Staying On Top (Whitman University)

by Payne, Lyla

  “So, what are the chances your dad is hiding out in Serbia? I mean, I know they don’t have a nonextradition treaty, and those places are pretty hard to come by these days, but still. It’s not that parts of it aren’t nice, but it’s not an easy place to spend thirty million dollars of my money.”

  Blair didn’t reply, leaning on the crooked wooden railing and staring off toward the mountains. The November air had a sharp chill to it, one that made me shiver, but even out here with no jacket, she didn’t seem to feel it. Or it didn’t bother her, maybe.

  “Where are you from? Originally?” It seemed as though she piqued my curiosity more with each passing day, instead of the opposite, which was more typical for me. I wanted to understand what made her tick, guess the reasons she tried to ignore our chemistry so I could convince her to ignore them.

  “New York City.” Even though she faced away from me, the smile was clear in her voice.

  “You loved it there.”

  “I still do. But Florida is okay.”

  “Florida’s a shithole, Blair, and as two people who have seen a good portion of the world, we’re uniquely qualified to make that assessment.”

  “The weather is nice.”

  “You don’t seem to mind the cold.”

  She turned then, the wind whipping long strands of brown hair in front of her face. When she brushed them away, her cheeks were red, her dark eyes bright. “I like the chill. I miss the seasons while I’m in Florida. You’re from there, though, aren’t you?”

  There she went again, spouting offhand knowledge that she really shouldn’t have. It was possible that Quinn or Toby had mentioned it, or even that I had said something to her while we were in St. Moritz—heaven knew I wasn’t sober enough while we were there to recall the details of every conversation—but it had happened enough times now that I knew she had to be lying. About being a tennis fan or not being attracted to me, I couldn’t be sure. And it made my stomach twist into an impressive knot.

  I liked her. I had since we first met, and there didn’t seem to be much point in denying the fact to her or myself, but I had to remind myself to be careful. “Yes. My parents are from central Florida—the middle of the shithole, as it were—but we moved to Bradenton when I started training seriously.”

  “Where do you live in the off-season? Melbourne?”

  I hated that question. People asked it all the time—reporters, friends, nosy fans—because most players had that place they loved. Sometimes the home they were born into, sometimes one they had fallen in love with and adopted along the way, but not me. My six weeks off were spent wherever sounded good at the time. More of them had been spent in Melbourne than other places, because that’s where the new season began and it was nice to not have to rush, but that was the only reason. I had no more affection for Australia than anywhere else.

  It didn’t take a shrink to know that it was because home had never been a place of solace for me. The road had given me a life. Refuge. Love. As much as I adored women, enjoyed being in relationships, they’d never had any chance of surviving. My family had cured me of a burning desire to create one of my own—what the tennis world gave me was enough.

  *

  I had dozed off with less than an hour to go before we arrived in Belgrade. A loud pop and Blair’s fingers squeezing my thigh startled me awake.

  “What?”

  Her hand flew from my leg to cover my mouth, but her sharp gaze stayed focused on the front of the bus. Mine followed, and a second later, cold fear froze my limbs.

  The meth-head guy had a gun.

  I pulled her hand off my face and squeezed it between my palms, then slumped down in the seat, tugging her with me so our heads were out of sight.

  “What’s happening?” I whispered.

  She shook her head, the faint, leftover smell of her shampoo tickling my nose. “He started yelling, then a lady screamed, then he fired the gun.”

  “What’s he yelling about?”

  “I don’t even know what language he’s speaking,” she said so softly it barely carried over the sound of the engine.

  Great. I knew the two of us were going to be in trouble trying to traverse less-traveled European countries like normal people—ones who knew how to handle crises that might pop up—but being on a bus with a loaded gun was outside even my wild imaginings.

  For her part, Blair looked unimpressed. The fact that she’d grabbed on to me so hard when it started proved that it frightened her, but now she appeared more annoyed than anything as she peered around the edge of the seat to get a better look.

  Her fingers twitched between my palms but she didn’t pull away.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Shut up, I’m trying to listen,” she hissed back.

  The man and woman continued to shriek at each other in what sounded like babble, and a moment later Blair slid back my direction. Her teeth worried her bottom lip, but other than that, she still didn’t seem too bothered by the fact that a maniac with a gun paced the aisle. “He thinks the woman he’s with is cheating on him. Maybe with his brother.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “A few Latin roots here and there, plus his hand gestures and the fact that she’s yelling back now.” She shook her head. “It’s the Maury Show. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  The bus swerved toward the shoulder of the uneven road, slamming our hips together. I let go of her hand and caught her around the shoulders, steadying us both against the window. My hands were shaking, and even though it was stupid, I hoped she didn’t notice.

  More shouting erupted from up front, along with another gunshot that made us both duck on instinct, and the bus swerved back into the proper lane. I guessed the driver’s plan to pull over and deal with this crisis while not moving had failed.

  “Fuck this shit,” Blair muttered, and stood up before I could stop her.

  To her credit, she didn’t straighten all the way, leaving her chest and torso covered by the seat, but if you asked me she should have been more concerned about her head.

  Then again, these seats weren’t stopping a bullet. If the asshole decided to spray the back of the bus, both of us were going to be Swiss cheese.

  “Excuse me!”

  Her voice rang over the shrieked argument, too loud, too confrontational. Awe over her balls warred with embarrassment over my cowering, with neither winning out over my worry.

  “Is there any way you could put the gun away and sit your ass down? The rest of us would like to arrive in Belgrade alive, and we’re only, like, ten minutes from the station. You can just pick up where you left off there.” She paused, waiting for a response maybe, but the rest of the bus had a similar reaction to mine—stunned silence. “Hinsetzen? Schnauze? Ja?”

  The glance she threw me seemed to ask an opinion on her German. It was translatable, though whether it would be understood was another story. I gave her a baffled nod. I inched upward until my eyes cleared the top of the seat, just in time to see all hell break loose.

  Blair’s mouth had shocked the gunman into silence, and two of the bigger organ thieves took advantage of the distraction and rushed him. His gun arm flailed. They wrestled and shouted while the bus swerved again. A shot exploded. Someone screamed and I grabbed Blair around the waist, yanking her down on my lap and curling around her body.

  The commotion ceased as quickly as it began. My heart pounded so hard against Blair’s back there was no way she didn’t feel it, and my arms trembled from holding on to her so tight. My eyes were closed and I had to work at opening them for several seconds—the feeling of her breathing said she was alive, but fear that there would be blood everywhere kept ice in my veins.

  “Sam.”

  I gulped some more air. “Yeah?”

  “I can’t breathe.”

  “Oh my god, are you hurt? Did he shoot you?”

  “No, dumbass. You’re squeezing the shit out of me.”

  “Oh.” I loosened my grip and op
ened my eyes, already feeling a little stupid and expecting to see exasperation and contempt in her gaze. She maneuvered on my lap until she straddled me, and then smiled. For some reason, her reaction swapped my cold fear for hot anger. “What in the hell were you thinking? He could have shot you!”

  “Somebody had to do something before the driver freaked out and drove us over a cliff.”

  “You didn’t even know what was going on, or what kind of crazy he is! It didn’t have to be you.”

  “I was willing. Everyone else was sitting on their hands. Ergo, it had to be me.”

  “Blair.”

  She cut me off by placing her palms on my cheeks, hesitating for the tiniest of seconds, then leaning forward to press her lips against mine.

  The kiss was soft, so unlike Blair that it took me by surprise. I slid my hands to her hips, squeezing hard enough to keep her in place. She scooted forward on my lap, her palms drifting to my chest while her fingers brushed the exposed skin at the base of my throat.

  Her touch drove out my fear and replaced it with shuddering desire, and I tangled a hand in her hair. The slip of her tongue against my bottom lip shot boiling need into my gut and I opened my mouth, greedy for the taste of her.

  What began as a kiss, maybe to thank me for trying to protect her, maybe born of the relief of surviving a harrowing incident, turned into something animalistic inside ten seconds. Her chest pressed against mine as her fingers dug into my scalp and our tongues tangled with far more urgency than was appropriate for a very public place.

  I didn’t care.

  It was as though my hands had minds of their own. They explored until they found the hem of her sweatshirt, then the tank top underneath, reveling in the softness of the skin on her back.

  Blair gasped against my lips, the tiny, incredible admission of pleasure bringing me back to the present. As much as I didn’t want to let her slip away, we had to stop or end up being the second horrifying thing our poor fellow passengers would witness today.

  I didn’t remove my hands, though. Now that she’d touched me, now that she’d proven that her body felt the same pull as mine, going back was off the table. She laid her forehead against mine, eyes closed, until both of us could breathe normally.

  “I knew you were hot for me, Blair Paddington,” I whispered with a smile.

  She sat up and crossed her arms, avoiding my gaze. “Whatever. I just thought it was sweet that you tried to protect me. Even if it came a little late.”

  “Don’t do that.” Her eyes snapped to mine, and I held on to her gaze, refusing to let her look away again. “There was nothing sweet about that kiss, and I never come late. I’m a right-on-time kind of guy.”

  That made her smile, even if she didn’t seem to want to. “Fine. I might be attracted to you, but that’s it. I don’t like you or anything, so go ahead and unswell your head accordingly.”

  “I don’t like you, either. You’re a pain in my ass, you do crazy shit like stand up in front of men holding guns, and I’m considering the idea that you could be the Antichrist.” I ran my hands over the bare skin of her back, then trailed my fingers around front, skimming the softness under her bra. The way her eyes fluttered made me ache to pull her against me, but dammit, we were still on the bus. “But you’re a fucking sexy devil.”

  “You really are an idiot.”

  “But I’m hot?”

  She rolled her eyes and climbed off my lap, turning to check out the scene that had started all of this. I almost wanted to thank the psycho with the weapon for helping me break down the emotional barriers Blair had spent who knows how long erecting. Even though she’d kissed me as though she wanted to fuck me right here, even though she’d acknowledged the crackling attraction that felt as natural as breathing, I had an inkling that getting her to admit to any feelings would be harder than pulling teeth out of a rabid raccoon.

  Instead of pressing—and also to give me time to deep-breathe away my boner—I followed her gaze. The bus driver had pulled over at some point during our make-out session, which must have gone on a little longer than it had seemed to, and the two burly men who had corralled the gun-wielder had escorted him off the bus.

  One of them was talking to him, a hand on his shoulder, and the previously frightening crazy person now looked to be sobbing on the side of the road. The woman who had sparked such passion sat in silence, knitting something lumpy and purple. She didn’t look up when the two men boarded the bus without her boyfriend or whatever he was, and said nothing when the driver pulled away, leaving him behind in the frigid night.

  We were close enough to Belgrade that he wouldn’t have to walk far to get a ride, find shelter, or call someone, so it was hard to feel badly for him. Especially since he could have killed us.

  Blair said nothing as the bus puffed and puttered the remaining ten minutes to the bus station. She sat carefully next to me, near enough that we shared heat but far enough to keep us from touching, with a faint smile on her lips. I realized my own mouth sported a matching one and shook it away. Goofiness would never help me into the bed of a girl such as Blair Paddington.

  It still surprised me that even after the kiss—which I could not stop thinking about—I was still more curious about what was going on in her head than between her legs.

  And that helped me stop smiling for good.

  Chapter 9

  Blair

  I could not stop thinking about that kiss. It had been an impulse, a result of high adrenaline and base wonder that he had tried to protect me. Or, that’s what I’d thought before my lips touched his.

  I could barely recall what happened after that. It was a haze of lust and heat and tongues, of his hands on my skin, of the frustrating desire to be closer to him. The reaction had been instinctual, coded into my DNA, and the force of it left my head in a fog. Scooting away from Sam had done nothing to dim the electric current of desire humming underneath my skin.

  We needed more space from each other than a bus could provide, and by the time we pulled into the Belgrade station, I was happier to see Serbia than anyone had a right to be.

  That is, until the sight of the all-too-perfect Marija Peronovic greeted me inside the dingy terminal.

  After five days of nonstop travel, wrinkled clothes, and no shower, Sam and I fit in with the rest of our bedraggled travel companions a little too seamlessly. Marija freaking glowed, from the shiny ebony hair that hung to the middle of her back to the long inky lashes framing her bright blue eyes and the tanned legs that were completely out of place in the Serbian winter. She must have had a dress or skirt on, but it wasn’t visible under the soft blue of her wool coat.

  She smiled at Sam, happiness and welcome lighting her beautiful face, and opened her arms for a hug. The girl had been one of my favorites to watch for years, and her spunky attitude with the press always planted me in her camp, but when her manicured fingers locked around Sam’s back, I wanted to claw her eyes out.

  Which was stupid. Sam wasn’t mine, and I didn’t want him to be. No matter what I’d told the woman on the train, we were not lovers exploring Europe on Thanksgiving break. I was here to get access to his bank accounts by whatever means necessary, and kissing him couldn’t change that. Wouldn’t change that, even if I wanted it to.

  Which I didn’t.

  Sam and Marija had spent months and months on the road together for years. If they’d wanted to have sex or date, they’d had plenty of opportunity already—and who’s to say they hadn’t? The familiarity and ease between them as they caught up in soft voices suggested a level of comfort that could be more than friendship.

  I touched my lips, then snatched my hand away when I realized what I was doing. So, Sam was a good kisser. So, it felt as though his lips were made of magnets perfectly tuned to a frequency in mine. All it meant was that, if this job did come to getting naked with him, I might actually enjoy it.

  The tingle between my thighs at the thought said I would definitely enjoy it—or even want it—
but as hard as it was to admit that to myself, I couldn’t do it like this. Lying to him.

  I needed to stop dripping with lust and focus on the task at hand. Earn Sam’s trust. Make him believe I was on his side by pretending to ferret out my father’s current location. When we “failed,” talk him out of his bank account information so that I could continue the “search” on my own. End of story.

  Still, would it be so bad to enjoy myself while doing my due diligence?

  “Hello, earth to Blair …”

  Sam’s voice knocked me out of a frustrating loop of not-logic. “Sorry, what?”

  “What were you thinking about just then? Your face looked exactly like the one on a possum treed by a dog.”

  “That’s flattering.”

  Silence hung in the air between the three of us until he accepted there wouldn’t be any more information forthcoming about my state of mind.

  “I was introducing you to Marija.” He nodded toward her as though he were speaking to some kind of daft child, or a recluse who didn’t own a television. “Marija, this is Blair Paddington, a friend of Quinn’s.”

  “Any friend of Sam and Quinn’s is a friend of mine,” she replied in perfect, perky English. Even though she played for Serbia, she’d trained in the United States since she was ten years old. Common enough knowledge. “Would you like to go?”

  “Wait, where are we going?” I turned to Sam. “I thought we were just borrowing a car.”

  “Calm down, devil girl. We are borrowing a car; it’s at Marija’s house. And since it’s almost midnight, I was thinking we could grab a shower and catch a few hours of horizontal sleep.”

  Agreeing meant going against everything I had been telling him since we set out on this misguided field trip, but the mere mention of a hot shower brought tears to my eyes. I stunk like four-day-old body odor, and even though it wouldn’t have stopped me from making out with him for another twenty minutes, Sam didn’t smell so hot, either.