift in the room's temperature—the way Soren has gone still above her, the way his expression has emptied of everything except a flat, distant blankness.
"You should go," he says.
His voice is hollow, scraped clean of the charm he'd been performing.
She searches his face, finds nothing there for her, and sits up. The gathering of dignity is quick and efficient—dress pulled down, shoes located, a brief hesitation at the door where she considers saying something and decides against it.
The latch clicks behind her with the finality of a verdict. Silence. The suite settles into it like sediment after a storm.
I set down my glass and then I look at him—still shirtless on the couch, breathing hard, the evidence of his arousal straining against his trousers with an insistence his body can't fake.
His fists clench against the cushions, knuckles white, fury burning in his eyes alongside something rawer and more desperate.
"You didn't finish." I state it the way I'd note a mechanical failure in post-race analysis—factual, stripped of judgment.
"Fuck off." His voice cracks at the edges, ragged with anger and something that sounds terrifyingly close to need.
I don't reply. The distance between the kitchenette and the couch is maybe four metres—an insignificant gap that somehow contains everything we've been avoiding.
I close it slowly, deliberately, each step measured, watching his pupils dilate as I approach.
His breathing accelerates. His hands grip the cushions harder, the tendons in his forearms standing in sharp relief. He's coiled with tension—fight or flight or the third option neither of us will name.
I stop close enough that he has to tilt his head back to meet my eyes.
"Roll over." My voice comes out quiet, absolute. Not a request. Not a suggestion. A command delivered with the certainty of someone who already knows the answer.