Driving Miss Catherine

Cat hesitantly placed her hand on the door knob. Should she knock? No, she knew what she wanted. She pushed the door open and walked in, trying to hold her head up. Seb was standing in the corner of the room looking out a window. She felt her heart beating faster and faster with anticipation.

“That race….it was pretty, um,” She bit her lip, and didn’t know how to continue. Was it good? Bad? She didn’t even know.

He turned around and the intense look of desire on his face took Cat’s breath away. It was clear that he didn’t care about the outcome of the race, and there was only one thing on his mind. It didn’t take long for Cat to reciprocate those feelings. He crossed the room to place his hand on her face, the other hand on her hip, slowly moving downward.

“Bed,” she whispered in his ear and wrapped her arms tightly round his neck as he pushed her against the wall. He fumbled with the door, distracted by Cat’s kissing, and finally just kicked it closed, leaving it unlocked. Cat reached up to tear his shirt off, and he pushed her back on the bed, trapping her slim frame beneath his muscular, toned body. Her shirt and bikini top disappeared as he moved from kissing her mouth lower, and lower, peppering her neck and chest with kisses until his lips found her nipple.

Cat gasped and he teased her for a few minutes before she moaned his name. Seb took this as his cue and moved his right hand between her legs, while his left hand worked her other nipple. He pushed her skirt up and after removing her thong, he wet his thumb with her juices and slowly circled her nub before picking up the pace and sliding one, then two fingers into her. Cat swore in every language she knew, and pretty soon she was just mumbling incoherently as her mind went blank. Seb knew it wouldn’t be long, as these were Cat’s tell-tale signs of an impending orgasm. He switched his thumb for his mouth and sucked on her clit until her breath came in short gasps, and her twitching legs stiffened as her back arched. The pent up tension from the race was transformed into a massive orgasm, and it crashed down on her like a wave. Her eyes glossed over and everything went blank; it was just the two of them alone in this amazing cocoon of sexual passion.

Cat eventually came back to it, and opened her eyes to see a shirtless Seb removing the rest of his clothes. She didn’t remember him taking his shirt off, and she reached forward to touch him, wanting to feel the hard muscle beneath his soft skin. She ran her hands over his chest, kissing him here and there, before moving down to strip him of the last of his clothes. Cat didn’t hesitate to take him into her mouth, sucking softly and playfully at first, until she felt his hands on the back of her head. She repositioned herself so she was kneeling on the bed in front of him, one hand on the bed for support, one hand wrapped around the base of his cock.

Seb felt his knees getting weak, and while he loved what Cat was doing, he wasn’t ready to let it end here. He reluctantly stopped her and pushed her back on the bed on her back and he climbed on top of her. Her legs fell naturally apart, just far enough for him to get in between and slide into her. “Fuck me,” she whispered and bit her lip.

“I’ve been thinking about this the whole race” Seb breathed, and drove into her hard and fast until she came again, this time harder than the first orgasm. Seb’s finish followed shortly after, unable to hold off any longer. They collapsed on the bed, totally spent, and murmured various other cute things while they tried to catch their breath.

She curled around him and rested her head on his chest. As her head slowly stopped spinning and her brain came back into focus, she remembered the intensity of the race, and Seb’s look after leaving his car. Was every race like this? Was this the effect racing had on him?

If so, Cat didn’t mind. She smiled inwardly and let him wrap his arms around her, enclosing her in a secure embrace.

Cat wanted to enjoy the moment, but there were questions she needed answered. She closed her eyes and let herself melt into his grasp; feeling his arms around her made Cat feel safe. She knew the sex was most likely the result of some post-race high, or a misplaced emotion from losing to his younger, less experienced, teammate. Maybe he was just angry that he hadn’t won, or made podium, or maybe there were some other lingering emotions from last year’s race in Australia.

As Cat’s mind raced with ideas, Seb lay behind her feeling nothing but momentary peace and emptiness. He’d spent the entire race trying to ignore the memories of what had happened last year. He tried to wipe the image of racing next to his close friend Kimi, but images of the crash kept reappearing every time he approached that corner. He remembered everything he did wrong, all the factors that led to Raikkonen’s red Ferrari crashing into the wall, while his car spun around like a top, and he tried to fix it. It was like reliving a nightmare, over, and over, and over again, trying to change the outcome each lap.

But there it was. Each time he rounded that corner he was looking at that spot. But his year, instead of seeing a Ferrari car flying into the wall and bursting into flames, he made every corner expertly without making contact, or even getting close to the car he was battling with. He played it safe, and in the end, came out unscathed. But Sebastian Vettel doesn’t ‘play it safe.’ He pushes the boundaries, and tests the limits. He doesn’t stay within the parameters, and pushes those around him to drive outside of their comfort zone; Sebastian Vettel wins, he doesn’t let people come in ahead of him.

It was just one race, though, right? He would come back stronger and faster than ever in two weeks at Malaysia. He would silence the doubters, and he would practice as much as he could. He would be better.

Seb was drawn out of his reverie by a quiet knocking on the door.

“One minute!” He said and dashed to grab his clothes. Cat dizzily sat up and looked at him. Why was he rushing? She reached for her bathing suit top and re-tied it around her chest, and had just shimmied back into her tight red skirt as the door opened.

“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t mean to walk in on you getting dressed….I didn’t think…” Kevin trailed off, not hiding the fact that he was absently staring at Cat.

“I said ‘one minute’!” Seb growled, sitting in his underpants trying to find the rest of his clothes.

“And I waited a minute before I opened the door!” Kevin retorted imperviously and shot Seb an almost childish look.

“Well what do you want?” Seb asked as Cat tried to pull her shirt on.

Kevin’s eyes slid between Cat and Seb before finally landing on Seb’s angry face. “Maurizio wants to see you.” Kevin’s gaze made one more pass over Cat before he blushed and left in a hurry. He stalked back to his room where he was met by his physio, who wanted to do a post-race workdown, but Kevin wouldn’t have any of it. Rather abruptly, he told his physio off and slammed the door. Frustrated, he leaned against the door and slowly slid down.

‘What are you getting yourself into, Kevin?’ He thought, and bowed his head. ‘You’re an F1 driver; there are probably dozens, maybe even hundreds of girls who’d be willing to have you, yet you pick the one girl you can’t touch.’ He peeled himself out of his racing suit and headed off to take a cold shower, something he foresaw himself doing a lot in the near future.

On the long plane ride back to Switzerland, Cat busied herself in her studies. She was still in school, even if ‘school’ counted as going to the racetrack and watching her boyfriend drive. She was halfway through the semester, and theoretically her senior project should be halfway done. However, it was far from being completed. Each time she came across something new it sent her project in a new direction. Things were slowly spiraling away from her, and she knew she needed to present her work so far to her adviser. She would be traveling to New York next week to meet with him, yet at this point, she didn’t have anything conclusive to present to him. She knew the cars went fast, and took a lot of fuel, that part was obvious; it was all the hidden environmental effects that kept adding to her research. The energy spent warming the tires before races and qualifying, the disposal of tires after one use, the fuel spent driving the team caravans across the world to each race, the fact that they flew halfway across the world just to drive around a racetrack…. So many factors to take into her final project, but what was really important? When Cat first set out to be an environmental engineer, she never imagined herself getting into motorsports, something that does not seem environmentally friendly at all.

However, compared to the F1 cars over the past few decades, these cars were significantly more efficient, yet just as fast. Cat had never been interested in mechanical engineering, but she found herself digging further and further into the details of how the cars were made. Luckily, there was a team of experienced mechanical engineers to explain to her what was going on with the cars, and the changes made to make them more fuel efficient. Really, it was fascinating, but not at all what Cat had spent the last three and a half years studying. She had focused on studying water pollution, and how to provide clean water to developing and third world countries. She had imagined herself going to Africa and working in an impoverished country, or maybe going to China and helping to keep the industrializing country from ruining their clean water supply.

But studying racecars? It was a sport, something people did for fun. No matter how important it was to Seb, or Kevin, or anyone else involved in the sport, it somehow didn’t seem as imperative to Cat as having clean drinking water. No matter how hard she tried to shake that thought from her mind, it always crept back when she wasn’t paying attention. Were her efforts wasted? As she looked toward the F1 race in Malaysia, she couldn’t help picturing the juxtaposition of one of the most glamorous sports with a country like Malaysia. Somehow, it didn’t seem right. A country devastated by deforestation, which has decimated the population of certain animals, Cat felt her place in Malaysia shouldn’t be on the racetrack, but in the rainforests. Cat tried to dismiss these thoughts, saying they weren’t her problem right now, but they were. These were entirely the kinds of problems she set out to fix.

She closed her eyes and slipped into a fitful sleep on the long flight from Australia. Seb was next to her, sleeping equally unwell. He had his doubts about Malaysia, but in a completely different way. He hoped the next race would be uncomplicated by thoughts of Kimi’s crash, and he would be unhindered by a pretense of caution. He just needed to get back into the game.

Cat was exhausted by the time they landed, but still took the time to listen to the voicemail her father left her. She hadn’t heard from him lately, so she assumed it might be something important.

And it was.

‘Catherine, Briggsley informs me that you have made an investment in the Ferrari F1 team. Now, I know that money was in your name, but it was not technically yours. I gave it to you because I could not, for tax reasons, have my entire fortune under my name. I had planned to use that money somewhere very important, and I have come into a very...difficult situation because it is no longer there. I really wish you would consult me before spending my money on petty projects like your boyfriends racecar. I doubt there is any way to get that back now, but Cat, I hope you know how frustrated I am with you. You have made things very difficult for me!’

Cat had never heard her father this angry before. He was nearly sputtering as he said those last words, and she thought the message was over, but quietly, he added:

‘I really wish things between you and Heikki had worked out…. this would be so much easier if it had.’