14 - Jess #2
"Outstanding form,” he said, taking up the leg press next to mine. “I think I’ll give the dead bug position a try on my next set."
"Leave me alone," I muttered, hauling myself upright.
My fingers were slick with nervous sweat as I fumbled with the locking mechanism, trying to figure out which hole the steel pin belonged in.
It was a humiliating reminder that despite my recent progress with Brock, the mechanical geometry of the weight room was still an alien language.
"The third hole from the bottom," Dane said, his voice dropping into a dry, irritating rumble as he dropped his own pin into the maximum weight stack with a loud, metallic clink. "Unless you prefer having your knees crushed into your chin. Which, by all means, go ahead. I’d pay to see that."
"I know what I'm doing," I lied, jamming the pin into place and planting my feet on the sled.
What followed was an unscripted, unspoken competition.
There was no agreement, no countdown, but the second my sled moved, his did too.
The sound of our weight stacks clanking became a spiteful exchange.
Each time I pushed the steel plate away, Dane did it a fraction of a second faster, his movements fluid and infuriatingly precise.
“This isn’t a fair fight,” I pushed out with a puff of air. “Your quads are chunks of granite.”
He wasn’t even out of breath. “Yours are bags of wet sand.”
I focused on the black iron of the ceiling beam, refusing to let him see me track the definition of his calves. He was a dick, a parking-spot thief, and the fact that he possessed the physique of a classical statue was a design flaw in the universe.
"You're bottoming out,” he said, motioning at the row of treadmills that lined the mirrored wall. “What do you say we settle this once and for all with some good old cardio? See if that lawnmower has a top-end speed.”
"You're on."
I swallowed my words pretty early into the run.
The treadmill deck was a conveyor belt to hell.
Within four minutes, the initial burst of spite had dissolved into a desperate struggle for survival.
My pace was set to an aggressive eight miles per hour, lungs working like old bags belonging to a senior citizen who was also a chain smoker.
Each time I glanced over, Dane’s stride looked smoother, his expression more detached. As if he were taking a casual stroll through a park rather than running at a pace that was making my vision blur at the edges.
Then the asshole grabbed the hem of his shirt and peeled it over his head in one fluid, unbothered motion. Without stumbling or slowing down.
Now there was an immense expanse of tanned, glistening skin occupying my peripheral vision.
His back was a landscape of shifting muscle, the long lines flexing with every stride, his obliques cutting deep V-shapes right into the waistband of his shorts.
Sweat ran in neat, transparent tracks down the center of his chest, catching the harsh glare of the fluorescent tubes above.
It was a ridiculous amount of skin, a visual distraction so loud it felt like an assault on my senses.
"What's the matter?" he called out over the whirr of the belts, his chest expanding easily, his voice barely holding a tremor. "Forgetting how to breathe? You're dropping your pace."
"In... your... dreams," I choked out, my throat feeling like it had been scoured with barbed wire. "I'm... pacing... myself."
"You look like you're about to stroke out.”
“You wish,” I said to echo his earlier brand of assholery, and pushed the button to increase the speed, my legs turning into unstable pistons.
The heat in my chest was a toxic mix of physical exhaustion and pure hatred for his smug endurance.
I lasted another two minutes before the numbers on the screen began to swim.
My coordination unraveled all at once, the muscles in my calves turning to water.
All the reasons to keep going didn’t seem so important anymore.
It was either throw in the towel or fall over dead, and I wasn’t in the mood to die just yet.
No matter how shitty it would be to have him gloating in my face.
I hit the emergency stop button, and the belt ground to a sudden, jarring halt. This was supposed to be a moment of relief. Of rest and reprieve after that bonkers competition.
It was none of those things.
My ankles buckled instantly under my weight, the floor tilting sideways as my balance totally dissolved. But although I braced for the impact of the black rubber floor, it never came.
Dane exploded off his moving treadmill without a second of hesitation, his balance remaining perfectly centered as his bare, sweat-slicked arms shot forward into the space between us.
His palms clapped against my ribs, fingers digging into the fabric of my crop top with a fierce grip that stopped my descent three inches from the floor.
“Easy there.” He pulled me up against his chest with a single, effortless surge of power.
The contact was a total sensory overload.
He was burning hot, his bare skin slick against my hands as my arms instinctively flapped out to grip his shoulders for support.
The scent of clean sweat rolled off him in a wave that got my blood rushing harder than it already was.
His chest heaved, the thick muscles of his torso pressing hard against my collarbone, heart thumping like a trapped bird right beneath my palms. For a fraction of a second, the gym became completely silent, the only sound the ragged, synchronized gasps of our breath mingling in the small distance between our faces.
His eyes were startled wide, staring down into mine with an intensity that made the hair on my arms stand up.
He held on so tightly I could feel the individual ridges of his knuckles pressing into my spine.
We stayed like that, suspended in a strange, high-voltage paralysis, his grip unbroken, my fingers still digging into the meat of his bare shoulders.
Then the reality of his bare chest fully processed, and the heat turned into a flash of panic.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I wrenched onto my feet and brought my palm down across his cheek with a resounding, flesh-on-flesh slap that echoed through the Sweat Sanctuary. “Get your goddamn hands off me.”
A bright red print of my fingers instantly bloomed against his skin and to make matters worse, Dane said nothing. Just gave me this smug look as if he were expecting this reaction the whole time.
I stumbled back from the treadmills, my legs trembling from the workout and shock of what I’d just done. And since I couldn’t find any other words to hurl his way, I just turned around and stormed off.