Blind Landing (Flipped #1) Page 10

  She began jumping like a boxer about to get into the ring, pushing through her toes and charging up the raw power in her calves and thighs.

  Then abruptly, she stopped, and I swore I saw her wince.

  “What’s wrong?” Wincing a month before Olympic Trials was a very bad thing.

  Julia bent down, rubbing the tender spot at the back of her ankle that houses the Achilles. “Just this damn heel and ankle. They still hurt even after all of the physical therapy and rehabbing I did. I’ll be fine.”

  She stood up straight again, checking around us to see if anyone had noticed. Acknowledging your injury in front of competitors was like taunting sharks in bloody water.

  “Just make sure you go see the trainer after this. You might just need to ice bath that.” Was it sad that most of us hadn’t even hit twenty yet and we were regularly soaking in freezing cold tubs to heal our bodies quicker after endless days of workouts?

  “Or maybe they can give me something. Maybe a shot.” Julia looks off into the distance and I could see the gears turning in her brain.

  I grab her wrist, making sure she’s making eye contact before I talk. “Cortisone? Be careful with that shit, Jules. It’s not a cure, it’s a mask.”

  I’d seen dozens of gymnasts shoot the pain-erasing drug into various parts of their bodies. Sure, it was a miracle at the time, but most of them either couldn’t walk now because of the damage it had done, or they had serious arthritis, bone damage and muscle numbness.

  “It’s the Olympics, Nat.” She shrugged and brushed me off, walking to the opposite end of the gym to go start her warmups on a different runway.

  Her rationale made sense, soothed the part of my soul that was warring with telling her not to do it. Not to inevitably get the shot. Because she was right.

  And I’d do the same thing.

  Eighteen

  Natalia

  Two days of watching myself and my routines on YouTube and Spence has me throwing Arabian dismounts off the regular competition beam easy as pie. He’s even stepped off the spotter’s block a couple of times, and no mental noise has fucked up my head.

  Spencer had done the impossible; he’d cured the fearless gymnast of her fear. Though, I was knocking on wood anytime I saw it. I didn’t want to jinx anything.

  But so far, there had been no back stepping; I hadn’t reverted back to the fear and the mental block. It took me a second or two to work up the courage while I stood on the other end of the beam … but every time I’d run full force and sent my body twisting and soaring through the Arabian dismount.

  “I know I’m no fashion expert, but I’m pretty sure that is the ugliest fucking leotard I’ve ever seen.” Spence laughs as he falls backward onto the mat underneath the rings.

  We’re sitting side by side, his arm touching my knee as we watch yet another video of my beam routine before we get started.

  “God, yes. You’re right. My old gym wanted us to wear those brown and gold things … they were so awful. One of my old teammates kept calling us the Flipping Poops all day.”

  I stop the video and look around us at the Olympic gym. It’s modeled after the competition stage from the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, the year that Filipek brought the USA team gold after years of drought. It’s how he made his name in the gymnastics community here.

  Glancing back at Spence, I see him staring up at the rings. “Do you miss it?”

  He doesn’t look at me, his green eyes still following the gently swinging rings above his head. “With every single breath.”

  I smile a small smile at his use of my words from a couple of days ago. I remember his injury, everybody does. When one of the greatest gymnasts of all time falls to the mat with a resounding crash and doesn’t get back up, it reverberates through the community like a stone thrown in a lake.

  “And there is nothing they can do to fix it?”

  He sighs, still not making eye contact with me. I probably shouldn’t ask this, get into any of his deep, dark shit. So far all our relationship has consisted of is flirting, teasing and the occasional fucking. Asking him about his injury may be crossing a line.

  But to my surprise, he answers me. “If the tear was even a partial one, they probably could have saved it. Given me back my full mobility and arm strength. But when I was up on those rings, in that competition, the thing tore straight through.”

  Spence’s voice echoes in the empty gym. “Gymnastics was my life, you know? The thing that made my blood pump, the thing that made it possible to breath. I would have never stopped. Didn’t even know my shoulder was in trouble. There was no warning signs, no pain, no tenderness or tightness. I went into that Olympic Trial thinking I was going to do nothing but secure my spot as the USA’s top gymnast. I went up onto those rings as one man. The gymnast who would never feel anything better than swinging around that equipment, than pushing his body to the limit. And I came down as another. Blindly falling into the abyss of all of the other former washed up athletes. It felt like my shoulder had been ripped clean off. They couldn’t save it. Couldn’t repair it to any semblance of a usable shoulder for an elite athlete.”

  Tears clogged my throat as I listened to him. Not because I felt sorry for him, though I did. But because I could never imagine something like that happening to me. Gymnastics was my oxygen too. “And why stay here?”

  I can’t stop the disdain in my tone. Knowing that Spence is one of them, one of Novak’s coaches, is starting to wear on me. He’s a good person, obviously loves this sport.

  He sits up, the golden tanned skin of his strong jaw clenching. “Like I said, gymnastics is my life. Where else would I go? What else would I do?”

  He’s right. This is the premier training center in the entire United States. Working here, with this caliber of gymnasts is the top of the top for coaches. But I still wish it wasn’t.

  I nod my head, feeling the weight of our conversation float over my shoulders. Spence looks so distraught and perturbed that I feel the immediate need to erase that expression from his face.

  I’m not sure what’s happening until I feel my body scoot over slightly, my hands latch onto his firm biceps. I guess I don’t really even know what I’m doing until my lips find his, hoping to soothe the battle he’s waging with himself inside his own head.

  The gym is silent, the whole campus is really, nothing and no one making a sound except for the rusty old fans that turn day and night in the high corners of the ceilings. My lips slide over Spence’s, unhurried and hoping. Hoping to be a balm for him. I hold myself there, positioned awkwardly next to him but also in front of him, kissing and caressing his mouth while my fingers rub the smooth skin on the underside of his bulging muscles.

  It’s a minute or two before he reacts. But when he does. My lord.

  I think it finally registers to both of us what I’ve done, that I’ve made the first move in a public place. A place where any coach or gymnast could walk in and see us, sitting under the rings latching onto each other’s tongues. It’s the first time either of us has used any kind of physical touch to comfort the other.

  That might be alarming. It might mean something.

  But I push it to the back of my brain when Spence starts to push me back onto the chalky mat, fisting his hands in my tightly-pulled hair, pulling and ripping strands from the neat ponytail. He all but tackles me, moving with the grace of a lion but the bluntness of a rhino, until his naked torso lays over every inch of my upper half.

  “I knew you were kinky. We could get caught, you know.” His lips move to my jaw, causing my whole stomach to tumble right down to my feet.

  I hook my fingers under his waistband, playing with the deep V-lines that paint the way towards his most prized possession. “Are you scared?”

  Spence leaves one brawny arm pinned beside my head, the other coming down to wrench my thigh up and around his waist. “Never. But maybe you should be.”

  He flashes a devil-may-care grin at me a split-second before he hefts my en
tire body off the mat. My legs wrap around his solid waist as he crushes his mouth to mine, plunging his tongue in. Sparks zing down my spine and into my core, causing my clit to throb and whine for attention as it rubs against my leotard and his shorts.

  “I’m going to teach you how to work the horse.” Spence whispers in my ear as he sets me down on a hard surface.

  I peek down to see I’m sitting on the pommel horse. Bolted to the ground by two steel beams, the rectangular wooden block covered in leathery canvas sits underneath my body. My butt is square in the middle of the two curved handgrips, and Spence’s hands rest snuggly on the dips in my cheeks.

  A grin spreads across my face as I look back up at him, the tent in his pants catching my eye. I pat the pommel horse sitting under me. “I thought you retired from spinning your hips on this thing.”

  He brings his gaze down low to meet mine, his fingers digging into the flesh of my thighs. “That doesn’t mean I don’t still know a few tricks.”

  His fingers tiptoed across my leg, and my feminine instincts had me dropping my knees to either side, so spread out that they practically touched the leather of the horse.

  “See, the thing you have to learn about performing on pommels is … your hands. They have to be quick and precise.” Spence inches the crotch of my leotard aside, the velvet of it brushing the inner part of my thigh and sending shivers through my pores.

  As soon as the tepid gym air hits my wetness, we both gasp. Gymnasts didn’t wear panties under their leotards. You weren’t a real gymnast if you did. And I was as real as they came.

  “And were yours?” I choke out, Spence’s fingers so close to my dripping opening now that I can’t concentrate.

  “Were mine what?” He toys with me, brushing up and down the inner part of my left thigh with a solitary finger.

  “Were your … were your hands quick? And precise?” I’m trying to hold my ground, keep up the game. But his attention to my thighs is driving me mad.

  “Oh, Nat. Don’t you know? I was the best.”

  Spence presses a blunt fingertip to my pulsing clit, rubbing a slow small circle. I hear my careening moan echo off of the walls, filling the empty Olympic Gym with my sounds of pleasure.

  I latch onto his neck, suckling and biting down when he pushes a thick finger inside of me. His masculine smell fills my nostrils, and I keep my face pressed there, his stubble tickling my cheeks. It’s the only way I’ll stay quiet, the way Spence is working me up to tumble off the ledge causing my entire body to tremble.

  He slides one strap of my leotard down, freeing my shoulder enough that he can roughly stick a hand inside, tweaking my nipple and causing a whole new series of lust to roll through my body.

  “On the pommel horse, you can never second-guess yourself. You just have to give yourself over to the motion of the routine. If you don’t … your hand might slip.”

  Spence removes his fingers from inside of me, my orgasm so dangerously close that I scoot my body forward, seeking the pleasure he just took away.

  “Please, Spence …” I choke, desperate for relief.

  “Or your hips. If you stop to think, your entire flow will be out of rhythm. You just have to do it, give in.” He pulls the waistband of his pants down ever-so-slightly. Just enough so that his cock is exposed, springing out of it’s cage like an animal ready to pounce. It’s swollen and stiff, the length making me almost swallow my own tongue.

  Sure, I felt it in my hand the other night. But it was dark, the only light in my tiny dorm had been the moonlight streaming through the windows. Now that I could see it, the veins popping along the surface, the tip bulging, my stomach was doing somersaults.

  Spence kneels down, rooting around in his own bag close to the legs of the pommel horse. My head is spinning, I feel trapped, like I’m in a perpetual state of flipping and twisting but my body won’t let me land. My orgasm pushes so close to the surface, that just one touch and I know I’ll come crashing down, pulled back to earth by gravity.

  The crinkle of foil has me focusing, Spence’s face now close to mine, his body lining up.

  “Are my tricks gold medal worthy?” He rubs the tip of his cock against my slit.

  I bite my lip hard, pushing forward for just an ounce more of friction.

  “Top of the podium,” I pant through a smile.

  Spence pushes in, a low growl emanating from his chest, through his limbs, and into me where I feel it settle in my chest. He thrusts in, all the way, until I can feel his head hitting the back of my walls. And he doesn’t stop.

  His hips thrust, up into my body as I hold on to him. My lips, teeth and fingernails are probably leaving marks. But then again, I know my tailbone will be sore for days after the pounding he’s giving me into the pommel horse.

  It’s illicit, the way we’re going at it in public, anyone could walk in and see us half-dressed, Spence’s shorts around his knees as his tight butt flexes over and over while he drives into me.

  He hits the exact spot, grinding down on my clit while he’s lodged inside me, and I lose it. My body, mind and soul start to fall, spinning out of control and tumbling through layers of ecstasy and pleasure. What started as an act to soothe Spencer has morphed into something else.

  Something more.

  And then he’s joining me, groaning with release into my neck as we hold each other, my body pinned to the horse.

  Spence lets out a rough chuckle. “The last key to pommels is the landing. And I think we definitely stuck that.”

  Nineteen

  Spencer

  I can still smell Natalia’s scent everywhere as I file into the conference room for the Thursday night coaches meeting.

  Even though my body is physically present, I’m still back in that gym this morning, my flesh pounding into hers as my thighs slam into the pommel horse. All the blood in my body starts to head south, and I have to suck myself back into the present moment, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over and over to get my woody to dissipate.

  “Come, come everyone. We have lot to discuss.” Novak waves all of the coaches around the large oak table in the center of the room.

  The conference room is housed in the building of office suites on the outskirts of the Filipek compound. I’m hardly ever in here, opting to spend all of my coaching time in the gyms rather than behind a desk. Which is why I hardly ever recognize the staff that houses this building. They keep the camp and programs running with their accounting, business and marketing acumen. Things that could not interest me less.

  A vegetable tray sits in the middle of the large wooden table, water bottles laid out, marking each padded office chair surrounding it. Of course they couldn’t even spring for donuts for this. Sugar was basically outlawed on this campus. Just like backbones or attitude.

  The fifteen coaches plod in warily, most of us wanting to attend this two-hour ass-reaming almost as much as we wanted to get a root canal. Novak was going to tear us all new ones, as he always did at coaches meetings. Because it wasn’t just the elite, incredible gymnasts who were subpar here. Their coaches could always be better. Even if I never slept, didn’t do anything but stand on a spotter’s block all day and give great motivation and education … he still would not be happy.

  Once we’re all seated, Novak starts in, addressing the room in his brusque Polish accent. “We have only one month before Olympic Trials. We must decide who will make team now, and focus on those girls and boys. Others will stay, just in case, but everybody know that we choose team before the competition.”

  I hadn’t been here last time they’d done this. Well, I had. But not in this room. No, I was still out in the gyms, blissfully ignorant to things like injuries and the bullshit political agendas of Novak. But Rourke Bosco had warned me about this, the way they manipulated and controlled every aspect of USA gymnastics.

  “Why even bother having Trials then?” I lean over to Rourke, who shoots me a look that is a mix between agreement and a warning.

  “What w
as that, Spencer?” Melinda’s hawk eyes land on me, and I know full well she probably heard what I’d said.

  “Nothing, Melinda. Can you pass me a carrot stick? I’m hungry.” I bat my lashes at her and earn a huff. And a carrot stick nearly chucked at my head.

  “Let’s start with the men.” Novak looks around the table to the men’s coaches.

  Rourke clears his throat first. “Well, since we apparently have to do this, we all know Duke and Jared are making that team, right?”

  Each person around the room shook their head in agreement, and some of the breath I didn’t realize I was holding whooshed out of my lungs. I was glad the other coaches thought Duke and Jared were shoe-ins for the team. It meant I didn’t have to battle anyone at this table.

  “Yes, Duke and Jared are sure to make the team. I think before the summer that Jared may have gone soft. But is good to see that he is still just as good.” Novak writes their names on a sheet, basically sealing their fate and their plane tickets to Rio.

  I almost want to tell them later when I see them, but I’d probably be skinned alive. If Novak saw them resting on their laurels for the next four weeks, they’d probably throw them off the team just to spite me.

  “James should be on that list too. We all know it. He vaults and does rings better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Well, besides you, Spence.” Ryan Bock, one of the other men’s team coaches, speaks up from farther down the table.

  I salute him, thanking him for the props about my rings expertise. But I don’t miss the pit of sadness that lumps in my stomach. If I hadn’t gotten injured, I could possibly still be doing gymnastics. I could have been headed for Rio in mere months.

  I clear my throat. “I second that, and his pommel horse has really improved. He’s a solid, consistent athlete; he’d be a smart addition to the team.”

  Novak looks at me a minute before writing James’ name down on his sheet. This is all such bullshit anyway, they could totally rearrange this list when we leave, take out or put on whoever they feel like on any given day for the next month. Novak is sneaky; he wants to make the coaches feel important, like we’re a part of this process. Like our opinions are valued and we are really part of a family here at Filipek’s.