And while I was leaning almost all of my weight against him, he lowered us onto our sides and kept on holding me, pulling me so I was halfway on top of him, my head on his chest, one of my hands gripping his ribs, a leg over his own. We stayed like that until the tears stopped leaking out of my eyes, and I could take deep breaths again.
He brushed his hand down my hair, almost absently.
I had thought earlier that night had been one of the best moments of my life, but this was. This was, and I loved Ivan so much, I didn’t think it was possible to love him any more. Everything he had said to me, I felt the exact same way about, except I would have skated with someone else if he’d truly wanted to go back to his old partner, but I would have done it as a tribute to him, for all the ways he had changed me and my life.
I wanted to give him all the shit and all the shit I couldn’t forever and always, because he’d given me everything.
Neither one of us said anything for a long, long time as we lay there.
Not when his hands made longer strokes along my hair, not when his hand drifted to my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Or when his palm moved down my arm, gentle, gentle, gentle, his fingertips almost tickling me as he touched the thigh I had over him.
I wouldn’t have moved away for all the money in the whole world. Not for all the awards and all the medals either. Not for fucking anything.
What Ivan did was move his fingertips across my thigh and then, then to my knee. It took everything in me not to react as all but one of his fingertips disappeared, and that one sole, lonely pad began making circles over my kneecap. So light, so soft, it felt like a feather.
I stayed right there.
His fingertip made wider and wider circles, dipping down to the sensitive skin at the crease behind my knee before making its way back upward again to my quads, making that track-like pattern one more time. Then that fingertip made a trail down my bare shin and calf, making a circle around the muscle I used and overused. Then he made another one.
I’d never been happier that from the moment Mom had given me permission to shave—right after I’d hit puberty and hair had grown in with everywhere—that she’d stressed how important it was to do it every day. And moisturize. Because if you asked my mom, moisturizing was one of the most important parts of the day. Just like brushing your teeth. Or wiping your ass after using the bathroom. I was so damn thankful I’d shaved after coming back to my room following dinner.
One fingertip turned into four. Then the length of four fingers. Then an entire palm. All covering my calf. Then my shin. Up and down.
“How’s your skin so smooth?” His question was low, almost distracted if I hadn’t known any better.
“Coconut oil,” I answered, hitching my leg up higher so that it was closer to him.
“Coconut oil?” He spread his fingers wide to wrap around the entire width of my lower leg.
“Uh-huh,” I answered, swallowing hard at the feel of his warm skin on mine.
If he noticed me moving it closer to him, he didn’t comment on it.
“You know, Jasmine,” he said, sounding almost distracted, “these things are so strong—”
“Things?” I almost panted out.
“Legs,” he clarified, still touching my skin. “Legs,” he emphasized. “They’re all muscle. I didn’t think—” He made a noise in the back of his throat as his palm swept up over my knee to land on the top of my thigh. “—they would be so soft.”
“You know how many bruises I get,” I managed to get out, “how many cuts and scars… it helps… heal.”
I swallowed. Gulped.
Ivan dragged his hand higher up my thigh, so high the fingers snuck beneath the hem of my shorts, his hands practically spanning the length of my entire thigh. It wasn’t like I had long legs or anything, and I was grateful. Because he could touch more. Touch everything.
And I wanted him to.
“Jesus,” he almost hissed, moving his hand around, fingertips so deep into my sleep shorts, the tips touched the very top of my ass. He made a little line over the skin there, grazing my crack, and I couldn’t help but flex everything from my ankle up. “Are you not wearing any underwear?”
I didn’t know what it was that had me tipping my head up, my nose touching his throat, when I whispered, “I’m wearing some.”
He hummed, walking his fingers another inch higher into my shorts. God, I’d never been ungrateful for the fact he had such big hands, and I especially wasn’t cursing it right then. Because his fingers kept moving… but instead of going back in the direction of my back, they moved to the side… then back again… lower… reaching another crease… then again to the side…
And I sucked in a breath as those fingers found my underwear.
Specifically, the strip of my underwear that went right up between my ass cheeks.
It was then, as his fingers made contact with my thong, that he slung another arm around my lower back, and with a strength I was totally aware of, that I knew so well, he pulled me over his lap so that I was straddling him. The arm around my back crushed my lower body against his.
And I felt it. All long and thick and hard.
Jesus.
“Ivan—”
He cut me off with his mouth then. Those pink lips sealed over mine, slanted, wet, taking mine completely and totally. His tongue darted against mine, needy. Thirsty. He pressed our mouths together like they were meant to be like that. His fingers trailed up the sliver of fabric between my ass cheeks, touching over places on my body that I was shy with. That anybody would be shy with.
Most anybody.
Those fingertips went up, up, grazing over the triangle at the top of my thong. I slanted my mouth to the side, touching my tongue against his as he pulled at the triangle and let it go, letting it snap against my skin with a hoarse groan that I felt everywhere. “Only you would wear this fucking underwear under these shorts,” he groaned, grabbing a handful of ass cheek and squeezing it almost hard enough to hurt.
Almost.
I moved my mouth just enough so that I could aim it toward his neck, biting it instantly.
And Ivan, fucking Ivan, groaned, tipping his head back to give me more room. So I opened my mouth wider and took more of his neck into my mouth, the skin soft and just a little salty and smelling like that clean, expensive cologne I knew he wore on a daily basis.
“Jesus, Jas,” he hissed when my teeth turned into my tongue and lips, sucking on his skin a lot harder than I knew I should.
The hips beneath mine rolled, curled and fucking humped into mine, and they did it twice more when I sucked on the skin even harder, dragging my tongue across his throat.
“You taste so damn good,” I moaned, sucking on him harder.
He let out a wild groan, his hips moving beneath mine, his arms restless, wrapping low around my back, bringing our fronts together, tight. Flush. My breasts smashed against the hard surface of his chest.
“Damn,” Ivan hissed. His chin still tilted up, still giving me access to that beautiful, long throat as his lower body moved, gaining friction between the material of his pants, the anaconda I couldn’t wrap my head around under them, and the thin, stretchy material covering the part of me that wanted him to fill it like I needed painkillers on a regular basis.
A new curse straight out of that wonderful mouth lit up my spine, my fingertips, my knees, and everything in between.
The trail of curse words had me pulling back, sitting my ass against his thighs, right by his knees, settling all my weight there while I sat up straight, and with a talent that would have impressed the best stripper in Vegas, I yanked my shirt over my head, leaving me in one of those lacy bras with no underwires that were one of the only good things about being either the smallest B-cup in the world or the largest A-cup.