Fit for Love

3. Kendall

Chapter 3

Kendall

A few seconds earlier

As I fly from the treadmill, time seems to slow, giving me a cruel opportunity to picture myself breaking a limb. Or my neck. Or my tailbone. Either way, I will be so full of negative juju Tierre will fire me for sure.

Assuming I survive.

To my huge surprise, I don’t hit the ground.

Instead, I land upright, smashing into something hard yet pliant and enveloping at the same time.

Something that smells deliciously masculine.

Realizing my eyes are squeezed shut, I open them and… holy fuck.

My savior is built like a Greek statue but with more muscles. His sun-kissed hair is a couple of inches too long, a surfer’s look. Only instead of the ocean, he smells like lime zest, clean skin, and toe-curling sex.

Speaking of sex, his blue-gray eyes are hooded, and I can feel something big and hard against my belly. Something that is definitely not a flashlight.

“Thank you,” I manage to say, albeit a bit breathlessly. I’m really hoping Mr. McScrumptious can’t feel my drumming heartbeat or my pebbled nipples.

“You’re welcome,” he murmurs in a deep, soft voice that reminds me of melted things—like caramel, hearts, and panties.

With effort, I pull myself together—not an easy task since he’s still holding me. Since he didn’t get the hint from my thank-you, I say, “Seriously, you can let go of me now.”

I guess I could also push him away, but I’m not sure I can bring myself to do it—not with all the jolts of sensual energy zapping through my body, leaving gooseflesh in their wake.

Sadly, he listens to me and lets me go.

Grr. Why did I insist on that? I could’ve enjoyed his embrace for a few more minutes before it would’ve seemed too weird… right?

He even steps away—and the idiot that I am, I immediately miss his proximity.

As he stands there, his gorgeously carved face goes through a series of expressions, settling on something dark, which, for some reason, only makes me want to jump back into his arms—or into his bed.

Crap. Focus, Kendall. You’ve sworn off men, remember?

I swallow and pull myself together, again. “Aren’t you going to say something?”

Between the silence and his dark expression, I’m starting to feel all kinds of uncomfortable, and not all of it down south.

“Yes,” he growls. “Don’t you ever, ever, do something like that again. Is that understood?”

My hackles—which I thought I’d lasered off a long time ago—rise. “Ex-fucking-cuse me?”

A muscle in his jaw ticks. “How could you have been so careless? You could’ve hit your head.”

What the fuck? Who the hell does he think he is?

“If I had, I’d still be smarter than you,” I retort caustically.

He blows out a breath. “Is it that hard to attach the safety key?”

So that’s what the thingy is called? “I didn’t realize I had to. I usually run on the street.”

His eyes narrow dangerously. “The street?”

Is he picturing me running through Manhattan traffic? What kind of an idiot does he take me for?

“I run in the park,” I clarify. “‘On the street’ is just a turn of phrase.”

“Which park?” he demands. “Some are worse than the street.”

“East River. Not that it’s any of your business.”

Seriously, what is up with this guy?

He cocks his head. “I’m your fitness trainer, so anything to do with you running is my business.”

“Wait. You’re Ash?”

For some reason, I expected someone more boring-looking. Not to mention dressed in the gym’s uniform instead of short shorts that expose his powerful legs and a tank top that shows enough lickable skin to make one salivate.

He grimaces. “You can call me Ash if you insist, but I prefer to go by?—”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be calling you anything. This whole thing was a mistake. I’m just going to leave.”

He crosses his arms over his impressive chest. “Do you want a trainer who’d let you break your arms? Your neck?”

I roll my eyes. “What I want is a rush of endorphins to cheer me up. This—whatever you’re doing—is accomplishing the opposite.”

“You came for endorphins?” he asks, and the gleam in his eyes tells me he’s picturing a completely different endorphin-generating scenario from the one I meant.

And there I go again. My panties are officially damp.

“This conversation is over.” I turn to leave, as much to get his perfect face out of my sight as to make a statement.

“Wait,” he says—and fuck, his voice alone is doing things to my insides. He steps around me to block my way. “If you don’t want a session with me, let me at least show you a few machines that can help you get those endorphins.”

What he seems to leave unsaid is that these machines are the second-best way to get endorphins when he’s involved. The number one way is, of course, to fuck his brains out. Or is it my brains?

Also, why is “brains” plural in that expression?

I give him my best glare. “You really think I can’t use a machine without your supervision?”

He smirks, and damn him, it’s a sexy smirk. “Use safely? I think we just saw the answer to that.”

I resist the urge to growl. “You’re insufferable. What happened was a freak accident, nothing more.”

“If you say so.” He pointedly glances at the cursed treadmill.

“Let me show you how little I need your so-called help.” I stomp over to the nearest machine—an upright bench with two paddle-like things at waist level. I have no idea what it does, but there are instructions on it, and I learned how to read when I was five.

“That one?” He arches his eyebrow in an infuriatingly cocky way. “You sure you don’t want to make your point somewhere else?”

“Stop following me. Or shut up.”

“This should be interesting.” He folds his arms across his chest again and watches me, eyes gleaming with amusement.

I read the small font.

Sit upright, with back against the pad.

Hmm. As I plop onto the seat, the paddle thingies align with my legs, which I should have expected but somehow didn’t. This gives me an unpleasant suspicion, like maybe I’ve seen this exercise before, on a less fancy machine and?—

“Hip abduction?” he murmurs. “Interesting.”

I turn from the instructions to glare at him, but it’s a mistake, insofar as I get ensnared by his ridiculously handsome looks again. “Abduction is not hip, no matter how cool the aliens.”

He snorts. “Hip as in those that don’t lie in that song by Shakira.” He gestures at his own narrow hips, but that just draws my attention to the nearby bulge in his shorts. “As to abduction, it means your limbs will move away from your midsection. Both words are homonyms, but I bet you knew that.”

I snort. “I don’t know what a homonym is, but it sounds vaguely homophobic.”

It also sounds like Ash might’ve gone to college and/or read a book, which makes him impossibly more attractive.

Crap. Even his exasperated sigh is sexy.

“Go on then,” he says after said sigh. “Let’s see if you’re as smart with this machine as you are with your mouth.”

Is that his way of asking me for a blowjob?

No. It’s a challenge, so I read the rest of the instructions… and my heart sinks. My earlier suspicion was correct. This is that machine where you push apart the paddles with your knees to end up with your legs spread, like you’re begging someone to fuck you—or summoning a gynecologist.

Usually, in an empty gym or if surrounded by women, I wouldn’t have a problem spreading my legs, no matter how obscenely wide. But to do so with Ash staring, and while I’m so wet…

“Nope.” I leap to my feet. “There will be no abductions today.”

He smiles—and it’s like a glorious sunrise after a hurricane. “I can show you a better way to work those same muscles, using movements that are more natural.”

“Oh, yeah? Let me see this alleged way.”

He leads me to a machine with cables sticking out of it and grabs two thingies that look suspiciously like a collar a sub would wear in BDSM—with a metal ring attached and everything.

Is this workout about to turn kinky? And… do I want it to?

“You put these around your ankles,” he says, demonstrating on himself.

He then clips the ring on the collar—or shackle—to the cable on the bottom of the machine, which still looks kind of kinky now that my mind has gone there. With four of these shackles, two on wrists and two on ankles, one could be restrained in a spread-eagle position and then?—

“Next, you do this.” He extends his bound leg to the side, lifting the weight attached to the cable.

Fuck me. All his muscles—but especially those in his powerful legs—flex in the process of this demonstration, doing damage to my sanity and panties.

“And then with the other leg.” He clips his other ankle in and stands with his back to me, giving me a view of his perfectly sculpted back and ass.

“Now.” He frees himself from the shackles and hands them to me. “Your turn.”