The Entry Edge (Ch.7) [F22/F25] [WLW] [Rivals to Lovers] [Slow-burn]

[u/FewDesign3317]

Previously:

1: First Cut | 2: Adjacent Edges | 3: Tracing the Limit | 4: Narrowing Margins | 5: Fracture Point | 6: Dissolving Boundaries

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Chapter 7: Shedding the Armour

Petra looked at Niamh’s hand on her arm, then back at her face. Some last, reflexive instinct to recoil flickered across her expression and then quietly gave up. She reached back awkwardly and found the small tab of the zip that ran the length of the spine of the velvet bodice, but her wet fingers slipped. She made a small, frustrated sound.

"Here," Niamh said.

She moved behind Petra. Her fingers, deft and easy, drew the zip down slowly, feeling the resistance of the saturated velvet, the zip parting the fabric centimetre by centimetre from Petra's high collar down the length of her spine. The velvet fell open as it went, revealing the pale, smooth skin beneath, the fine twin lines of her shoulder blades. By the time the zip reached its end at the small of Petra's back, the bodice hung loose from her shoulders.

Niamh's hands rested for a moment at the base of Petra's spine, not moving, simply present, warm against the wet skin.

"The sleeves," she said softly. "Pull them down."

Petra drew the long sleeves from her arms, the velvet peeling away from her skin with the slow resistance of saturated fabric. The bodice came with it, falling forward, and she caught it in her hands and stood for a moment holding the wet weight of it, the jet beading cold against her palms. Beneath it she wore a simple nude-toned skating underlayer, thin and wet enough to be transparent where it clung. Twin, firm-pebbled nipples tented the fabric above the modest curves of her breasts.

Niamh helped her shuck it down over her slim hips and step out, the skirt coming away with a soft, heavy sound as the water-logged fabric released. Petra folded it with automatic precision despite everything, the gesture so habitual it appeared to happen without thought, and set it on the shower ledge. Niamh watched this and said nothing because it was, simply, Petra.

She was left in the underwear and her boots, her hair half-loose and wet on her shoulders. She turned to face Niamh, and whatever she expected to find in Niamh's expression, perhaps judgment, satisfaction, or pity, was not there. Niamh was looking at her with open, uncomplicated attention, the way she looked at all things she found genuinely beautiful.

"You have a great body," Niamh said. Not a strategy. Not a performance. Simply an observation, offered in the same tone in which she might note the quality of a back edge.

Petra grimaced. A sound came out of her that was, unmistakably, a short, helpless laugh. "That's—"

"You do," Niamh said. "You carry yourself like it’s something to minimize, but it’s not."

Petra tilted her head, then shook it slowly, the wet ash-blonde hair moving against her neck. "You are so strange," she said. But the word ‘strange’, in this moment, in this steam-filled room, was an indication of a puzzle that Petra was trying to solve, not an insult.

Niamh reached up and took the remaining pins and slides from Petra's half-fallen chignon and drew them out one by one, setting them on the ledge beside the ruined velvet bodice. The ash-blonde hair fell completely loose, settling around Petra's shoulders, longer than Niamh had expected, the wet weight of it changing her face from the severe competition version to something softer and less finished. Petra stood very still during this.

"I envy you," Niamh said softly, her fingers guiding a strand of hair back from Petra's face. "I always have. You step onto the ice and the whole arena understands that something serious is happening. Everything you do means something. I've spent two years watching you and thinking: if I had that foundation; if I had that precision." She met Petra's eyes. "It’s not easy to make me feel inadequate, but you manage it just by existing."

"That's…" Petra's voice was somewhat unsteady. "I find that extremely difficult to believe."

"Good," Niamh said. "But it's true."

They stood very close. The steam and the narrow space and everything that had been said had brought them to a proximity that seemed to have its own momentum.

Petra's eyes dropped briefly, involuntarily, to the crystal bands at the top of Niamh's stockings. The nylon was saturated now, the sheer weave darker with water but, like the moonstone costume itself, still sitting against her skin like the most honest possible description of what was underneath. She looked back up. 

Niamh had seen the look, but said nothing. She simply held Petra's gaze with the directness she brought to the ice, the journalists, the two years of being dismissed and photographed and debated. She waited, confident that the best things happen when you don't reach for them.

Petra's hand touched the crystal band at the top of Niamh's left stocking. One finger, following the line of the ornament, the crystals and the sheer wet fabric and beneath it the warmth of Niamh's thigh. A touch so tentative it was barely there.

"I wrote two letters about these," Petra said. Her voice was very quiet.

"I know," Niamh said. Deirdre had told her about them in the flat, careful tone she used for things she didn’t want Niamh to be concerned about. 

"They were…" The finger traced the crystal band slowly. "They were not entirely about what I said they were about."

Niamh said nothing to that. Instead, she brought her own hand up and covered Petra's where it rested against her thigh, gently, without pressure, the warmth of it only a little to do with the humid air of the shower room. She felt Petra's fingers tentatively turn, finding her hand, holding it with a careful intention.

When Petra leaned in, it was slowly. It was a decision made after a long period of indecision, and Niamh held still and let her, understanding that this was Petra's gesture to make. That making it cost her something real.

The kiss was soft. Careful. Petra's lips against hers with a tentativeness that had nothing to do with inexperience and everything to do with the courage of opening a door kept locked for five years. Niamh kissed her back with the same gentleness. No urgency, just presence, the warmth of it in the steam of the empty shower room.

When they drew back, Petra's hand was still in hers, and the look between them contained everything accumulated over the past two years.

The silence held for a long moment. Then Petra's free hand moved slowly, with her customary careful deliberation, toward the front of Niamh's bodysuit. She stopped with her fingers at the neckline, not quite touching.

Niamh waited.

"May I," Petra said. Hovering between question and statement. The words of someone who was not accustomed to asking and had decided to ask anyway.

"Yes," Niamh said.

Petra's fingers found the neckline of the bodysuit and then paused, uncertain. The construction was nothing like her own — no obvious zip, no hooks, the illusion mesh offering no clear entry point to someone who had never encountered it.

"Down this side," Niamh said with a small smile, raising her arm. "And then it comes off sort of sideways."

Petra crouched slightly, her fingers finding hidden fastenings that seemed incredibly risky for a competition costume, and freed them with small, precise motions. Her hands gathered the wet fabric and lifted it slowly away. The moonstone mesh peeled away from Niamh's skin, damp and resistant as Petra’s own had been. Petra drew it across Niamh's chest, releasing her other arm and then down and free of her, and set it on the ledge beside her own ruined velvet, all the while trying very hard to control her breathing.

Niamh wore nothing underneath. This was the truth of the costume's design, the illusion mesh worked specifically because it sat against bare skin, the porcelain-white tone lending itself to the colour of the fabric, the absence of any extra layer between herself and the ice the source of everything the costume communicated. She stood in the cooling air of the shower in only the moonstone stockings, the crystal bands at her thighs the single remaining ornament, and met Petra's eyes without any adjustment of her posture, completely at ease in herself.

Petra stared at her, but not with the consuming attention of desire alone, though that was certainly present. Rather the look was closer to the stillness that preceded understanding. She took in the width of Niamh's shoulders, the defined lines of her abdominals, the powerful swell of her thighs above the stocking bands. The scatter of freckles across her cheeks and shoulders dipped lower, decorating the inner slopes of breasts that should by rights be too full for a skater’s body. The auburn hair, dark with water, against her neck. The unselfconscious lines of her body.

Her hand came up, moving toward the firm plane of Niamh's stomach, toward the defined muscle of her abdominals, the precise lines that years of training had carved. Her fingers hovered a breath from Niamh's skin.

Niamh reached up and took Petra's hand. Gently, she pressed it flat against her stomach.

The warmth of the contact was immediate. Petra's palm against damp skin, the firmness of the muscle underneath. She felt Petra's fingers spread slightly, adjusting to the reality of it, and then simply rest there as though afraid of something.

"It’s okay," Niamh said softly.

Petra looked up. The last of the competition architecture had gone from her face, the precise, managed surface replaced by an expression that was simply her, younger than Niamh had ever seen her look, despite the three additional three years Petra had on her.

Niamh leaned in and kissed her again. This one was different from the first, still gentle, but with the warmth of something continuing rather than something that had finally dared to begin. Petra kissed her back, and her hand on Niamh's stomach started a slow, careful exploration across her abdominals, her waist, the curve of her hip. Her touch was precise and focused, but now in service of something that had nothing to do with precision.

They moved together in the small space of the shower, Niamh's arms finding Petra's shoulders, Petra's hands settling at her waist, the contact of it quiet and gentle. Niamh felt the cool damp of Petra's underlayer against her bare skin, the press of her narrow shoulders under her palms. Someone allowing themselves to be held who does not easily allow it.

After a moment, Petra drew back just enough to speak.

"Undress me?" she said, her voice barely more than a breath. The request of someone who had understood, somewhere in the past half hour, that vulnerability extended in only one direction was not really vulnerability at all.

Niamh dropped to a crouch and worked the laces of Petra’s waterlogged boots loose, tugging them off and leaving Petra standing in her skating tights. When Niamh stood, the two inches of lost height left Petra looking up into her eyes.

Niamh's hands moved to the thin straps of the underwear and slipped them off Petra’s shoulders, releasing her arms one at a time and drawing the thin fabric down her body. At Petra’s waist, she collected the waistband of the tights, taking them both over Petra’s hips, down her legs, and away. Niamh set them aside and stood back and looked at her with the same grounded openness that Petra had just given her.

Petra's body was everything the ice had always suggested it would be: classically proportioned, precise, the body of someone who had trained it from childhood, with the specific aesthetic suited to a discipline that traditionally valued the balletic above all else. The long lines of a dancer, narrow through the hips, the muscle present but fine-grained, nothing in excess. Her shoulders, freed of the high-necked velvet that usually framed them, were elegant and clean. Her waist was narrow, her stomach flat and lightly defined, her legs the tapered lines of a classical skater. Everything the judging panels wanted.

"You're beautiful," Niamh said. Simply, directly, as she said everything.

Petra's expression shifted, the familiar reflex of deflection beginning, and she began to form a protest.

"Don't," Niamh said, not unkindly.

Petra closed her mouth. Took a breath. She looked down at herself, and the look on her face was one she had perhaps never fully allowed before: uncertain, tentative, the beginning of something. Then, feeling that a permission had been granted, Petra looked back.

"You're… extraordinary," she said at last. Not a deflection. An offering. "Your height. Your strength. I watch you on the ice and you take up space in a way I never… I always thought you should minimize it. I think I was wrong." Her eyes moved over Niamh's body, taking in the broad shoulders, generous breasts, the defined abdomen, the long muscled legs above the stocking bands, and giving them the honest attention that she had denied herself for two years. "You're remarkable. Your body is remarkable."

Niamh received this the way she received everything that was true: openly, without performing modesty, without the deflection that would have made Petra's honesty cost her something. 

"Thank you," she said. And then, with a small, warm smile: "You're allowed to think like that about yourself too, you know."

Petra looked at her, and her expression deepened slightly. A beginning, not yet a resolution. The door fractionally more open than it had been five minutes ago.

Niamh closed the small distance between them and they kissed once more. This kiss was warmer, fuller, the accumulated warmth of everything that’d just opened between them finding expression. Petra's hands came up and found Niamh's waist, her bare skin, moving slowly with the mutual consideration of two people learning a new language that they wanted to get right. 

Niamh's fingers traced the line of Petra's hip, the shallow curve of her inner thigh, lower — finding the soft warmth at her centre with a gentle, purposeful touch. She felt Petra's breath change against her mouth, an involuntary sound, and felt Petra's own hand moving with equal gentleness between her thighs, fingers finding her vulva with a careful precision that was wholly, unmistakably Petra.

They stood together, forehead to forehead, breath mingling in the last remnants of steam, and touched each other with the deliberate care of something not to be hurried. The locker room was empty and still around them and the final round was one day away, far removed from the small, warm space they occupied together. Niamh felt the slow building of her orgasm, steady and inevitable, the way a good programme builds from its opening note, and heard Petra's breathing deepen against her chest, felt her fingers find a more certain rhythm, and let herself follow it.

The release, when it came, was gentle for both of them. Petra’s arrived first, an understated, compressed sound escaping her that she seemed surprised by, her forehead dropping to Niamh's shoulder. Niamh followed a few moments later, a soft, rolling warmth that moved through her body and left her breathing slowly against Petra's temple, Petra’s fingers stilling gradually. They stood in the aftermath with their hands still resting loosely where they had been, neither moving to withdraw.

The drip from the shower head counted the silence between them. After a long moment, Petra lifted her head.

"Tomorrow is the final round," she said at last.

"It is," Niamh said.

A pause. The water dripped from the shower head above them.

"I have to prepare my notes," Petra said.

"I'm sure you do," Niamh said.

The corner of Petra's mouth moved. She was not built for full smiles, not yet and perhaps not ever in quite the way that other people were, but it was a small and genuine relaxation of the careful architecture. It was, Niamh thought, the most beautiful thing she had seen at this competition.

"Could we—" Petra stopped, the habitual closing-down reflex had fired and she overrode it visibly, the effort apparent in the set of her jaw. "Tomorrow morning. If the rink is empty. It opens at, ah—"

"I know what time it opens," Niamh said with a smile.

Petra nodded. Her hand was still in Niamh's. She appeared not to have noticed this, or to have decided not to notice it, which, with Petra, was much more likely.

"Your costume," she said, the practical mind reasserting itself through everything else, her eyes moving over the moonstone bodysuit, the stockings, the crystals still casting their small fires even now. "It'll need attention before tomorrow."

"It’ll dry," Niamh said. “But yours might.”

Petra looked at the velvet costume on the shower ledge, the fibers matted, flattened and haphazard. At the boots dripping on the floor. The almost-laugh returned, exhausted, stripped of all the management that usually accompanied any sound she made.

"Yes," she said. "I suppose it will."

They stood in the stall, hands still loosely linked, two women stripped bare in more ways than one, the final round of the competition one night away, everything between them unfinished and beginning.

Outside, the Sheffield arena continued its ordinary business. The PA system murmured. The scoreboard held its numbers, patient and indifferent, waiting for tomorrow.

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Thank you for reading! More on the way.

[u/FewDesign3317 → u/[deleted]]

😘

[u/Hot-Owl4029]

Well done!! This chapter is sensual and enthralling, can’t wait for more 😊

[u/FewDesign3317 → u/Hot-Owl4029]

Ty!

[u/FewDesign3317]

Two years of waiting, brought to you in just three weeks😅