Page 23 of Filled

It’s nothing. It’s a clinch. I’ve been in ten thousand of these. The smell of her hair is right under my chin, and her bare shoulder is sliding up my arm, and her hip is bumping mine, and I am going to die on this mat.

“Like this?” Her voice is right against my collarbone.

“Lower.” I bring her elbow down, my hand wrapping her wrist. I keep my touch light. “Don’t let me get under you. There. Now swim.”

She swims her hand through and our chests slide. Her breath ghosts up my throat.

I am so fucking screwed.

“Again.”

We drill it. Twenty reps. Thirty. The first ten I can hold the line because I’m focused on the mechanics, on her elbow angle, on her hip placement, on the technical things my brain has done a million times. By rep fifteen she’s sweating, and the sweat is making her skin tacky against mine, until all I can feel is the heat coming off her like a furnace.

“Bump now,” I tell her, and my voice has gone gravelly. “Drive your hip into mine. Use it to break the tie.”

She bumps me.

Her hipbone catches mine, and the friction drags her against me, and I’m already half-hard and now she’s pressing into me at exactly the wrong angle, and there’s nothing I can do about it except stand there and try to keep my face neutral.

“Was that right?” she asks.

“Yeah.” It comes out wrong. I clear my throat. “Yeah, that was good. Again.”

She does it again. Slower this time. Her brow pulls together a little, like she didn’t notice. And maybe she didn’t. Maybe I’m getting away with it. Maybe…

“Now resist,” I say, because I’m a goddamn masochist. “I’m going to try to break your grip. Don’t let me. Stay heavy.”

I shove into her. She holds. She’s strong as hell, and she’s planting her feet and dropping her weight, and her thigh slides between mine to anchor herself, andfuck.

Her thigh is between my legs.

She freezes.

It’s barely a hitch, half a second, the smallest catch in her breathing, but I feel it. She feels how hard I am. There’s no universe in which she doesn’t feel it, not pressed against me like this, not with how hard I’ve gone in the last sixty seconds.

I want to step back. I want to step back so badly my muscles are already twitching toward it.

I don’t. Because stepping back is admitting it. Stepping back is sayingyes, that’s what you felt, and yes, it’s because of you.

So I stay. I keep my face stone. I keep my voice flat.

“Reset. Other side.”

Her chin tips up, hazel eyes finding mine, and her cheeks have gone a pretty pink color. Her tongue darts out to wet her bottom lip and I want to suck it into my mouth.

“Coach—”

“Reset, Fisher.”

She blinks. The crack in her composure seals over. She steps off me, switches her grip, comes back in on the other side, like nothing happened.

I’m grateful. I’m dying. I’m both. And both feel like hell.

We drill the other side. My heart is hammering against my ribs hard enough that I’m worried she can hear it. The grip work is rougher now, and she’s coming in harder, fighting it more, like she’s trying to outrun what just happened by exhausting it.

I let her. I match her. Because the alternative is thinking about it, and if I think about it I’ll do something I can’t take back.

“Pummel through,” I tell her. “Don’t stop. Keep flowing. The point is you never stop swimming.”