Penalty Clause

A High-Heat Formula One Romance
by Tessa Valehart

Available at all major retailers

Pairing: MF
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Series: Standalone
Tropes: Boss × Employee (Sporting Director × Driver), Conduct Agreement, Forbidden Workplace Romance, Professional Boundaries, Older Heroine, Age Gap, Ice Queen, Hothead Hero, Instruction Kink, Praise Kink, Competence Kink, Control Swap (Both Ways), Light Bondage, Safe Word, Edging, Conflict of Interest Declared in Advance, Leaked Document, Grovel Done Right, No Cheating, No Love Triangle

Six clauses. Seven weeks. One conflict of interest she declares before it exists.

Fourteen seconds. That is how long it takes Matteo Vieri to grab a rival by the lapels at a sponsor gala, cost Vesper Racing a third of its season, and give one board member exactly the excuse he wanted to fire him.

Sabine Keller has been sporting director for twenty-three days. Her title still says provisional. She does not do apology videos. She drafts.

Two pages. Six clauses. No confrontation, verbal or otherwise. Every grievance in writing, to her, within the hour, and she answers inside twenty-four or she is the one in breach. Three sessions with a psychologist he chooses. A fixed ladder of penalties that costs the same whether she likes him that week or not.

He signs it with her fountain pen, leaning over her desk, close enough to count. Everything has a weak point, Director. Cars. Contracts. The people who draft them.

Then you have seven weeks to find mine.

From Monza to Singapore to Austin, the most combustible man on the grid learns to listen first, walk away, and fill in the form. And when he tells her plainly that he wants her, she does the most Sabine thing imaginable: she declares a conflict of interest before anything has happened, hands every decision about him to a panel, and has the door countersigned.

Behind it, she tells him where to put his hands. He finds out how quiet his head goes when someone else decides. She finds out what it is to stop being careful for an hour.

Then the whole agreement leaks with photographs beside every clause, a director with a lime in his drink asks her to step aside, and Matteo does the one thing she asked him not to.

Penalty Clause is a high-heat MF Formula One romance with a sporting director who writes the rules, a driver who signs them, a fountain pen that makes people slow down, a brown Volvo older than some of the grid, a watermark on every page, a lot of on-page spice, no cheating, and a guaranteed HEA. Dual first-person POV. Standalone.

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:

✅ An older heroine, 37, who is very good at her job and never once gets smaller to be wanted
✅ A hothead driver with four formal warnings who learns that walking away is the hard version
✅ “Sit down, Mr Vieri. Listen first.”
✅ A conduct agreement she drafts before breakfast, and a conflict of interest she declares before it exists
✅ “Hands flat on the counter. Behind you. Keep them there.”
✅ A kitchen counter in Jericho, a mirror in Dorset, a robe belt in Singapore, and a window over Turn 1
✅ Control swapped both ways, a safe word that is a vegetable, edging, praise, and a man who asks every time
✅ A grovel with no adjectives, a footer nobody reads, and a board meeting where she says nothing at all
✅ No cheating, no love triangle, 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ heat, HEA guaranteed

Buy Now

Get the Bonus Chapter →

⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic MF scenes, including oral sex, solo scenes, instruction and praise play, edging and orgasm denial, light bondage with a safe word, power exchange in both directions, sex in a kitchen, a car, a hotel room and against a window, and unprotected sex between committed partners; all on-page sex is consensual and negotiated), a public brawl at a sponsor gala and the online harassment of a young woman caught up in it, a hero with a history of anger and confrontation, workplace power dynamics handled through a formal recusal, a leaked private document and media intrusion, a board member who uses the scandal against the heroine, a hero who speaks for the heroine in public without her consent, a brief third-act separation, alcohol, and strong language. No sexual violence, no dub-con, no cheating. Intended for readers 18+.

📖 Read Chapter One Free

Not sure yet? Read all of Chapter One right here.

Chapter One: Sabine

Fourteen seconds.

That is how long it takes Matteo Vieri to cost Vesper Racing a title sponsor, and I have now watched it nine times with the sound off.

Second one: a London ballroom, a navy-and-silver sponsor wall, ORRIN repeated across it in tasteful capitals. Second four: Julian Cross of Strand GP says something over the rim of a champagne flute, smiling. Second six: my driver crosses three metres of carpet as if it were a braking zone. Second seven: both of Vieri’s fists are in Cross’s lapels and Cross’s shoulders are against the wall, framed by the logo of the company that pays for a third of our season.

Seconds eight through fourteen are other people’s hands. A Strand press officer. A waiter. Rosa Marin, who is five foot three and got an arm between two racing drivers before any of the men in dinner jackets thought to.

I watch it muted because I already know what was said, and because sound makes people sympathetic. Without it, the thing is only what it is. A very fast man choosing the slowest possible way to be right.

The FIA has noted the incident, observed that a hotel ballroom is not a circuit, and left the matter to the teams. Which is to say, to me. I have held this office for twenty-three days. The staff directory still lists me as Sporting Director (Provisional), a parenthesis the board will either delete or act upon after Austin.

His file lies open beside the laptop. Six seasons, eleven podiums, two wins, four formal warnings, and a note from my predecessor that reads, in its entirety: Handle with care, or don’t handle.

“Tell me you have something.” Helena Ward doesn’t sit. Our team principal has been on the phone since five, and it shows only in the coffee going cold in her hand. “Orrin want a head or a grovel by Friday. Their wording was more expensive, but that was the content.”

“And the board?”

“Conrad Hale wants him gone by lunch. He’s already asked legal how fast the morality clause moves.”

“Fast. It was drafted to.”

“He also mentioned, very kindly, that this is a great deal to hand someone in her first month.”

“How thoughtful of him.”

“Sabine.”

I close the laptop. “Both are premature. Fire him, and we’ve paid Strand to take the quickest driver on our books and told every partner we have that fourteen seconds outweighs six seasons. Put him in front of a camera to recite an apology he doesn’t mean, and he’ll behave for about a fortnight. Then we’ll be standing here again with a longer video.”

“And Cross?”

“Cross said one sentence in a private room and is now the injured party. I can’t touch him. I can make certain he never gets this for free again.”

“You have a third thing.”

“I have a draft of a third thing. I’d like to speak to Rosa before I form an opinion about it.”

Helena studies me the way people study a provisional appointment: hopefully, and from a slight distance. “Friday.”

“I can count to Friday.”

She goes. I straighten the pen on my desk, which did not need straightening.

Rosa Marin arrives with a tablet held against her chest like body armour. Twenty-seven, communications, the best handler we have on a Thursday media day and, since Saturday night, a hashtag.

“I’m not asking you to relive it,” I say. “I’m asking you to correct the record. What did he say?”

She recites it flat, the way you repeat a thing you have heard too often. “‘Somebody tell the intern her job is to hold the umbrella, not have opinions.’ I’d asked him to step off our mark. That was the opinion.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m Umbrella Girl.” She turns the tablet toward me. I don’t need to read it. “Four hundred messages. Half of them think Matteo’s my boyfriend. The other half think I should be grateful. My mum rang to check I was all right, and my mum can’t work the television remote, so that’s how far it’s travelled.”

“What do you need?”

She blinks. I gather nobody has asked.

“To stop being the story.” It comes out fast, as though it has been waiting. “I don’t need him sacked. I don’t need him sorry on Instagram. I need to run a media pen without somebody asking me how it felt.”

“Then that’s the brief.” I write it down, because things I write down happen.

She hesitates at the door. “If he does say sorry, I don’t want the press-release version. I write those. I know what they’re worth.”

“You won’t get one. He’ll listen before he’s permitted to say anything at all.”

“Permitted.” For the first time this morning, Rosa almost smiles. “I’d pay to watch that.”

“You won’t have to. You’ll be in the room.”

He is due at ten.

At four minutes past, Matteo Vieri walks into my office without knocking, and I understand the four minutes at once. They are a message. You may summon me. You may not make me hurry.

For three weeks I have seen him across garages and briefing tables. I have not had him alone in a room. He is not tall. In these heels my eyes are level with his, and it makes no difference whatsoever; he occupies space the way heat does. Dark curls too long for a helmet. A grey T-shirt where team kit should be, which is a second message. A pale scar splitting his left eyebrow. Forearms I have no professional reason to notice, so I log them once, as I would a hazard, and move on.

He hasn’t shaved. I suspect he hasn’t slept much either. The gala was Saturday, it is now Monday, and for forty hours nobody has told him anything except that he is finished.

“Director.” He makes it sound like a nickname he hasn’t decided is affectionate.

“Mr Vieri. Sit.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Then you’ll stand.” I stay where I am. “You’re four minutes late.”

“Traffic.”

“You live eleven minutes away on a road with one tractor.”

Something shifts at the corner of his mouth and is gone. He folds his arms and plants his feet, and I recognise the posture: a man braced for a blow he has decided not to flinch from.

“Go on, then. Where do you want me? Podium, camera, little table with a flag?” His English is quick and warm and entirely insolent. “I’ve seen the format. I’m deeply sorry, it doesn’t represent who I am, Julian does his wounded face. Do I cry? I can cry. I’m Italian, we’re gifted.”

“No.”

“No crying?”

“No statement.”

That lands. He was leaning his whole weight on a door, and I have opened it.

I slide two pages across the desk. Vesper navy letterhead. Six numbered clauses, a signature block, a date.

“This is an addendum to your driver contract. It replaces the termination that Orrin’s morality clause entitles the board to demand, and that one member of the board is demanding as we speak. It runs seven weeks. Read it.”

He doesn’t pick it up. He reads it where it lies, one hand flat on my desk, head bent, and I watch his eyes travel. He is quick, and then he goes back to the top, which I did not expect. People who intend to ignore a document don’t read it twice.

“Whose is this?”

“Mine.”

“The board approved it?”

“The board hasn’t seen it. They see it with your signature at the bottom or not at all. I don’t carry half a solution into a room with Conrad Hale.”

His eyebrows go up, scar and all. Then his finger comes down on the page.

“One. ‘No physical or verbal confrontation with any driver, staff member, official or partner.’ Verbal. So I can’t speak to him.”

“You can speak to anyone you like. You can’t start a fight with your mouth and call it conversation. The video opens on your hands, Mr Vieri, but the incident began four seconds earlier.”

“‘In public or out of it.'”

“The paddock has no private rooms. It has rooms the camera hasn’t reached yet.”

He breathes out through his nose. “Two. Grievances in writing. To you. Within the hour.” He looks up, and his eyes are a much warmer brown than his expression. “You want me to file a complaint. Like a man whose neighbour has a loud dog.”

“I want one route, so nothing you tell me can be lost, softened or forgotten by someone who finds it inconvenient. And you’ll notice the second sentence binds me. Twenty-four hours. If I haven’t answered, I’m the one in breach.”

That stops him for a full second. I let it.

“And if what I write is Julian Cross is a prick?”

“Then I’ll have it timed and in writing, and inside twenty-four hours you’ll have my reply. Very likely: Noted. Agreed. What did he do?“

He looks at me as if I have just spoken in a language he didn’t know I had.

“Three. ‘Every scheduled commitment, on time, in full.’ I turn up.”

“You turn up. In Budapest you left a partner dinner between the starter and the main.”

“The man was explaining cryptocurrency to me.”

“He was explaining it to you for two million a year. ‘In full’ means pudding.”

“You’re going to make me eat pudding.”

“I’m going to make you stay in the room. What you do with the pudding falls under clause six.”

He nearly laughs. I watch him refuse to. “Four.” The humour drains out of his voice. “A psychologist. There it is. You think I’m broken.”

“I think you make decisions at three hundred kilometres an hour for a living, and nobody has ever taught you to make one at walking pace. Three sessions. You choose the person. I never see a note.”

“I choose.”

“Anyone accredited. Bologna, Monaco, a man on a mountain. I don’t mind.”

“And you never read a word.”

“I see an invoice with three dates on it. That is all I’ve asked for and all I’ll get.”

“And if I say no to four?”

“Then we discuss four. It was five sessions in my first draft; I’m not sentimental about the number.” I take off my glasses. “I’m not trading one, two or five.”

He goes straight to five, naturally. “‘Alleged breaches go to the Conduct Panel.’ Who’s that, your friends?”

“General Counsel and an outside arbitrator who has never met either of us. Fixed ladder. Written warning, fine, a session out of the car, the seat. In that order, every time.”

“So you don’t even get to punish me yourself.” He says it lightly. He is watching me very closely.

“I’ve no wish to punish you at all. I want you to know on a Tuesday exactly what a Sunday mistake will cost, and I want it to cost the same whether I like you that week or not. Until now you’ve lived on other people’s moods. Helena’s. The board’s. A sponsor’s. That clause takes their moods away from them.” I pause. “And mine from me.”

Silence. Somewhere below us a wheel gun stutters in the race bays.

“Six,” he says, quieter. “‘Professional conduct only.'”

“Nothing in it touches your private life. Who you see, what you drink, where you sleep. I have no interest.”

“None?”

“None, Mr Vieri.”

“And what do I get? For being so obedient.”

“Predictable, not obedient; I’d be bored by obedient. You get your seat. And you get the same predictability back from me, in writing, which is more than anyone in this building has offered you in six years.”

He straightens, and the temper he has been banking finally finds air.

“You know what he said to her.”

“I know precisely what he said to her.”

“And you’d have stood there.” He comes round the corner of the desk. Not close, not yet, but the desk is no longer between us and we both know he’s done it on purpose. “Champagne in your hand, that face on, and you’d have let him say it.”

“No.” I rise, because I will not have this conversation looking up. “I’d have made sure she didn’t spend the next week answering for the scene you made.”

“I was defending her!”

“Did you ask what she needed?”

It isn’t loud. It doesn’t have to be. I watch it go in.

His mouth opens. Nothing arrives. A muscle jumps in his jaw, and for the first time since he walked through my door he looks less angry than caught, like a man who has glanced in his mirrors and found something already alongside.

“She’s a hashtag,” I tell him. “Her mother has seen it. Cross, meanwhile, is giving interviews about how alarmed he was. You handed him that. He supplied one sentence and you did the rest of his work for him.”

“So I should have done nothing.”

“You should have done something that worked. You’re the most precise driver on that grid. I’ve watched you put a car a hand’s width from a wall for fifty laps. Then somebody needles you and you become a man kicking a vending machine.” I hold his eyes. “I’m not trying to make you smaller. I want your temper engineered to the same standard as your car.”

He stares. I have the strange sensation of being looked at properly, all the way through, by someone who does it for a living at speed. My pulse is doing something I have not authorised. I note that, too, and file it where I filed the forearms.

“You practised that,” he says at last.

“I drafted it. There’s a difference.”

“Is there.”

“Practising is for people who are worried about how they’ll sound.”

That very nearly earns me the smile. It gets as far as his eyes and waits there.

“Do you ever lose it? Your temper.” He tilts his head. “I’m curious what it looks like.”

“Regularly. It looks like this.”

He takes me in: the knot of my hair, the navy jacket, my hands flat and still on the desk.

“Dio,” he says softly. “That’s worse.”

“So I’m told.”

“And if I don’t sign?”

“Then at two o’clock the board votes, Hale wins, and I spend the autumn explaining why my first act as sporting director was losing the fastest driver we’ve had in a decade. It would be bad for me. I’d sooner you knew that than wondered about it.” I uncap my fountain pen and lay it on the page, nib toward him. “It would be worse for you. But don’t sign because it’s good for me. Sign because it’s the only offer on any desk in this building that tells you what happens next.”

He considers the pen. Black lacquer, gold nib, older than his career.

“A fountain pen. Of course.”

“It makes people slow down.”

He picks it up.

He could reach the signature line from where he stands. He doesn’t stay there. He steps in and bends over my desk beside me, left hand braced on the wood a few centimetres from my hip, and I receive the full inventory whether I want it or not. Soap. Coffee. Warmth coming off his shoulder through thin cotton. The tendon moving in his wrist as he sets the nib to the paper.

I do not step back. Stepping back is an answer.

He signs slowly; the pen has seen to that. The signature is large, slanted, ludicrously confident, and he finishes it with one short hard stroke underneath, a man planting a flag on a hill he fully intends to retake.

Then he turns his head. We are eye to eye, near enough that I can see the scar is not one line but two.

“Everything has a weak point, Director.” Low, pleasant, almost a courtesy. “Cars. Contracts.” His gaze drops to my mouth and comes back in no hurry at all. “The people who draft them.”

“Then you have seven weeks to find mine.”

I take the pen out of his fingers. Our hands do not touch. I am aware, to the millimetre, of how much they do not touch. I cap it, and the click is very loud in the room.

“Two copies. Yours is on the left.”

He takes it, folds it in half like a parking ticket, and heads for the door with that loose driver’s stride, a man who has just lost a negotiation and means to look good leaving it.

“Mr Vieri.”

He stops with one hand on the frame.

“It has a review date. Seven weeks.” I sit, put my glasses back on, and do not look at the place on my desk where his hand was. “I intend to reach it without another video.”

Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.

Buy Penalty Clause

🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?

House Rules — A scene TOO HOT for the bookstore

Bologna, Boxing Day, after close. Twenty-two relatives gone home, Lucia’s keys in his hand, and one instruction: don’t touch my counter. Matteo has thought about that kitchen in Jericho every day since September. Tonight it’s his kitchen, his rules, and Sabine is the one keeping her hands where she’s told.

Get the Bonus Chapter →