“Jennifer Joffries was the hottest gymnast in my gym, all hips and overdeveloped breasts and long ass legs.”
I narrowed my eyes and glanced down, my lack of boobs standing out like a neon sign between us.
He shook his head, pushed more hair out of his face with his free hand.
Where was his hat? Oh. Probably in his motorcycle. At the gym.
“No, see, I was fourteen. I mentioned that, right?”
“A time or two.”
“And Jennifer started gymnastics after puberty, so her growth wasn’t stunted like the rest of the girls.”
“Still not sure I’m liking this.”
“Okay, okay,” he rushed. “You don’t realize this, but at fourteen, for guys, boobs are all that matter. At twenty-eight, I’ve got an entirely different favorite part.”
I felt the flush sweep through me from face to feet.
Point taken.
He chuckled at my easy embarrassment and grabbed onto my other hand to hold it too. Shin to shin, each of us had one leg tucked up on the couch and the other foot on the floor, both hands securely in each others’ hold. I was pretty sure it was one of the best forms of contact I’d ever felt.
“One day after practice, I finally got up the nerve to talk to her, and we ended up making out in the locker room. It was great.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at his boyish frankness.
“That is until I got a little overly worked up, and she pointed it out to the entirety of the gym, my parents included.”
“Ouch! Jennifer sounds like a total bitch.”
“Nah,” he denied. “Just fourteen and female.”
I shook my head at his generalization and bumped him in the inner thigh with the back of our hands. He scrambled to defend against a potential blow to the jewels.
“Well, that was fun,” I redirected, hoping he’d move on and let me off the hook. No such luck.
“Nuh uh uh. It’s your turn. Come on, Cal. Feed my soul. Give me some redemption. Prove to me that I’m not alone,” he fake pleaded, widening his eyes comically and making it impossible to resist.
The only thing I could think of was the one thing I didn’t want to say, but eager to get it over with, I blurted it all out at once anyway. “I lost my virginity to a guy who used to do gymnastics at the gym right after my first Olympics. I thought he really liked me, but he really just wanted to say that he’d been with the un-fuckable. And to make matters worse it happened in the basement of a high school house party with “Touch My Body” by Mariah Carey playing in the background. To this day, I skeeve out anytime I see her on TV.”
Across from me, Nik sat frozen, his body a statue and his face a bland mask of discomfort.
“You’re not laughing,” I pointed out.
He scoffed. “Because it isn’t fucking funny. Why is that women always think fucked up situations like that are embarrassing for them? That fucking asshole douche of a kid should be ashamed of himself. Not you.”
“I—”
“I bet he didn’t even give you an orgasm.”
The air left my lungs in such a hurry, I nearly choked.
Unable to speak, I settled for a shake of my head.
“What a fucking cocksucker.”
“Nik—”
“The next guy treated you right, right?”
At this point, the conversation had turned laughable, so I didn’t even pause before my admission. “What next guy?”
In one fast tug he had me up off the couch and headed down the hall.
“What are you doing?”
He stopped so fast, I nearly ran into him, looking directly at me and barking his answer.
“Treating you goddamn right.”
My face jerked back and warmed as his words washed over me.
“The romance is ripe,” I poked in jest as he started speed walking again and pulled me directly into his bedroom and onto the bed.
The gray cotton cover felt soft under my thighs as his baggy loaner shorts road up, but the sound of his gravelly voice roughened the moment just enough. “Right now isn’t about romance. It’s about pleasure and lust and teaching you the bare minimum you should ever settle for physically.”
I gulped an angry swallow down my tightening throat and curled into the growing ache in my abdomen. His words felt alive in a way that caressed each and every one of my senses.
His face pushed closer to mine.
“And I can guarantee when it comes to the minimum for you, there’s nothing mini about it.”
His earnest eyes met mine deliberately, and with the way he said the words, the way his eyes spoke as he did, there wasn’t a thing in the world that could convince me that when Nik said those words to me, there was a single one that didn’t breathe romance.
“Nik.”
“Let me make you feel good, Cal. Just you tonight.” His body trapped mine, pushing me gently back onto the bed until he hovered right above me, his lips inches from mine and affection in his crystal blue eyes. He smoothed the still damp hair from my face and kissed the skin he uncovered by doing it. Slowly, deliberately, worshipping. “Just you coming apart in my arms and you trusting me to be the one to make it happen.”
Goosebumps emblazoned my arms like a finely crafted textile as his words and movements swept over me. My eyes closed of their own accord.
Tender fingers pried the hem of his baggy t-shirt away from my body languidly, skimming the skin as they went and making my hips sink into the bed even further. Air tunneled under my back as it arched slightly, the feeling of his skin on mine even more electrifying without the aid of sight.
His lips touched each eyelid individually. I felt his breath caress my face when he spoke in a need-roughened whisper. “Trust me to make you feel good, Callie.”
“I do,” I admitted easily because I did. I didn’t know what that meant precisely or how he intended to achieve it, but I knew he’d do his best to take care of me.
Wide hands slid up the smooth muscle of my belly, and his lips moved slowly from the curve of my ear to my collarbone. The neck of my shirt impeded his progress.
Asking silent permission, he lifted and tugged at it, bringing it to the line just beneath my bare breasts and stopping. The material bunched and billowed, and the halt in progress made me itchy with need.
Knowing he wouldn’t go any further without my okay, I lifted my arms and granted him the room he needed to remove the barrier of cotton.
I opened my eyes when it cleared my face so I could watch his as he took in all of my exposed skin.
Eager and unfocused his eyes ate up every square inch of surface area, dilating at the sight of my chest. There wasn’t much there to see as far as I was concerned, but he didn’t look like a man unfulfilled. He looked like a man starved for the exact meal I was offering.
Lowering his head slowly, he rested his lips in the hollow of my throat and breathed. I could feel them move against my skin like a hundred tiny kisses as he spoke. “You’re beautiful, Calia.”
My full name felt strange and wonderful at once. I expected him to move quickly, but he didn’t. Instead he rested there for long moments breathing along with the rhythm moving in and out of my own throat. But I didn’t feel awkward in the least.
“Nikolai,” I called back, testing out the feel of his full name on my lips and producing a smile on his. They dragged along my skin as they curved, leaving a damp trail and accompanying chill in their wake.
Tweaking my ear briefly with his nose, his hands trailed up the lean line of my sides and settled on the span of my rib cage. My upper body was bigger in base than my middle and my thighs held equally disproportional mass. That was the body of a gymnast.
Traveling lips ghosted the line of my neck and down my chest, zeroing in on my nipple and sucking before I had time to prepare. Sparks flew in a direct line from there to the ache between my legs and deepened it. I expected relief in his pursuits but didn’t find it, instead feeling myself build higher and higher into a frenzy with each thoughtful lave of his tongue.