9 - Brock #2
"Before we start," I said, tapping away on the iPad. "Goals. We talking cardiovascular endurance, functional strength, or are we chasing a specific aesthetic?"
Her mouth twisted into a cynical line. "Let’s go with spite. I want whatever physical configuration is required to make my ex-best friend choke on her own wedding cake."
"Ah, the revenge body,” I said with a small laugh. “A classic motivator. Petty, but highly effective for high-intensity intervals."
"I prefer the term surgical strike," she countered, though the glibness in her voice faltered as I stepped into her space.
"Let's see the foundation then. Overhead squats. No weight, just the PVC pipe. I need to see where you’re tight."
I handed her the hollow plastic tube. As she lifted it, the movement pulled her crop top higher, exposing the soft, pale skin of her midriff. I moved behind her, my shadow swallowing hers. "Drop. Keep it slow."
She descended, her knees wobbling. I placed my hands on her inner thighs, my thumbs pressing into the muscle to force her knees outward. "Don't let them cave. Keep the tension against my palms."
"Easy for you to say," she said, her breath coming in short bursts. "You’re built like a support beam. I’m built like a librarian."
"You’re built just fine," I murmured against her ear, my hands sliding up to her hips to guide the tilt of her pelvis.
The contact was a jolt of current I wasn’t ready for.
The fabric of her leggings was slick, but the heat underneath was a living thing.
I could feel the strain of her muscles fighting the load and stepped closer, my chest brushing her shoulder blades to steady her.
The air between us was a thick slurry of ozone and her skin.
Not the floral extract Juno wore, but something deeper, like rainwater on hot pavement.
"Perfect. Now do it again.”
I spent the next thirty minutes moving around her, a constant cycle of tactile corrections. My fingers splayed against the heat of her spine to support her through rows. Guiding her arms during overhead presses, the friction of my chest against her back a slow, searing burn.
I reeled her in, feeling the way she melted into my touch, then stepped back the second things got too hot to be simply working out.
We moved through the circuit I’d planned with a clinical, punishing efficiency. I was the architect, and she was the raw material. But the blueprint kept blurring. Every station became a fresh exercise in sensory restraint.
On the lat pulldown, I stood behind her, my chest a hair’s breadth from her hair. I reached around to place my palms over her hands on the bar, guiding the path of the iron.
"Drive with the elbows," I said into the space behind her ear. "Imagine you’re tucking them into your back pockets."
The scent of her warm, salt-licked skin caused chaos with my breathing.
When she pulled the weight down, her back arched, the midnight-blue nylon stretching to its limit over the muscles of her spine.
The rhythmic hitch of her breath against my ribcage was a synchronized stutter that made the walls close in.
I could only hope Hunter was busy somewhere else. Because if he walked back here and saw this—
“Am I doing it right?”
We’d transitioned to the cable machine for woodchoppers. I had to wrap my arms almost entirely around her to correct the rotation of her torso. "Power comes from the hips, Jess. Pivot. Don't just pull."
My hands gripped her waist to force the turn, thumbs digging into the compressed dip of her sides. She was focused, her jaw set in a line of pure defiance, but her skin was flushing a deep, vivid pink wherever I touched.
"Again.”
The more I tried to keep a breath of distance between us, the more Jess searched for contact. She’d lean back, stopping only once she touched me again.
It was hell.
We hit the bench for a set of tricep extensions. I dropped low at the head of the bench, my knees framing her head as I cupped her elbows to keep them from flaring. The pulse in her arms was a runaway train beneath my fingertips.
Each time her hand came toward my face, her eyes locked on mine with a startling, wide-eyed intensity.
The air between us hummed with the friction of skin on skin and the punishing labor of her lungs.
I let the tension build until it got way too loud, then I broke the contact and moved to the next rack before the urge to pull her off the bench could take root.
By the time the final set of rows was done, Jess shook with exhaustion, and I shook with a pressure that had nothing to do with the workout.
I pointed to the mat. “Time to cool down. Let’s stretch it out.”
She hesitated, uncertain, her mind running a million miles behind her eyes.
“If we skip this part, you’ll seize up with cramps in the middle of the night and tell me I don’t know how to do my job.”
The smile did it.
Lying on her back, I stood over her and took her right leg, draping her calf over my shoulder as I kneeled between her thighs.
It was a precarious, intimate geometry I’d performed a thousand times with a thousand different clients.
But with Jess, the physics were different.
I pressed forward, using my body weight to deepen the stretch.
And my God, the sound that came out of her…