“We’re just warming up, lover boy. Quick feet!”One of Mabel’s trainers, Sandy, pats my shoulder with one hand and pushes the resistance band down to my ankles with the other. Mirroring Mabel, I spread my legs until the band is pulled taut and jump back and forth while Sandy shouts out the slowest countdown from twenty in history. I’m used to a similar move where I have to run with high knees through tires, but keeping balanced and not tripping over my feet while doing these small jumps is damn near impossible.
“How are you doing this?” I grumble at Mabel, who looks as graceful as a ballerina as she bounces back and forth. Taking my eyes off my own feet was a mistake, because once I catch sight of the light blue polish on Mabel’s toenails, I lose my footing and fall sideways onto my ass.
“Aww come on, Rye Bread, get up. You’re not going to let yourwifeyshow you up, are you?” Mabel teases, having already moved on from the band to stretching out the arches of her delicate feet with a textured lacrosse ball. It’s a move I’ve seen other people do a thousand times—hell, it’s a move I do myself on the daily—but damn. Watching Mabel roll her foot over the ball, stretching and flexing all those tiny tendons, I can’t help but stare.
Do I have a foot fetish? Can one develop a footfetish in their late twenties? Or is the way my dick is perking up behind the unforgiving nylon of my track pants part of my Mabel-specific obsession?
“I’m not worried about you showing me up, Mabel.”
She taps the lacrosse ball over to me with her toes, and from my position on the ground, I start to roll out my right foot. She’s got her hand propped on her cocked hip, her red hair pulled back in a ponytail that is already coming loose, little wisps settling on her forehead. Her mouth is twisted up in impatience that she is trying and failing to hide, and it’s goddamn adorable. From this angle, she looks a thousand feet tall, every bit the unattainable goddess I’ve made her out to be in my fantasies.
“Because you know you’re better than me and you’ve got the extra gold medals to prove it?” She tuts, as if she doesn’t know as well as I do that the only reason I have more wins than she does is because I’m older and therefore have more competitions under my belt. I stick my hand out and, surprisingly, Mabel takes it without pretense and helps me to my feet. Once I’m standing, I lean down until my lips are brushing against the shell of her ear and I can feel the warmth radiating off the freckled skin of her neck.
“No, Marshmallow. I’m not worried about you showing me up because you’ve already done it by a mile, and I expect you’re going to do it again and again.” I pull back just enough to see the surprise in Mabel’s eyes and the delectable way her pink lips part slightly. “I’m just lucky that the Games are still separated by gender; otherwise you’re talented enough to make sure I never see the middle podium.”
I spy the hitch in Mabel’s breath, the way her throat bobs slightly and her chest rises. I think she believes me. I think that maybe, for the first time, Mabel doesn’t think I’m totally full of shit, and the gremlins in my brain chant at me to make a move.
Kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss her.
“Oh, you two are just too cute!” Sandy’s voice cuts through the moment before I can do something stupid, like try to kiss my wife while sober. “But that’s enough. Be cute later. We’ve got work to do.”
Several hours later, I’m completely wiped. Sandy and Mabel worked me to the bone, and between the kettlebells, the superhumans, and the weighted sprints, I feel like every muscle in my body has been reduced to jelly.
“I thought the point of today was conditioning, not wrecking our bodies. I don’t know how you can stand on two feet.”
“Because I’m not a weak little baby like you apparently are. Sandy took it easy on you, Rye Bread,” Mabel calls from the other side of the sea-foam tiled wall.
I took the quickest shower of my life and have been sitting here in the locker room, waiting for Mabel and hyping myself up to propose our first date night while she got cleaned up. I’m thinking dinner, something casual like tacos where we can eat with our hands so that she can finally relax around me.
But when I look up from my spot on the bench, expecting to find Mabel dressed and ready to leave, I think my worries are unfounded. Because there, emerging from a cloud of steam like the object of every wet dream I’ve had since I was sixteen, is Mabel in nothing but a tiny terrycloth towel that she holds tight in front of her breasts. Her skin is dewy and pink, glistening with stray droplets of water. Her hair curls around her hairline, and when she turns and bends over, looking for something in her gym bag on the bench opposite of mine, the towel rides up just enough that I can almost see the crease where her muscular thigh meets her ass.
My dick swells up so fast, I get fucking dizzy from the rush. I cross one leg over the other to block my sudden, persistent erection. As hard as I try, I can’t seem to peel my eyes away as Mabel pulls apair of tiny, pink panties out of her bag and slides them on under her towel. A pair of black leggings follows, and they stick to her muscular calves like a second skin. Once the pants are sitting on her hips, Mabel drops the towel and I’m greeted with the bare expanse of her back. I shove my fist into my mouth and bite down hard, stifling a groan. She’s showing off less skin than in the bikinis I’ve seen her wear over the years, but something about the dimples at the base of her spine, the spray of freckles across her shoulders and the way she seems perfectly content with changing in front of me lends itself to an intimacy I could never have dreamed of.
Mabel is perfection.
My wifeis perfection.
It isn’t until she’s snapping her fingers in front of my face, torso covered in an oversized, puffy white hoodie that has her living up to her Marshmallow nickname that I notice I’ve averted my gaze to the ceiling, less I pass out from the force of her beauty.
“Earth to Rye Bread. Are you heading out?”
I realize that Mabel’s got her bag packed, slung over her shoulder and is ready to leave before I’ve had the chance to make my move.
“Tacos!” I shout, hating the idea of her getting into her separate car and leaving without me, and Mabel raises a brow in my direction.
“Tacos?”
“Yeah. Tacos. I’m going to get some. You should also. Eat tacos, that is.”
God, I’m a fucking idiot.
She seems to think so too, because she arches one adorably copper eyebrow before pressing her lips in a thin line and nodding slowly.
“Okay, maybe I will? I’ll see you back at my place, I guess?” Every word she speaks sounds like a question, and when she turns on her heel to leave the locker room, I curse under my breath. Grateful that my idiocy has at least caused my erection to wane, I jump to my feet and softly grip her wrist.
“Mabel,” I say as she turns back. “I’d like to get some tacos with you. Or pizza or Thai food or sushi. Anything you want. I’d like to take you out for a meal.”
“Like a date?”
