Sushi (gxg)

Chapter 16

"You got this, Kit!" I yelled at my gorgeous girlfriend. She was powering through the last of her leg presses, and I could tell she was running low on energy. "Only two more and then you get a treat! Come on!"

She let out a tiny growl that might have scared a kitten, and then straightened her legs once, and then a second time, before I helped her up off the machine. "I want my treat!" she demanded wearily.

I leaned in, my breath hot against her ear and made her shiver before gently I placed a lingering kiss on her cheek. It may not seem like much to some people, but for us it was a good step. She'd started the cheek kisses during the interview, and we had kept that up along with the forehead kisses, and she liked them all. To her they were gentle and romantic, and there was a lingering fear that if we went for the lips, we might not be able to stop what came next. So, we avoided that for now.

We both wanted whatever that next step included, and yet wanted to wait at the same time. It was a delicate balance that kept us perpetually excited and frustrated. Part of the waiting was because Kit's training was going so well, she had gained just under five pounds of muscle in the last week and was looking even more delectable than before, and the fact that neither of us wanted to cause a distraction in our training.

Not that it was easy to resist, especially at night. Whenever it was time for bed, we still ended up tangled together, smiles on our faces and bodies pressed together as I wrapped her up in my embrace. Her smiles always made my heart melt, and my heart grow fonder for her. It was a wonderful feeling, made even better by the fact that I could tell she was feeling the same things.

In the locker room, things had become more heated too. When we changed, Kit was happy to check me out, blushing every time. When she changed, I still held up the towel, but she had made it clear that I could look too, and oh wow was I in trouble. With our lives spent in the pool in tiny bathing suits, the majority of swimmers and divers were hairless all over. Some even shaved their eyebrows in an effort to reduce even the tiniest amount of drag while racing. So, like me, Kit was completely smooth and hairless everywhere, and mouth wateringly gorgeous.

"Are you ready to show Janine your dives tomorrow?" I asked once we were both dressed, and my heart rate had returned to normal.

Her eyes lit up, and she nodded happily. "Yeah! It will be nice to do the ones I want!"

"Let's get a good meal in you for dinner then, and a good night's sleep beforehand. I want you to be ready to show off tomorrow!" I took her hand, and we walked out of the locker room, heading for the shuttle bus stop. Since the race with Mark, we had a lot of people waving to us, or calling out to us, and we were polite and waved back, though we didn't get into any conversations with them. We were still too shy for that, but maybe later.

When Erin's article had come out there were quite a few people coming to apologize to me for having believed the rumors, and then a lot more people congratulating us on our relationship. I was sure there were some people against it, but they must have been in the minority, as none of them ever made their presence known. The best part of the article was that it meant the end of Coach McGinty. The investigation into her working with Kit's grandmother was already making her look horrible, but coupled with kicking me off the team for going to a funeral and the emails with that information getting out in the public's eye, got her suspended, and there may still be an arrest when all was said and done. We'd been disgusted when Janine told me all that they'd found. She wasn't fired yet, she'd still get her day in a review board to try and weasel out of it, but the writing was on the wall. In the meantime, the assistant to the men's team, a guy named Seth Baxter, was taking over as the team coach.

His first order of business was asking me to swim more races. I couldn't swim in any of the individual races, as I'd never qualified for them, but he talked me into being an alternate on the 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relay teams. I wasn't used to swimming with others, but he made it clear that if they needed me, they would have me go first and just let me swim my own race so I wouldn't have to worry about leaving too early or anything.