Andy knew what she was asking, and it wasn’t how long it had been since he’d seen her. He thought back to his last romance, if you could even call it that, ten minutes of undignified fumbling in the bathroom of a bar downtown. “It’s been a little while,” he said. That girl—God, he wasn’t even sure what her name was—had scribbled her phone number on his hand in eyeliner, if he remembered right, after neither one of them could find paper or a pen. The next week, when they’d met for drinks, Andy realized that they had absolutely nothing to say to each other and that, when he didn’t have four beers inside him, she looked like an eel, with a narrow body and a big, horsey mouth.
Not many of the runners had serious girlfriends. Hookups were more common, a night or a weekend with another athlete who understood the deal, or a woman who’d attach herself to you at a meet, or in a bar. Andy remembered the time he’d spent with a television reporter who’d been covering the Olympic trials in Atlanta. She’d worn a girdle and had gotten annoyed when he’d laughed. “It’s a foundation garment,” she’d said, her pretty face looking less pretty when she scowled. After they’d finished, he’d been starving, but all she had in the refrigerator of her chrome-and-stainless-steel loft was seltzer and a jar of pickles.
Not Rachel, he realized, now that he had Rachel in his arms again, her lush curves and her soft skin, her beautiful hair, her beautiful scar. That was the problem with the reporter. That was the problem with all of them. None of them were Rachel.
He felt her slip down the bed. She unfastened his pants, eased his briefs over his hips, and brushed the length of his cock with her palm before taking him in her mouth. He sighed, eyes shut, thinking about how unbelievably good it felt when Rachel gave a throaty moan, then rolled her mouth from base to tip and whispered, “Look at me.”
He looked and saw that she had her eyes open, locked on his, as she opened her mouth, hollowed her cheeks, and slid all the way down. He wondered if some other guy had asked for that—I want you to look at me when you do it—or if she’d seen it in a movie, or read it in some magazine. Ten Secrets to Turn Your Guy On. Rachel’s expression went from ardor to confusion as she felt him start to soften.
“What?” she asked.
“Shh,” he said, pulling her up so they were face-to-face again. He slid his hands between her legs, positioning fingers and thumb the way she’d taught him. Except that wasn’t right. She hadn’t taught him. They’d figured it out together, how to make her come. He nuzzled against her, his lips on her neck, nibbling and kissing his way up to her earlobe, where she’d always been ticklish. “Ooh,” she whispered. “Ooh! Oh, oh, oh,” she sighed as he worked his fingers against the slick seam . . . and then she forgot to pose, forgot about trying to look good, and lost herself inside her own pleasure. Andy watched her squeeze her eyes shut as she clamped her thighs against his wrist and snapped her hips up, once, twice, three times before she froze, all the muscles in her thighs and belly and bottom tense and quivering, and he felt her contract against his fingers.
Before she could recover, he’d rolled her onto her back and slipped inside her. After the first thrust he had to hold still, knowing that if he kept moving, if he gave himself up to the exquisite tightness, the heat, he would explode. He wanted her to come at least once more, with him, and he didn’t want her to tease him, the way she sometimes used to if they hadn’t seen each other in a while and he finished before she’d had a chance to get started.
“It’s not a race,” she would say. “You’re not trying to beat your personal record here.” He’d always taken care of her . . . or, sometimes, when he was sleepy, he would just curl around her, holding her close, with his fingers inside her and her fingers working at her clitoris, and they’d taken care of her together. But he wanted it to be good that night. He wanted everything to be perfect.
He reached down and stroked her cheek, then her hair. “Oh, God,” she whispered, swiveling her hips in a way he knew would send him right over the edge. “Oh, wait. Do you have a condom?” she whispered.
Andy opened his nightstand drawer and ripped open a Trojan. Rachel watched, frowning. “Tell me they sell those as singles,” she said.
He kissed her, pleased that she was jealous, thinking that he’d tell her anything she wanted to hear, and, finally, he slipped inside her again. She gasped and shut her eyes, and then neither of them spoke. She had one hand on his shoulder, the other slowly stroking his back, from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine.