Bound by Tradition by Roxy Harte Page A

sweetly, wondering which rumor he’d heard about me, because why else would he be looking, right? He turned his back to me. Whatever.
    Just for the hell of it, because he really was that amazing to look at, I watched him pull on a fresh shirt. My jaw dropped at the sight of his flexing back muscles. He looked over his shoulder and, seeing that I was still looking, laughed.
    Arrogant jerk.
    I hurried toward the stadium, irritated for being such an idiot and allowing myself to get distracted. I had to get my head back in the game.
    The women’s locker room stank of old sweat, dirty socks, and fruit-scented perfume. The room was filled with the nation’s top female martial arts competitors in varying stages of dress and nervousness, most of them young, too young. I saw a mother pulling a girl’s hair into a ponytail. She looked to be about six or seven and had tears glinting in her eyes. She watched me enter. Then her mother’s head turned, and she looked at me too.
    Walking past them, I heard the mother whisper, “See, you don’t see Stephanie crying because she has to have her hair pulled back. You want to grow up and be tough like her? Knock off the baby face.”
    It was all I could do to keep walking.
    As I stripped, I was well aware every eye watched, and was doubly aware of the whispers that followed my every move. I heard my name, said with awe, repeated so many times. Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie . It was said as many times in sneer. I’d come to hate my name. So much so that at college I went by my middle name, Ellyse.
    This wasn’t my first competition; it wouldn’t be my last, but I was getting too old for the childish games that seemed to always be part of it.
    As I was measured up by the older girls—stared down, crowded—I accepted it for what it was. Competitors trying to psych me out. My strategy was always the same. I was the portrait of bored indifference. They didn’t need to know that my heart was pounding or that my palms were sweating.
    As I pulled on my sports bra, I was aware of every eye taking in my skin, my flat abs, small breasts, muscled thighs. There were fans in the room, but there were also enemies who wished I wasn’t there at all. Some hoped this competition would be my fifteenth straight regional sweep. That I would take home three gold medals. Again. The others wanted to knock me off my pedestal. I tried not to think about it. I especially tried not to think about the newcomer to the scene—a twenty-two-year-old from San Diego rumored to be as good as me.
    Maybe I would meet my match. Maybe I wouldn’t. I was thinking about the hot guy in the parking lot and how unfair life was.
    I wished I knew his name, wished I knew what divisions he would be competing in, so that after I finished, I could watch him. Sure, I still thought he was gay and a jerk, but he was the hottest guy in the place, the first new face in ages, and besides, looking never hurt anyone.
    I was too horny for my own good. Too lonely.
    Last official date? God, high school prom, a long time ago…with one of the guys from the dojo. So not a good time.
    Last sex? A seminar in Ontario, four months ago…with a hot stranger, who wouldn’t kiss and tell.
    Thank God for my vibrator. I thought about it tucked into the bottom of my backpack and was once again thankful that the hotel had messed up our reservation, putting my room on the thirteenth floor and my father on the fifteenth. There was nothing worse than trying to get off with a vibrator while worried the sound could be heard through the walls. The hotel was better than home though and made me wonder if I would ever be able to afford my own place. Never, if I didn’t start working more hours, but it was hard to fit the few hours I was working in between school and my training schedule.
    What I really wanted though, even more than my own place, was for time to date. Then maybe sex could be more often than the occasional one-night stand in a hotel room with a