and angry, he needs me to tell him, “If you wanna kill yourself, then I’ll die with you too.”
And when he gets all jacked up by that, he needs me to spread my legs so he can fuck it all out of his system.
Oh, and he needs me to show him all the chick flicks so he doesn’t keep watching the game tapes over and over, analyzing his team’s every move.
And when he works out too hard, he needs me to wipe off his sweat.
Because Jesus Christ, he does.
He does work out too hard.
All those weights in his room that I saw the first night, they are for his training. Just because he’s sitting this season out doesn’t mean that he can slack off.
In fact, he’s working harder than ever.
Every morning, he goes for a run. He works on his own drills at the local club house.
Every night when I go to sleep after the awesome sex – he was right; I do slip into a coma-like nap after sex – he works out again, a few feet away from the bed.
One night I wake up from my nap and catch him doing pushups on the floor. On one fucking hand. His other arm is up and folded at his lower back, and he’s shirtless.
When I turn on my stomach to get a good look at him, Arrow’s eyes snap up.
They’re all dark and burning up with this aggression inside of him.
Sweat drips from his forehead as he watches me and does rep after rep. I see the planes on his back moving and shifting, like wings of some kind.
Tight muscles that bunch and release. Or maybe mountains, emerging from his back before disappearing within his body with every rep.
It’s such an aggressive and masculine thing, the dance of his muscles and his harsh stare, that I rise up from the bed.
I let the sheet fall away from my shoulders and pool at my knees, leaving me naked, my hair swaying at my back.
Arrow’s nostrils flare at the sight of me, but he doesn’t falter.
He keeps going up and down, his breaths noisy and whooshing, his muscles in a state of constant making and unmaking.
When I’m on the floor, I come down on all fours and begin to crawl over to him.
He narrows his eyes at me, still going up and down, and I crawl and crawl until I reach him.
Until I’m so close to him that his sweat-drenched hair grazes my chest and my stomach. Until the puffs of his heaving breaths explode on my naked skin and his silver chain hits my ribs and my belly button.
I put my hand on his shoulder to find that he’s burning.
“Stop,” I whisper.
His muscles flex and he works harder, if at all possible.
“Stop, Arrow.”
No effect.
“Please? For me?”
That does it.
He stops then.
But if I thought he’d go down on the floor in a heap of tired and burning muscles because God, they’ve got to be burning, then I’m wrong.
Because he comes up on his knees, sweat running like a river between his heaving pecs, and grabs my hair in a fist, making me look up at him.
“I had it,” he bites out, glaring at me.
I put my hand on his sweat-shiny chest; his dead heart is thundering. “I know you did.”
“Twenty more reps and I would’ve been done,” he pants. “I would’ve broken my record.”
See? I knew it.
I knew he was trying to break some kind of a record.
My stupid, darling Arrow, always trying to prove something. Always trying to be perfect when he already is so, so perfect.
“And probably killed yourself in the process.”
He leans down on me and the droplets of his sweat plop down on my body like rain. “I. Had. It.”
I study him for a beat, his panting, tight body, and I wind my arms around his neck. I go flush with his chest, his sweat slathering on my tits and stomach.
“Do you remember the time in your junior year?” I ask against his lips, my tongue peeking out to lick up the sweat and I can barely contain my moan at his musky taste. “You had a game. And you were playing your rival school and you guys were trying man-to-man marking for the first time?”
His eyes go back and forth between mine. “Yeah.”
“And since it was new to you, you practiced like crazy, and the night before the game, you didn’t even come home. Because you were practicing.”
He didn’t; I remember that.
I wonder if he was