The Ex Games by Jennifer Echols Read Free Book Online Page A

which case I would make an excuse and back out of the sauna. But now that the hallway door had developed this squeak, at least I knew I wouldn’t interrupt folks in the middle of something they shouldn’t be doing in a public place.
    As I pushed open the sauna door and stepped into the eucalyptus-scented steam, I saw I wouldn’t be alone. The other occupant had heard me coming and was wrapping his towel more modestly around hisbathing suit. I could still back out of the small, dark space. I hesitated to slide onto the bench across from him until I got a good look at him.
    I squinted through the mist and finally realized it was—“Nick! I mean, Ex!”
    “Hayden! I mean, Hoyden!” He sounded as surprised to see me as I was to see him. His eyes slid to my bare tummy. “You have a body like a rock.”
    Right back at ya
, I could have said. I’d known Nick was built. His family had a membership at my parents’ health club, and he sometimes came in to lift weights. His favorites were the arm curl machine and the abdominal machine, where he would lift hard for long minutes and then fight for a few last painful crunches. Not that I made a habit of standing there and staring at him as he worked out. That would be creepy. I watched him on the surveillance cameras behind the reception desk.
    Even though he never worked out with his shirt off, I could have predicted that what I saw now had been hiding under his tee: six-pack abs with beads of sweat sliding down them like the disembodied torsos in workout machine infomercials. But Iwas surprised at how thin he was. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him anywhere. I watched the muscles of his upper arms move underneath his skin as he leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. I had the strange sensation I was seeing a different person, a real person, rather than the model-handsome perfection who had sashayed his way through my school and my fantasies for the last four years. Suddenly he was less a superhero and more a boy my age, caught off guard in the sauna.
    I liked this Nick even better.
    And
he
approved of
my
body, too.
    Or did he? Did a girl want to be a rock? Was this a compliment? I draped my towel across the bench opposite him and sat down. “What kind of rock?” I asked casually. “Granite is rough. Mica is shiny and flaky.” Whoops. I was feeding him jokes. I might as well have sat there and insulted myself. Nick didn’t even need to participate.
    Both of those sound right,
he would have said if we were trading insults across the chemistry classroom. Instead he said, “Come over here and give me a closer look.”
    Nick was hot, and his voice was honey.We were alone in a cloud of steam. I wanted so badly to close the five feet of space between us by hopping down from my bench and jumping onto his.
    But there was no way. That’s what I’d do if I were still the new girl at school who wasn’t wise to him yet. I said, “You’re the one who wants the look.
You
come over
here
.”
    His gaze slid up my body to my face. His eyes locked with mine and held me there. Would he give in to this battle of wills? Or did he figure that if it led to contact with a girl, he always won?
    Yeah, he sure was acting like he had the upper hand. Still holding me in place with his eyes, slowly he stepped down from his bench. He stepped up onto my bench and settled beside me on my towel. And he slid one hand onto the bare skin of my tummy.
    I tried not to flinch. I told myself he didn’t mean anything by it—he was just the school’s biggest flirt—so there was no reason to make him unhand me. In fact, I’d found through experience that people who didn’t flinch seemed to fare better with Nick, because he wasn’t sure what to do with them. And I
had
told him to come over here.
    Besides, it was just my tummy, my innocent tummy that I showed to the general public every summer at the pool. But Nick had never touched my bare tummy before, and my body screamed at me to
pay