If only I hadn’t vowed at age sixteen to save my virginity for him.
Bottom lip clamped between my teeth, I remove my swim cap, letting out my long fall of white-blonde hair. Then I climb onto the table to lie face down, turning my head to watch Everett cleaning his hands in the sink, rolling back the sleeves of his button-down shirt to reveal strong forearms. He applies lotion to his palms and comes toward me, a muscle popping in his cheek. “You did well today, Margot,” he says, rubbing those big hands together, hesitating a second, then laying them on the backs of my thighs. Digging his thumbs into the tense muscle and dragging them all the way up, up, stopping just beneath the curve of my buttocks. “But something is bothering you. Preventing you from giving the dives your full concentration. Do you want to talk to me about it?”
Talk? Right now? With those magical fingertips trailing slowly down my calves, thumbs coasting up the curve of my instep. “Oh, um…” My mouth is completely dry, my pulse loud in my ears. Because his touch is traveling back up the full length of my legs, coming closer and closer to my bottom. Touch it. Touch me. But he just barely grazes the start of my bathing suit before retreating back down to my feet. “I didn’t realize I seemed distracted,” I lie.
In the ensuing silence, Everett crosses back to the lotion dispenser, methodically applying fresh white cream to his hands and slowly striding back in the direction of the table. “Now tell me the truth,” he says.
Do I dare?
It’s not a conversation I should be having with a man almost twice my age. A man who isn’t a member of my family. He’s my coach. But if I really stop to think about it, there is no one else in my life who I trust more. Everett always has my best interest in mind. Always. “I think maybe…” I squeeze my eyes closed. “My body seems like it’s changing. It’s…different lately.”
He takes a long breath and lets it out, sort of unevenly. “Different how?”
“Well.” I swallow. “Certain parts of me don’t fit as easily into my suit now.”
No taking it back. I’ve said it out loud.
I’ve been watching the changes in me take place in the mirror at home, concerned they’ll have a negative effect on my diving, but I haven’t shared my worries with anyone until now. It’s actually kind of a relief. At least, until he says, “Which parts, Margot?”
Oh God.
I’m flushing head to toe. Burying my face in the leather of the table.
“My hips,” I mutter, giggling a little bit out of discomfort. “But mostly my boobs.”
He hums in his throat and I can feel his gaze running the length of my body, assessing me, and it takes every ounce of my willpower not to squirm. Or squeeze my legs together in an attempt to muffle the incessant pulsing.
“Turn over on your back. Let’s take a look.” His gruff instructions cause my feminine flesh to seize almost painfully. To flood with heat. Wet liquid warmth. This has never happened before. He’s asking me to take down my bathing suit? Like, show him my breasts? “It’s late, Margot. We don’t have all night.” He grips me by the waist and turns me over, resting a hand just beneath my belly button. So close-so close-to my sex. Does he realize where he’s touching me? Does he realize his touch is making me clench? “Peel it down, Margot.”
“Yes, coach,” I whisper, my fingers trembling as they reach up and hook beneath the damp straps of my bathing suit, first pulling my arms through the holes, then slowly pushing the material down to my waist. Immediately after exposing myself to the cold room and his sharp eyes, I stare at the ceiling. But my curiosity quickly gets the better of me and I look at Everett, finding his attention locked on my breasts, his jaw tight. Eyes glittering. What does that mean? “Does everything look…normal?” I ask quietly, resisting the urge to yank the suit back up.
“Yes,” he heaves, nostrils flaring. He takes a tissue out of his back pocket and pats his forehead-and that’s when I notice the bulge in his pants. It’s…massive. Pushing straight out from his zipper. My breath catches and Everett’s gaze shoots to mine. “It’s a natural reaction to seeing a woman’s naked body, Margot.”
“Oh,” I manage breathily. “I…I know.”
Only, I don’t know.
I know nothing about sex or the chemistry between men and women.
But I do know that Everett’s penis being hard means he’s aroused. That much was explained to me in health class, all the way back in middle school. The male genitalia hardens when it’s preparing to go inside of a woman. In other words, I’ve…aroused him. And that fact excites me, makes my toes curl at the end of the table.
Everett’s hands are still covered in lotion. I forget about that until he splays his palms on my tummy and slowly, slowly, slides his hands up and over my breasts, cupping them firmly. “There is nothing wrong with you here, sweetheart. You’re perfect. You’ve just matured.”
I can’t breathe. Is this really happening?
Everett is holding my bare breasts in his hands.
Now he’s massaging them, running his thumb back and forth over the nipples, making them pucker excruciatingly. The combination of pleasure and pain is so intense that I make a sound. A brief desperate one, accompanied by my thighs shooting together.
Squeezing.
What is wrong with my body? Should it feel this restless? I’m an inferno.
Everett watches it all happen in that shrewd, assessing way. “With maturity comes a lot of new feelings, Margot. You’ll learn to cope. Eventually you will adapt to the changes and you’ll find a new normal with diving.”
His voice is so low. His entire powerful frame seems coiled tight. And I can’t help it. My gaze drops to that protrusion in his pants and find it resting on the table beside my hip. “I…hope so, coach. I hope I can go back to feeling normal.”
“Yes.” He drags his lower lip through his teeth, a new sheen of sweat appearing on his forehead. “Unfortunately, we have to work fast to get you feeling better, Margot. We’re at the Olympics. We don’t have an unlimited amount of time for you to get used to being a woman. And everything that comes with it.”
“What…what do you mean?” I ask, fully crossing my legs now. Oh god. I’m growing more wet by the second. Every time his thumbs drag across my nipples, there is a corresponding throb between my thighs. “What comes with being a woman?”
“Apart from your swimsuit fitting differently…” His throat works with a hard swallow and his hands leave my breasts. He drops his right one to his side and the left, oh Lord, it slips down my belly and grips my sex through the swimsuit, bringing my hips off the table, my strangled gasp loud in the small therapy room. “Are there changes down here, too, Margot? Does your pussy feel different?”
The word bursts out of me. “Yes.”
His thumb presses to the seam of my flesh. Just presses and holds, but it’s enough to set off fireworks in my belly, turn my thighs to jelly. “Has it been getting wet and uncomfortable?”
All I can do is nod.
He’s holding the most intimate part of me in his hands. Secrets seem useless.
“Yes.”
Everett bites off a growl, closing his eyes for long moments while visibly composing himself. “You’re horny, Margot.” He tightens his grip. “You have a horny little pussy.”
“H-horny?”
I’ve heard this word before, but I don’t know exactly what it means.
“Yes,” Everett says. “It means your body wants the kind of relief that comes from sex.” His voice turns choppy, his grip clenching and releasing. “You’re…ready for sex. That’s likely the reason your swimsuit feels extra tight and awkward lately.”
I want sex?
I never stopped to consider that.
Oh, I know I enjoy my coach’s hands on me, but sex always seemed like something so far in the future. Something that would happen after I won gold at the Olympics. For so long, diving has been the sole focus of my life. Nothing else. Have I been completely sheltered from the realities of turning into a woman and everything it means? “What am I going to do?” I whisper, unable to resist opening my thighs a little wider. It feels so good to be touched there.
“We have to take care of this before official competition starts. Otherwise you’re going to be distracted and anxious.” Everett says thickly, his eyelids drooped so low I can only see a sliver of his eyes. “You need an orgasm, Margot.”
An orgasm.
Relief.
As soon as he says the word, it’s like my body knows he’s right. It begins to clamor for it, nerve endings crackling, my blood rushing and racing backwards and forwards in my veins. “Are you going t-to give me one, coach?” I whisper, looking down at his hand where it still fondles me through the wet nylon of my bathing suit.
“I can’t,” he growls, his face a mask of misery as he finally yanks his hand away from the juncture of my thighs, pacing to the other side of the therapy room. “I’m old enough to be your father, goddammit. I’m your diving coach. I’ve already taken this way too far. The things I’ve done, sweetheart…you don’t even know the half.”
“Tell me,” I whisper, my heart thunking wildly.
What is he talking about?
Is he trying to admit he has feelings for me? The way I have for him?
Before I can press for more information, Everett snatches something up off the counter by the sink. A small, white, rolled up towel. “Turn over onto your stomach again,” he rasps.