Текст книги "These Battered Hands"

Автор книги: Laurel Ulen Curtis

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Surreal.

Before Nik had shown up a little over three weeks ago, I would have sworn up and down that unicorns shitting rainbows and giant cars made of candy were a more realistic possibility than me getting mixed up in some pseudo-forbidden romance with anyone, let alone my new coach.

Add in the fact that I knew I’d have to face questions about my behavior that day at some point—I lived with my parents for shit’s sake—and my head was reeling.

Spinning and spiraling to figure out the ups and the downs and how to make it all order itself into something that made sense. Something that fit in with the person I thought I was or proved irrefutably that I’d been wrong all along. I couldn’t settle on either scenario, my world stuck in the limbo in between. I’d never been in between two places before.

At least, it didn’t seem like it. I knew I had been, the impossibility of getting from one place to the other without passing through the area in between crystal cut. But I usually made moves with precision, a straight line of least resistance and notably lacking in traffic.

In some ways, I hadn’t traveled much at all, sticking to my comfort zone even if I pushed at my levels of adaptability within it. I’d never felt like I was truly losing something that I desperately wanted to gain.

And that fact left me somewhat inexperienced emotionally in addition to physically.

The smell of Nik’s shampoo had me nearly coming out of my skin as I massaged it into my hair, the memory of its scent lodged in my brain from the moment I’d put my eager searching hands into his hair. The wet from the rain revived the scent as we’d kissed, bleeding it into the air like a slow release valve for the air on your tires.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Yeah?”

It cracked open slowly, a low-pitched squeal just barely emanating from poorly oiled hinges.

“I’ll just leave the clothes here on the counter,” Nik said without preamble or waiting for a reply. The door shut behind him with a click, and my head followed it by sinking into my hands.

I had to laugh to myself as I stood there under the warm water, bathed in the lingering awkwardness of his delivery.

Nervousness seeped off of his normally confident figure in the way he moved and spoke and looked at me. He said all of the right words, plugged all of the right holes, and answered all of the right questions, but he felt just as lost as me.

And the beauty of that was it made me feel a little less lost after all.

It was a spin on the old, “Not all those who wander are lost.”

For me, for us, I couldn’t help but feel that those who wander aimlessly together, aren’t, in fact, aimless at all.

When the last of the shampoo rinsed from my hair and the last of the soap slipped from my body, I turned off the water and stepped out.

His towel was fluffy and new, and its scent suggested a fresh wash.

I’d noticed briefly on the way in that everything seemed tidy and thoughtfully placed too. I wasn’t sure if this was an insight into his personality or if he just hadn’t spent enough time here to mess it up, but I logged the information and stored it for later, just in case.

His clothes were baggy, but not by too much, the muscle tone of his athletic body more lean that meaty.

I finger combed the strands of my hair and left them loose, took one last look in the mirror and deep breath in my lungs, and stepped out into the quiet darkness of the hallway.

The utter silence was disconcerting, but I figured with the riotous mess my nerves were, there could be a full blown concert taking place in his apartment and I still wouldn’t have felt completely at ease.

A small beacon of light shone from the living room, so I padded along the dark, berber carpet to the opening he’d shown me before and peeked inside. I didn’t know quite what to expect from any of it. From him, from our intimate encounter, or if it would directly lead into more.

I felt torn, both wanting to pick up where we left off and anxiously unready at the same time. When I’d stormed out of the gym, I’d been lost in myself and my mind and the lingering effects of him. Now, fresh from my shower, I’d scrubbed some of my boldness away, shining the surface to a cautiously inhibited clean.

“Hey,” he greeted me immediately from his spot on the couch, dry clothes replacing his previously soaked ones.

“Hey,” I waved back, unsure of where we were supposed to go from here.

I felt comfortable in his apartment, as much as I could under the circumstances, and I trusted him not to push me, but my experience in all things adult was limited.

I’d lived a very tunneled life, the traffic of my intentions flowing in one very distinct direction—Olympic greatness. That left little time for anything else, romantic or otherwise.

Now that I wanted it, I didn’t know how to take it.

“You look like a frightened puppy,” he called out, making my contemplative eyes jerk to his.

Mine narrowed slightly in mildly affronted reaction. “You don’t look exactly at ease yourself,” I argued.

Laughter rolled from deep in his chest, up the column of his throat, and out of his appealing mouth, letting out the breath we’d both been holding in one swift moment.

“You’re right.”

I walked over to him as he spoke and sat down on the couch across from him. His hand automatically sought mine, his fingers pushing through mine and settling into a hold that felt strangely like home.

“Let’s break the ice,” he suggested. “We’ll each admit something embarrassing to each other. Something you haven’t told anyone else and have tried your best to forget yourself.”

“Oh, yeah,” I grumbled, horrified. “That sounds like a great idea.”

He laughed at my obvious sarcasm and squeezed my hand, pulling the pair of them until the back of his entwined hand rested on his thigh. I watched as it went but pried my eyes free when he spoke again.

“It won’t be that bad. I’ll go first.” He took a deep breath and exhaled, but when I expected him to start his confession, he stalled a little more instead. “Just remember that this exercise is meant to endear me to you. If I find out you’re selling my secrets on the internet, I’ll be pissed.”

“No selling your embarrassing tales on the internet. Got it.” He nodded, but I held up a finger to slow him. “Unless, I stand to gain a fortune weighty enough to sustain independent wealth.”

One corner of his mouth hitched up.

“If they’re willing to pay that much, I’ll probably tell,” I teased through a face scrunch and a shrug.

“Deal,” he agreed good-naturedly, his whole being alight with humor and goodness.

I’d never considered the kind of man I wanted enough to know what qualities that included ahead of time.

The more I spent time with him, though, the more that list of non-existent qualities looked like him.

Patient. Forgiving. Unflappably rational.

Engaged in me and life and everything around him.

He actually spoke with his eyes, crinkling the corners and narrowing them just enough to make me notice when he was choosing his words carefully. They widened infinitesimally when he was working harder to make me agree with his point or when he really wanted me to listen. And they were just as expressive when he was listening to me. They emoted his every feeling and absorbed each accompanying one of mine.

I’d been noticing all along, but forcing myself to forget.

I most certainly wasn’t forgetting right then.

“Okay,” he said, getting himself ready to admit one of his best kept secrets. “Embarrassing. God, yeah, this fits the bill.” He paused again. “Who’s idea was this again?”

I laughed. “Yours.”

He nodded his resignation. “Right. Okay, so. I was fourteen, right?”

“I imagine you were at one time, yes,” I goaded.

He shook his head in amusement. “Well, you know what fourteen is like for guys—”

I raised my brows.

He chuckled and pushed his hair back out of his eyes in discomfort. “Okay, right, I guess you don’t.” He bit his bottom lip and considered his words carefully. “It’s a temperamental time for a young man—hormonally.”

I couldn’t help the stupid smile from forming on my face and sticking, both corners of my mouth secured indefinitely to the corners of my eyes.

“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.

His fingers toyed at the waistband of my shorts playfully before diving underneath to stroke the skin. I found myself wanting his hand to travel further, wanting his fingers to toy with me rather than the waistband. I didn’t have a ton of experience, and part of that had always ashamed me. It had always felt like a disadvantage to make it to twenty-six years old with only one crappy sexual experience to count, but it didn’t feel that way anymore.

This man and place were right. I wasn’t fully convinced about the timing, but the more he did and the closer he got to my sex, the more I came around to that thinking.

His lips came back to mine at the exact moment his fingers found my clit, and the combination made me feel like I’d go blind.

Stars and blackness alternated behind my lids at random, and the caress of his tongue on mine made the time needed comically short.

With a moan I hadn’t known was possible, I came apart just as one of his long fingers settled inside me. It didn’t feel invasive or foreign. It felt welcome.

And my body reacted accordingly. Sucking and milking it in an effort to pull it deeper, my sex sought to keep his finger there, probably forever if possible, and clenched at the girth of it with release. Fire burned through my body and all voluntary function ceased to exist. Only Nik and my pleasure could change the way I acted in that moment.

“God, Cal,” he breathed into the skin at my neck, tucking his face there and inhaling my scent. His body shook on top of mine and his hand made no effort to retreat.

When my hands found the will to move again, I put them to his back, scooting his t-shirt up and smoothing them over his slick skin in an effort to get closer.

I cringed at the rough and ragged feel of my touch, immediately withdrawing my hands in embarrassment.

He noticed the retreat and made an accompanying one of his own, but only as to position himself so he could see my face.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Callie,” he protested, putting one gentle finger to the curve of my chin.

“Something changed. What is it? Did I make you uncomfortable—” he surveyed with worry, breaking me nearly immediately with guilt.

“No. Nik, it’s not that. I…that was wonderful.” I closed my eyes tight against the shame before opening them to my admission at once. “It’s just my hands.”

“Your hands?”

I searched for the words to explain, and he waited patiently until they formed. “I’ve been fighting for this. Fighting and clawing and scratching for nearly my entire life.”

He nodded along, confirming that he’d followed me along my nonsensical path from hands to gymnastics. The best part was that he wasn’t just appeasing me. It seemed to make sense to him too. I lifted one hand in front of our faces and studied it.

“And sometimes I feel like all I have to show for it are these battered hands.”

“Your hands aren’t battered,” he denied in a whisper.

“They’re not?”

He shook his head and reached out to rub his thumb over the brutalized skin of my rips.

“They’re beautiful.” His eyes left the motion of this caress and lifted to meet mine. “Mental and physical toughness. Determination. Dedication. Hard work. Someone I want to know. Those are the things your hands say to me.”

Drugged on the high of my night with Nik, I didn’t think about what would be waiting for me at home after I dropped him back at the gym to get his motorcycle, gave him one last kiss, and headed there.

I moved with the invincible mindset of a teenager for the first time, and it had only taken me seven extra years to get there.

The time was late but not obscene at a quarter past ten, and the lights were largely extinguished on the interior of our house as I pulled in the driveway.

I guess that’s why the harsh sound of my father’s voice calling out to me as I walked in the door nearly sent me into cardiac arrest.

“Where’ve you been, Calia?”

The question itself was preposterous for a twenty-six year old woman to have to answer without protest, but I understood the concept of respect. I’d stormed out of the gym without thought or explanation early that day—something that was highly unlike me—and disappeared without a reachable trace for nearly the rest of the day. He had a right to ask as a concerned loved one whether I thought he was in the position to be fatherly or not.

I tried for vague, knowing I absolutely couldn’t go with the truth. “I just needed to clear my head.”

His eyes narrowed. “What’s going on with Nik?”

My chest seized and I nearly ingested my tongue. A couple of forced, rough swallows made it possible to speak again.

“We fought,” I admitted, largely leaving out the details and hoping he’d take it at face value.

He shook his head in exasperation. “What else is new?”

“I apologized.”

Understatement.

“Well, that’s definitely different.”

I fought the instinct to roll my eyes. Now was not the time to egg my father on and instigate more questions than necessary. Now was the time to contain the blast and get out with minimal damage.

“I drove him home since he’s only got the motorcycle and the rain was so bad.” I gestured gallantly outside for added effect. Cleared my throat. “I think one of his friends was going to run him back later to get his motorcycle or something. Then I just drove around for a while to visualize my routines and get back in the right mindset.”

Unbelievably, he nodded with approval, and I sighed a huge breath of relief. I hadn’t been too bad at lying for not having tried my hand at it much in the past. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing, but tonight, I was thankful. I’d sell my soul to just about any devil to keep my night with Nik, and this was a small price to pay comparatively.

Tonight had been happiness, fulfillment, and fantasy.

Tonight had been—