Between Heats (Downtown Aquatics Book 1)

by Laney Castro

  Aaron shrugged. “Could be,” he said politely.

  “Here, take a look,” she said, as she accessed her photo album and started scrolling back. “Tell me if this is you and I could tell my friend I was right all along.”

  He leaned closer to get a better look. Her thumb slowed down its scrolling, and Aaron did a double-take. Was that a naked photo? He wasn’t sure. But Anna slowed down her pace even more and this time, Aaron was certain: she was naked in the next few photographs. And no, he wasn’t looking at some high-concept editorial shoot. These were badly-lit selfies before a mirror. At least he thought it was Anna; it was hard to tell when half the screen was taken up by her two huge breasts.

  “Oh!” Anna exclaimed, nearly dropping her phone if Aaron hadn’t been quick enough to catch it.

  “Here you go,” he said, trying hard not to look at the screen as he handed it to her.

  “I’m so sorry you had to see that, Aaron,” Anna started babbling. “I thought I had deleted them from my phone—”

  “It’s cool. Really,” he assured her. He grinned now, unable to reign his amusement in for a second longer. Maybe if he had met Anna first, he’d be making plans with her instead of a certain redhead.

  Oh, wait. He did meet Anna first. And it still didn’t do anything for him.

  “We’re ready for you now!” the photographer called out, and Anna tossed the phone beside her robe, all embarrassment gone.

  “I was born ready,” she tittered, with a sideways glance at Aaron. She headed to the pool, her hips moving to a silent salsa beat. Aaron looked up at the bleachers to see if Madison was around and not finding her there, he followed the blonde into the pool.

  Chapter Nine

  She deliberately stayed away from him, but it was easier than she thought. They only had two set-ups together: one with just the two of them, poised as if to dive into the pool, and another one with the rest of the group—and Madison and Aaron were both on opposite ends of the frame. The rest of her shoots were with the second photography unit, while Aaron did the underwater pool shots. They had another group shot scheduled towards later that afternoon, which was why Madison had to stay until the end of the day.

  As she sat on the bleachers watching the scenes unfold, Madison was fuming. She didn't see much of what was happening underwater except for what was being transferred onto the photographer's laptop, but whenever Aaron and Anna would emerge, she would be laughing and clinging to him. She watched as Anna, who had been contorting her body effortlessly underwater, suddenly surfaced with her hands around Aaron's neck. Aaron held her back. Madison wanted to gag. Part of her wanted to head to the dressing room but a perverse sense of curiosity took over and made her remain where she was.

  “Pretty annoying, isn't he?” a new voice asked. Madison turned to see a girl around her age sitting there. Her hair was jet-black with blue lowlights and she wore an army jacket over a dress with a Peter Pan collar. She surveyed the scene, looking bored. Madison was surprised to find someone who wasn't enamored by Aaron Harding and his boy-next door charm.

  “You mean Aar— Harding?” Madison clarified.

  The girl nodded. “What do you think?”

  Madison frowned. Though she was mad at him, she wasn't about to talk smack about him to a perfect stranger. “Well, he can be one-track minded and he likes messing with my head but I wouldn't really call him annoying. Sometimes I suspect he's actually just a bit shy.”

  “You seem to know him well,” the girl pointed out.

  Was she some kind of reporter? “Oh, no, not really,” Madison denied. “We just met yesterday.”

  “Aaah. You were the one he was talking about,” the other girl said.

  “The one he was talking about? Huh?” She glanced back at the pool, where Aaron had just dived down for another frame. “You mean Aaron?” What did this girl know about him? And why would Aaron go around talking about her?

  “Yeah, my idiot brother has a big mouth.” The girl laughed. “But at least he's got pretty good taste in girls. I'm Zoe, by the way.”

  Madison's jaw dropped open. She didn't know whether to be flattered or dismayed that Aaron had been talking about her. She wanted to ask what he had said but no words seemed to form on her lips. “Ma-Madison Thomas,” she finally introduced.

  “So good to meet you,” Zoe said, shaking her hand. “I have a feeling we'll be very good friends.” She rifled through her bag. “Mints? Sugar-free gum?”

  Zoe was a gold mine of information about Aaron. His sister, Madison soon found, was willing to spill everything about him. Madison made sure to take mental notes. It made her feel better whenever she would glance at the laptop screen and see Aaron and Lakeisha's legs twined underwater or catch his hands just inches away from Anna's abundant charms. They even had lunch together. But her new friend didn't stay for long, so by the end of the day, any elation that Madison had felt had now rapidly devolved to pure venom.

  Even Elliott’s arrival to check on her on the way to see another model shoot wasn’t enough to bring her out of her funk. “By the way, Sean Torrance called,” Elliott said, after they had run out of gossip. “Asked how you were doing with Stroke. Red, tell me this was a random call. I thought you were done with that guy!”

  “What do you want me to say, Elliott?” Madison responded defensively, crossing her arms over her chest. “It’s not personal.”

  “You know exactly why it’s fucked up,” he told her. “You could be seeing so many other guys. Didn’t Mr. Olympics drive you home yesterday?”

  Madison shook her head. “We’re just getting to know each other.”

  “Just a distraction in between calls from Sean Torrance?”

  “You make it sound as if I have nothing better to do than to sit around and wait for Sean to call,” she snapped.

  Elliott raised a knowing eyebrow but was the first to back down. “Whatever. It’s your life.”

  Still, Elliott’s words sobered her up. She was all business when the final shoot came. The other girls greeted her warmly as she approached but she tried to keep her poker face on.

  “Hey,” he greeted her as she found her marker beside him. Everyone else seemed to fade in the background when she was around him. Tunnel senses and it made her hot. So hot that it was getting hard to follow her all-work, no-play policy.

  “Hey yourself,” she replied.

  He leaned closer so his lips were directly against her ear. “You look gorgeous in white. I might need another hand later,” he murmured.

  His compliment wormed itself through her walls, making her smile just a little. “We're working, hotshot,” she reminded him out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Okay, Aaron, put your arms around Madison now,” the photographer said. She stiffened when Aaron's arms first encircled her waist. She could smell the chlorine on his skin. She wanted to melt against him, feel her back flush against him.

  “This is good,” he murmured.

  “Mmm-hmm,” she agreed absently. There was something about him that made her feel safe. But she snapped herself back into the zone before her mind could go off wandering again.

  The last few frames felt like torture for Madison, whenever she heard the other girls flirting with Aaron in between takes. Whenever she glanced at him, he’d give her an amused smirk like he had a secret he was about to tell her, but he kept right on flirting back. At least he wasn’t treating her like a social pariah, but she had to admit that she was the teensiest bit jealous at all the attention he was giving the other models.

  When the last frame was over, the crew broke out in appreciative applause and started thanking each other. She glanced at Aaron who was bending down to give Lakeisha a hug. She waited a bit, but she was pulling him off to one side. Madison shrugged and just thanked the photographer and the clients before slipping out of the room. But Aaron didn’t even seem to notice that she had gone. So that was that, she thought. Funny how she thought there’d be something more. Expected something more.


  Maybe it was time to take matters into her own hands again.

  When the shoot finally ended, Aaron just wanted to go home. What bummed him out was that he didn’t know where Madison had gone after. It took him a while before he could extricate himself from Anna and Lakeisha, then he had to thank Eliza and the rest of the marketing team. When he realized that Madison wasn’t there, he wanted to curse. He didn’t even have her number. So he just took a perfunctory shower and then headed for the building garage.

  To his surprise, he found Madison standing by his car when he thought she had left. She was dressed in a loose gray shirt and tight jeans. Her red hair was neatly tied back into a ponytail and she was carrying a large bag. “What are you doing there?” he asked.

  “I just came to see which of the girls you're taking to dinner,” she said haughtily. “Elliott and I made a bet.”

  Aaron opened the back door and placed his bag in the backseat. “Why would I take either of them out? I'm not interested in them.”

  “Oh, you say that after a whole day of pawing at them?” Madison demanded.

  “I was just doing what the photographer instructed. Besides, Anna is dangerous. Did you know she keeps naked pictures of herself on her phone?” he asked.

  “Naked pictures?” she spluttered. “How did you know?”

  “She was showing me something on her phone and she accidentally scrolled through some—”

  “Seriously? That was her ploy?” Madison shook her head in amusement. “And you walked right into it!”

  Aaron opened the door to the driver's seat, but instead of getting in, he leaned with both elbows against the car frame and looked at her. “Of course, your ploy yesterday was much better.”

  That rattled her because she narrowed her eyes at him. “That was for you too, hotshot, in case you forgot. Or maybe you did, because it was me one day, Anna the next… Too bad this is a two-day shoot or you’ll probably be after Lakeisha tomorrow.”

  He frowned. “Hey, you said you didn’t want unnecessary attention… wait a minute, are you jealous?"

  Madison gave a brisk laugh. "Me, jealous? You have got to be kidding."

  His gray eyes were suddenly serious and so was his voice. Seconds passed by. "So who did you bet on, with Elliott? The model I'd be taking to dinner tonight? Anna?"

  Madison was quiet for a few seconds. Then she opened the passenger side and got in, her cheeks pink. She looked straight ahead instead of meeting his eyes.

  “Me.”

  She was a serious fireball, unpredictable and infuriating and much more dangerous than a girl with naked photos on her iPhone. She drove him crazy.

  And he couldn’t get enough of her.

  “And after dinner?” Aaron asked as he got in. He started the car and glanced at her. “What happens to us then?”

  “I brought home the white swimsuit,” she replied, her cheeks now a bright shade of red. Her voice seemed husky. “You could finally teach me to swim underwater.”

  Chapter Ten

  Dinner was at a restaurant that used to be an old fire station, but all Aaron could think of was Madison in her white swimsuit, in the water. His water. There was a large lap pool at his apartment, but there was a smaller and more private one that only tenants from the top two ‘clusters,’ as they called it, could use. The building gave him more leeway with its use but none of his neighbors complained anyway. He could bring Madison there and no one would bat an eyelash.

  There was something about her that captivated him. He could claim that it was her face and her body that first caught his eye, but she was no-nonsense and focused in ways that had nothing to do with competitive swimming, and he found that incredibly sexy. She blew hot and cold and he found himself increasingly intrigued. Like there was always something going on behind her flashing green eyes. She was like chili and coffee, with a hint of cherries right beneath the surface.

  And now that he was taking her back to his apartment tonight… dinner was rapidly becoming the last thing on his mind.

  Aaron was already in the water by the time Madison stepped out onto the deck, nervously adjusting the straps of her white swimsuit. Damn. She stopped in her tracks, just a few steps short of the pool. Aaron was submerged in the deep end of the pool, hands holding on to the sides in a breathing exercise.

  Aaron turned to face her, diving deep once and then emerging, his black hair slicked back by the water. His eyes were trained on her face and her body as he slowly swam lazy strokes to get to where she was.

  Aaron stopped by the pool handrails. He gripped the rails, bringing out the definition in his toned arms and muscles. She looked down at him and he hoped she liked what she was seeing. His lithe torso was chiseled and the V that his female fans seemed to find so sexy was emphasized by the jammers he wore. “The water’s fine,” he said with a grin.

  Madison smiled as she slowly made her way to the edge. She turned around to get a better grip of the handrails and descended down the ladder with her back to him. She had no way of knowing what the sight of her trim figure in a virginal white suit was doing to Aaron.

  Double damn.

  His strong hands were on her waist, helping her down. “Got you,” he murmured.

  “Thanks,” she said. Damn, she was so gorgeous. The white swimsuit clung to all her curves. Even in the dim lights around the pool, he could see the light brushing of freckles over her shoulders and breasts. His hands slowly skimmed her sides before letting go. They were alone, true, but they were also technically in a public place. He thought he saw her blush, and reminded himself that she was here to learn swimming techniques. She was such a contradiction. One moment her mouth would be dishing out comebacks and retorts; the next moment her body would be responding as if she were embarrassed.

  “Let’s see you swim first,” Aaron said.

  “Performance anxiety!” She laughed, submerging herself in the water and then coming back up immediately. “I feel like I’m about to be judged.”

  Aaron grinned and watched. Madison swam to the opposite end of the pool, took a short break when she got there, then swam back to where he was. “I’ll leave the underwater turns to experts like you,” she teased. “So, how did I do?”

  “Your posture’s awful,” he taunted back. “But I think I can work with you.”

  Her reply was to roll her eyes at him. “So how do we start?”

  “I think you should relax a bit and maybe try some breathing and kicking exercises. But first...” Aaron moved closer to Madison, his hand smoothing over the curve of her waist and drawing her close. She gave in to his tug, her snapping green eyes now softer and gentler. She parted her lips slightly and Aaron closed the distance between them. Her lips were lush and soft. He could feel the heat from her body and it drove him wild. He wanted to tangle himself in her as his lips captured hers in hungry, tantalizing kisses. He wanted her so much. Her breasts pushed against his chest as she responded enthusiastically, her hands behind his neck. His tongue tasted hers, sliding over her eager sweetness. She was ready for him. In the water, they were completely level.

  Aaron’s legs locked around hers while his hands on her waist slowly brought her down. She didn’t seem to have time to panic, so intent was she on matching his tongue movements with hers. The water closed in above them as they continued to kiss underwater. Their tongues played and lapped, until he brought her back up again and they broke for air.

  “That was…” she panted, still clinging to him. The color was high in her cheeks while her chest heaved as she caught her breath.

  Aaron looked down at her mischievously. “Breathing exercise,” he said. If this was what kissing her felt like, he couldn’t imagine what she would be like in bed. “Want another round?”

  Madison moved in the water, and rubbed herself against him. He hardened instinctively. “Yes,” she almost purred.

  Their underwater kisses became longer and more intense. Madison’s chest was flush up against Aaron’s and he could feel her sensitive nubs har
dening with every sensation. Her body was so damn honest that he was already hardening. On their fourth trip down, Aaron abandoned all thoughts of kissing her lips and moved on to exploring the rest of her body with his hands. She jerked in surprise, surfacing and taking deep lungfuls of air.

  But Aaron remained underwater. He wasn’t finished yet. He anchored one hand on one of her breasts and the other on the back of her thigh. Then slowly both hands made languid, caressing movements over the rest of her: her legs, her thighs, her butt. He was everywhere. When she made no protest, his fingers brushed against her center.

  And then suddenly he was tracing her contours there.

  Madison brought her legs together, unable to suppress the moan that escaped her lips. His face so close to her heat, his fingers content with just teasing her.

  “Aaron!” she half-panted, half-scolded. “You said you’d teach me, remember?”

  He resurfaced, a laugh on his lips. “I am doing that!”

  “You’re not,” she pouted. “Show-off.”

  “I’m not the one who came here with a body begging to be touched,” he said in a low voice. “Who’s the show-off now?”

  Madison shook her head. “Why anyone thinks you’re the perfect boy-next-door, I’ll never know.”

  He grinned at her. “I can’t control what people think of me.”

  “You’re supposed to be teaching me how to swim underwater,” she reminded him, leaning to give him a quick kiss, before wading out of reach, as if he couldn’t catch her with just one stroke.

  “All right,” Aaron said. He let her swim around a bit more, just content to watch her. Finally, he asked, “Do you know how to do a breast stroke?”

  “Is this a legitimate question or a loaded innuendo?” she shot back.

  “Legit,” he replied and she switched from her front crawl to execute a couple of basic breaststrokes. Satisfied, he took her through some breathing exercises by the side of a wall. But her chest was too damn distracting so he ended up demonstrating how to swim underwater, just to take his mind off her body.