Page 84 of Racing Hearts

My next breath hitches as Adrian flips me onto my back. For a long moment, he hovers above me: eyes boring twin holes into mine, one hand pressed to the sand by my braid, the other cupping my cheek. His thumb traces across the hard plane of my cheekbone and I can feel the fluttering in my chest as my heart takes off with breathless anticipation.

“You do like a challenge,” I say.

Adrian laughs again and then he’s kissing me and I’m all out of quips because he’s already hard again. Two weeks ago, this would have taken me by surprise. Now? I know better.

I tug at Adrian’s shoulders as he traces my jawline with his tongue. His hands work down the rest of the smooth material of my unisuit. For some reason, it reminds me of the way my shirt hitched in the wake of his exploring touch when we danced—the first time our bodies pressed together.

“You know what else I like?” he asks into my hair.

Before I can make a joke about a well-organized weight room, Adrian eases his hand into my spandex, and because I never wear underwear on the water, his fingers are already on me. My next breath comes out in a low gasp, unbidden. Making noises like this was never something I used to do, at least not unintentionally. But now, under Adrian’s light touches and soft circling fingers, it feels like I’m sighing and gasping on a daily basis.

He runs his teeth over his lower lip, watching my face as I flutter my eyes closed again. “I like the way your cheeks go pink when you’re doing squats. Or when I’m doing this.”

His fingers circle again and my hips buck into his hand. Warmth courses down my skin as my thoughts turn feverish and fierce.

“Adrian,” I say, and the word is almost as inadvertent as a groan. Like he’s drawing it out of me and I don’t even know what it is.

Somehow, Adrian does, though, because his fingers release me for just long enough that he can push my unisuit down my thighs until it catches on my knees. When I try to kick the material loose, Adrian stills me, leaving my legs pressed nearly closed together.

He takes me in. His eyes trace a long, slow line from my face down my chest to the place where he’s positioned just above my thighs. I can feel my heart thrumming with anticipation, and there’s heat radiating over every part of my skin. I shift, bound legs fighting to close the distance between us, but Adrian holds himself above me without ceding any more inches.

“I like you like this, too,” he says. “You’re most beautiful when you want something.”

“Adrian,” I protest.

If he weren’t so maddening I’d be able to appreciate how beautiful he is right now—lips full, cheekbones shadowed, eyes flaring bright in the sun. Instead, though, all I can think about is how good it feels to have him inside me. And the fact that he’s currently not.

Adrian lowers his mouth to mine and draws a kiss across my lips. It’s wonderful and pleasurable and also pure torture because it’s not nearly satisfying enough. I arch into him, begging without words. Perhaps he listens to my silent pleas or maybe he just wants this as much as I do because, with one hand pressed to the ground, he repositions himself. Then, slowly, he pushes inside me.

My hips arch into him as my fingernails find his shoulder blades. He lowers himself to his elbows, and with the motion, he draws himself the rest of the way. And, oh god, everything feels so full and tight it’s like I’m the personification of a twanging string. He moves up and down, dragging through me in slow, agonizing strokes.

I strain upward toward him. His mouth drops to mine, then travels to my jaw, my throat. He kisses the mounds of my shoulders, runs his nose down the crest of one of my biceps, traces his fingers over the ridges of my ribs.

“So fucking beautiful,” he whispers into my neck as he pushes into me again.

When he slides back, eyes locked on mine, I think maybe I can see it, too. Or at the very least, I can see the yearning in his expression, because I know it’s exactly how I look at him. He runs his hand down my thigh muscle and pushes the unisuit the rest of the way off my legs, freeing them. I lift up a knee, curling around his back and Adrian thrusts into me again, deeper this time. I let out an unrestrained moan.

He groans in answer.

“And so strong,” he says. “You…”

He trails off, barely finishing the word because our breaths are coming in heavier now, like we’re both sprinting to an unseen finish line. I kiss him back, fiercely, and our tongues move together as he glides in and out of me. Unrestrained, I move with him, letting the rhythm of our strokes sail through our bodies like we’re back in that bar in Italy dancing to the deep thrum of bass. Like we’re on twin ergs racing each other to a sweat-soaked finish. It’s all blurring together—the heat and sweat and flecks of sand and Adrian’s hands on me, Adrian’s hands everywhere as he sinks deeper, moving like a rolling wave.

It’s the same breathless, paradoxical moment of disassociation and focus I just had rolling across the waves in the bay. This time, though, there’s nothing but Adrian’s tongue tracing across my neck, the drip of sweat that’s descending his collarbone and tucking between his pecs, and, most of all, the fullness of the pleasure coursing through me.

I’m lost in this moment and I think Adrian is lost with me, because he keeps opening his eyes, finding mine, before closing them again. His mouth strains against words he can’t form, either because his tongue won’t move the way he wants it to or because his brain has stopped working, also.

“You,” he manages finally as he gathers one of my hands into his and presses it to his chest, his strokes deepening until I’m pulling taut and there are unrestrained words bubbling out of me now, too. They’re rising up alongside the friction of pleasure rising up against my skin.

It’s another thought—this one carrying the heavy fullness of truth. Something I know not just with logic, but intuition. Not just with words, but feeling. Something that maybe I can answer aloud, because right now, safe in Adrian’s arms, I feel emboldened enough to admit it. To him. To myself. His hips stutter.

The change in tempo is just jarring enough to rip me apart, rip the word out of me that’s been pressed against my lips and hovering on my tongue.

“Extraordinary.”

Twenty-Six

“I meant what I said, you know.” I have the back of my head pressed against Adrian’s thigh, and when I swivel to look up at him, the San Francisco skyline fills the space beyond his shoulders. “You’re a brilliant coach.”