Blind Landing (Flipped #1) (7 page)

I
have
no idea what just happened.

One minute I’m tumbling over the beam, the part of my brain that second-guesses and doubts completely turned off. I felt my leg come in contact with something else, not the hard beam or the soft pit. Now I realize it must have been some part of Spence.

My dismount was interrupted, the flow of my body and the spin of my flip completely thrown off by his interfering arm. And now we’re tangled, his strong, athletic body thrown over my own, pressing me down into the blue foam blocks at my back.

And even though I just fell in almost the exact same way I did when I landed on my neck, fear is not the feeling gripping all of my limbs and emotions right now.

Lust is.

I feel my core start to heat, the stirrings of desire flood through my gut. My spine starts to tingle as my back arches up into Spence’s chiseled body, my good sense unable to speak louder than the need coursing through me.

“Whoops …” Spence’s guilty grin tells me it was an accident that led us to being up close and personal right now, but that he’s not sorry about it.

“Why do I feel like you planned this?” I don’t move when his hands come up to grip my waist, plunging us even deeper into the foam block quicksand. I couldn’t move right now, even if I wanted to.

His voice breathes across my lips as he stares at my mouth. “I don’t need to tackle girls into the pit to see some action, Nat. Give me more credit than that.”

I’m surprised to find my lungs breathless when I answer him. “Is that so? Then why haven’t you gotten off of me yet?”

We’re both staring at each other’s lips, just hairbreadths away from pushing them together. His hands feel sturdy and controlling on my hips, the way he has me pinned to the sea of foam is sending my head space into a dizzy tumble. This pit could swallow us whole and no one would know.

“Flirty friends kiss right?”

Spence’s husky question should send alarm bells ringing in my head. Flirty friends don’t kiss, and we both know it. They tease and poke fun, but they most certainly don’t hookup. Unless they do? Unless they need the relief of what will surely be a fantastic couple-night stand. No strings attached, no complicated relationship.

“I’m not—”

Spence never gives me the option of saying I’m not sure. He swoops in, his mouth claiming mine in an exploration that I feel all the way down to the tips of my toes. He nudges and caresses my lips with his own, sending my heart leaping up into my throat. My stomach is doing somersaults, and when he plunges his tongue inside to tangle with my own, the satisfied humming noise that explodes from my throat sends our kiss vibrating.

Spencer Russell can kiss.

“Okay, flirty friends can make out.” I snort at my stupid declaration, as if saying it will somehow make the line we just crossed okay.

Spence doesn’t take the time to joke or make a witty comment. He just keeps on kissing me, stretching and building our kiss until I’m one hot ball of need. His body smashes against mine, the lack of solid ground beneath us only pushing us together more. His hands grip and knead my hips, my fingers trace patterns over his shorn buzz cut. I thumb his strong jaw, loving the growl he breathes into my throat at the movement.

For the first time in weeks, I’m not thinking. I’m just doing, just feeling. And it feels fucking fantastic. Maybe this is why Olympic athletes sleep around so much. We’re all hot, we’re all in perfect physical condition. We all have competitive libidos. But most of all, it’s a
distraction
. An activity that we don’t have to be focused and in-the-zone to enjoy. Sex is the ultimate sport; you can have fun, get exercise, and at the end, everyone gets a medal in the form of an orgasm.

“I’ve wanted to touch you like this since the day you almost tripped me in the cafeteria.” Spence’s hands trail up my velvet leotard, his fingers massaging the smooth fabric and making the skin beneath dance with anticipation.

“And you think it’s much easier for me to resist you?
Mr. I Don’t Believe in Shirts
.” I rake my nails down his bare abs, swirling them in the smattering of happy trail that dips beneath his black workout shorts.

Spence shudders as I assault his muscles, fingering the grooves of silk covered steel. His hands finally reach my breasts, grabbing the small handfuls and molding them to fit his palms. He expertly locates my hard buds through the fabric, the scratchy material of my sports bra shifting as he pulls and pinches at my painfully rigid nipples. Desire and need roll over my body, diving deep and suffusing every pore until I’m mewling into Spence’s mouth.

“I’m being an extremely rewarding friend right now. But I think I can be an even better friend.” Spence grinds himself between my open thighs, and I feel his steel erection push against my swollen nub.

It’s deliciously good. I wrap my legs around his back, pushing my thighs as far apart as they’ll go and winding all of my limbs around him. He cants his hips, using his hold on one of my breasts and the other hand clamping down onto my thigh. He’s big, and I don’t mean big compared to the three other guys I’ve been with. I mean
big
. I may be just shy of twenty, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t seen porn. I’m not a prude. I know what those guys are packing and Spencer could give them a run for their money.

He rubs himself back and forth on me again, and I can’t help the sequence of moans that pass my lips at the hurricane of friction he’s creating below my waist.

“If you want to stop, you have to tell me. Because I’m not leaning towards being very gentlemanly right now.” Spence’s voice is husky and I can feel each muscle in his jaw locking as he buries his face in my shoulder.

“Who said I wanted you to hold back?”

His head shoots up, and I can see the challenge I’ve posed being met in his mossy green eyes.

And just as he dips his head down to capture my lips again, all of the lights in the beam gym begin to flicker on.

Spence reacts, smashing me further into the sea of foamy blocks, covering my mouth and burying his head back into my shoulder. We hear someone humming and the jolt of switches being turned on as whoever has invaded our private moment moves from one light panel to the next.

How the hell we’re going to get out of here, I have no idea. It’s not as if I can just come waltzing out of the pit with Spencer on my heels and not completely freak out the person turning on the lights. And no doubt they would raise suspicions to the entire camp. It would be bad enough if people knew why we were meeting in secret. But if they found out about the most recent development in our relationship, I would carry around a label I swore I’d never get.

Maybe I could get out and Spence could just stay in for a week or two, to not draw any attention to what we’ve been doing. I’d bring him water and food. Hey, it was the best plan I could come up with as of right now.

“What are we going to do?” I hiss quietly in Spence’s ear.

He tilts his head up a fraction and places his pointer finger over his swollen and bitten lips, motioning for me to be quiet.

A minute or two later, I hear the gym door bang closed with a thud.

“That was one of the assistant coaches. Usually one of us makes the rounds on a rotating schedule each morning to get the gyms ready. They just come in and turn the lights on, but we’ve always been out of here by the time whatever coach usually comes in. Seems someone had us distracted today.”

His grin is epic, spreading a mile wide across his face. I’m not sure if I want to kiss it off of him, or smack him for being so cocky.

“You think you’re really funny don’t you? I was scared shitless just then!” I hit his shoulder. His very toned, tan shoulder. Which is still connected to the hand holding my hip in such a way that a shiver runs down my spine.

“I would have saved you. Carried you out and made some excuse about you fainting. Either that or I would have left you in there for a week and brought food and water until it was safe for you to come out.”

I laugh, arching up into him again. “Funny, I was thinking I’d have to do the exact same thing for you.”

“Alright, as much as I want to continue what was just so rudely interrupted, that wake up calls means others will be close behind whoever just turned all of the lights on. We should get out.”

Spence starts to climb off of me, and I can’t help but lay back for a couple more seconds and admire just how fucking gorgeous he is. People underestimate male gymnasts in the athlete department. Compared to football, baseball and hockey players, no one has discovered the magic of these finely honed athletes. But I have. And
damn
, let me tell you.

Spence turns back from where he’s dragging himself out of the pit, a curious expression on his face. “So now that we’re no longer, technically flirty friends, what would you call us? Make out mates? Lip lockers? Kissing cousins?”

I swing my leg, essentially knocking him over so he topples back down, all of the progress he’s made to dig himself out ruined.

“That last one is disgusting.”

I hear his cackle as I elegantly, as possible, hold my head high and trudge out of the foam blocks.

M
ost gymnasts have a favorite event
. The one that they get more excited for than any other when they see it coming in the rotation. The one they could practice for hours on end and never want to stop.

For me, that event is the floor exercise. Sure, uneven bars might be my best event, but I love floor more than I could put into words. It combines grace and elegance with strength and raw power. One of my coaches once compared my floor routine to that of a hummingbird. She told me I exuded beauty and confidence, but just under the surface there was toughness and spirit.

I’ve had four floor routines now. Gymnasts usually use one routine each season, changing their choreography every year. The process goes a little something like this. Sit down on the blue carpeted floor exercise with a boom box and a bunch of crates full of tapes and CDs. Play each tape and CD through once, marking down your favorite tracks … which usually comes out to, oh, about a thousand. Then put away the music you won’t be choosing from, and again sort through the narrowed down tracks.

Five weeks later, I usually have one song picked out for my new routine. And remember, no lyrics or sound effects, or the judges will dock points. Gymnasts get to perform to wordless melodies that either derive from show tunes or the big brass band era. Luckily, I fucking love both of those things.

My preferred floor music usually comes from my favorite movies or plays. My first choreography had been done to the soundtrack from
Man of La Mancha
, and my past year’s routine was to music from the
Harry Potter
movies. But this was the year I was stepping it up, bringing everything I had in the dance department and throwing it at the judges during the Olympics. Three months ago, my choreographer back home came up with a routine set to songs from
Phantom of the Opera
that is so wonderful, it was a miracle the room wasn’t weeping by the time I finished. And I’m not saying that to sound cocky, that my routine could move people to tears, but it was just a fact. I almost broke down every time I heard the opening chords of “Music of the Night.”

“Another dance-through please, Natalia!” Novak barks at me just as I come off the finishing notes of my routine.

A dance-through is when you perform your routine to your music, but just omit the tumbling passes. This way, you can focus on the choreography and leaps and jumps while saving the energy you’d usually expend on flips and twists. He’s been working us like soldiers this afternoon, making us do dance-through after dance-through of our floor routines. I never mind these though. It’s like a fun break. Not much energy exuded, and I get to dance. It’s a win-win for me.

“God, not again!” Julia whines under her breath.

Unlike me, Julia hates floor. She can’t stand the artistic movements and prancing, she’s much more of a brawn and muscle gymnast than most.

“Be happy you’re not putting much energy out there. This is the easy stuff.”

She shrugs at my suggestion. Peyton would have loved this down time; the lazy afternoon of dance-throughs was a welcome task over pushing our bodies to the limits with conditioning or some other strenuous exercise.

Although now that I think about it, the strenuous exercise might have been a friend at this moment. The ease of floor routines and dancing around gave me time to think. And every spare moment I’d had to think in the last two days were devoted solely to Spencer Russell.

The way his mouth had moved over mine. The way his tongue had licked and stolen my own. The way his hands had threaded in my ponytail and caressed my hips. The way my core had been pulsing so badly after we separated that I had to go back to my dorm room and touch myself while thinking about him just to relieve the ache.

Not that I’d ever tell him that. He was way too cocky for his own good, it would only cause his head to explode. But he did show me more action than I’d ever seen in a gym thus far, and I’d been a competitive gymnast for over a decade.

And it also didn’t mean I didn’t want to do it again. I didn’t know how or when, but I knew that at some point Spence was going to get me tangled up in him once more. And I was ready. I needed the distraction, and apparently, I needed the release more than I had realized. How sweet, how delicious, it would be coming from his fingers and not my own.

“Earth to Natalia! Novak has been staring at you to start for like twenty seconds!” Grace practically yelled in my ear.

Scowling at her, I trotted onto the floor and knelt, bending my back all the way until my ponytail brushed the floor beneath it. When then the sweeping crescendos of Andrew Lloyd Webber captured my heart, I began.

* * *

“
D
o
you think we could get away with having a French braid at the front of our hair for the Olympics?” Grace thumbed through
People Magazine
and held up a beachy Jennifer Aniston with a pretty braid hanging at her temple.

“I think Novak would scalp you,” Julia snorted.

I polished off the last bite of my bland grilled chicken and nodded my head in agreement. “You know the drill, Gracie. It’s always been buns and hairspray for the USA in competition and it always will be. At least until that slave driver dies.”

“Because there is no chance in hell they’re prying this organization away from him unless it’s from his cold, lifeless hands.” Julia points her spoon at Grace, flicking little pellets of strawberry yogurt across the table.

Grace’s young face contorts, all the talk of death and hell probably a little overboard for her. We’d make her one of us yet. “Whatever, I just thought it was cute. Have you seen the new Olympic leotards yet?”

Grace stares at Julia, whose gaze lingers on a table across the room, and following her stare, I notice Duke and Jared sitting with Spence. My stomach automatically filled with butterflies and need.

“Earth to Julia. Something over there catching your fancy?” I smirk at her while snapping my fingers in front of her face.

She startles back to attention and pins her jade eyes on me. “Just tired is all. No I haven’t seen them. Aren’t they supposed to be under lock and key?”

Grace shrugs, flipping through a section detailing the latest Hollywood makeups and breakups. “Yeah, but I thought maybe Nat had. Since she’s been sneaking around camp at all hours of the morning?”

That sly little sixteen year old! “And how would you know about my morning activities?”

“Anna and James said they saw you sneaking out of the beam gym this morning.” At least she has the decency to blush a little as she shamefully outs me.

My skin, which had only moments ago yearned to be touched and manipulated by Spence, turned ice cold. Someone had found us out. And screw Mr. and Mrs. Perfect. Anna and James were gymnastics’ golden couple, together before and through their first Olympics four years ago and still going strong. They were both pretty much shoe-ins for Rio. And known for getting up at the ass crack of dawn for couple runs. Gag me.

“Well, they must have seen a ghost because I was cozy and snuggled in my bed.” Denial worked every time.

“You’re so full of it. I know you haven’t been walking out with the rest of the dorm in the morning. If you’re getting some, at least share some details. We could all use some spicy stories.” Julia added insult to injury, and then had the nerve to rest her chin on her fists and blink up at me, waiting for me to spill.

I sighed, not seeing any more ways to spin this but hilarity. “Yes, I’m having a torrid affair with a hot businessman who comes and picks me up in his limo, where we do unspeakable things. Then he drops me off before dawn with a kiss on my lips and a spank on the ass.”

I wilt, playing into the dramatics, looking at the ceiling with a lovelorn expression.

Grace stands, ready to throw out her tray and get back to the dorm. I notice she’s barely touched the small chickpea salad she chose. “If you don’t want to give us the dirt, fine with me. Just save the acting drama for your mama.”

Julia rolls her eyes at the lame cliché, and we both crack up before standing to follow her.