A Slave to Love

Chapter 20: Unexciting

"What happened to your thigh?" Landon asked, jerking his chin at my bruised leg, helpfully on display because we were at track practice and it was so hot I was sticking with shorts to avoid passing out from the heat and exercise.

"Um..." I faltered, "I was playing with a belt and I accidentally whipped myself with it."

The truth about my thigh was that Blade had whipped me a little bit harder than I thought last night when we were playing pool and now I had a long, thin, purple bruise going right across the width of my thigh.

If he kept marking me up every time we hung out I was going to kill him. It was a pain in the ass to have to keep coming up with lame excuses as to why I always had some kind of strange mark or injury.

"Why were you playing with a belt?" he asked as we jogged around the corner of the track for warm-up. 

"Well, I was going to wear it and while I was talking to Katie I started playing with it, but I didn't notice until I whipped myself with it," I said, "It's no biggie."

"You're so accident prone. Fracturing a bone, bite marks on your neck, whipping yourself with a belt. If it was humanly possible I'd think you were dreaming of Sunday brunch and bit yourself thinking it was a sandwich or something."

"You're so funny," I said sarcastically. So long as he didn't look too closely at all the injuries or question me too much, he could make all the jokes he wanted. It was way better than the truth of it.

"I know," he said with a grin as we started to turn on the last stretch of the track.

"Want to race?" I asked, "First to the finish has to treat the loser to dinner on Saturday."

"Deal. Go!" he shouted before he kicked into a sprint, leaving me behind.

What an adorable dumbass move that was.

I took off after him, keeping pace so he wouldn't realize my trick until we neared the finish line, where I slowed down just enough to let him cross first.

"Yes!" he said victoriously, "I win!"

"Yes you did," I said, conceding defeat. "And now you get to treat me to dinner on Saturday."

"Wait—what?" the happy grin fell as he retraced our conversation. The penny dropped. "You tricked me."

"I did no such thing, had you been paying attention then it wouldn't have happened."

He sighed dramatically. "Oh well, I guess that means I have a date Saturday."

"Please don't sound so enthusiastic," I said, lifting my foot to knock him gently in the ass.

"Hey! That's my butt!" he protested, covering his butt with his hands.

"Yeah, I know. Kind of the point."

He lunged for me and scooped me clear off the ground before he laid me down on the inside turf of the track, tickling my sides until I was laughing so hard I couldn't even breathe. Which didn't take long considering we'd just been jogging around the track for the past half hour and I was already winded.

"Lan....Landon!" I gasped, "Can't....bre...breathe!"

"Are you going to touch my ass again?" he asked, pausing in his tickling.

"Hmmm, it depends," I mused, trying to catch my breath. "Am I going to kick it? Probably not. As for touching it in other ways..." I trailed off and flashed him a wicked grin, "I make no promises."

"Jeez, you really are starting to be kinky," he exclaimed as he rolled off of me so we were lying side by side on the turf, breathing hard before we moved onto the next bout of training.