Page 75 of Save Your Breath

It was the same adrenaline I got before I ran out on stage to start a concert, that anticipation that something great was about to happen and I would be a part of it.

I let it fill me up, let myself sink into it like a warm, hidden oasis.

I took a breath. I let it out. I wound up with the ball in my hand… and I let it fly.

The chants went silent as soon as the ball was launched, and it seemed that ball flew in slow motion across the turf. Even the people playing games next to us had stopped to watch, to see if this was it, if we would take home the gold.

The red ball soared in a perfect arc, and when it hit the rim of the trash can, there was a collectiveohthat rang out from the crowd. I bounced up on my toes, clapping my hands together and screaming, “GET IN THERE!”

It bounced, teasing all of us.

And then it fell right into the trash can.

Everything happened at once: the crowd screaming, beer flying around us, someone running through the middle of the little yard pong court and tearing their shirt off.

And me jumping into Aleks’s arms.

He spun me as soon as I landed, my legs wrapped around his strong center and him holding me effortlessly with one hand as he thrust the other into the air in victory.

Just when I realized that the one hand he had holding me steady was firmly on my ass, just when I started to react to the way a very sensitive part of me was flush against his heat — we were being surrounded.

Aleks dropped me to the ground but kept me close, his arm possessively hooked around me as we handed out high-fives and accepted people roughly palming our heads through our masks and giving us a good shake. There were dozens of people claiming they had downs and would play us next, but I tugged at Aleks’s damp shirt, proof that he was as hot as I was from playing a sport in this dreadful Florida heat with a rubber mask on our head.

I loved that I didn’t even have to say it. He knew by that one little motion that I needed a break.

“Alright, I think it’s time we step down from the throne and let other people play,” he announced to the disappointment ofthe crowd. But he just waved off their pleas, grabbing my hand in his and tugging me toward the bar.

We both chugged a water, and then I did a shot while Aleks left me only long enough to run to the restroom and back.

“Are you as sweaty under there as I am?” he asked, tugging on my mask.

“Oh, I’m absolutely disgusting. I’ve gone from a cat to a swamp monster.”

I could hear him chuckle even through the rubber, and he fished out more cash for the bartender before he had my hand in his again.

“Come on,” he said. “I know somewhere we can go.”

Tied Up in Knots

Aleks

“I promise, we’re good down here,” I said for the third time, squeezing Mia’s knee where it hooked over the edge of the pier. We were facing the now-black water of the bay, listening to the waves crashing at our feet as we licked at our ice cream cones.

Mia still had her mask perched on her head, as if she was ready to yank it down at any moment, should someone approach us. But no one was giving us a second look. There were skaters practicing moves and filming themselves in the brightly lit courtyard behind us, families playing in the park to our right, lovers sprinkled along the edge of the pier just like us, caught up in their own world. James and Hunter lurked nearby, too, just in case.

“Mia,” I said on a laugh when she flinched at a passing skateboard, her hand flying up to the mask on her head. “This is Downtown St. Pete — not L.A. We arefine.”

I peeled the rubber off her head, letting it fall to the opposite side of me where she couldn’t reach it with aslap. Her worried eyes doubled in size as she peeked up at me, but I just nodded to the melting cone in her hand.

“You better get to licking, or you’re going to have a mess on your hands.”

Mia blinked, glancing at her dripping cone before running her tongue long and flat around the edges of it. It didn’t matterthat she was a sweaty, smelly mess — that woman’s sweat was like catnip to me.

She still looked fucking gorgeous.

She still had me tied up in knots with the urge to touch her.

And she was still running her tongue all along that ice cream cone in a way that made it impossible not to imagine her licking something else.