Was it possible my princess wore diamonds and spoke with a hundred-dollar vocabulary…while also throwing her dirty clothes on the floor, refusing to make her bed, and dumping nuclear-level hot sauce on her takeout?
“Living room?” Lila said from behind me, and I turned around.
“Lead the way, Princess.”
She’d pulled up a playlist on her phone—something instrumental, strings and piano, the kind of music I associated with the figure skating videos I’d been watching all week. It filled the apartment quietly, like this was the sort of music that belonged in a place like this.
Except for the hot sauce, a voice whispered in the back of my head.
I wondered which part of Lila was the real deal, and which part I liked more.
She had pushed the coffee table back against the wall and was standing in the center of the living room in her bare feet, her hair still up from dinner. She’d lost her heels somewhere, and I decided that made her feel far more approachable.
And sexy as fuck, the way her toes curled into the thick rug as I eyed her appreciatively.
She was starting to blush again. “Okay. I think the routine will probably focus on lifts, since you’re so strong.” Her gaze dropped to my chest as she stepped closer, shaking out her hands, as if she was trying to remain professional. “Obviously, we’re not ready to skate any, but I thought we could learn the basic lift positions tonight, get your hands comfortable with where they need to be.”
My hands know where they’d like to be.
I didn’t say it. Instead, I nodded curtly. “Walk me through them.”
Lila clicked something on her phone. A video played—a pairs competition, the male tossing the female overhead like she weighed nothing. She paused it and pointed with her other hand.
“That’s the goal. But we start here.” She tossed the phone on the uncomfortable-looking couch and positioned herself in front of me, close enough that I could smell the slight coconut scent of her lotion that had been driving me nuts all week. “Put your hands on my waist.”
I put my hands on her waist.
She looked up at me with an expression that suggested she was focusing very hard on being professional. “The first lift is a press lift. It’s exactly what it sounds like. I put my hands on your shoulders, you take my weight, I go up. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“For now.” Her hands came to my shoulders. “The hard part isn’t the lift. It’s that you have to feel the moment I’m ready to go—there’s a gathering, a shift of weight onto the balls of my feet. You’ll learn to read it the same way you read me on the ice. Ready?”
I lifted her.
She made a soft surprised sound—not frightened, something else—as her feet left the floor and she rose above me. Her hands tightened on my shoulders. I held her there, steady, watching her face shift from startled into something more like wonder.
“You didn’t even flex,” she said. “I didn’t push off or anything.”
“You don’t weigh anything.”
“I absolutely weigh something.” But she was smiling as I lowered her back down. “Again. This time feel for the moment I shift my weight.”
We did it four more times. By the third, I knew exactly when she was ready—a small transfer of weight, a slight lift of her chin—and I was already moving when she was.
On the fifth, she laughed, delighted.
“See?” she said, tipping her head back to smile up at me. “You read me.”
“I told you.” I could still feel the warmth of her waist through the thin wool of her top. “I always know where you are.”
She looked at me for a moment too long, then stepped back and consulted her phone. “We’re going to try the tabletop lift next, where I’ll be thankful for the tall ceilings. This one’s about trust on your part as much as mine.”
With a nod, she swallowed, then positioned herself in front of me.
“I’m going to fall forward into your hands—you catch me under the hips, here”—she guided my hands to the position—“and you lift me over your head. Carry me horizontal, I’ll be face down. My weight will feel strange at first.”
It didn’t feel strange. It felt like the most natural thing I’d done in weeks—her weight distributed across my palms, her body elongated above me, arms wide, back arched.
