Susanne Novan - Driven

She looked around in awe, eyes wide, and realized, for the first time, just a little of what it was like to be Dylan Lambert.

"Dear God," she whispered, holding a hand to the pulse hammering in her throat. She found herself fighting down a sudden, almost overwhelming and totally unexpected attack of claustrophobia as the crowd seemed to grow and swell before her wide, staring eyes. Voices and faces merged into one

writhing and almost malevolent entity, swelling toward her as if intent on ripping out her very heart and displaying it on a trophy stand on their collective mantle.

A warm hand brushing lightly against her shoulder grounded her slightly, and she looked up, the extent of her anguish mirrored in the lenses of Dylan’s

sunglasses.

"How in the world do you handle this?" she croaked, voice as dry as the sand beneath her feet.

Dylan looked up, sparing the immense crowd a casual glance, which further sparked their mania, before looking back to Cat. A broad shoulder lifted briefly in a casual shrug. "Just something you get used to, I suppose."

"I’d never get used to this," Cat said, stopping an internal shiver from becoming an external one. "Never in a million years."

The corner of Dylan’s mouth quirked. "Oh, you will. It won’t be long before it’s your name they’re shouting like this."

"Not like this," Cat replied with conviction. "Never like this."

Dylan relaxed her lips into a full smile. "We’ll see." She touched Cat’s shoulder again, long fingers surreptitiously stroking the soft flesh there. "C’mon.

They can’t start without us."

Cat forced her legs to move to the small seating area that was reserved for them. The screaming crowd was still much too close to the court for her tastes, but a long line of beefy security guards seemed intent on keeping the writhing mass away from the players.

Relaxing a bit, she smoothed the tuck of her tight, sweat-wick shirt into her black and purple running shorts and squatted down to stretch her still tense muscles, her back to the crowd.

Her routine was interrupted by an almost sexual moan from the crowd behind her. Turning her head, she froze, and only barely saved herself from an

ignominious fall to her backside as her eyes, thankfully hidden behind the dark glasses, widened to the size of saucers.

Dylan had just stripped away her black windbreaker sweats to reveal the outfit of a professional beach volleyball player. Black microshorts, tiny enough to pass for a thong, covered her pelvis and the very tops of her ropy, muscled thighs. Above, she wore a snug sports-bra type top, ending just below her

breasts and displaying the cut, banded and rippling muscles of her abdomen, shoulders and arms, accentuated by her deep, almost black tan.

Whatever moisture had managed to return to Cat’s mouth was gone in that instant, as she felt a wave of desire, far eclipsing anything she had ever known, pass over her, coating her in its liquid heat.

Dylan flashed her a grin, and Cat, though she never knew exactly how, managed to pull herself upright on legs filled with pudding. As Dylan passed close

by, Cat fixed her with a look. "You expect me to actually playnow?"

Dylan’s grin broadened.

"Volleyball, I mean."

Dylan chuckled. "C’mon, Shortchange. Let’s show em what we’ve got."

"I think you’re showing them plenty already," Cat replied, not surprised at all to hear the note of jealousy threading its way up through her vocal cords. She could literally feel the eyes of the crowd crawling over her partner. Shaking her head to break the spell, she resolutely trailed after Dylan. "Well," she remarked to the air at large as she assumed her place behind the service line, "at least I’m not nervous anymore."

*******

The whistle blew.

"Point and game, Lambert and Hodges, 15-1."

After shaking their opponents’ hands, Dylan and Cat strolled back to their shaded nook to the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd. Dylan grabbed a water

bottle from an overly-attentive young line boy and chugged it down. Cat rubbed the sand from her body with a towel, and stared daggers at said line boy

until he took the hint and feasted his eyes somewhere safer.

Like Afghanistan.

The game had been a walkover. Cat displayed a wicked, curving overhand serve no-one—including herself—knew she had, and Dylan was, quite simply,

Dylan. Their opponents never had a chance, though they gave it a game effort.

The tournament was a modified round robin format, with the six teams broken up into two three-team groups. Each team would play the others in its group

in a one game to fifteen winner take all match. Then the winners of each group would play one another for the right to face the world’s top professional

two-woman beach volleyball team.

And that right would likely come with a royal butt-whipping.

Today, Thursday, was reserved for the preliminary rounds. Friday would host the group winner face off and the "championship" game against the pros.

The weekend itself was reserved for the true showpiece of the tournament, the annual three-on-three basketball pro-am.

The fans, however, were enjoying the preliminary "festivities".

And if the beer vendor, who was so intent on ripping the rest of Dylan’s scant clothing off with his eyes that he walked into a support post and was

currently wearing his product, was any indication, volleyball would be back next year for certain.

Cat looked over at Dylan, who was sitting regally in her canvas chair, looking totally cool and unruffled, and felt a brief stab of envy. Cat herself was hot, sweaty, sore, and had a pound of sand in places where sand had no place being.

She was also a hormonal wreck. It was bad enough seeing the woman of her dreams half clothed and facing her. But when Cat stood behind the service

line and looked at that perfectly sculpted back, legs longer than the Nile, and a posterior worthy of the envy of every god, past, present and future, her mind was insisting on sending her images that would make a streetwalker blush.

People wondered where her wicked serve came from. She didn’t.

Sexual frustration, plain and simple.

And the very object of that frustration was walking toward her, oiled, sleek, and mouth-wateringly gorgeous.

"Ready?"

Any more ready and I’d explode into a million pieces right in front of the crowd.

She didn’t say that out loud, of course.

At least, she didn’t think she did.

By the look on Dylan’s face, however, there was a distinct possibility that her thoughts had been well and truly read.

Cat rose with a sigh. It was going to be a very long day.

*******

Leaning her shoulder and head against the cool cement of the tunnel, Cat more or less patiently waited for Dylan to finally break away from every Tom,

Dick, and Harriet who clamored for her much valued attention. She’d faced the press and crowds for a small eternity herself, but it was obvious exactly to whom they all paid homage. Which suited Cat just fine. The crowd gave her a major case of the willies.

She smiled, though, remembering one small girl, her hair all gone from chemotherapy treatments, and how she’d pushed with determination through the

writhing mass, Cat’s rookie card in her small hand. Her right leg ended in a prosthesis, which made her determination all the more fierce and, to Cat,

exceptional. The young girl had given her a shy, gap-toothed grin, and held up her card to be signed. Cat was, the girl said, her absolute favorite player in the whole world.

Smitten, and damn near tears, she’d signed the card, knowing that the pure, undiluted joy of that simple act would be something she would always