Fucking supplier – I’ll kill them.

Vasily calmly dismounted, feeling the ripped material, his skin. He looked at his soigneur.

‘You have another, Rachel?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ Rachel replied, closing the door on the fans craving every last glimpse, any glimpse, of the great Russian. Again, the two of them freed Vasily’s body from its colourful sheath and he stood naked and contemplative whilst Rachel delved around a bag for another.

‘Have you grown?’ she asked Vasily, eyeing him objectively, or as objectively as such a particularly fine specimen of masculinity could be viewed by a young woman.

‘No,’ Vasily said, ‘I am as I always am. No change.’

‘Bloody suppliers,’ Rachel elaborated with a thunderous frown.

‘Yes, bloody them,’ said Vasily ingenuously, liking the semantic taste of the word but intending no insult. Rachel puffed clouds of talcum powder over Vasily’s torso and patted his skin lightly. And then, momentarily, she wavered. She stroked him gently down his chest. Smoothing the talc. No, stroking his body. She turned him around. Again, she wavered. She looked at his back – no, gazed at his back – before applying more powder. Stroking gives better coverage than patting. Yeah, right, Rachel. She took the new lycra, assessing the material with much concentration, trying to pay no attention to the downy blond hairs furled about his forearms. She’d never noticed them before; she certainly wasn’t going to start noticing them now.

How can I not have noticed them before? How many times must I have massaged this rider?

Was Vasily staring at her? She didn’t think so. How could he be, with his Time Trial looming? His eyes might be focused on her, but she acknowledged that his mind was already engrossed in the Computaparc course. She’d obviously quite lost hers. She helped Vasily dress again, checked the seams of the new skinsuit and asked him to bend, to stretch.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’ll last you the 54 and a half k and the short trip to the podium this evening.’ She winked at him supportively, wished him good luck and told him to go and finish his tuning up.

‘Thank you, Rachel,’ Vasily replied, continuing to stare at her so intently that she wiped her hand across her chin to remove whatever it was that had so caught his attention.

‘Go!’ Rachel said, glancing at her watch and wanting Vasily to be warming up five minutes ago.

‘Yes,’ said the rider. And then Vasily Jawlensky kissed Rachel McEwen. Quite quickly but very intensely. Too swiftly for her to have pulled away; too adeptly for her to have wanted to. He encircled her waist, lowered his head and took his lips to hers, slipping his tongue into her mouth immediately on contact. She’d never had a kiss like it. His eyes were open and so were hers. Their tongues danced slowly. It lasted seconds yet it was luxurious and measured rather than urgent. Then Vasily went directly to his bike and continued to warm up in earnest. Rachel closed the campervan door and sat down heavily on the bench. She placed her head in her hands and took deep breaths. She could smell talcum powder. She inhaled deeply.