Page 84 of Tipping Point
I lower my feet and he sets me down gently on the floor between the shards of the broken cup. He nuzzles my neck, his fingers already tracing the edge of his sweatshirt, edging it up over my thighs.
I take in the sight of him, naked, up close.
All the drivers are extremely fit to deal with the rigorous demands of driving, but seeing it up close is always a pleasure.
His whole torso, upper arms and thighs are covered in an intricate tattoo design, completely hidden when he’s dressed. Any open spaces are filled with patterns and solid blackouts, everything tied together seamlessly into one big canvas.
Over the hard planes of his stomach my fingers trail the outline of a racetrack, interspersed with a checkered flag, tire tracks, and debris from an airborne race car, captured eternally mid crash. A large hourglass, with time running out, a few grains of sand still left to spill through. A raven perched atop the hourglass, it’s talons piercing the glass, and small cracks running across it like spiderwebs. A tree of life in the hollow of his chest, the branches forming a four-leafed clover. And over his chest, the Latin phrase Omnia Vanitas, the script so thorny the edges blur into the design around it.
“What does it mean?”
“Hm…” He snatches my fingers lazily, drawing them to his mouth where he grazes my knuckles with his lips.
My thoughts grow heavy. When he’s like this, I can’t resist him. Slow and steady, every turn of his hand as he runs his fingers down my side is intentional. As if he has no other purpose than to worship me.
“How do you do it every time?”
His mouth, now occupied with teasing kisses down my ribs, mumbles against my flesh.
“Do what?”
“Reel me in, every time I try to walk away.”
He stills. Looks up at me earnestly with black eyes, his lids heavy and low.
“I don’t.”
He dips his chin to run a wet circle around my belly button with his tongue.
“You do!” I squirm, giggling as he digs his fingers into my ribs.
“I don’t, Camille. You come to me. And show me the man who can deny you. Such a fool does not exist.”
I think there’s truth there, about me and my role in this thing between us, but it swirls away with all my other thoughts as his head dips lower and I strangle my fingers into his hair, arching back with languid anticipation.
He takes his time like always and drives me to the cusp of my threshold before he destroys me completely and I tumble down and down and down to where only he can anchor me in reality.
It distracts me completely.
15
Chapter 15
CAMILLE
Isleep through the plane ride to Kannapolis. We’re at the Skorost headquarters and McKenna McIntyre is way younger than I expect. She’s in her mid-twenties and has a passion for her job that is just infectious. Their headquarters are on the edge of a racetrack, one they use to test their cars. A couple of race cars are on the track already. I watch them through the glass wall of the massive second-floor open space, which McKenna calls the lab, but Anatoly Petrov, who hovers close by, calls “bardac.”
He’s as polite as always, but it’s obvious he’s uncomfortable with us here, filming in the lab. He’s the one that deflected our filming enquiries in the past, but the Grande Prima executives finally came to the table to push it through, and he caved under the pressure.
Jay pans the vast room. At the far end, a team of engineers are stooped over a huge table covered in blueprints and plastic molded car parts are strewn everywhere.
“It’s biomimicry,” McKenna says excitedly and scoops up a part. “Nature really has the best designs.” She launches into a very technical explanation of birds of prey and airflow dynamics in bird flight. “We recreated it in the upgraded design for the next racing season.”
There are specific regulations that dictate when changes to the cars can be made, and though they are tweaked throughout the racing season, major developmental upgrades usually take place over the winter break, which is end of November through January typically.
“So, while the aerodynamics of the car is one thing, by implementing biomimicry into the production materials as well, we’re not only recreating the aerodynamic properties, like wing shape, but we can also apply structural and materialistic improvements based on natural structures.”
She snatches up a blueprint enthusiastically. Anatoly starts forward in an attempt to keep at least some of their research private, but McKenna easily pulls it out of his grasp.