Authors: Lauren Gilley
Her body lotion was vanilla and it blended well with her perfume, the combined scents shooting up his nose as he leaned in and put his lips to her bare skin. He was never going to get tired of hearing her excited snatch of breath as he flicked his tongue across her nipple. And tonight, even better, was the way she braced her hands back behind her on the counter and offered up her chest to him.
“Oh,” she murmured when he sucked her nipple into his mouth, grazed it with his teeth, her legs spreading wide under his palms as he leaned into her. She was unspoiled – she had no idea she was sexy, was just breathless and thankful and wanted his attention.
Jordan had every intention of taking her upstairs, but they wound up on the floor instead, his clothes and the rest of hers a pile in front of the sink, the tile a cold shock against his skin as he settled onto his back and pulled her astride him.
Ellie braced her palms on his chest, nails biting into him as her fingers flexed. The pace she set was urgent. Her hair a shimmering chocolate waterfall over one shoulder. And despite the glorious spectacle of her riding him, her breasts bouncing, it was her face he watched. Her eyes. Because she needed to be the one in control in this moment. Because he’d made her an irrevocable silent promise tonight in her kitchen.
He wasn’t just pretending with her, and he wasn’t going to hurt her on purpose.
After, the harsh beat of their breathing echoing against the cabinet faces around them, their bodies glued together with perspiration, Jordan circled his arms around her and kept her on top of him. Raked his fingers through her hair. Felt the dry, shiny streaks her tears had left along her temples.
Oh, shit
. He’d reached a point of investment he couldn’t do a damn thing about.
“I’m sorry,” he told her, and her hair rustled as she tipped her head up and propped her chin against his shoulder. “I shouldn’t have yelled.”
“I shouldn’t have doubted you,” she said softly. She traced his clavicle with a fingertip. “I guess I get kinda paranoid.”
Feeling like a total sap, he smoothed her hair again. “With good reason, probably.”
Her lashes were dark as soot against her ceramic face, eyes still red around the edges when she lifted them. “Yeah.” A wavering half smile curled one corner of her pretty bow mouth. “Paige will be home soon and we’re kind of…naked in the kitchen.”
“Yeah, she wishes she could walk in on me.”
Her laugh was quiet, but it was still a laugh, and that was encouraging.
They dressed, and then, to his amusement, she started cleaning up the kitchen again.
“You’re picking up her mess?”
Ellie shrugged and her half-buttoned shirt started sliding off one shoulder. She had amassed more dirty bowls than would have been necessary for a Thanksgiving feast at the sink and was filling up one half of the old porcelain basin with Dawn and water. “It beats waiting on her to do it herself.”
Jordan sighed and called himself whipped. “Here.” He stepped up beside her. “Gimme a towel and I’ll dry.”
She snorted, a true smile cutting up at him from beneath her lashes. “You’ll dry?”
“Ah, you’ve never met my mother. You don’t grow up in a house of seven and not get put to work in the kitchen. Yeah. I’ll dry.”
23
M
orning was a virginal blush behind the black silhouettes of the trees when Ellie finally dragged herself out of bed the next morning. She’d been much more efficient before Jordan had come into her life; but, she realized now, lonely. Very lonely.
She spent a good five minutes finger combing the tangles from her hair and watching the horizon yellow out through the window before she reminded herself that it was Friday, and the morning of the track meet.
Her robe was hanging on the bed post and she pulled it on, shivering as her bare feet hit the hardwood. She went downstairs and started coffee, then came back up. The runners’ questions about her attendance were no longer relevant: she was going, no decision to make.
In the bathroom, Jordan’s running clothes were a red and black puddle on top of his Nikes, and the shower was on, the water pelting the opaque curtain.
“Morning,” she greeted as she laid a stripe of Colgate on her toothbrush.
“Hey.” His voice was muffled by water. “I don’t have anything I need.”
“Like what?” she asked around the toothbrush.
The water cut off with the usual thumps and groans of the old pipes and the towel he’d thrown up on the bar got pulled down on the other side. In the mirror, Ellie watched the curtain push back, clicking on its plastic rings, and Jordan stepped out on the mat with the towel around his waist, still dripping wet and shiny like he’d been oiled.
Ooh, baby oil
, she thought and then chastised herself, feeling a blush creeping into her cheeks.
“No razor, no gel, no toothbrush.” He frowned at his reflection in the mirror and slicked his dripping hair back along his head, the curls dark brown with water.
Ellie spit in the sink, rinsed her toothbrush and offered it to him.
“You sure?”
“Of all the bodily fluids swapped,” she said with a smile, “spit is nothing.”
“True.”
While he brushed his teeth, she crouched down in front of the free floating shelves she and Paige had somehow managed to install themselves and rifled through the little decorative storage baskets until she came out with a new disposable razor.
She bit back a laugh when Jordan’s brows snapped together. He spit his toothpaste and said, “It’s pink.”
“And glittery,” she added. “But it’s still a razor.”
“It’s a
chick
razor.”
“A Venus, actually. You’ll have skin like a goddess…or whatever their tagline is.”
“But no shaving cream.”
“Oh, I have that too.” She pulled a can of the Skintimate she sometimes used on her legs out of the basket.
“Mango and passion fruit,” he said, dead-faced. “What are you trying to do to me?”
“Take it or leave it.”
He sighed through his nostrils like a horse. “Take it.”
She left him to it, going back to her room to tidy up. In the precious first light of day, in the autumn-chilled, dark wood of her room, she fluffed the white pillows and coverlet that smelled like Jordan’s cologne and watched dust motes stir with a homey sort of contentment. She had turned her room into the timeless setting she’d always wanted – the sort of place where it wouldn’t have been out of the question to find Jane Austen or one of her characters – and now she had the aesthetic layer of man draped over it all. Of two people. Of a couple. Her stupid little heart was all aflutter with it.
Downstairs, she had a travel mug of coffee and homemade, reheated hash brown bites waiting because she knew he liked potatoes for breakfast. Jordan came into the kitchen in the jeans and flannel shirt he’d worn the night before, stress lines stamped between his brows.
“I gotta be in KSU colors, so I’ll have to stop by the bookstore when I get to the school,” he explained, half to himself. He plucked at his hair with a frown. “Oh, and I used somebody’s mousse.”
Ellie had to laugh.
“It’s not funny.”
She leaned into him, set her hands just above his belt and smoothed them up the flannel covered, hard lines of his torso until she could slip them behind his neck. “Oh, but it is.” She stretched up on her tiptoes and pressed her nose and lips against his cheek. “You smell like fruit salad.”
“Hence the not funny,” he grumbled, but his arms stole around her and squeezed. “Are you coming?”
In truth, she couldn’t believe he’d stayed the night before, especially knowing he had a meet today. She sank back on her heels and smiled up at him, fingertips tracing the underside of his jaw. “Of course.”
Surprise was a fast ripple across his face, there and gone. “Cool.”
They stood together for a long moment, and Ellie was struck by the sense that he was enjoying it just as much as she was. She was in trouble, true: invested and attached and thinking of him in semi-permanent terms. But she was sure, staring up at him as morning fell over the house, that he was in trouble too.
**
KSU’s track was new, part of a sports complex off-campus. It was expensive, professional, and gave the school the as-of-yet-unavailable opportunity to host track events. The first real invitational of the season wasn’t until December in Illinois, but today was a chance for his boys to dip their toes in the pond with Georgia State, Shorter, and Georgia Southern.
It was also a chance for Jordan to prove he was either a total moron, or a decent coach.
It was a quarter to nine and the dew was as thick and white as frost on the grass. Jordan’s breath was a plume of dragon smoke as he locked up his Jeep in the parking lot and headed toward the track.
The lot wasn’t crowded; he recognized Coach Vaughn’s Explorer thanks to the mosaic of bumper stickers that covered the back window, all of them touting him as a runner and a coach and all of them making it known to the world that the guy behind the wheel was an obnoxious jackass. The rest of the cars would belong to the coaching staff, runners and parents. Squinting against the ferocious bite of the autumn sun that climbed the horizon, he saw a fleet of vans turning in up at the entrance of the sports complex and assumed they belonged to one of the other competing universities. The bleachers were slick and shiny with dew, skeletal and lonely. Track meets were only exciting for spectators at the Olympic level. For high school kids and college runners, for all those future Olympians who hadn’t yet graced televisions worldwide, it wasn’t about recognition. It was the clock, the track, the tightness of their shoes, and the few brave family members and coaches who dared believe in them when there was such a chance they’d never amount to anything extraordinary. No one ran for women, for fame, for Range Rovers and endorsement deals; they ran because something they couldn’t understand or control compelled them to.
“There he is! Coach Walker!” Vaughn’s voice was a stain against the clean morning around them. He stood at the curb, the other assistant coaches grouped well away from him like they didn’t want anyone to assume they were with him. His Owls polo was tucked too tightly into his shorts, the fabric stretched over the soft paunch of his stomach, a belly button the size of a fist giving his midsection the look of one big, disgusting doughnut. The sun wasn’t even up and he already had a sheen of sweat glazing his forehead.
Well isn’t that the image of track and field success
, Jordan thought, and then tried to pin a pretend smile to his face as he had no choice but to walk right into a hand shake and shoulder slug.
“Mornin’!” Vaughn’s hand was clammy. “You pumped?”
Jordan didn’t do “pumped,” but he said, “Yeah,” and resisted the urge to wipe his palm against the leg of his shorts.
There were four other assistant track coaches, and only one – David whose nose could be seen from space and whose HPS students bemoaned his seriousness – taught in addition to coaching. The other three all worked second jobs, and all had been runners at some point, the long legs and lean builds persisting. The girl of the bunch, Virginia, wore not a stitch of makeup, her ponytail severe. She cracked her gum, chewing with her mouth open, and gave him an up-and-down inspection with a masculine half smile that left him uneasy. She flirted like a man and he hoped she handled rejection better than one.
“I hear you’ve been running with your guys,” Vaughn said as they moved up the walk as a unit.
So good at laying traps, Jordan smelled one now. “They needed some incentive,” he said with a shrug, hands going in the pockets of the black track pants he’d dug out of a bag in the back of his Jeep. The KSU bookstore hadn’t been open yet, so he’d gone from office to office in the convocation center until he’d found a polo to borrow. “And I like to stay on my game.”
“Smart, smart,” Vaughn conceded with a wide, insincere smile that soured the coffee churning around in Jordan’s gut. “I always like my guys bringing new ideas to the table.”
Lie. He detested new ideas – that much was visible in his little button eyes – almost as much as he hated being shown up by a younger coach.
“Could you still compete?”
Ellie had asked with the wonder of a rock star groupie. Faced with the politics, ass-kissing and uninspired teaching methods of the coaching circle he was locked into, he wondered how he’d ever been stupid enough to
stop
competing.
**
The sun was rapidly scaling its way along the great blue bowl of the sky, blasting away the remnants of last night’s clouds, but the nip still had its claws in the air, the dew still a blanket of crystal across the grass. Travel mug of coffee in one hand, shades pushed up on her nose, Ellie went up the walk to the track and found a seat on the bottom rung of the bleachers, right up close to the action. She wasn’t going to get Jordan fired, but she also wasn’t going to play the covert mistress lurking in the upper deck. However he wanted to phrase it, he was her somebody, and she was going to be supportive.
The light was the pure, warm, butter-colored stuff of fall, and on the sprinkler-fed green grass, the runners were like jewels in their black and gold. Jordan only worked with the three middle distance boys, but there were more here now: sprinters, distance runners, and decathletes. There were girls too. Ellie watched the female track team with their chiseled legs and washboard abs, their aloof, cool assuredness, and felt an unexpected, white-hot jolt of jealousy surge through her. Not because she wanted to be one of them, but because she wondered why Jordan wasn’t
with
one of them; it would have been so natural for him to mate with his own kind.
Stupid
, she chided herself. He hadn’t slept last night with his leg wedged between one of those girls’ knees, and she refused to think about any of the rest of it, sweeping it out of her mind in one big motion.
Her gaze caught a great big demonstrative wave out on the track and she saw Lane coming toward her, one of his playboy smiles catching the attention of the women sitting down the bleachers from her. “Ellie!” he called in that rowdy way only guys in their early twenties can master.
His shout caught Jonathan and Anton’s ears and they peeled away from the herd, moving toward her too.
“You came!” Anton yelled.
“Sweet,” was Jonathan’s contribution.
“Hi, guys.” She smiled, keeping her voice on the quiet side of happy-to-see-them. She didn’t know if they liked her, or if they liked the thought that she was younger than all of them and very obviously dating their coach. Either way, Jordan had heard them, and Ellie’s heart gave a happy leap when she spotted him standing apart from the other coaches, his sun-gilded silhouette a teen heartthrob poster made just to her specifications.
“Guys,” he called to his runners, “stop hitting on the spectators.”