Alluring Passion: A MM Contemporary Bundle
Page 57
He grinned. “Of course. Want to try the same hold from a different position?”
“There are different positions?”
“Yeah. There are several different guards.” He gestured to the mat. “Here. You lay on your back, and I’ll straddle your hips.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. “Um. Pardon?”
“It’s called the mount guard,” he said. When he saw my hesitation, he added, “It’s a thing, okay? I swear.”
“Alright.” I laid back, hesitant. “So I just lay here?”
“Sort of.” He lifted a leg and settled himself on top of me, but I noticed he was still hovering just above me, careful not to actually touch. He took my hands and put them back on his chest. “Now, you want to push up against me a little bit.”
I did. He put his hands on my chest, then twisted to the side, holding me down with one knee on my abdomen. He wrapped his arms around my right arm, swept his legs out, and before I knew it, he had my arm between his legs.
This one took a few more tries for me to master, but I was finally ready to switch off and try it myself. Jonah laid back, apparently comfortable, but there seemed to be a forced air of casual calm surrounding him.
I straddled Jonah’s hips. I had hoped it would be easy for me to not actually touch his crotch, especially considering he had been very gentlemanly about avoiding touching mine, but his hips were too wide for my short legs, and I ended up sinking down on top of him. I tried not to think too much about it. “So, I sit like this, right? Or…?”
“Yup.” His voice sounded like there was barely-concealed fear bubbling up beneath the surface. “That’s good. Now, put your hands on my chest and push off with them.”
I tried and tripped a few times. I felt bad that I had to keep mounting him. I kept trying to avoid his genitals, but he would correct my pose with a gentle shift of my hips. Eventually, I grew frustrated and sat up straight, not caring about putting my weight on him. I lifted the hem of my shirt to wipe at the sweat starting to bead up on my forehead. “Fuck,” I grumbled, pushing my hair back. “I don’t know why this is so hard.”
“It takes practice,” he reassured me.
I gave him a small smile of thanks. “Yeah, well,” I joked, “usually I don’t have so much trouble in this position. I’ve gotten pretty good at mounting dudes.”
I had said it purely to be funny, but he didn’t laugh. Instead, I felt his body go rigid with tension beneath me.
And that wasn’t the only thing going rigid.
I thought at first that I was imagining things and I squirmed a little bit, assuming I would find something to ease my mind, but instead, it only seemed to exacerbate the problem.
And I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to be a pretty fucking big problem.
“Uh,” I stuttered, eloquent as always.
Jonah’s face was bright red, and I had a fleeting moment of wonder that he had enough blood upstairs to blush. “Maybe we can skip this one for now?” he said. It seemed like he’d wanted it to come out as a statement, but it didn’t work out that way.
“Yeah,” I said. I practically threw myself off of him. I couldn’t help but take a little peek as I did, and I saw a definite—and fairly large—bulge before he jumped to his feet and turned to covertly rearrange himself. I averted my gaze. I didn’t know which of us I was more embarrassed for. “What should we do next?”
“How about we just work on some stances and things like that?” he suggested, and I readily agreed.
A big part of me wanted to run out of the building and never look back. I had expected myself to be terrified during the classes; I didn’t have a great track record with organized sports, after all. Being one on one helped—I hated having to work with other people on something like that because it made me feel incredibly weak and worried about being overpowered—but it was more than that. It wasn’t, I allowed myself to realize, just about what we were doing and the goals I was there to achieve. A big part of it was about Jonah himself. Something about him was comforting, safe and familiar. Even though he had his moments where he was far too uptight, he was smart and he was actually pretty fun.
Plus, he taught me how to tackle someone by their legs and take them down to the mat with almost zero effort, which was nice.
The fact was that, as much as I liked jiu jitsu, I realized I was starting to like Jonah more. It was strange because, whenever I liked somebody, I usually made an effort to disappear. I didn’t want to get close to anyone. I didn’t want them to try to understand me or save me or feel bad for me. That’s why things with Gary had seemed so ideal—he could be a supportive friend when I needed someone to lean on, he already knew all of my stuff, and he was pretty good at sex. I figured that was all I needed.
And maybe, technically, it was. Maybe I didn’t need anything more than that.
But Jonah sure made me want it.
At the end of the lesson, after he’d tried to convince me to do a somersault from a standing position—which I gave him a firm “no” on—he asked, “You want to try something fun?”
I was feeling winded and shaky, but his face had lit up in a way that made me say, “Yeah, alright,” anyway.
“Okay. It’s called butterfly guard. It’s going to seem like I’m going to throw you at first, but that’s not it, I swear.”
“Well, that inspires confidence,” I grumbled.
He raised an eyebrow. “So are you not going to do it?”
I sighed. “I never said that. Show me this stupid guard.”
He grinned and sat down, his legs bent. “Alright, come sit in front of me. Sit on your heels with your legs a little bit apart.”
I obeyed, watching him curiously. He tucked his feet between my legs and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me close to him. “Now, put your arms around my neck.”
I frowned. “This feels less like jiu jitsu and more like we’re about to make out.”
He blushed, but he kept smiling. “You’d be surprised how similar the two actually feel.”
“After today, I don’t think I’ll find it all that surprising.” I wrapped my arms around his neck, acutely aware of how close together we were sitting. His breath was warm and smelled like mint and green tea. “Now what?”
His grin widened. “And now, you fly.”
“I what?”
His only response was to dig his heels in under me and roll onto his back, flipping my legs up into the air. I let out a decidedly unmanly scream of surprise, which made him laugh as he held me there, hands on my waist and legs under mine, holding me up in the air. Without warning, I burst out laughing and my hands had to find the mat behind him so I didn’t lose my balance. “You asshole, this is just airplane!” I choked, and he laughed along with me, him holding me and my whole body shaking with his deep rumbling laughter until we both had tears streaming down our cheeks.
Very gently, he dropped me back onto the floor. I wiped my eyes, still fighting back tiny chuckles. “That’s normally where I’d throw you,” he said, “but I figured you earned a free ride after the last class.”
“That was literally just airplane for adults,” I reminded him again.
“Well, consider me your personal airplane. You can have a ride whenever you need one.”
I dissolved into a fresh peal of laughter, collapsing on the mats on the floor. The bizarre, flirty banter we’d been trading was fun. It wasn’t like the awkward flirting and arrangements I dealt with when I was with Gary; instead, it was just pure enjoyment. I felt like there was a helium balloon filling my chest and that I was going to float away if I didn’t find something to hold me down.
I was surprised when I checked my phone and found that I’d been there for an hour and forty-five minutes. An average class was supposed to be an hour. “Shit,” I said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time. And for free, no less.”
He shrugged, suddenly sheepish. “It’s fine,” he said. “Don’t mention it.”
“We can count this as two classes,” I suggested, but he waved the comment away.
“Really, don’t worry about it. I had fun doing it,” he said. His posture was almost relaxed; I figured it was about as relaxed as he could get. “I really enjoy working with you, Harris.”
A wave of nerves swept over me and, though I’d never understood the whole “butterflies in your stomach” sensation I’d heard about, I thought I was feeling it then. “I like working with you too, Sensei Daddy,” I teased. It was my only recourse.
He shook his head and smiled. “Asshole,” he said. “I’m not just saying that, you know. And I’m not just saying that I like seeing you at work either.”
“Oh?” I asked. “Then what are you saying?”
He bit at his lip. “Do I really need to spell it out?”
My stomach fluttered again. “It would be appreciated.”
He rolled his eyes, then made sure not to make eye contact with me again. He seemed just as nervous as I was. “I’m just saying that I like spending time with you, period,” he said. “And I’d… like to do it some more. If that’s okay, of course.”
“Uh. Sure,” I said. I almost winced, worried that I sounded like an asshole. I didn’t want to come across as some fuck boy who was going to blow him off. “I mean, it’s cool. I’d really like to hang out with you too.”
He scratched at the back of his neck, his gaze dropping from a spot near my left ear to my feet. “You know that when I say I want to spend time with you,” he said, slowly, “that I mean that I want to spend… romantic time with you, right?”
Well, if I’d had any doubts up until that point, they dried up as soon as he said that. “Oh,” I said. Stupid, my brain snapped at me, say something! Don’t let this opportunity pass you by! Seize the day! Carpe diem! Oh captain, my captain! Just fucking say something!
He must have mistaken my silence for dismissal, because he quickly started backtracking. “I mean, of course, we could always just hang out in the normal way too,” he said. “We don’t need to make it into a sex thing. Or a relationship thing! Neither of them. I swear I wasn’t trying to just, like, nail you and leave or something.” His face scrunched up as if in physical pain. “Ugh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say something as gross and tawdry as ‘nail you’, it just sort of came out that way. I’m so sorry. Look, if you don’t want to keep taking classes with me, I get it. This is super unprofessional of me, and I swear I’ve never done this before, but—”
“Jonah,” I heard myself saying, as if my body was on autopilot, “relax. Okay? Just relax.”
He was trying. His shoulders dropped a quarter of an inch. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to make anything weird.”
“Nothing is weird. Well, okay, the way you’re acting about it is a little bit weird, but not that weird. It’s not, like, serial killer weird. It’s okay. You’re fine.” I tried to swallow, but my mouth had decided to dry out within the last minute. My mouth seemed to be working as a free agent, with all of my fears suddenly unable to communicate with it. “I’d really like to spend time together like that too.”
He blinked and his eyes snapped up to meet mine. The deep black pools of his eyes drew me in and I had to force myself to keep looking and let myself fall into them, to live in that moment with him. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am,” I said. “I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t.”
I didn’t buy that, but then again, I didn’t need to. I wasn’t the one my mouth was trying to convince.
Fortunately, it seemed that my mouth had achieved a victory, and Jonah gave me a huge grin. “Okay, then.” He kicked awkwardly at the mats, looking sheepish. “So… I’ll text you?”
“Yeah,” I said, giving him a smile of my own. “Yeah, that’d be awesome.”
As I walked out of the room and through the echoing hallways of the old YMCA, I pinched at my forearm, and I almost couldn’t believe it when I realized I wasn’t dreaming.
Chapter Eleven
“This argument is going in circles,” Gary growled, two pinks spots still dotted on his cheeks from his shouting and ranting. “You’re never going to listen to reason.”
“I’m being perfectly reasonable!” Leonard barked, slamming his fist down on the reading table. I jumped at the sound and glared at him, but he didn’t notice. “You’re the one who’s being deliberately obtuse right now!”
“This whole thing is stupid,” I reminded them. “There are thousands of superheroes. Hell, there are hundreds of X-Men alone, and there’s no definitive criteria that you’re using to judge. Give it up already. You’re giving me a fucking migraine.”
“I won’t give up until he admits that I’m right,” Leonard sniffed. “I’m sorry, but Dazzler is the worst superhero, end of story. That’s it.”
“That is such bullshit!” Gary yelled, and I massaged my throbbing temples. “Dazzler is a great character! She may not always be on great teams, and she may not always be the most useful one there, but her power is actually cool as hell and it makes total sense for her character. There have been several story arcs where she’s been not just successful, but definitively kickass.”
“Just because you read X-Treme X-Men Volume Two, that doesn’t somehow magically make you right,” Leonard said.
“She’s not even the worst person in the X-Men!” Gary snapped. “Think about it. You’re really going to sit there and tell me that Dazzler is worse than Jubilee? I mean, for Christ’s sake, Len, even you have to have higher standards than Jubilee.”
“I happen to like Jubilee, thank you very much! And you know, at least Jubilee wants to be a superhero and help out the team. Half the time, Dazzler wants to leave to keep playing her awful music!”
“So a woman can’t have dreams?!”
“Oh, my God!” I snarled. “Could you two either shut up or find somewhere else to fight? I’m trying to read Nailbiter! It’s the final issue, and the both of you are ruining it!”
“Where else are we supposed to go?” Leonard complained. “It’s raining like crazy out there, and you’re going to be closing soon anyway.”
“Can’t you just be our tiebreaker?” Gary begged. “Come on, Harris. You know more about all of this than either of us could ever hope to anyway.”
“I don’t know that that’s true,” Leonard interrupted, but Gary paid him no mind.
I sighed. “You want me to tell you who the worst superhero is?”
“Yes,” Gary affirmed. “Which one of us is right?”
I thought for a second. “Are we including all comics?”
“Yeah.”
“What about other media?” I asked. “TV? Movies? Stuff like that?”
“Sure.”
“Right.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Well, to start off: you’re both wrong.”
“What?!” they both bellowed in outrage.
I held up my hands. “Sorry, guys, but you’re the ones who wanted my opinion, so you’re going to get it.”
“Well, one of us wanted it,” Leonard mumbled, but I ignored him.
“Even if we’re talking about just the X-Men, you’re still wrong,” I continued. “I mean, maybe if we’re talking about the big leagues and the heavy hitters, but it’s like both of you have completely forgotten the classically terrible character that is Cypher.”
“Shit!” Gary swore. “How did we forget Cypher?”
“That’s a great question,” I said, “because he is literally famously awful. He would have been completely useless if the writers just kept pretending that all the aliens knew English. And remember the whole thing where he could ‘read’ a building because he spoke the language of architecture or some shit?”
“Oh my God, how did we forget about Cypher?” Leonard murmured, shaking his head.
“Well, even if you had said Cypher,” I continued, “you’d still be wrong. Because Beak exists.”
Leonard slammed his hand down again. “Dammit!” he snapped. “We forgot Beak!”
“Yeah. I do now,” Gary admitted, sheepishly.
“But that’s just the X-Men,” I pointed out. “I think there’s a pretty good argument for saying that Beak was the worst in comics, but there’s one other character you’re forgetting about, which is absolutely shameful, considering who it is.” I took a deep breath, enjoying drawing out their torment. “One Miss Alisha Daniels from Misfits.”
Both of them swore loudly. “You’re right,” Gary said, miserably. “She’s the only character whose superpower actively caused people to hurt her.”
“How did we forget about Misfits, of all things?” Leonard asked, clearly disgusted with himself.
“Probably because you’ve been rotting your brain with Smallville,” I said. “Seriously, Len, you said it gets good eventually. When is that going to happen?”
He scowled. “Oh, get off your high horse. I hate it when you’re right. You act like such a dick for the rest of the day.”
“That’s how I usually act, Len. You’re just not listening the rest of the time.”
He nodded. Even Leonard couldn’t pretend that he was a decent listener. For someone with very little self-awareness, he at least had that.
“So what are you up to tonight, man?” Gary asked me, coming up to lean against the counter.
“Nothing. Just going home. Why?”
He shrugged. “I was wondering if you’d want me to come over.”
I looked out of the windows. “You sure?” I asked. “The rain is crazy tonight.”
“Yeah. I’d still like to hang out with you. I was going to ask if you’d mind me crashing there if it gets too crazy out. I mean, you can always kick me out, you know, but I was hoping to just sleep on the couch or whatever.”
“Oh, God,” Leonard groaned, clapping his hands over his ears, “are you two making gross sex plans with me in the room?!”
Gary gave me a roguish, lopsided grin. “I was hoping that’s what we were doing,” he said.