Breathless: Winchester Academy, Book 5

  Breathless

  Winchester Academy, Book 5

  Madison Faye

  Contents

  Breathless

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek - Barely

  Also by Madison Faye

  Mailing List

  About the Author

  Copyright Notice

  Copyright © 2019 Madison Faye

  Cover: Coverlüv Book Design

  Photography: Wander Aguiar

  Models: Zack Salaun, Kali Feline

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  Breathless

  The first kiss I stole.

  The second, he claimed.

  This is forbidden. This is taboo. And this is a scandal that could drown us both.

  My name is Waverly Owens, and I’m in love with my high school swim coach.

  I’ve got a crush. He’s gorgeous and brooding, with arms that make my knees week, abs that make me forget how to breath, and good lord does he fill out a swimsuit in all the right ways.

  The only problem? He’s ten years older, my mother is his boss, and, oh right, he’s my high school swim coach.

  Yeah.

  Camden Kirby is what you might call “x-rated” hot. He’s too gorgeous—certainly too gorgeous to be coaching girls high school swimming. Crushing on my coach is one thing. But when I end up creating a fake dating app profile specifically to, well, secretly seduce him? Well, now we’re playing in the deep end.

  There’s too much at stake for us to be this reckless, but once we’ve crossed that line, there’s no swimming back, no matter how wrong this is.

  I’ve got homework and college apps, he’s got demons, and scars. I’m in over my head, but I want to drown in him. I want to lose myself in him.

  This is a story love, lust, and diving in head-first.

  …You better take a deep breath.

  * * *

  Each of the Winchester Academy books are completely standalone stories, with no cliffhangers.

  As with all my books, this one is safe, with no cheating, and a HEA guaranteed.

  1

  Waverly

  “Okay, that shit is X-fucking-rated, I swear.”

  Sasha sucks on her teeth and shakes her head, her eyes looking over my shoulder as she bends over all the way to her toe. I’m facing her in the same pose—legs spread, back arched, and my hands sliding down my ankles to hold my feet—but I ease off to turn and follow her gaze.

  And instantly, hot, burning heat flashes over my face and down my chest under my suit. I quickly turn back, swallowing thickly as I slide back into the stretch. But I know damn well what I just saw, just like I know I’m going to be thinking about it—no, obsessing over it—for the rest of the day. And week. And probably months.

  Like I always do about him.

  But this time, instead of turning around to gawk and stare and, well, lust like I typically do when it comes to Camden Kirby, I force myself back into the stretch, my typically sore muscles aching in preparation for the coming practice. Sasha giggles.

  “Oh, come on. You know, never having been laid doesn’t have to mean prude. You can look, you know.”

  I roll my eyes in an attempt to wave her off, but she’s not having it.

  “No, Waverly, just look at him!”

  “I know what he looks like!” I say with a forced laugh that I hope to God covers that burning heat on my face.

  “Whatever.”

  My friend sighs and shakes her head at me before glancing over at Brynn, who’s also stretching.

  “Back me up here.”

  Brynn smiles a shy smile, shrugging. “I dunno. I mean, yeah, he’s hot.”

  Hot does not even BEGIN to cover it. In fact, I’m not entirely sure there are the right words in the English language to describe how gorgeous the man Sasha is ogling is.

  “My God, Waverly, will you just look?”

  I know I shouldn’t. I know nothing good can from looking at him—and God forbid he sees me looking at him, today of all days. In fact, after last night, I don’t even know how the fuck I’m even at practice right now.

  “Sasha—”

  “Oh helll-lo!”

  She grins, her eyes firmly over my shoulder. And just like that, I cave. I turn, and there he is.

  Okay, that shit is X-fucking-rated.

  I want to open my mouth to say something—maybe to tell Sasha to quit being weird and concentrate on warming up or something. But then, I’m just as guilty as she is. At least, my eyes sure as hell are. I feel the heat spread over my face as I watch him slide from the pool—muscles clenching and glistening as he grips the handrails to the ladder. His abs ripple like freaking liquid steel, and the huge tattoo covering the massive scars on his back rolls with his strength as he climbs out. Water streams down his body, running in rivulets over his muscles, his arms flexing as he raises them to push his hair back from his face.

  I mean seriously. It’s seriously like a live-action, pool version of Magic Mike, and every single girl at practice knows it.

  He turns, shoving his fingers from one hand through his hair, and when my eyes slide back down his body, my face instantly burns intensely, along with the fluttery feeling of the forbidden that teases through my core. His hand slides down his abs, his finger tugging at the waist of his black, skin-tight swimmer’s shorts—not board shorts or anything baggy like guys my age might wear to the beach or something. No, he looks like a freaking pinnacle athlete—all sleek, toned, gorgeous, muscled, and…

  I swallow thickly my face tingling with heat.

  “I mean that bulge!”

  I giggle at Sasha, but it’s just to cover my own lusty looks as I turn back.

  “Okay, stop it,” I chide without any real feeling behind it. “We need to warm up.”

  Except my words fall flat as I turn and just keep staring right alongside Sasha and Brynn. At him.

  “Him,” by the way, is Camden Kirby, our swim coach at Winchester Academy. Our crazy-hot, impossibly perfect, completely captivating, ten-years-my-senior-and-totally-off-limits swim coach, at that.

  “If Jason Momoa, Tom Hardy, and Camden Kirby were in a room with me, and I could only fuck two of them,” Sasha says with a hungry smile. “I would fuck Coach Kirby, twice.”

  Brynn giggles and I roll my eyes, my cheeks burning.

  “Okay, stop it.”

  I’m trying to laugh alongside them, because I know they’re just having fun. But, it’s a little hard to “just have fun” or “just pretend” when it comes to Coach Kirby.

  Not after last night.

  Sasha gives me a look as she eases off her stretch and tucks one leg under and back to st
retch her hamstrings. She’s wearing a new blue and silver one-piece suit that looks fantastic on her, and I’m about to try and change the subject by trying to get her to fess up where she bought it, but she bulldozes right on ahead.

  “Um, hell no I won’t stop it. Not with that tall glass of yes please walking around.”

  She nods back over my shoulder, and when I see her blush and Brynn’s eyes go wide as she rakes her teeth over her bottom lip, I cave. Again. I turn to glance over my shoulder, and again, my whole body tingles, my core tightening as my eyes drink him in.

  Coach Kirby is yelling at some of the guys from the men’s team, trying to get them to remember form during the relay practice. He paces the far side of the massive indoor pool, both arms clasped behind his head, which just has the effect of making every single rippling muscle in his chiseled, perfect body tighten and clench. He jumps into the pool again, showing Tyler Powell the hand-off move he’s been yelling at them about before he turns and easily pulls himself out of the pool again. Water cascades down his perfect body, and down over his black, skin-tight bathing—

  My face burns hot, and my eyes go a little wider. And when the other two girls with me go silent, I know I’m not the only one seeing what I’m seeing.

  He’s wearing a regulation suit, which means it’s got netting on the inside to prevent things from being, well, too revealing when soaking wet nylon sticks to and molds around whatever is under it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t see… well…

  It.

  The very large, very defined, very much sending shivers of heat through my core bulge in the front of Coach Kirby’s suit.

  Brynn quietly clears her throat.

  “I mean, do you think it slows him down? Like, creates unnecessary water drag?”

  I groan, rolling my eyes as she and Sasha giggle.

  “No, girl, it’s like the keel of a sailboat, it helps with drag.”

  Oh my God.

  “Maybe it’s ballast?” Waverly grins, sending Sasha into a fit of giggles.

  “Okay, you guys, stop,” I groan, blushing wildly.

  Sasha grins at me before glancing at Brynn.

  “Yeah, Brynn, stop it. You’re making the virgin uncomfortable.”

  I groan, giving her a look. “I mean, I wasn’t until you boiled down my entire persona to my lack of sexual history?”

  She snorts. “Okay, some advice?”

  “I’m actually good, but I’m sure you’re—”

  “I’m going to tell yon anyways.”

  I groan, even when Brynn shoot me a sympathetic look.

  “So, the words ‘sexual history’ should be dropped from your go-to dating talk words, okay?”

  “Yeah, noted, thanks.”

  “This might be why your Sparkr date no-showed last night, by the way.”

  “Brynn’s in the v-card club too, you know,” I grumble. “How come you’re not giving her a hard time?”

  Our blonde friend giggles. “Because I’m not on freaking Sparkr trying to lose it to a stranger.”

  “He wasn’t a stranger, okay?” I mutter.

  “Oh, and what’s his name then?”

  I glare at Sasha as she grins triumphantly at me.

  “Oh, that’s right, you guys only know each other through your dumb screen names, don’t you?”

  Not exactly. Not anymore.

  “That’s sort of the point of the Sparkr app, you know,” I throw back. “Anonymity? You know you can’t be too careful out there these days.”

  Sasha rolls her eyes. “Right, which is why you went out all dolled up to some bar three towns away to meet a man who’s name you don’t know, who, oh, right, you’ve been texting for all of one week. Which has comprised of what again? Deep thoughts on the universe? Personal details? No?”

  I glare at her.

  “Remind me to never confide in you again.”

  She grins. “Oh right! Your texting has literally just been sexting, where you sent this stranger fucking nudes for the last week? So, yeah, way to be safe out there, Waverly.”

  Brynn gives me a sympathetic look as she stretches over to squeeze my hand.

  “Hey, she was safe.”

  “Yeah, because creepy stranger was a no-show,” Sasha throws back.

  Which is a lie. Well, that last part is at least. I swallow, trying to keep the heat from my cheeks.

  The thing is, my friends are only getting half the story. Yes, after I turned eighteen two weeks ago, I opened a Sparkr account. Big deal, okay? And I only did it because of Sasha’s incessant needling about my love life, or rather, my lack there-of. It’s not like she’s this big player-type either, but she’s at least getting laid. Sasha’s been with the same guy—Charlie—since they were like fourteen. He goes to a different boarding school up in Connecticut, but when he visits, let’s just say Sasha having scored a single room in the dorms comes in quite handy. I have zero idea how she hasn’t been caught, but that’s another story entirely.

  So, it’s partly Sasha, but also partly this dumb thing from the internet. See, swimming is my life, and I do mean my whole life. I’ve been in the water since I was three, and it’s been a struggle to get me out of a pool ever since. And if I can toot my own horn, I’m pretty freaking good now that I’m a senior varsity swimmer. I’ve broken five regional time records in the last year—one of them my own record—and three state records, and Winchester is looking great for a regional championship this year. I’ve been accepted to Cornell for college next year, but there’s been some talk of deferring a year or two to pursue the professional or even Olympic track and see how I do.

  But I’m rambling. There was the internet thing which started this whole thing, even though I’m blaming Sasha and her teasing. See, it started with this post on a hugely popular girls swim Facebook group I’m in. In it, this girl was claiming that there were new scientific studies out there backing up this idea that girls who… well, had experience, did better at sports.

  No, really.

  Basically, she was claiming that getting laid, especially if you were a virgin, could do wonders to open up your pelvis, giving you more flexibility and in our case with swimming, shave entire seconds off your best times. I read it, I decided it was pseudo-science bullshit, and moved on.

  …And then I came back to it. Over, and over, and over again. I knew it was dumb, and that there was no way any of it was true, but I couldn’t stop wondering about it. I mean, what if it was true? When you’re at my level, you’re already doing everything possible to shave milliseconds off your time. NASA-designed swimsuits that cut down on drag, taping down your tits for the same reason, shaving everything, religiously, south of your eyebrows. Not to mention the grueling workouts, practices, lifting, conditioning, and dieting.

  But yeah, I’ve never had sex. Big whoop.

  It’s not like I’m some sort of social outcast or anything. It’s just that swim has always come first, and it takes up every second of my free time outside of school. But, if this girl’s bullshit happened to be true, where was the harm? So, yeah, I turned eighteen, and basically went online that very night and downloaded the crazy popular anonymous dating app. You can post pictures of your face, but most people don’t. So, neither did I. And neither did he.

  Him.

  The man I’ve been, well, sexting for a week now. The man I’ve been having filthy daydreams about at school, counting down the seconds until a class is over so that I can check my phone and see what sort of filthy, toe-curlingly hot stuff he’s texted me. Or even what sort of pictures he’s sent.

  Last night, we were supposed to meet. For the first time. And that’s not the only first planned for last night. He didn’t exactly know that particular detail, but I’d decided that I wasn’t going to tell him. I mean, I knew he was older—even older than the twenty-two I claimed to be on the app. And I didn’t see a need to freak him out about some crazy, clingy virgin.

  Except, here’s the twist.

  I wish—and I really do wish—tha
t I could say I just went on Sparkr, found some hot random guy, and took it from there. But that’s just the lie I’ve told Brynn and Sasha. The horrible, terrible, incredibly fucked up part of it is, though, is that he wasn’t random at all. In fact, he was the very reason I joined the app in the first place, after seeing his phone lying open with Sparkr open on it and his screen name clearly visible. I chose him, because I want him. And actually, I’ve wanted him for a very, very long time.

  I’m not sure what I was thinking. I guess I never saw it through in my head, past that first meeting. Maybe I imagined he’d figure me out and go with it anyways? Which sounds batshit nuts now—now that it all blew up in my face when we did finally meet face to face last night.

  One kiss. One fierce, wild, Lord-take-me-now-because-it-does-not-get-better-than-this kiss. Then we opened our eyes, and then he saw who I was, and ran.

  And that brings us to now, where I’m stretching before swim practice, trying to shrug off what happened last night to my friends while absolutely burning up inside.

  Because my mystery man? The hot older guy I’d picked to pluck my cherry? Well, like I said, he wasn’t exactly random. Not at all.

  I swallow, turning hesitantly and shooting a quick look over my shoulder. Coach Kirby is barking some directions to some of the guys from the boys’ team at the far end of the pool. But suddenly, like he knows, he suddenly stands upright, turns, and his eyes burn right into mine. I gasp, my face going red as I quickly turn back into my stretch.

  Yeah, so, in case it wasn’t painfully obvious? The “mystery man” from Sparkr? The guy I’ve been sexting dirty, dirty pictures to, who’s texted me pictures of his huge cock, and told me all the filthy ways he wants to make me his “bad girl”? The man I’ve been touching myself to for, well, a lot longer than just the last week of text conversations? The man who I dressed up to the nines for last night, in strappy heels, the world’s most scandalous little red cocktail dress, and zero panties for? The man who walked into that bar like a force of nature, came up behind me, whirled me around and kissed me hard, kissed me fierce, and kissed me like I was his, before he pulled back and the realization came crashing over him?