I’d like to say that I focused on putting the sunblock on my own body, but I didn’t. Correction: I couldn’t.

When Sacha peeled off his shirt and began smothering the cream onto his freckle-spotted shoulders, arms, chest, neck and even the shell of his ears… I was entranced. It was like seeing a meteor shower. Or having candy for the first time after you’d tried going on a diet.

Except way more magnificent.

Sacha even had these small light-brown moles dotting his abs and back. He had a trim, muscular frame that I admired from the corner of my eye every time he was shirtless. He had the body of those swimmers that Laila and I groaned over every four years, and he was putting lotion all over himself. It was better than watching porn. Hell, better than watching Robby Lingus porn. Good grief. I finished slathering myself sloppily while he put his shirt back on.

“Do you know where you want to go run or are we figuring it out as we go?” I asked as I bent over to stretch my hamstrings.

“East. There’s usually less people in that direction,” Sacha said.

I hummed like I knew what direction east was without searching out the sun and chirped up an, “okay.”

Five minutes later, we were both stretched and ready to go. He tipped his head to the left with a playful smile and asked, “Are you ready, Jesse Owens?”

I snorted. “I was born ready.”

Sacha snickered before nudging my forearm with the back of his hand.

We started off with a slow jog to warm up for what seemed about a mile. He tempered his step so that he wasn’t twenty feet in front of me considering his legs were almost a foot longer. He shot me a glance over his shoulder once and I nodded. Then we took off.

He wasn’t kidding when he said he was fast. He really was. He had the stride of a long distance runner but the potential, restrained speed of someone who possibly ran sprints for fun. Luckily for me, I’d been a sprinter in high school, so it didn’t kill me too much to catch up with him.

At first.

One mile.

Two miles.

Three, four and five miles.

My lungs started to get tight.

Six miles.

Seven miles.

My calves began cramping.

By the eighth mile, I was struggling with my breathing and my cramps passed “aching” and went straight to “cramping.”

Honestly, I had no clue where we were, much less where the venue was. What made it worse was that Sacha looked sweaty but not nearly winded enough. What the hell was he? A cyborg?

It was probably another half a mile before I decided… that was it. I couldn’t keep going without dying.

“Hey, hey,” I wheezed as I came to a stop.

It took a second for him to slow down and turn around. His face was pink, perspiration dotting along his temples. “Are you all right?” he asked sounding just slightly out of breath.

I was sucking in air through my nose raggedly as I nodded, pressing a hand flat to the part of my stomach that was the most deprived of air. “I can’t… I need to stop.”

Those gray-blue eyes swept over me for a second as I stood there, one hand on my hip, the other over my belly button. My loose shorts were clinging to my legs and my shirt was definitely plastered to me. Then there were the pit stains. I didn’t even want to think about the pit stains and the damp spots on my shorts. Whatever. Who cared. Sacha saw me after the show was over every night when my mascara was runny and I smelled like week-old socks. Plus, it wasn’t like I was trying to get a boyfriend or anything.

“I don’t… run… for distance,” I panted.

He took a big visible inhale through his nose and nodded. “That’s okay.”