Page 84 of Jump on Three
When Layla scowled at me, my stomach dipped, but I didn’t stop. I yelled for Ivan. I clapped and jumped until he hit the wall first.
Pushing himself out of the water, he zeroed in on me jumping around in celebration, and the smile he shot me warmed me from head to toe.
I would probably question if I was cheering too loud next time. It’s who I was. But I wouldn’t hesitate to do it. Not when I was rewarded with Ivan’s very public, very unabashed pleasure.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Evelyn
Ivan bunched the front of my sweatshirt in his fist. “I want you to come hang out with me.”
I wanted to also, but I needed details.
“In your room?”
“Or yours. Wherever you’re comfortable. I’m not ready to say good night yet. Are you?”
“I’m not.”
I wasn’t. We’d spent the bus ride back from the meet kissing, and in between kissing, Ivan murmured praise. How much he loved hearing me when he finished his race. How proud he was of me for moving past what Layla had said. I found myself blossoming under every positive word, like a little flower turning into his bright, beautiful sun.
“Your room or mine?” he asked as we entered our dorm building.
We’d made out in room three five times. The bus twice. We’d stolen kisses in the stacks of the library, against the brick wall of the dining hall, behind a column outside the language building. Never had we spent time inside each other’s bedrooms.
I wrapped my fingers around his wrist. “I don’t want to create false expectations. I’m not ready to have sex.”
Groaning, he tugged me into his arms and rubbed his nose on the top of my head. “That’s good. Neither am I.”
I smiled into his chest at the best answer he could have possibly given me. “Okay. Let’s go to your room then.”
He swept me off my feet, as he was wont to do, and carried me to the elevator, and when we arrived on his floor, down the hall to his room. Freddie was lounging in their shared living space. Ivan carried me past him.
“Hi, Evelyn. Bye, Evelyn,” Freddie called.
“Hi and bye, Freddie,” I returned, waving over Ivan’s shoulder.
He closed us in his room, kicking the door shut behind him. When Freddie began to sing loudly, Ivan turned on music, drowning him out.
I laughed at Ivan’s deep grumbles. He called me adorable, but my stomach got squishy from listening to him be cranky.
“You and Freddie are cute together.”
He grunted as he searched through his playlists. “He’s annoying on purpose.”
“And you allow him to bait you.”
He looked up from his phone. “He thinks he is…how do Americans say it? Oh, yes, he thinks he’s cockblocking me right now. He is lucky I’m not normally a violent person.”
I walked over to him, pressing against him to peer at his screen…but also just to be close to him. “But he is not cockblocking you since you aren’t ready to have sex with me.”
“No.” His lips brushed my forehead. “He doesn’t know that, though.”
“Why aren’t you ready?”
Putting his phone down, he turned to me and took my face in his hands, tipping it back. Our height difference was so vast it was like looking up at a mountain.
“Are you a virgin?” he asked.