Free Blind Landing (Flipped #1) by Carrie Aarons

thing. If someone is there to spot you, even if they don’t even touch you, it just eases your mind. I wasn’t even conscious of him doing it until now, but my heart flips over when I realize he’s trying to comfort me.
    I climb out, dragging my body back to the other end of the beam before mounting it again. Over and over this cycle continues, until I’ve done so many roundoffs I’m dizzy.
    “Okay, now we’re going to do hundreds of Arabians.” Spence ushers me to the end of the beam with a wave of his hand, and again my stomach drops. He must see the panic on my face. “Get out of your fucking head, Meat.”
    I spit out a laugh as I join him at the end of the beam, me standing on it and him on the spotting block next to it. “Did you just Bull Durham me?”
    “I’m surprised you even know what that movie is. Kids these days have no appreciation for the classics.”
    I flick him. “Excuse me, you’re only three years older than I am! Well,” I put a finger to my chin, pretending to think, “I guess you are an old man then!”
    He swats at my butt, but I hop out of the way just before his hand makes contact.
    “Enough joking around, we are working here. Okay, you’re going to stand at the end of the beam, and for the first few I’m literally going to do the Arabian for you. I’m going to lift you off of the beam, twist your body, and then flip you forward. Don’t think, just work on keeping your muscles tight and your toes pointed. Feel the motion of the skill, how your body goes through each part of it. Okay?”
    I’m staring at his mouth by the time he’s done. I know I said we were just flirty friends, but something about the way he talks about gymnastics has me flushed and hot. And he’s going to be working my body through a skill? My stomach dips again, and this time it has nothing to do with fear.
    I turn, my back facing the pit as my heels hang off the end of the beam. Spence lays a hand on my back, the warmth of his fingers seeping through my leotard. My palms start to sweat and I refrain from wiping them down my legs. He places his other hand on the back of my thigh, right above my knee so he can throw my body in to the skill when he needs to. The tips of his fingers brush the back of my knee, and I have to tamp down the shudder and moan that race through me.
    “Ready?” If I’m not mistaken, Spence’s voice is husky when he asks me the question.
    “Yeah,” I nod, gulping as his grip on me tightens.
    I don’t have time to think about my fear of falling. All I can focus on are Spence’s strong hands on the small of my back, his rough calluses against the smooth skin of my thigh as he flips my body through the air. The way he holds me, secures me and protects me.
    The next thing I know, I’m in the pit, my skin and nervous system short-circuiting and trying to comprehend what just happened.
    When I stare up, Spence’s expression looks oddly similar to my own confused, flushed stare.

Twelve
Spencer
    W omen are beautiful things . I appreciate their femininity and their enticing, sweet ways. I appreciate their sauciness and their authority; I appreciate how they always seem to smell like vanilla or flowers.
    I’ve appreciated my fair share of women up close and personally. But I’ve never appreciated a woman more than I’ve appreciated Natalia Grekov. And neither has my cock.
    And he hasn’t even been up close and personal with her. Yet.
    Over the course of the last week, my hands have been all over Nat’s body. On the small of her back, brushing against her knees, gripping her shoulder, cradling her head. I’ve been molding, protecting and manipulating her figure. And I haven’t so much as done one sexual thing to her.
    Maybe it’s the fact that she’s a female gymnast and I hardly ever work with the girls who train here. I’m strictly a men’s coach, though that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to work with the women gymnasts. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t gotten laid