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21
Nina steppedoff the elliptical and paused for a minute to catch her breath. She left to grab a bottle of cleaning solution and a rag and returned to wipe down the machine. When she was done, she picked up her water bottle and towel and wiped her face as she headed for the lockers to get the rest of herstuff.
Normally she would have taken time to stretch at the end of her workout, but she’d told Edmonia she’d put in a couple hours at the gallery before she went to Amy’s for a Friday nightpotluck.
“See you tomorrow,Nina.”
She looked up and waved at Tom, one of the owners of the gym. “Seeyou.”
Outside, spring was in bloom, the temperature mild, the April sun gentle now that winter was behind them. The shift had happened almost all at once — her neighbors smiling and saying hello, shop owners shouting out cheery greetings as she passed, the sidewalks busy with people at all hours, every day of theweek.
It was like watching the entire city emerge from a long hibernation, and Nina was noexception.
She felt reborn, inbloom.
When she turned her head toward the gym as she passed, she caught her reflection in the glass and almost didn’t recognizeherself.
She was still curvy, but her dedication over the last month had highlighted muscles she didn’t know she had. The extra skin on the underside of her arms had diminished to almost nothing, showcasing newly defined biceps and triceps. Her thighs were still on the pillowy side, but she was no longer self-conscious about fat knees when she wore dresses, and her thighs had serious definition thanks to the squatrack.
Best of all, she’d dropped her excess body fat, leaving her with an almost-flat stomach after years of fighting a muffintop.
But it wasn’t just thegym.
If her time alone at the house in Larchmont while she and Peter had been in the middle of their divorce had been a period of incubation, the past month had been a period ofrevelation.
Her relationship with both Liam and Jack had continued, and while she’d had to force herself in the beginning to follow Karen’s advice about playing it close to the vest, she’d become more comfortable with the idea of dating both men atonce.
She didn’t know if she’d still feel that way once she slept with one of them — a decision that was imminent in both cases — but she’d enjoyed getting to know them, had allowed herself the freedom to do so withoutguilt.
It helped that she was surrounded by so many curious, intelligent women — women who challenged the status quo and questioned traditional gender paradigms. She could feel her perspective expanding, could feel herselfgrowing.
It also helped that the two men were so different, her relationships with them proceeding at different paces and in differentdirections.
She’d settled into a routine with Liam, comfortable except for the passion his kiss, his touch, woke in her. He texted her every day, sometimes just to say hello and see how her day was going, and he was a frequent visitor to the gallery when she wasworking.
She’d thought it was an old routine until Edmonia had teased her that thanks to Nina, she might just get more shows out of Liamyet.
They ate meals out and ate meals in at her place or his, an expansive but warm loft apartment in Williamsburg. They watched movies and attended gallery shows, Liam asking her opinion on interesting pieces, then sharing his ownobservations.
The temptation to sleep with him had only grown since their first kiss after brunch outside her apartment. He was patient, never pushing, never even showing frustration, but it was getting ridiculous, even for her “take it slow” standards. She had no idea what she was waiting for, although sometimes, when she was in the mood to be really honest with herself, she thought it was aboutJack.
She hadn’t even had a chance to turn him down. She’d been out with him five times since the Amfar gala, each one increasing the level of sexual tension betweenthem.
And yet he hadn’t tried to sleep with her. He hadn’t even tried to kissher.
She was almost positive he was attracted to her. She could feel the chemistry move between them, an invisible energy field that almost rippled theair.
If she had to guess, she’d say the delay was about control, something Jack liked to wield in all situations. They’d been to three five-star restaurants, a Broadway show with a yearlong waiting list, and another charity dinner — this one far less formal than the Amfargala.
Every date had been orchestrated by him, her presence more or less demanded. He always sent her clothes before their dates, insisting that he didn’t want them back after she’d worn them, that they were a gift. Once, he’d sent her a diamond bracelet to accompany a cocktail dress. He’d almost looked hurt when she’d handed it back to him at the door of her apartment, insisting that she couldn’t keep it, that if he made a big deal of it she would have to cancel theirdate.
While the chemistry between her and Liam was taut with affectionate anticipation, the tension between her and Jack was close to the boiling point. He was as careful not to touch her now as he’d been the night of their first date, and she’d begun to have the impression that his actions outside her apartment after their first date weren’t a choice, that maybe he’d gotten carried away by the energy betweenthem.
She’d waited breathlessly during each of their subsequent dates for a similar lapse but it had been to no avail. If Jack hadn’t kept demanding her presence, she would have thought he wasn’t interested in her atall.
She was ashamed of the thrill it gave her. The withholding of all but a hand to help her out of the car, an arm to clutch on the way into a restaurant, an unexpected aphrodisiac that would make any self-respecting feministshudder.
But she couldn’t deny it: the only shuddering she was doing around Jack was due to her intense arousal, his restraint only increasing her need to feel his mouth on hers, his hands on herbody.
