AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve never noticed that there was with you before,” he muttered, and stalked out of the room before I could say anything else.
My stomach knotted. We’d managed not to talk about anything that’d happened before I’d shown up at his grandparents’ house other than past skating performances. He grumbled a lot, but mildly enough that I didn’t take it personally.
I thought I’d heard a little anger in his tone just now, though. Was he still angry at me underneath?
I’d tried to touch on that very sensitive subject a couple of times, but Jasper had deflected me before I’d gotten anywhere close. So I’d settled for making up for my screw-up last year as well as I could without bringing it up directly. It obviously hadn’t been enough yet.
Lou gave me a little wave and vanished into the hall after Jasper. I stayed in the converted storage room for a few minutes, breathing deeply and clearing my head.
The training. I just had to focus on the training. Everything good I could do for either of my current charges would grow from there.
In my mind, I replayed the key moments from today’s training. Lou’s joke about me being a yoga guru came back to me with a spark of inspiration.
I had actually practiced yoga on and off at a studio back home. The main teacher had shown me a position that’d flipped a switch in my head when it came to maintaining balance. It might help Lou as well.
With a burst of hopeful enthusiasm, I hurried down the hall to the women’s change room. If I caught her before she left, she could give it a shot tonight and it might have leveled up her abilities by tomorrow’s session.
I knocked on the locker room door but didn’t hear an answer. Had she already left?
Worried that I’d missed her, I pushed inside. “Lou?”
I’d only made it a few steps before I processed the hiss of running water. And the image that went with that sound.
Lou was in the shower area in the corner of the change room, behind the curtain that hung across one of the three stalls. It hid any details, but the silhouette of her lithely curved form showed vaguely against the translucent material.
My dick jumped to attention. The rest of me backpedaled as fast as humanly possible.
But she’d already heard my call. Before I made it to the door, Lou poked her face around the edge of the curtain, her dark hair plastered to her head. “Niko?”
Heat burned my cheeks as I averted my eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize—I was in a hurry to tell you something—it can wait.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I was almost finished. Just give me a second.”
I didn’t know whether it would be more rude to stay on her request or insist on leaving anyway. I settled for turning so my back was to her.
But I heard every motion. The click of the water turning off. The rustle as she reached for the towel she’d left on a nearby bench. The soft whispers of it rubbing over her light brown skin.
Stop imagining what that looks like, I ordered my brain.
My brain did not cooperate.
“Are you going to tell me what’s up or are you just going to leave me staring at your back?” Lou asked in an amused tone.
I dared to turn around, assuming she’d gotten dressed faster than I’d expected. But she was standing by the bench with only her towel wrapped around her body.
Well, a little of her body. The thin terrycloth fabric covered the swell of her breasts while leaving plenty of smooth skin and a tempting dip of cleavage on display. It only hung to mid-thigh.
When she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, the ends of the towel slipped a little apart, opening a gap almost to her right hip. I jerked my gaze away, but not before noting the few droplets of water that still clung to her upper legs. My pants had gotten uncomfortably tight.
Could she tell? Oh, kuso!
Lou flipped her damp hair back over her bare shoulder and gave me a look that felt both curious and assessing. If my face had been hot before, now it was totally burning.
And it wasn’t the only part of me on fire.
“Don’t leave me hanging,” she said. Did her voice usually sound that sultry?
Was I just imagining it because of how turned on I was right now?
