“Callie—” he gasped through a breath, moving his mouth from mine to my jaw and working it to the line of my neck.
I couldn’t pull him close enough fast enough.
It felt like I’d been waiting forever.
Like this was as natural as breathing.
And, swaddled by the protection of the rain and a frozen moment in time, I allowed myself to savor it.
To squeeze the grip of my legs tighter and pull his body closer to mine.
Our wet clothes stuck to one another, and my leotard and what was left of his t-shirt left little to the imagination.
But I wanted what little there was.
I pulled at the hem of his shirt as he kissed from my collarbone up my neck and back again, sinking my fingers into the skin above the waistband of his pants and scratching.
He groaned into my mouth, and I moaned into his as we worked together toward the thing I found myself wanting more than anything in that moment—
Connection.
I wanted one with her almost more than I wanted my next breath, but I had no intention of taking it there pressed up against the cool metal of her family’s gym. Not in the rain, not in the sun, and not within five miles of her peers.
We’d already been gone long enough that someone should have noticed, but I guess the rain had kept them from actually looking.
“Callie—” I called, prying my lips from hers and trying to move her hands away from the growing bulge in my pants.
I know. It sounded crazy to me too.
“Nik,” she cooed back, still lost in the moment. I took the opportunity to pull back and look at her, covered in water and flushed from her nose to her ears and all the way down her exposed chest.
Her eyes were closed, and a droplet of water clung to the long, curled line of her lashes. Stretching to reach me, her lips parted and pursed just slightly, and her hips shifted even closer to mine.
The skin of her thighs felt smooth and creamy, the now wet chalk forming a thin film of paste that made my hands harder to move.
I didn’t mind, the feeling of my hands attached to her in a more powerful way than normal only deepened the need in my gut.
Her eyes opened as a result of my lull and looked questioningly into mine. Security fled and nerves started to encroach, her body language changing minutely in preparation for rejection. She thought this was it, the definition of catch and release.
Before she could retreat, I flexed the fingers of one hand deeper into one thigh and moved the other to cup the side of her face. My fingers mingled with the wet, straggling hairs of her ponytail that fell around the sides, and my thumb sought the supple corner of her lips.
I forced it up when it wanted to curve down and reassured her with actions as well as words.
“I’m in this, Cal. I’m not backing out, I’m not running away, and I’m not giving it up. I don’t know what it is about you, but I couldn’t forget this happened if I tried.”
I’d been shocked as shit when her lips first met mine and momentarily mystified that my life had taken a path that somehow ended in this moment—fully enthralled mentally and physically with an athlete I’d been charged to coach and mentor—but at the feel of her and I together all of it faded away. The only thing left was awareness. A distinct recognition that something existed between us that neither one of us could manage to deny.
She seemed surprised that I could read her so well, but with me she’d always been a crystal clear page. No smudges to impede the context or fancy emotional language to get caught up in. Just smooth, simple prose that read true to her every emotion.
If other people had trouble reading her, they weren’t very good at context clues.
“But we can’t do this here any more than you can admit that I’m right.”
“Hey!”
I smiled at the return of her fire. Anger or passion, it didn't matter to me. Just as long as it burned, I’d tend to it with care. Poke and nudge and rearrange when necessary. And any time she started to die out, I’d just add more fuel to the pile.
“How many people watched you leave?”
“Oh my God,” she squeaked, the realization of consequences and aftermath slapping her on the cheek and leaving it red with embarrassment. “I can’t go back in there. Not like this…”
She looked down at herself, the sopping material of her leotard, her hair mussed from the rain and my hands, and the paste-y chalk evidence of my touch plastered over nearly every inappropriate surface illustrating her point. “Not after leaving like that.”
“We don’t have to go back in,” I assured her, running my thumb from her lips to her ear and back again just because I could. Just because she wasn’t stopping me from touching her, wasn’t fighting me on the validity of what had happened.
I took a moment to soak it in and tried to telegraph the feeling it evoked in me right back to her.
“But we can’t stay here.”
“You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here? Are we at a bar?” Her head thunked back into the metal of the building behind her. “That’d be handy actually. I could use a drink.”
“Callie,” I called, asking for attention by pulling her face back toward mine with two soft fingers at her chin. “This is big. I get it, I feel it, and I’m just as confused about how it happened as you are. But I need you to calm down…and focus. We cannot stay here right now. Especially not, as much as I enjoy it, with your sexy as fuck bare legs wrapped around my waist and my hard dick crushing you into the building.”
“Crushing me?” she teased with a tilt of her head. “You sure think a lot about your—”
“Cal!”
“Okay! I get it! We need to leave.” She rolled her eyes playfully. “Then take me somewhere for crying out loud.”
Regretfully, I unwound her legs from me and set her bare feet on the ground, steadying her swaying body as it lurched toward me in unbalance. Her body’s lingering physical reaction gave me some clue as to why her mental realization of our scenario was delayed as well.
She was still turned on and tuned up on adrenaline, and apparently, lust made her frolicsome.
Fuck me.
I didn’t know if she always reacted this way or if it was the intensity and unexpected nature of the moment, but I had absolutely no desire to waste it. I wanted to get her somewhere else, somewhere where I could work her back up to that reaction again, and I wanted to do it quickly.
I grabbed her hand and ran, pulling her behind me into the more brutal rain of the open parking lot. Her hand clenched tightly in mine when a gust of wind drove the rain like horizontal spikes.
The pound of her bare feet on the pavement behind me sounded like a rhythm, each step jolting through my chest and confirming the unbelievable fact that we were here. That she had followed me from the gym, that she’d been the one to kiss me.
All of it felt like an imaginary whirlwind. Her car only feet away, I dropped her hand in preparation and rounded the hood, hoping to everything holy that she kept her keys in the car rather than her bag in the gym. If not, we’d have to take the motorcycle, and besides the rain, I didn’t like the idea of her riding with so much unprotected skin exposed.
“Keys?” I called over the hood, just as she opened the passenger door.
She nodded with knowing, pointing inside the car and sinking into the seat and out of the rain.
I yanked my door open and threw one leg in, but looked up as I did.
Right into the eyes of Frank Nickleson.
Hands on his hips, he stood stagnant on the other side of the glass door, keen and curious eyes on me and the very familiar car I was waiting to sink into.