3. Chapter Two
Chapter Two
Creed
I arrive at Forge two minutes before opening. My girl was getting ready early this morning and there was only one reason for her deviation. Me. Showing up at the gym has unsettled her.
The air is dead, the only sound the slap of my runners on the rubber matting. The girl at the desk, pierced, mascaraed, half-asleep, barely scans my ID before waving me through. She doesn’t give a shit about this job, which means I blend in.
The real subject arrives twelve minutes later.
Julianna is focused to the point of psychosis, she cannot tolerate even a microsecond of wasted motion.
Her leggings are a shade lighter than the ones from yesterday, but the cut is the same.
I note the switch, log it against her usual navy-and-black palette.
just in a strappy black sports bra, her tits almost spill out of the top.
She wears her hair high, tight, a single elastic constricting the dark mass.
No makeup. No jewelry. Nothing to catch or snag.
She moves with the efficiency of someone who has known violence, or expects it.
Perhaps I profiled her wrong. She has no fear… which begs the question, why did she need all that security?
She doesn’t see me at first. I have already positioned myself on a treadmill along the perimeter wall, directly across from the stretching zone.
The vantage is perfect: clear, uninterrupted lines of sight to every angle of her warmup.
My pace is steady, seven-point-five, incline set to five percent.
I don’t break a sweat. I’ve been in the gym everyday for most of my life, only not this gym. No, this move was strictly for her.
Her stretching is a ritual. Quadriceps, then calves. Arms overhead, then across. She holds each pose for precisely eight seconds. I count, watching the clock on the wall behind her. She faces the mirror but never looks herself in the eye. That detail pleases me. Self-obsession is for the weak.
She is flawless in form, straight-backed, chin parallel to the floor, shoulders never rounding even as she bends forward. There is power in her hamstrings, a tension visible even beneath the thin spandex. She doesn’t even look at the men ogling her.
The real show begins at the squat rack. She approaches it with no hesitation, loads a barbell with ninety-five pounds, and steps under the bar like she’s greeting an old friend.
Her hands are small, nails trimmed close today, knuckles pale with pressure.
I watch as she sets her feet, shoulder-width, toes ten degrees outward.
Textbook. Her first set is a warmup: fifteen reps, deep, slow, controlled.
I note her breathing, inhale on the way down, exhale with force on the return.
She manages the weight with ease. I could add thirty pounds and she’d probably crush it.
On the second set, she increases the load by twenty-five percent.
Her face tightens, but her form remains perfect.
On the twelfth rep, she falters, a micro-wobble of the left ankle, corrected instantly.
I imagine her in an OR, scalpel pressed to a beating heart, the tremor of exhaustion filtered out by raw will.
I imagine her scalpels. I imagine them cutting into me.
Oh yes, my little kitten is one of the best surgeons to see this city. Low death rate, which is why it’s so surprising the deaths she has clocked. Seemingly easy surgeries, somehow gone awry. Maybe that’s why she needs security. Disgruntled families.
By the third set, she is flagging. Sweat darkens the band of her sports bra, a crescent at the base of her perfect tits. I fixate on the bead of moisture that trickles down her spine. Her hair escapes the elastic, a single strand clinging to her cheekbone. She doesn’t wipe it away.
I remember, with painful clarity, the image of her from last night.
The way her body moved from shower to kitchen, breasts loose and natural, the dark landing strip of hair leading between her thighs.
The memory is so sharp it slices through the present.
My body responds, inevitable, automatic, but I can’t allow the sensation to distract.
I catalog the reaction, file it for later use.
I watch her thighs flex and imagine them squeezing around my hips, around my neck, around my face.
I want to see if she can break me. If she can drown me in the pleasure I’ll pull from her body.
She finishes her squats and moves to the cable machine.
She wipes the bar, then her face. I time her rest interval: exactly sixty-five seconds.
During that span, she glances at me in the mirror, once, then twice, each time pretending not to notice.
I ignore her. It is the only way to control the narrative.
I run my treadmill up to ten. As she shifts to lat pull-downs, I increase my own output, sweat finally breaking along my collar.
My body is a metronome, never deviating from the set pace.
I watch her grip the bar, fingers whitening, elbows locked in a perfect arc.
She closes her eyes on the last three reps, lips pressed together in a thin, bloodless line.
There is pain, but she does not cede an inch to it.
When she finishes, she does not collapse or even sit.
She walks a slow lap around the gym, cooling down, then returns to the mats for core work.
Planks. Side crunches. A sequence of Russian twists that would break lesser mortals.
Her abs contract with each turn, the sweat pooling at the base of her spine.
She’s a fucking goddess. Perfect. Powerful.
Definitely not the prey I pegged her to be, which only serves to make me want her even more.
She glances at me again, this time holding the eye contact for a full second. There is a challenge in it, a question. I do not respond. I simply watch, expressionless, until she looks away.
My body is in revolt, muscles tight, cock straining against the waistband of my shorts, the blood thrumming so loud I can barely hear the gym’s sound system.
Slowing my pace, I bring the treadmill to a halt, and wipe the sweat from my forehead.
Bending at the waist to stretch my quads, then walk to the water fountain.
Every movement is deliberate, slow, a study in control.
She’s unravelling me and I fucking hate it. I’m supposed to be the one tracking her. Watching her. But she’s caught wind of the game, which means my timeline is out the window and it’s time to play Chess.
Julianna finishes her workout, towels off, and heads to the locker room. She doesn’t look back.
I wait sixty seconds, then follow. I don’t go in, obviously.
Instead, I position myself just outside the exit, leaning against a steel beam, stretching my calves.
She comes five minutes later, hair wet, cheeks flushed, skin radiant from the endorphins.
For a moment, I wonder what she’d look like freshly fucked within an inch of her life.
She walks past me without a word, but her eyes flick up, meet mine. For a heartbeat, neither of us moves.
Then she smiles, just at the corner of her mouth, and turns away.
I watch her walk out the door. Her gait is even, unhurried, but there’s the barest suggestion of anticipation in the way her arms swing, the slight forward lean of her posture. She expects me to follow. She wants it.
Only, I’m trying to regain control of the beast that wants to rise. To claim. Right here in the middle of the fucking gym. Turning, I head to the elliptical to cool off, needing time to think about what the hell my plan is now.
By the time I finish, the gym is full, the morning crowd of office drones and housewives filling the air with chatter. I shower, cold water only, then dress in a fresh set of clothes.
Outside, the city is alive with noise and motion. But all I hear is the sound of her breath, the memory of her body, the hunger in her eyes.
I know her pattern now. She knows I know. She won’t deviate again.
And neither will I.
I get back to my loft before noon. The building is older than it appears, converted from some industrial shithole into a grid of luxury units.
Mine is on the upper floor, high enough to catch the sun, high enough to see everything below.
The entry is protected by two locks and a biometric panel that recognizes only my prints.
I don’t trust key cards. They’re too easy to clone.
Inside, the space is immaculate. Concrete floors, walls the color of dirty snow, furniture designed for comfort but not indulgence.
At the center of the main room is my workstation: three monitors, one high-res display looping live feeds from across the city, and a secondary rig devoted solely to the manipulation of digital records.
Part of my job for Kairo is to track the movements of certain high-profile individuals.
Opening the secure connection to Julianna’s condo, I lean back in my chair, getting ready for the show. If the last two nights are any indication, I’m in for another experience. One I’ll memorize, yet again.
She showers. She drinks two glasses of mineral water. She stretches again, barefoot on the white tile. Unlike the previous two days, she heads to her closet.
Black leggings and a long-sleeve shirt, the fabric so thin it nearly vanishes against her skin.
I pause the feed at the exact moment she glances up, as if sensing something.
Her eyes are sharp as she looks directly at the cam, her lips twisting into a smirk.
Zooming in, I screenshot it, capturing the frame, and set it as the background of my secondary monitor.
Perfect.