These Battered Hands

by Laurel Ulen Curtis

  “You are not responsible for turning it around,” she argued just because she could. Her ponytail whipped in denial. “What did you do? Hang out in the locker room and talk me up?”

  “No.” I chewed softly at the bottom half of my lips to keep my grin from growing out of control.

  “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?”

  Exasperated, she snapped, “You didn’t fix it!”

  “Right you are,” I agreed, momentarily throwing her off and making her chest heave back slightly. “Because there was never anything to fix but your crusty exterior. You said hi and those girls practically threw up all over themselves to say it back.”

  One corner of her mouth curled up in aggravated astonishment.

  “Though,” I said with a lift of one finger, “I am the one who’s helped revive you from your grumpy ways. And forced you to say hello. So, really, I did fix it.”

  She shook her head and scrunched her nose with ill-concealed humor. “Just shut up and follow me to Vault.”

  I crossed my arms and hid a smile behind the cup of one hand. She turned in a huff, whipping the tail her long, tied back hair over her shoulder as she did.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I called to her back, inconspicuously watching her butt sway side to side as she walked in front of me.

  “Ew.” Her head jerked around to look at me. “Don’t call me ma’am. That’s creepy.”

  “How about I call you Peacock?” I offered magnanimously.

  “Um, no.” She squinted further in disgust. “Pea, maybe. You can keep the cock for yourself.”

  “I have the cock. I am the cock. I do not want to keep it to myself.”

  “What is it that’s happened that all of a sudden makes me feel like you might be a sex offender?”

  “Stop!” I choked out through a laugh, looking around cautiously since she hadn’t bothered to manage her volume.

  “Just do that whole coaching thing you’re supposed to be doing.”

  “I can’t coach you until you actually do something,” I pointed out, leaning against the wall next to the vault and gesturing to the end of the runway.

  “Always me having to do all the stuff,” she grumbled good-naturedly as she retightened the lion’s paws around her wrists.

  “I tell you what,” I offered with a gallant bow as I shoved away from the wall. “I’ll set up your spring board for you.”

  She stuck out her tongue. “That’s your job.”

  I nodded again, smiling as I did and wagging my brows. “And gymnastics is yours.”

  Her face was alight and alive, and I soaked it in, letting it feed my mind and body.

  With one last shake, she turned and retreated, heading for the end of the runway and trusting me to set everything up to her liking.

  We joked and jested like that for the rest of the day, and if I was honest, I hadn’t even considered the fact that people were watching us and taking notice. That our normally aggressive banter had toned way down in aggression, and the way we looked at each other may as well have been a beacon for anyone looking to find an example of flirtation and affection.

  I’d made certain not to touch her with my hands unless she legitimately needed a spot, but I didn’t really have to.

  The way I touched her with my eyes already said it all.

  “You only wear purple. Why?” I asked as I sat across from her on the end of the rod floor, wrapping my ankles in layer after layer of tape in order to tumble.

  “Ha,” she mock-laughed looking down to the offending material and then away toward the other side of the empty gym. “I guess I’m just wearing my bruises on the outside.”

  “That’s not it,” I denied as I looked at the back of her head. She was lying, and she wasn’t doing it well.

  With a slow but unyielding turn, her eyes met mine. “How can you tell?”

  “Because then you’d be in red,” I said simply. Her face turned questioning, but she didn’t say anything. By now, she knew I’d explain. I always did.

  “You’re insides are bloodied, not bruised.”

  “Geez,” she groaned, mildly affronted.

  I chuckled. “Come on, Cal. You know I like your bloody inner gore.”

  An agitated sigh left her mouth in staccato.

  “Why do you really wear it?”

  She shook her head and looked at a swirl in the material at her neck.

  “It’s stupid.”

  “So what if it is?” I asked.

  Her arm reached out in order to shove me playfully until my back hit the floor. “Thanks. You’re supposed to tell me that there’s no way it’s stupid.”

  I shrugged as I sat up, curling my abs and reaching for the tape for my fingers as I did. “Sorry. But it might be. And that’s okay. You’re allowed to do stuff for stupid reasons every once in a while. I don’t think the fact that I look for the number nine in everything I do is logical or intelligent, but I still do it. Because I can.”

  “You look for the number nine in everything?”

  “I just said I did,” I confirmed with smile and tilt of my head.

  “Do I look like a nine?”

  “No.”

  “What? Not curved enough for you?” she teased, rolling her neck to the side and trying to connect it with her body.

  “No,” I replied. “You don’t look like a nine,” I paused, “because you’re a ten.”

  Her eyes dilated both at the corniness of my assertion and the meaning behind it. She knew I said it not to get a reaction, but because I meant it.

  Instead of lingering in the moment, she cleared her throat and went back to the original question.

  “When I was younger, it was my favorite color. I wore it all the time because that’s what twelve year olds do.” She picked at the tight, short fiber of the foam carpet covering the rods. “But I loved gymnastics then. Looked forward to every day, every split, and each and every event. Last year when I started feeling like I’d lost my way, I don’t know…I guess I thought this might help.”

  My head cocked just slightly, wanting so badly to ask her more about her lack of love for the sport and why she kept doing it anyway. But I didn’t want to ruin what I knew was already a powerful admission on her part, so I forced myself to let it go.

  Mostly.

  “Did it?”

  She laughed, the end of her ponytail swaying with the negative shake of her head. “Not even a little bit.”

  Her answer made my skin itch, so much so that my mental cortisone nearly wore off, but I fought it, keeping my question innocent rather than probing.

  “But you’re still doing it?” I queried after looking from her very purple leotard to her face and back again.

  Her shoulders went up to her cute ears and back down. “I bought all new leotards and got rid of my old ones. They’re all purple.”

  My laugh started as a low wheeze and turned into a barking cough as I fell back to horizontal on the floor.

  She scooted toward me suddenly, covering my body with hers in annoyance.

  “Don’t laugh at me!”

  “I couldn’t stop if I tried, my little Pea,” I admitted, happy and unable to hide it. There with her, in the gym alone at night with her simple admission floating through the air and mingling with all the leftover stirred up chalk of the day, I couldn’t make myself want to be anywhere else.

  She cringed at the nickname, but I found myself liking it. She was tiny in size, and yet, her presence was undeniable just like the pea under a certain princess’ mattress.

  The weight of her body settled on top of mine as her hands left the support of the ground and ventured into my hair. Pushing clumps and sweeping individual strands different directions, she played with the mop of it mindlessly for minutes as she did nothing else but stare directly into my eyes.

  With bated breath, I did my best not to disturb her, desperate for her to keep it up.

  Her nails unintentionally scratched at my scalp, and the motion of her actions tugg
ed at the nerves at each sensitive root. It felt relaxing and personal and contentedly natural.

  Just as she’d accused, while she worked, I watched.

  The skin of her face was smooth and unflawed, and the lashes of her eyes curled with natural length and luster. She didn’t wear much makeup from what I’d seen, instead sticking to striving for a subtle girl next door mystique.

  She failed miserably.

  Only because she couldn’t hide the dimension of her irises or change the curve of her smile. Each cheek hooked all the way to her eyes when laughter robbed her face of seriousness, and raw power shone off of every muscular line of her perfectly honed body.

  The way she moved when she was in her element only made it better.

  “You’re so pretty, Cal,” I whispered, grabbing one of her hips with an open hand and settling the other palm on her warm back. “I don’t think I’ve really told you that, but it’s true. From the very first moment you glared at me, your eyes have been my undoing.”

  Speaking of the devils, they narrowed playfully at the use of the word ‘glared’.

  Still she said nothing as we lay there with our legs intertwined and touching, and as the silence stretched on, my curiosity started to over-ripen and bruise with worry.

  “Callie?” I asked softly, wrapping my palm around the curve of her cheek.

  Leaning forward, she touched her lips to mine, speaking with them there in the same way that I often did.

  “Make love to me, Nik,” she breathed on one soft exhale.

  My eyes squeezed painfully shut before prying themselves open again.

  Sweet Christ Almighty.

  “Here?”

  “Here,” she nodded, resolute. “Right now.”

  “Cal—”

  “I want to know how it’s supposed to feel,” she interrupted on a silky whisper, touching the very tip of her delicate nose to my large one.

  I wasn’t ashamed to admit a full body shiver made quick work of my six foot tall frame.

  “God, Cal.”

  Pain from consideration splintered in my rational mind and indecision warred in my belly, but one team was fighting with an intensity that the other side had not one chance of matching.

  I figured it had a hell of a lot to do with redirection of blood flow.

  “I want to go on record as having said this is a bad idea.”

  Her eyes made an understated revolution before her lips settled softly atop mine once more. “You’re hereby absolved of responsibility.”

  I shook my head in response, knowing I’d go head to head with any challenge whether I’d been the brain behind the idea or not. Especially one where I was able but completely unwilling to say no.

  “Unnecessary,” I murmured as I sealed her lips to mine, bringing a hand to the back of her exposed neck and pulling her even closer. “This is one action I find undeniably worth any and all consequences.”

  My only concern now was making it good for her. Making her feel comfortable and cared for and taking the super shitty reality of her first time and replacing it with memory much worthier of keeping.

  She giggled as I rolled her, trapping her small body under mine and shifting my hardening hips directly into hers.

  My hands went straight to her hips, digging and scraping and trying to get under a hem that wasn’t there.

  “Of course you would have to be wearing the world’s most impossible garment for achieving skin to skin contact,” I grumbled as I kissed her neck, inhaling the smell of apples and citrus that seemed to seep from her skin. She’d been sweating and working all day, but she smelled as appealing as ever, and I was convinced that was another one of God’s well-thought-out plans.

  Not only was olfaction big in sensory memory, it was a scientific aphrodisiac, literally endearing you to people biologically matched to you.

  Okay, I didn’t have any actual research on the subject, but I could have sworn I’d seen an article about it at some point.

  Callie’s scent called to me, begging me to get closer, to burrow my way inside her skin and get as close as possible.

  “There’s skin everywhere,” she disagreed through a laugh, her bare legs and arms curling around me with meaning.

  And there was.

  But it wasn’t the skin that I wanted.

  “You sure you want to do this here?” I asked, shaking my brain inside my head when it hinted at the fact that we (me, my brain, and my dick) didn’t want to stop.

  “Yeah,” she confirmed quietly, nodding and slipping the strap of her leotard off of one smooth shoulder.

  Knowing how tricky it was to get out of one of those damn things, I helped her slide her entire arm out and then repeated the process on the other side.

  Languidly, fabric scraping softly over each nerve and eliciting goosebumps, I slid the rest of the leotard down. Past her hard-peaked chest, over the line of each rib, along the smooth ridges of her muscled abs, over the defined bones of her hips, and down the line of her toned legs.

  Her turned on eyes followed me the whole way, meeting mine when I was done with an intensity and security that astonished me.

  The dichotomy between the trust she showed me and the skepticism she showed everyone else humbled me. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve it.

  “Why me?” I asked quietly, the desire to know outweighing everything and anything else in that moment.

  Callie was, of course, confused. She hadn’t been inside of my head to follow the same thought path I had.

  “Why do you trust me?” I clarified, running my hands up her naked legs but focusing directly on her eyes.

  They searched for the answer as she did, studying my face by touching on every part of it.

  I knew it wasn’t necessarily a fair or easy question. The complexity behind her reasoning would be hard enough to pinpoint, let alone condense into one, succinct statement.

  It would be for me anyway.

  “I don’t know.”

  I nodded, knowing that I couldn’t be disappointed at the lack of an answer for my difficult pop quiz, but she wasn’t done.

  “I guess it’s because you’ve gone to great lengths to see me.”

  I smiled.

  “And make sure I see you.”

  I leaned over, touching my lips to the skin of her abdomen and breathing her in. I felt satisfied. Justified in my intentions and actions.

  Pulling my face up and away from her belly, she raised a brow in question.

  “Why do you trust me?”

  Just one corner of my mouth curved up, knowing I was going to bug the hell out of her.

  “Same.”

  “Oh!” She smacked my shoulder and shoved at me as I started to laugh. “You cheater! A big, fat, cop-out of a cheater!”

  “It’s not my fault you took the good answer first,” I remarked through my chuckle, appealing to her ego and accusation at the same time.

  I trapped her hands as she swung at me, taking her arms by the wrists and pinning them to the ground above her head.

  Laughter turned serious, and smiling eyes warmed to hot.

  My hands slid into hers and our fingers interlaced as I settled my body on top of hers.

  Air compressed and moved, vacating the narrowing space between us as I settled my lips onto hers. A sigh escaped through them and floated into mine as she opened herself to me.

  My tongue worked in tandem with the slow grinding movement of my hips, caressing the tip of hers and soaking in the feel of it.

  She felt incredible, all smooth skin and flexible limbs, and her legs came up to wrap around my waist.

  I pulled back, though, not wanting to be trapped for fear that I wouldn’t be able to make myself move again. And we still had too many layers of barrier between us.

  Removing myself from her hold slowly and carefully, I sank my butt to my heels and pulled myself up to standing, shedding my shorts and underwear in one smooth movement.

  Her eyes rounded from below me. The sight of me nake
d had either surprised or frightened her, but I was hoping for the first.

  “You alright?” I asked.

  She gulped and pushed up onto her elbows, thrusting her chest out further into my view without realizing. “Yeah, it’s just…you weren’t naked and then all of a sudden you were.”

  “Hah!” I barked with humor. “That’s usually how it works.”

  “No, I know. I was just expecting it to go…slower.” Her eyes were alight with mischief and fun and no longer held an air of fear, releasing me from worry and opening up the opportunity to taunt.

  “You want me to do a striptease?”

  “There’s nothing left,” she pointed out.

  I pointed to one of my feet and offered, “I bet I could do a hell of a job making taking off my tape look sexy if you had your heart set on it.”

  Sudden realization froze her face, and she flopped back to the floor and let both arms flail down beside her. “Ahhh,” she groaned.

  “What?”

  “I’ll be more impressed if you can make something appear.”

  My eyebrows inched closer together.

  “A condom,” she specified, lifting her head to look at me.

  Oh.

  I laughed. “I have one in my bag.”

  “I want to ask why really badly right now,” she said. “Instead, I’m just gonna be grateful.”

  “No illicit reason,” I comforted with a smile and a shake of my head. “Just a routine. A strictly precautionary measure.”

  She bit her lip, satisfied with my answer, before jerking her head in the direction of my bag in suggestion.

  I moved quickly and grabbed it, a small gasp of air breaking the silence from behind me as I bent over to dig through the contents.

  When my fingers met foil, I ripped it immediately from the package and rolled it on.

  Her eyes burned with want when I turned back around, and I wasted no time stalking her like prey. Each step felt like a mile, each second an hour. We’d spent so much time dancing around our attraction, and we hadn’t acted any differently in this moment.

  My hands went directly to her hips and hooked into the sides of her flesh colored underwear. Simultaneously, she curled her upper body off of the ground with nothing but the power of her abs and pulled her matching sports bra off.