sophisticate

Self-Control Is a Foreign Concept

Chapter 2: Your Lacy Pink Underwear, My Libido

She had been avoiding him all week.

It began on Monday, when Austin had rolled into the parking lot of the Rock in the nick of time, having overslept after a restless night spent reliving the inexplicable events of Sunday morning. He sauntered through the gym doors and of course all the little girls came swarming. Austin hardly registered them, though, as his eyes scanned the large room keenly for a dark brown ponytail held up with a pink-and-black scrunchie.

He caught sight of it as she dashed out of the room and up to Sasha's office, obviously feigning an 'urgent need' to speak with the coach.

On Monday and on every other day that week, she vanished during the lunch break and never slowed her training even to stop at the water cooler for five seconds. The moment Sasha dismissed the elite gymnasts, she fled, not bothering to shower or even say good-bye to her friends.

Kaylie was clearly extremely talented at evading a situation.

Austin was not. He liked to face things head-on.

And here he was – Thursday evening, five minutes before the elite girls were due to be done with training. Austin leaned casually against the hood of Kaylie's car, arms crossed in a very James Dean posture of nonchalance. His leather jacket was strained by his broad soldiers, but unlike Dean, he actually did have a cause.

Austin was trying very hard not to feel like a stalker, and for the most part it was working. It wasn't like he was obsessed with Kaylie or anything – he scoffed at the thought. No, he just wanted to check up on her, talk to her, hear her voice, stare into her eyes, take her into his arms, lean in and touch…

Whoa, slow down there: he shook his head to clear it. The crisp evening air was almost enough to jolt him into reality and save him from the warm, heady world of his fantasies.

Speaking of his fantasies…Kaylie's tired face suddenly became visible through the glass doors of the Rock. She had obviously thrown on her tracksuit and gym bag, following her routine this week of fleeing after training to avoid a confrontation with Austin. Well, this time Austin had outmaneuvered her.

She walked briskly over to her parking spot, intent on fishing her car keys out of her bag. Austin tensed for a split second as she approached him, then quickly regained his pose of insouciance. She glanced up.

"What the…" Kaylie looked confused. And then livid. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Nice to see you, too, Kaylie," Austin smirked, settling easy into his invulnerable-charmer routine. He'd perfected it years ago, after all.

"Uh…not so much," replied Kaylie, sounding pissed as hell. She stopped in her tracts, one hip jutted out, her lean arms crossed over her chest. A pose he'd seen her adopt countless times before. A pose that meant that he was in for a good, long lecture. "You can't just lounge around on other people's cars, Austin. It's probably illegal, you know, there could be some law against car-trespassing or something, and as much as I'd love to see you go to prison, I'd rather –"

"- 'car-trespassing'?" He cut her off disbelievingly. "Even lawyers don't stretch the law that much."

Kaylie scowled. She was always fairly angry whenever she encountered Austin, but tonight she was clearly in a horrible mood. "Then it's a good thing I'm not a lawyer, huh? Instead, I'm an elite gymnast, an elite gymnast who has to get home so that I can get enough sleep and rest before training again tomorrow."

"Well, then you'd better get home," invited Austin mockingly, throwing his arms open in faux-concordance.

"Yeah, okay, I will. Just as soon as you get off of my car," here she glared at him pointedly, "and I find my…" She distractedly resumed her previous task of searching her large gym bag for her car keys. "Find my…" Kaylie hissed in frustration, using both hands now to take items out of the bag and toss them on the ground, her search becoming frantic. "Where the hell are they?"

Austin grinned to himself, knowing that she was too focused on finding her keys to notice his satisfaction. "What, what do you need?" he feigned concern.

"My keys," responded Kaylie absentmindedly. She was launching objects out now at a rapid-fire. A towel. A pink water bottle. A case of spare scrunchies. An energy bar. Now another outfit meant for after the shower she'd skipped every day this week: a frilly tank top. Dark-wash jeans. Pink, lacy panties…

…fuck.

Before he could catch himself, Austin groaned. Kaylie's head jolted upwards. "What…" She followed his line of vision and blushed crimson when she spotted her discarded underwear. She quickly bent down and snatched up the offending article of clothing. Although clearly embarrassed, she looked back at Austin and met his gaze head-on.

Meanwhile, Austin was making a Herculean effort to control himself. If clenched his fists hard enough and kept his brain on a steady mantra of Focus focus focus focus…but his mind was clearly acting independently and slipped into Focus focus pink lacy panties no focus but pink lace…

Fuck. He was totally fucked. Even if he'd wanted to (and at this point he couldn't bring himself to want to), Austin couldn't stop himself from staring back into her dark eyes and imagining that little piece of lace falling onto the ground in an entirely different situation…

She was in his bedroom, those night eyes drawing him ever close to his large bed. Her underwear had fallen to the ground and he was just so entranced by the sight of her that he didn't even realize that they had both ended up lying on the navy blue sheets. Her tiny hand traced circles on his chest and he closed his eyes, shuddering at the contact. When he felt her hips slide down and her body pressed against him, he couldn't take it anymore. He flipped her over, pinning her to his mattress with one easy touch of his strong arm. Throwing her head back in pleasure, she leaned her face up to meet his in a wild, heady kiss. Their lips were moving faster, now, and their backs arched and she was moaning his name…

"…Austin? Austin! AUSTIN!" Kaylie's insistent voice brought him out of his recurring fantasy. He shook his head, hard, trying to swipe the image of her like that from his mind. "AUSTIN!" Apparently, she had been trying to get his attention for a while.

"Huh?" His train of thought was still a little foggy and bemused.

Kaylie squinted, clearly puzzled by his behavior. Finally, she shrugged. "Nothing. Anyway, I need to find my…" She made as if to reach back into her bag for her keys, but then her eyes instantly shot back to Austin's impassive face. "Wait a minute…"

Damn, it looked like she was onto him. Oh, well, Austin couldn't help himself; he felt pretty proud of himself at the moment. He threw his arms behind his head and smirked infuriatingly.

"You didn't…" Kaylie breathed. Then she scowled, placing her hands on her hips. "You did!" she accused.

Austin tried his best to widen his blue eyes as much as possible, going for the innocent-little-lost-puppy look. Austin Tucker could pull off a lot of looks, but unfortunately, it seemed that 'innocent' wasn't one of them.

"I can't believe you!" shrieked Kaylie.

Suavely, he reached into his pocket and tossed the all-important keys into the air, easily reaching up and catching them high above her head. "Looking for these?"

Glaring at him furiously, she spit, "You're such an ass, you know that?" Kaylie reached up to try and grab the keys, but Austin grinned and moved them just out of her reach. Oh, how he loved his height advantage.

"Uh-uh," he scolded. "Nice try."

Kaylie looked near explosion. "Give…them…to…me…" she demanded through gritted teeth.

Maybe Austin was some kind of masochist or something, but for some reason he kind of liked it when Kaylie got all riled up and pissed at him. At least then she was paying attention to him, noticing him.

Plus, she looked pretty damn sexy right now, with her eyes all wild and her cheeks flushed, glaring at him so intently. Austin wanted to just charge forward right now and claim her. Fuck propriety. She was gorgeous and he wanted her so badly, he would crush her lips to his and lean her back on her car and make her feel like he knew she'd never felt before, make her feel things that Carter wouldn't have even attempted to elicit.

But no. No, he had a purpose with all of this and Austin liked to think that he had a little more self-control than to just pounce on Kaylie every time he saw her…

…damn, that actually sounded pretty amazing. No, Tucker, he scolded himself. Focus.

"Listen, Kaylie, despite what you may think, I didn't steal your keys just to be a dick. Come on, what kinda guy do you think I am?"

She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows, her fuming eyes saying, Do you really want me to answer that?

Austin quirked an eyebrow. "Never mind," he amended, a little impressed at her wordless fierceness. He lowered his arm and set her keys behind him on the car. "But I had to take them, see? You've been avoiding me all week and," he lowered his voice and stared her right in the eyes so she'd realize the gravitas of his words, "we need to talk."

"I…I haven't been…I'm not avoiding you," stammered Kaylie, turning a little pink. Austin bit down hard on the side of his cheek so that he would stop thinking about how adorable she looked.

He sent her a disbelieving look.

"I haven't!" she insisted.

He sighed. She wasn't fooling anyone, least of all herself. "You've thrown yourself into your training, you avoid the lunch room, you leave every day immediately, you run away every time you see me," Austin rattled off in a monotone. "You can't avoid this any longer. We are going to talk about what happened on Sunday."

"S-Sunday?" Kaylie stuttered, obviously flustered. "What about Sunday? Nothing happened on Sunday. Why Sunday?" she ran all of her words together in a frantic string of denial.

Austin rolled his eyes. So she was going to make him play this fucked-up game with her. "Hmm…what in the world could have possibly happened on Sunday?" he mocked, stroking his chin exaggeratedly and pretending to look as though he were deep in thought. "Well…I woke up. Came to the Rock. Trained. And, oh, what was it…oh, now I remember: made out with Kaylie Cruz in the viewing room!"

"Shh!" Kaylie panicked and looked around the deserted parking lot frantically.

Since there was no one else around, Austin assumed she must be trying to prevent herself from hearing him say the truth. "There's no use pretending it didn't happen," he bravely forged on, "because it did. We kissed, Kaylie. And I'm not going to beat around the bush – it was fucking incredible." He stared her straight in the eyes. "Ignoring me for an entire week afterwards, though, now that's a little immature."

"Immature?" Kaylie echoed, clearly irritated. "I'll tell you what's immature," she hissed in a low voice. "Taking your shirt off like some kind of…some kind of…" she sputtered, "…some kind of stripper or something and assaulting me while my parents were in the next room."

Austin tried, unsuccessfully, to bite back a laugh. He chuckled darkly. She really was the most entertaining person he had ever had the dubious pleasure of meeting. "Oh, Kaylie, stop pretending like your life is a little soap opera. If I remember correctly," he took a step forward, leaning his head down toward Kaylie's shocked face, "you kissed me back."

She wasn't breathing and he found her deer-in-headlights look unreasonably attractive. They were staring at each other intently; they were so close. If he leaned down one inch or she tilted her chin upward about thirty degrees, their lips would meet and he could relive that unbelievably fucking sexy kiss from Sunday, but this time he wouldn't let her run away, he wouldn't sit there like a helpless dummy, he would go after her and grab her arm and whirl her around and take her in his arms and pull her mouth to his, and he would whisper in her ear…

"Ooh, what's this?" The female voice didn't register with Austin for a moment, not until Kaylie was the first to snap out of their…whatever that had been…and looked to the right. Austin blinked and looked in the direction of the sound. Oh, fucking fuck. Fucking Lauren Tanner and her fucking amazing timing.

"Austin and Kaylie, hmm, what will the reporters say," Lauren giggled mischievously. Damn her for walking outside just as he had been about to show Kaylie what she was missing.

Kaylie had somehow put about five feet between her and Austin in a split second. "Lauren," she managed, caught completely off-guard. "Don't worry, the reporters won't say anything. The only reason I'm even talking to him is because the jerk stole my car keys," and Kaylie shot him a look that explicitly said, Don't think I've forgotten about that.

Oh, what, she was still pissed about that? The keys? A man had to do what a man had to do, to get the girl of his dreams (literally, she wreaked havoc on his mind every night) to talk to him.

Lauren giggled. "Mm-hmm, sure," she teased, her tone making it obvious that she didn't believe Kaylie. "Well, have fun, you two." The blonde got into her car and backed out, waving at the pair playfully from behind the windshield.

"Hear that?" Austin drawled. "She said 'fun' – it's a concept I don't think you're familiar with. You really need to lighten up a little."

Kaylie glared at him sardonically. "Yes, I know what fun is. And I can have all the fun I want after the Olympics. But right now, I need to focus on my training. I'm the Natio-"

"- National Champion," he finished with her. Austin had heard this little shtick more times than he could count. "Well guess what, Kaylie. I'm the National Champion, too. And I manage to have a little fun." He closed the distance she had put between them again. "Do you need me to show you what I mean?" he asked huskily.

"I…" Kaylie never finished her response, as Emily and Payson pushed open the glass doors next, chatting excitedly to each other.

"And thank God, I finally landed my –" Payson noticed Kaylie and Austin standing in the rapidly dimming light. "Oh, hey, guys."

"Hi," greeted Emily.

Austin gritted his teeth. Did the Rock girls have some kind of secret girl code? Thou shalt intrude whenever your best friend is about to get thoroughly kissed? "Hey," he groaned.

"You should probably get going," Payson reminded Kaylie. "It's getting late, and you worked really hard today. You need some rest."

Kaylie nodded, eyes wide. "Uh, yes, uh…I was just leaving." Her eyes lit up when she spotted her keys on the hood of her car, where Austin had haphazardly set them at some point. Kaylie grabbed the keys and stepped around Austin to get into her car. She started it.

"See you tomorrow, Pay, Em," she waved.

"Bye!" chorused the two other girls.

Austin and Kaylie just stared at each other as she backed out of her spot, neither breaking eye contact until Kaylie shifted the car's gears and sped away.

A/N: As always, reviews are very loved! So, whose POV do you like better thus far – Kaylie's or Austin's?