She hums, satisfied, and finally lets her hand retreat fully to her own leg. The air in the car doesn’t get any less charged. Every kilometer toward Reiteralm feels like a race inspection, building pressure, all nerves tuned to the same point: her body next to mine, the memory of her under my hands, the fact that this time I don’t have to pretend we’re going our separate ways in a few hours.
By the time we turn off the main road and the first patches of dirty snow appear in the ditches, I’ve made exactly one clear decision: no pulled-over quickies. Not today. I want to take herto my apartment, close the door, and strip this tension down properly, layer by layer, until there’s nothing left between us that feels like an accident.
***
The staircase up to the federation apartment smells like wax, damp concrete, and someone’s overcooked potatoes. Not exactly a seduction soundtrack. I shoulder her bag through the door, flick the light, and the place blinks awake: single bed, thin mattress, desk with my laptop and a ring of coffee on the wood, drying rack sagging under base layers, spare boots zipped into bags in the corner. The sad plant by the window is half dead, like it gave up somewhere around mid-season.
For half a second, I see it through her eyes and wince. Then she steps in behind me, and the whole room shifts.
She brushes past, warm jacket sliding against my arm, and suddenly it smells less like potatoes and more like train stations and her shampoo. She drops the small bag onto the chair and shakes her hair out of the hood. Her jacket goes on the hook next to mine, its sleeve falling over my collar. Her boots thump down beside my runners, toes almost touching. When she leans her race bag against the wall under the window, Lusti logo flashing in my space, something low in my chest tightens. There it is: her life bleeding into mine in stupid, ordinary objects.
“So, this is the luxurious off-season palace,” she says, turning a slow circle, eyebrow up.
“Five stars,” I say. “Six if you count the washing machine that eats socks and towels.”
The corner of her mouth kicks, but the joke doesn’t clear anything. The air goes dense instead. Gondola metal, hotel sheets, every filthy sentence we’ve texted since—it all seems to take up space between us. She folds her arms, not exactly wrapping herself up, more like she’s physically holding in the adrenaline.
I’m done pretending I don’t feel it too.
I step in, one pace, then another, until there’s only a breath between us. My free hand comes up to her jaw, thumb sliding up along the soft skin below her ear. I don’t pull her in; I just tilt her face very slightly, giving her the choice. Her lashes flutter once. Her eyes flick down to my mouth, then lock on mine again. Heat there. Nerves too.
The first brush of her lips takes the floor out from under me. Weeks of screens and replays and her pixelated face on my phone vanish the second I feel her for real again. She tastes like cheap train coffee and mint and a sweetness that has nothing to do with either. She rises onto her toes, hands fisting in my jacket like she’s drowning and I’m the nearest solid thing.
The kiss goes from cautious to starving in the space of one heartbeat. Her mouth opens under mine, and I take the invitation, tongue sliding in, meeting hers. She makes a small sound in the back of her throat that shoots straight south. I back her up without thinking, until we slam into the wall by the door. My shoulder hits plaster hard enough to sting. She laughs into my mouth, breathless, and I swallow the laugh, chasing it deeper.
There’s nowhere for our hands to go. My palm finds her hip, fingers digging into denim, thumb under the hem of her hoodie, heat against my skin. She yanks on my jacket zip like it’s personally offended her; the teeth catch on her own zipper, and we get briefly stuck, chests mashed together. Her bag strap wedges between us and I shove it aside, not gentle. My cap gets knocked sideways, then flicked off by her hand, and disappears behind us. We’re half wrestling, half kissing, too much clothing and not enough space, and it’s still the best thing I’ve felt all month.
“Shit,” she laughs against my mouth when my hand slides up under her hoodie and finds bare skin. Her stomach jumps under my palm. Goosebumps erupt along the trail my fingers leave. “Your hands are cold.”
“They’ll warm up,” I promise, voice rough, and drag my thumb in a slow line just above the waistband of her jeans. Her breath stutters. Her grip on my jacket tightens. The heat coming off her is unreal; my body locks onto it like a magnet. Every memory turns into a live wire—the way she pressed against me under the jacket in the storm, the crack in her voice when she told me I was her crush, the way she sounded in that cabin when she asked for my dick like she’d thought about it for years. It all piles up and slams straight through my chest into my cock. No detour, no mercy.
I tear my mouth away from hers just far enough to breathe. We’re both panting, foreheads touching, noses bumping when we suck in air. Her pupils are blown wide, lips swollen and slick. She looks wrecked and hungry and very, very here.
“Bed,” I say, and it comes out more like a growl than a suggestion. “Before we put a hole in this wall.”
She huffs a shaky laugh. “Always safety first with you.”
“Always efficiency,” I shoot back, but I’m already catching her hand, threading our fingers together, backing us down the narrow strip toward the bed.
As we move, her gaze skims over my mess of a life: numbered socks pegged on the drying rack, a second toothbrush in the glass by the sink, spare race suit folded over the chair. I see the way her face changes—a quick spark of wanting, then a flicker of something like fear. This doesn’t look like a hotel room you leave in the morning. It looks like somewhere you could accidentally stay. I don’t touch it with words. I just squeeze her hand and keep going.
At the bed, I stop, tug her closer, and kiss her again, deeper. This time we strip as we go, jackets first, then hoodies, shrugging and wriggling until they’re just dark shapes on the floor. Her t-shirt underneath smells faintly of cat, laundry powder, and her skin. It hits me harder than any expensive perfume ever has.
I get my own shirt over my head; it snags for a second on my ear, and when it’s off, there’s a ginger cat hair clinging to my chin. She bursts out laughing, cheeks pink, and reaches up to brush it away, fingertip lingering against my jaw.
“See?” I murmur, catching her wrist and kissing the inside of it. “Luxury.”
“Definitely an upgrade from a metal bench,” she says, voice a little breathless, then hooks her fingers in my waistband and gives a firm, no-nonsense tug that drops me onto the mattress with her.
I land half on, half beside her. She’s already spreading her thighs, knee hitching up over my hip, the heat of her body lining up perfectly against mine. Whatever restraint I had till now burns off at the contact. Every muscle goes tight, every nerve suddenly, painfully awake.
“Impatient,” I murmur.
“You made me cross a border for this,” she says against my skin. “Catch up.”
“Bossy,” I say, and slide my hand down the back of her thigh, fingers closing around muscle. She shivers.
“Coach,” she corrects, breath hitching when I squeeze. “Someone has to keep you in line.”
