Harder
Blue Ashcroft
Published by Blue Ashcroft
Copyright 2013. Blue Ashcroft
Cover design: Clarissa [email protected]
Formatting: Polgarus Studio
ISBN: 978-0-9887912-7-5
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the author at [email protected].
All characters or in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any events or locations depicted are also fiction and figments of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events or locations is purely coincidental.
Chapter 1
I walk the deck of the water park. My water park.
As I expected, they made me senior guard at the start of the second season. Something about me just screams leadership. Maybe my butch energy, maybe the fact that I don’t take crap from anyone, least of all Knight, reigning king of the sandbox.
For now.
As usual, they put the new seniors over training. It’s a way to start getting some respect from the guards that have come to see us as friends.
I’m ready, there’s just one problem. Ryan.
Why is he even a senior guard if he’d rather be standing there like an idiot at the guard chair, guarding instead? We were supposed to take today to set up a training together. Instead, he found out we were down a guard and decided to take the shift.
Just standing there, looking hot as hell. Just my type. Sexy long hair, pulled back in a pony, huge, cut body, pretty boy face. Green eyes. Light brown hair that looks both soft and badass at the same time. Damn, I just want to…
He’s looking at me now, with that frank quiet stare that makes my stomach flutter. No, my stomach does not flutter. Hell no. I push the front of my hair up, the way I always do when I’m nervous and turn to head back into the guard’s break room.
Jay’s in. I called him in to cover for Ryan, because dude needs to help me with trainings. I’d just plan them on my own, but then I’d be accused of being too controlling. I go to my locker and pull out a baseball cap and slam it on backwards to keep my hair out of my face and pull out my notepad. It has scribbles from my ideas so far. I suck at writing. I’m just a physical person.
Which brings me to my other problem with Ryan. Dude doesn’t talk. It’s like trying to talk to a hippo at the zoo, he just stares at you with those big eyes and nods or gestures, and pulling words out of him is like pulling teeth. Why is he a senior guard again?
I nod at Jay as he walks out to replace Ryan. Dude probably won’t be happy I did it without asking him but then again he took this shift without asking me. I watch out the glass doors and see the switch go off just fine. Ryan just shrugs and takes off his tube and hands it off, waits for Jay to be in control of the water, and leaves. Heading my way.
If someone pulled me off shift without my permission, you can bet I’d have crap with them, but he just walks towards me with a pleasant look on his face, like he isn’t coming to meet with his arch rival, which he is.
“Hi,” he says quietly, pulling up a chair and looking down at my notebook. Embarrassed by my own chicken scratch, I pull it under my elbow and crouch over it. “So where are your ideas for training? Or were you hoping if you just worked all the time I’d come up with them for you?”
One of his perfectly arched eyebrows raises, as if it hadn’t even occurred to him that someone could suspect that of him. Yeah, I’m not buying the innocent act either.
“Okay, then, ideas.” I sit back, pull my hat a bit tighter and fold my arms. It’s a posture that never fails to intimidate the squeamish, and it’s also darn comfy.
He closes his eyes, puts his hand up to run it through the front of his hair, making it shimmer in the light. He then takes it out of its ponytail holder and shakes his head, using his hands to help loosen it up. I want to help.
Even slightly sweaty from a half shift of guarding, his hair is gorgeous like only guy hair can be. Never tortured by hot irons and blow dryers, just silky perfection. I want to put my hands in it, pull his head toward me, watch his beautiful shocked eyes as I take his mouth, hard and fast. Yeah, the thought makes me drool so I sit up and try to look more professional. Not good if he catches me drooling. Won’t do good things for our rivalry.
Whoops, too late. He’s staring at me and the flush working over those high cheekbones means he’s realized I’m watching him.
“Damn girly hair. Does it get sore in the pony?”
He nods, a half smile playing at the corner of his mouth. Stupid, kissable, full mouth. He scratches the inside of his arm and draws my attention to his muscles, which are a nice contrast to his girly face.
He’s mail ordered for Ally, if I could just get him to talk more. I like strong and silent, but I want to know what’s going on in that big brain.
How do I know it’s a big brain? He’s my TA at community college. For not one, but two classes. First time I saw him up at the front of class, next to the teacher, looking all professional and shiz with a button up shirt and his hair done, I couldn’t believe it.
Brains and brawn. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this guy. Wonder what he does to work out. Those kind of muscles don’t come just from swimming. “You work out?”
He nods.
“How?”
He purses his lips, thinks about it for a moment, then makes two little jab motions in the air. I get what he means, but it drives me nuts sometimes. I mean, we aren’t in sign language class. One of the classes he TAs for me. Sign language is big in the bay. I figure I can use it when deaf people come into the park. Wonder how long dude has done it for.
“So you fight?”
He tilts his head. Then nods.
“Where?”
He shakes his head, as if dismissing the topic, and pulls my note pad back out from under my arm. Just pulls it right out. No ‘please’ or ‘thank you’. He’s hard to argue with when he just does crap like that. He looks down over the paper at my chicken scratch and I can feel my neck heating up. Blushing.
“Those are just some ideas,” I say, to cover myself in case he thinks they’re stupid.
He nods, and doesn’t say anything. Lifts the paper to see if I’ve written on the page after it, which I haven’t. I swallow, and my mouth is suddenly dry. Damn.
“Laps?” he asks.
“Yeah, like a five hundred. Always a good way to start.”
He nods. “Okay.”
That’s it? Oh man. I’m not a patient person, and this kid could wear out a saint. At least it gives me a chance to look at him. “Anything you want to add?”
He looks around the table for a pen, sees one by my arm, and again without asking, grabs it. He brushes my arm as he does so and it’s warm against me for a moment. I scratch my arm, wanting to remove the awkward feeling left there by his touch.
He grabs off the cap with his mouth and starts writing quickly over the pad. His handwriting is nicer than mine, kind of loopy and tilted and easy to read. He has really nice hands, something I’ve noticed from all of the gestures he makes. He has really long fingers and really nicely shaped nails, but they’re still man hands. Long and strong.
If I was the type of chick that could swoon, I’d swoon for him. Pass right out on my chair and melt all over the ground.
But
instead, I’ll just hope he has some awesome ideas to add to mine so we can go into training looking like pros. Once we’ve proven we can work well together, that’s the time to prove I’m even more capable than him so that when the next promotion comes up, it’s me, not him. Even if he is Knight’s buddy.
Stupid Knight. Bringing me on with a dude who doesn’t even want to be doing the job. Apparently Ryan’s been here for four years or something, yet he’s never wanted to be a senior. What’s that about?
He looks up from the paper and pushes the pad over to me, recapping the pen smoothly with his mouth. “Done. What do you think?”
Holy crap, five words. It’s a world record people!
I look down and read over what he’s written. A few good ideas for drills, but then, something new. Something I haven’t even thought about. Something that’s probably going to get him noticed before I am.
“Signals? You want to incorporate signals?”
He nods.
“Why?”
He pushes the pad towards me and I read what he’s written. “Sometimes it’s hard to hear on the pool deck.”
“Well,” I say, pushing the pad back, “I think it’s a stroke of genius, but you’ll have to clear it with Rain and Knight.”
Rain’s been doing more administrative stuff lately, probably on track to move into a pool manager position in a couple of years, and she’s the one to talk to when it comes to making changes to the existing structure. She’s hella strict on rules ‘cuz of an accident that happened at her last park, so she’ll probably be the one to yay or nay this. But asking Knight couldn’t hurt, especially if you have him in your pocket like Ryan does.
Other people probably think I’m the one Knight favors, but what they don’t realize is I’ve earned it. Knight and I are both certifiable badasses, and we recognize the other as such. It just creates a bond, that ability to not give a crap what people think. At least, other than Ryan. I sort of give a crap what he thinks, and I hate that.
“Okay,” he says, leaning back and looking out the window as if he wishes he had something else to do.
“One thing though, if the guards are supposed to be watching their water, how are they supposed to be seeing and using signals?”
“Could be just us.”
“Just us?” I try not to blush, secretly liking the implications of the words. But he waves a hand, as if he knows the words can be misunderstood and doesn’t want them to be.
“Senior guards. During emergencies. Like Rain.”
I know what he means. Apparently last year, Rain was too far away from Knight to get him to intervene when there was a sex offender, so she just ran over by herself. If she’d had a signal, she could have just double whistled and then used it to explain and get Knight the hell over there in time. She wouldn’t have had to choose between running to him or running to stop the sex offender.
This kid is a freakin’ genius. No wonder he’s a senior guard. “That’s fuckin’ smart.”
He winces at my words.
“You hate swearing?”
He nods and shrugs.
“So you want me to stop?”
He shrugs.
“Fine.” I guess I’ll have to be smart like him and figure out a way to say things differently. I can’t help swearing most of the time though. It’s just how I grew up and those words are as natural to me as water. I guess I’ll just have to swear in my head, or start gesturing.
“Do they have swears in sign language?”
He smiles, and he has perfect white teeth. The kind that had braces and probably lots of fancy dental work. He nods.
“Do you like those?” I ask.
He grins to one side and shakes his head.
“Do you hate talking in general?”
His expression falls. “No, why would you think that?”
“Dude! You never talk, you always gesture, and you just, just, I never know what the fu-, I mean, what the eff you’re thinking in there. Damn. Sorry, but damn.”
He blinks at me a couple of times, then tucks his hair behind his ear, leans in, and before I can register what he’s doing, plants one right on my mouth.
Soft and hot and surprising. My lips fall open in surprise, and he nips them gently and then pulls back, a satisfied look on his face.
He stretches, grabs the pad, and turns towards the door. “I’ll finish up the plans. You did a lot of the work already.”
Then he walks out. Just walks out.
Damn. Didn’t anyone tell him I’m supposed to be in charge?
***
I’m still mad and confused the next day, as I walk out on the deck to join Ryan for our first training. It’s a good distraction from being nervous.
I scan the deck for him and find him talking to Knight. They’re huddled together, two tall, buff bros that could model for a living.
He got to Knight first, so I can’t exactly complain about what happened. But isn’t that sexual harassment? Sure, I wanted it, wanted it bad, but come on. He’s not supposed to just…
You know.
I put my hand up to my face to wipe sweat off my forehead. Even thinking about the other day makes me sweat. I mean it would be different if I had attacked him, like I’d wanted to. I was expecting him to be shy, to look shocked when I pulled him in and took him. Instead he took me. Damn.
“You okay Ally?” Knight asks me as I approach.
“Sure, why?”
“You look kind of pale. You have air conditioning in your car? Was the drive here too hot?” He moves to put a hand up to my forehead. Knight almost treats me like a little brother sometimes.
“No, I’m fine.” I swat his hand away. He’s ruining my mojo right now, treating me like a girl. I hate being treated like a girl. Nothing good comes from being treated like a girl.
I look over to see Ryan is watching me. His hair is neatly back in its usual ponytail, a few loose pieces at the sides of his face. His eyes are really devastating when his hair is back. So green. He and Knight are some of the only guys that can make me feel small at 5’11”.
The other is a huge tank of a guy, but Knight and Ryan look like they’ve walked off magazine spreads. Tall lean, swimmer bodies, pretty boy faces. Knight’s dark hair and tats make him look edgier than Ryan, who has a softer look to him, despite being just as cut. Maybe it’s his face. Maybe it’s how little he says, or his soft stare and softer lips. He’s a weird mash of contradictions, hard and soft, unassuming and unavoidable at the same time.
Looking at him now, as he patently avoids my eyes, I can’t believe what happened the other day actually happened. For some reason it annoys me, this shy, good guy act when I know he can be bold and aggressive when he wants to be.
“Ryan, you have the plans for training?”
He looks at me blankly, and then shakes his head.
“For all the-“
Then he grins, and pulls a rolled up piece of paper out of his pocket, covered in his neat script. “Just kidding.” His voice is low and beautiful, and I honestly don’t get why he doesn’t use it more often.
I give him a light punch on his rock hard arm and take the plans out of his hands. He stares down at the place I hit as if he doesn’t know what to make of it.
I open the paper and read over it. Basic, but it’ll work. And it gave me time to play Call of Duty instead of slaving over guard work last night, so I’m grateful. I hand it back to him.
“You want to do the five hundred with them, or you want me to do it?” I ask.
He blinks and looks over at the pool. Then over at the break room where the guards are filing out towards us, ready and in swimsuits. He shrugs, but looks troubled about it. It’s like working with a mime sometimes.
“Let’s both do it, then.”
He nods, and I think he’s somewhat relieved not to be splitting up. I heard he didn’t really want to be a senior guard and Knight pushed him into it out of obligation to the park putting up with him for four years. At least that was his exc
use, since from what I’ve heard Ryan is a stellar guard, and my main competition for promotions. Unless he’s going to use his smarty pants brain and do something with college. All the better for me if he does.
People like me, who have to make their living in a physical way to feel alive, deserve these jobs. Bookies should just stick to libraries.
I pull on a swim cap and swing my arms to warm up. He comes up beside me.
“No cap?” I ask.
He shakes his head. I’m not going to ask him about the talking thing again, because of what happened last time, but it still drives me crazy. All of the gestures in place of words. I like the way his hair moves when he shakes his head though. It catches the light and I can see bits of gold.
When the guards get over to us, all they have to do is see Ryan and me stretching to know what’s coming. I can hear a few cat calls from some of the less mature guys.
Dane, a gay dude with a fauxhauk that varies in color from week to week but is green today, raises his hand, and I point at him, allowing him to speak.
“Why don’t you two race? Battle of the senior guards!”
“Battle of the sexes!” Amy calls from behind him.
I grin. I doubt anyone here can beat me in the water. I swam all through high school, and until I started getting injured, I probably could have made something of it. It’s a nice skill to have tucked away in my utility belt for times like this, times when I need to get my masculine pride back.
Ryan is shaking his head at them and frowning. Doesn’t want to lose, hm? I hop from foot to foot to warm up my feet, and roll my shoulders one more time. Then I dive in. Early bird gets the worm, and he’s not the only one who can communicate non-verbally.
I cut through the water, feeling like a fish, or a dolphin, confident I can beat him. Though I haven’t swum competitively in a year, my lungs are still strong from workouts here and at the gym. I’ll never let my body be weak. I don’t even notice kick turns anymore, and the laps blur past me.
Swimming isn’t fun like it used to be before I gave it up. I’m aware of my own animal power, but I no longer feel free here. I no longer want to escape here. I don’t relish the feel of the water caressing my body as I swim. I simply relish the feel of being strong, of overcoming, and the knowledge that despite whatever else was taken from me, I can still swim like hell.
Harder Page 1