Chapter 14: Spearcrest Knight: Part 1 – Chapter 14

if conjured by some spell or curse, just when I’m trying my best to get her out of my head. It’s almost as if she can somehow sense what I’m trying to do and chooses that very moment to materialise into my day.

Of course, this time she doesn’t so much materialise into my day as float into it like some dream mermaid.

I’m standing at one end of the pool stretching when I spot her in the water, floating with her arms out and her legs gently paddling. Her dark hair is in a plait, she’s wearing a plain black swimsuit and her eyes are wide open as she stares up at the ceiling. She is almost otherworldly in the bluish light of the pool, her skin ghostly in the water.

I end up sitting at the edge of the pool and staring at her. I’m surprised she hasn’t noticed she’s not alone yet, but she is too deep in thought to have any awareness of her surroundings.

Not just deep in thought, but… sort of sad. Melancholy.

It makes my chest clench uncomfortably, and I act on instinct. Kicking out my foot, I send a tiny wave of water splashing towards her face.

She’s startled, and flounders for a moment in the water, arms splashing as she rights herself. She turns around and faces me. The sad look on her face is gone, replaced by a frown. “Are you following me?”

I scoff. If only she knew that it’s quite the opposite, that I’ve only come here tonight to clear my mind of her. But the last thing Sophie needs is for me to give her the ammo she needs to shoot me with.

“Are following ?” I fire back. “You know I’m on the swim team. I doubt you’re here by pure coincidence.”

“I happen to come here every other day,” she says coolly, “I’ve never bumped into you before.”

“Every other day, huh?” I lock that useful morsel of information away in my mind for later use. “That’s a lot of exercise for a scholar like you, Sutton.”

She gives me a little fake smile and answers tritely, “Healthy body, healthy mind.”

She kicks herself into a quick crawl to the edge of the pool and climbs out of the water. It’s hard to not look at her, with her black swimsuit sticking to her body, water running down her long limbs. But it becomes quickly obvious how much my body appreciates the sight of hers, because blood immediately rushes to my cock.

I’m not about to irrevocably embarrass myself in front of Sophie Sutton by being caught in the pool with an erection, so I make sure my eyes rush to her face and stay stuck to it.

“Don’t leave on my account,” I tell her. “Plenty of space for both of us.”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly swim next to an elite of the swim team,” she says, dry as dust.

She walks up to her towel and picks it up. She’s not going to stay if I’m here. Why would she? She can’t stand me.

But the look of sadness on her face when I spotted her is like a fucking dagger to the chest. It’s stuck in my ribs, too painful to ignore, and I can’t repress the impulse to be nice to her.

“I’ll go if you want,” I say, glancing away, keeping my voice light and casual. “If you want the pool to yourself or whatever. I’ve not even gone in the water yet. I’ll go.”

She pauses, towel wrapped around her shoulders. Her brown eyes, almost black in the dim light of the pool, fix me with a long, searching gaze. It’s difficult to tell what she’s looking for, or whether she finds it. But she retraces her steps to the edge of the pool and sits down, facing me across the water.

“Don’t be stupid,” she says, but there’s definitely a lot less of the usual impatience and irritation there normally is behind the words. “You came here to swim, didn’t you? So swim.”

I drop off the edge of the pool and sink to the bottom, letting the temporary shock of cold travel through me before I kick myself back up. Once I break through the surface, I swim slowly towards her.

“I didn’t come here for swim team practice,” I admit to her. Something about the fact that she’s staying melts me like butter, making me softer, sweeter. Not something I can explain, just something I can feel in my chest. “Swimming just helps take my mind off things.”

She gazes at me with the same searching gaze as before. Maybe she’s trying to work out how sincere I’m being. I meet her gaze with a frank grin.

“Same,” she says after a moment of silence. “What could possibly be troubling you anyway? I thought your life was just a series of carefree adventures, girlfriends and parties?”

I laugh. “And that doesn’t sound stressful to you?”

She smiles. It’s only a tiny lifting of the corners of her mouth, but it’s sincere. A sincere, shy little Sophie smile. It makes my chest tight and warm. I can’t help but wade slightly closer to her.

“It sounds appalling,” she says. “Never realised how harrowing your life actually is.”

“The worst.”

I stop until I’m only an arm’s reach away from her. She sits with her feet in the water, her towel around her shoulders. Droplets fall from her hair like tiny raindrops, sliding down her face and neck.

“What brings you here, then? What could possibly be troubling the perfect Sophie Sutton?”

“I’m overwhelmed by the enormity of what lies ahead,” she answers quietly, her eyes intently fixed on mine.

I can’t believe she’s opening up like that. For a moment, I’m frozen in shock. Then I swim to the edge, placing my hands on either side of her legs to bring myself closer to her.

“What do you mean? What lies ahead?”

She leans down until her face is so close to mine droplets from her wet hair tickle my forehead and cheeks.

“My Everest, my white whale,” she murmurs. “Getting you to pass that fucking English exam.”

All the tension leaves my body and I let out a groan of annoyance. I can’t believe she got me so easily.

“Oh, fuck you!” I say, pushing myself away from the wall and splashing water up at her.

“No thanks,” she retorts. “I can do better.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“We’ll see.” And with that threat, I grab her by the arms and pull her into the water.

She falls forward with a big splash and remerges, spluttering.

“Evan! My towel!”

I hold up my middle finger. “Fuck your towel, too.”

She grabs the towel, now sopping wet, and tosses it out of the water. Then she turns around, her eyes searching the pool. She seems to find whatever she’s looking for, and I turn to follow her gaze.

My eyes land on my clean, dry, monogrammed, Turkish cotton towel, folded and sitting innocently at the other end of the pool.

“Oh no, you fucking don’t!”

I dive into the water and catch up with her, yanking her leg back. She sinks and flails, then breaks the surface and pushes a big wave at me. My goggles are still around my neck, so my eyes are already burning from the chlorine, but I still turn my head to avoid the splash.

She tries to swim away, but she’s not fast enough to get away from me. I grab her by the waist and swim her away to the other side of the pool.

“Let me go, you giant moron!”

She struggles against me, but I keep her pinned by her waist. It’s not easy, because she’s stronger than she looks. She presses her hands to my chest and pushes, but I refuse to let her go. By the time we both realise her thighs are wrapped around my hips and her breasts are at my eye level, it’s too late.

Her indignant laughter dies in her throat. Wet black hair coils against her neck and shoulders. Droplets of water slide across her skin, disappearing between her breasts. Her nipples are hard underneath the smooth black fabric of her swimsuit. She stares at me, lips slightly parted. I stare back, praying to God almighty she can’t tell I’m suddenly really fucking turned on.

She takes my face in her hand, holding my jaw in her fingers. For a crazy second, I think she’s about to kiss me. I tilt my head, raising my mouth to hers. Every inch of me wants this—a dark, yawning hunger inside me I didn’t even know was there.

Her lips ghost across mine.

But of course, she doesn’t kiss me.

“Race me,” she says instead, her breath tickling my lips, her voice low and husky.

The way she’s looking down at me with those dark, hooded eyes is authoritative, almost dominant. My breath catches, my cock hardening. She looks so fucking hot I can barely stand to look at her. All I can think of is claiming her mouth with mine, palming her pretty tits roughly and shoving aside her swimsuit to thrust myself inside her to the hilt.

“W—what?” I ask hoarsely, realising I didn’t register what she said.

Her fingers dig into my cheeks and she pushes my head back with a slow, cocky smirk. “You heard me.

, swim team champ.”

I swallow hard. I can think of a thousand things I want to do to her right now, and racing her is the last thing on the list. By now I’m really fucking hard, my cock desperate for friction, contact—anything. If she was anybody else, I’d already have my tongue in her mouth and my cock buried inside her—but she’s not anybody else, and I’d rather die than let Sophie know how hard I am for her.

So I push her away from me in the water and paddle away, calling over my shoulder, “You’re on!”

We both go to different edges and wait. I take my goggles off my neck and shake the water off them, then pull them on. If nothing else, this race will reroute the blood through my body and hopefully away from my cock.

I glance over at her and she nods.

“On my mark. Ready…. Steady…”

I grin. She has no idea what she’s signed up for.

“Go!” she calls.

I shoot forward, piercing through the water like a spear. I keep my head down, emerging only to breathe at timed intervals. I reach the end in minutes, and emerge triumphantly, looking around so I can watch her catch up with me.

“Trust you to have the fanciest towel imaginable.”

I whip around. Sophie is standing by the edge of the pool, my towel wrapped around her, patting her face and neck with a corner.

“You little fucking cheat!”

She doesn’t even have the courtesy of looking sheepish. Instead, she shrugs and sneers down at me in the same dominant way she looked at me before.

“I said ‘let’s race’.” Arrogance drips from her voice. “I never said anything about swimming.”

And with that cocky smirk plastered all over her face, she gives me the middle fingers, turns around and walks away.

After she’s gone, what lingers with me isn’t her dishonesty and treachery—part of me her dishonesty and treachery.

Instead, what lingers with me is the red-hot memory of her waist pinned by my arms and her thighs wrapped around my hips. The husky arrogance of her voice, her heavy-lidded eyes as she stares imperiously down at me.

Sophie fucking Sutton. She really is full of surprises this year. And yet I can already tell the memory of this moment is going to be making frequent invasions into my fantasies. Especially when I’m in the shower.

So much for coming here to get my mind off Sophie fucking Sutton.