I drop my tank top on the floor.
“Sophia,” he says. There’s a pained expression on his face. “Please don’t.”
I watch him across my living room. Recklessness and something else, something wild, claws beneath my breastbone. “And why not?”
“You know why not.” He’s not looking at me, like my sports bra and bare stomach is as dangerous as Medusa. His face looks carved in stern lines.
“Because you don’t mix business and pleasure,” I say, “or because you don’t want me?”
He shakes his head. “You know that’s not it.”
“Do I?” I walk backward through my living room, my feet sinking into the plush carpet.
His hand turns into a fist at his side. “You deserve much more than this. Proper fucking dates, over candlelight. Flowers and gifts, and a slow seduction.”
“I don’t want that. I’ve had that.”
“I know,” he says and curses again. I’ve never heard him swear this much before. “You think I don’t want you? You’re all I goddamn think about these days, and it’s been that way for far too long.”
My skin feels hot. “We’re not breaking any rules.”
“Only all of them,” he mutters, and for the first time since I took off my clothes, Isaac lets his gaze drop.
His eyes warm every inch of my skin they touch. There’s always been a leashed quality to him, but it’s fraying now, coming undone at the edges. His hair is mussed from my fingers, and I want his hands on my bare skin.
He flew in just to make our tennis match.
“Fine,” he mutters, an angry furrow between his brows, and then he crosses the distance to me. He kisses me the same way he did in the kitchen. Thoroughly and deeply, and I lose myself in it. It feels so good to just feel again, to forget about myself and my ruined life, and Percy dating Scarlett.
I reach for his shirt, and he breaks our kiss just long enough to tug it over his wide shoulders. His chest is clearly defined, and there’s a hint of ab muscles beneath a smattering of dark hair. It disappears down his shorts.
My stomach tightens at the sight, and when I run my hands over his chest, he groans against my lips.
“Where is—”
“Behind me,” I say. He starts walking me backward toward the bedroom, but then I remember what we’ve just been doing.
I grip his shoulders. “Shower first.”
He groans. “Do you want to kill me?”
That makes me chuckle. The sound is tinged with nerves and anticipation, and the remnants of my adrenaline high from our victory earlier. I haven’t had sex since Percy, and it’s been many years since I had sex with anyone else.
Isaac’s hands tighten around my waist, and he lifts me up with a grunt. I lock my legs around his hips. “You didn’t have to do that,” I say with a grin.
He walks us toward my bathroom. “Trust me, I didn’t feel the least bit forced.”
“Oh? What is it then, a privilege?” I tease.
He sets me down on the bathroom mat but keeps our bodies tight. “An honor.” His hands slide down my sides and over my tennis skirt, and I shiver at the slow touch.
“I always thought we’d do this in a hotel room,” I say.
He raises an eyebrow. “You’ve thought about this, too?”
I like the word too more than I should.
“Maybe.” I undo the zipper in my tennis skirt. “Not once did I think it would be in my apartment, though.”
His gaze is on my body and the slow shimmy of my skirt and built-in shorts down my legs.
“Stunning,” he murmurs. “Let me…”
He tugs at my ponytail until it unravels, my hair falling over my shoulders. “First thing I noticed,” he says and bends to kiss my neck. His free hand runs through my hair.
I close my eyes at the sensation. “First thing you noticed?
Isaac kisses along my collarbone and takes a very long time to answer. “What was that?” he asks, voice hoarse.
I chuckle. “Never mind.”
His lips stop at the edge of my sports bra, and then, his eyes shift with a focus that makes me shiver. He reaches behind me for a clasp.
But it doesn’t have one, and I lean back in his arms to pull my sports bra over my chest. My breasts pop free, and Isaac groans, the hands supporting my waist tightening almost painfully.
“Jesus, you’re so fucking beautiful,” he says.
The expression on his face heats my skin as much as his words do. My chest is average, not big or small, and not very noteworthy. But his expression says anything but average.
We step into the shower. I reach behind him to turn the knob, and cold water sprays from above.
“Shit,” he says, and I yelp at the sudden spray. “Sorry!”
He pulls me into his arms and into the corner of my small shower. Chest to chest, my cheek against his. He reaches behind me to adjust the temperature.
“I might not be a math teacher,” he murmurs, “but I know degrees.”
I pretend to shiver in delight, and he laughs. “Yeah. Just don’t make me do calculus, though.”
“Please don’t,” I say and fan myself with my hand. “That would bring me over the edge.”
He glances down, and the humor on his face fades, leaving behind concentrated awe. “Cold water does have its perks, though.” He smooths his hands up my ribs, his thumbs brushing a peaked nipple. “Would you look at that,” he murmurs.
It’s been so long. So long, and never here in my shower in the apartment I got to start over. He bends his head and kisses my skin, his mouth hot, warmer than the water at my back. I close my eyes at the sensations.
I twine my fingers through his hair, the short, dark strands unusually mussy. He adds his teeth, biting lightly at my nipple.
“Isaac,” I say. My free hand finds his shoulder, curving around it. “Please.”
He lifts his head. “Please what?”
“I need more. I need…” I wrap my arms around his neck and pull us under the warm water. The nerves in my body feel electrified, my stomach alive.
“What do you need?” Isaac asks and bends his head to kiss me. They’re long, warm kisses beneath the onslaught of water; kisses with his hands on my waist, on my breasts, on the wet fabric of my underwear.
You, I think.
“Sophia?” he reminds me in a deep voice.
I rest my hands on the waistband of his shorts, now soaked through. To pull them down? To pull us both out of this shower?
I don’t know.
I open my mouth to tell him that I want him. That I want fun, and easy, and for us to forget ourselves in one another. But that’s not what comes out.
“It’s been so long since I did this,” I whisper.
His hands pause at my hips. “I see.”
“But I want you,” I say. “I want this.”
Isaac makes a low humming sound, a thoughtful agreement. The water runs in rivulets down his lightly stubbled cheeks and over wide shoulders. The silence between us feels taut, and I wonder if I’ve ruined the moment. Broken the magic spell.
But then, he turns me around, my back to his chest, and his hands move down my body. They grip my underwear. “These need to come off,” he says and pulls them down my thighs. Soaking wet, they fall the rest of the way, leaving me naked.
“You said you liked clear communication,” he murmurs in my ear and slides his hand down my stomach. “Go on, then. Tell me what you like.”
The first touch of his fingers makes me catch my breath. It’s so foreign, being touched there, and I can’t help but look down. At the thick forearm draped around my chest.
His free hand cups my breast. “Sophia,” he says. “Talk to me.”
His hand moves, and it’s almost obscene, watching him touch me. “That’s nice,” I breathe.
“Just… nice?”
“Mm-hmm. I think you could—oh.” He finds a spot that has me reaching out to the tiled wall to brace myself.
“Here?” he asks and presses his lips to my neck. The kisses, the fingers between my legs, and the hand on my breast…
I’m so turned on, I have to focus on breathing through my mouth, in and out, to stop from moaning. “Yes,” I say. “That’s it. Right there.”
His fingers circle, and speed up, and I grip his forearm to make sure he doesn’t pull away. He chuckles and tips my head back to rest against his shoulder. “So, it’s been a long time, huh?”
“Screw you,” I whisper, and he chuckles again. The sound echoes against the tiles, and I spread my legs wider, holding on.
“That’s it,” he mutters, fingers speeding up. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this?”
I shake my head. The words ricochet through my mind, but it’s impossible to hold on to them, to hear anything but the pounding of my blood. I’m close, and it hasn’t been this good by myself, not for months, not for—
Isaac takes his hand off me. I open my mouth to protest when he brings it back sharply in a smack, right there. I gasp, and then he does it again, and one more time, and on the fourth, the orgasm erupts inside of me.
My legs freeze up, and I moan at the liquid heat pouring through my limbs, almost unbearable. His hand returns between my legs to stroke me through it.
When the last tremors leave me, I rest my head against his shoulder. “Oh my God,” I whisper. “I didn’t expect that to be so…”
“Satisfying?”
“That, too. But not so quick. It’s not like that happens every time.”
His hands stroke up my stomach and return to cup my breasts. My body feels languid and liquid, like it’s becoming one with the water pouring down from above.
“Every time by yourself?” he asks. “Or every time with… someone else?”
We both know who he’s referring to. I close my eyes. “Someone else,” I say. “Any someone, really.”
He reaches past me to grab a few pumps of soap and starts stroking down my body. I give a satisfied sigh and turn in his arms. “Thanks.”
His smile tips up and to the side, wider than I’ve ever seen it before. “I should be the one to say thank you. You’re beautiful when you come.”
A flush creeps up my cheeks. “Thanks.”
He looks down my body, at his hands and at my own, resting on one another. Soapy bubbles have started to form at the peaks of my nipples.
He kisses me slowly, softly. “Thanks for today,” he murmurs. He runs a hand through his hair, squeezes out some of the water, and then steps out of the shower.
“Isaac?”
He reaches for a towel and runs it over his head. “Yes.”
“You’re leaving?” I look down, at the clear imprint of his length against the wet workout shorts. The sight makes my stomach tighten again, and I feel hyperaware of my naked body, and of how close it is to his. To that.
“Do you have a condom?” he asks, the look in his eyes wry. “Because I didn’t bring one with me to the tournament.”
“Oh,” I breathe. “Shit, no, I don’t.”
I’m not on birth control anymore. Three months after I’d left Percy, it was time to renew my prescription for the pill… and I just hadn’t. What had been the point? I wasn’t looking to date. Ever. Only a small, gray-striped kitten had forced me out of bed in those early weeks.
“Didn’t think so,” he says and bends to grab his shirt. “I would never impose on you like that.”
Impose. The old-fashioned word makes me smile. It’s so him, the glimpses of chivalry bred into him. As if having unprotected sex with me would be an imposition.
“Stay,” I say. “There are other things we can do.”
His eyes are filled with heat. “Don’t tempt me. It’s been a very long twenty-four hours, and resisting you is more than I have in me right now, sweetheart.”
My mouth opens. “Oh.”
He kisses me goodbye and looks me over one final time with eyes glowing with appreciation. He smiles in farewell and leaves, and a few seconds later, I hear the door to my apartment close behind him.
I lean back against the shower wall. Sweetheart. Percy had never called me anything but Soph for our entire relationship. When I once asked him why he never called me any pet names, not even baby, he’d laughed and said that I was nobody’s baby. You’re way too… strong, he’d said, phrasing it like a compliment. Too smart. Baby doesn’t fit. I’d tried to take it as a compliment, even if the words hadn’t made sense to me.
Sweetheart. I let the warm water wash the remnants of the soap away, and every single part of me feels clean.
