19 - Jess
Jess
Booking it out of the gym, I reached the Bronco a few paces behind Dane. In time to slam the driver’s door closed the second he’d opened it.
Dane jumped a full inch. “Are you insane?”
“You don't get to walk out after what you just did in there.” The adrenaline from the weights room boiled over into hostility.
He took a long breath, his fingers loosening on the door handle as he leaned his hip against it. Nowhere near as pissed off as I was. He looked down at me, but the usual edge in his eyes was missing. Brock’s little revelation about the training room sucker punch seemed to have blunted Dane’s drive.
“First you want me gone, now you're stopping me from leaving? Jesus, make up your mind, woman.”
“I want you to explain why you're being such a dick,” I countered, stepping directly into his personal space.
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“You owe me a reason,” I seethed, and heard myself getting louder despite the painfully public nature of this confrontation. But I didn’t care. “This has gone on long enough, Dane.”
His eyes darted to the entrance where two members in matching neon lifting straps came out, their conversation dying out as they stared at us.
“Get in the truck. You’re making a scene.”
“No,” I said, planting my feet with my arms folded over my chest. “I’m staying right out here. Where there are witnesses.”
A surprised twitch appeared at the corner of his mouth, the first sign of amusement he’d shown all day. He indulged me, some of the tension seeping out of his shoulders. “Witnesses? In case you haven’t noticed, I save my right hooks for people my size.”
“You're a petulant child who can't handle the fact that I don't look at you the way you want,” I said, testing the boundaries of Brock's theory.
The amusement fell from his face, replaced by a tight, defensive stillness. He shifted his weight, shoes grinding a stray piece of gravel into powder beneath his toe. “Brock talks too much. He thinks every woman who walks through that door is an audition, and he projects his bullshit onto me.”
“Then look me in the eye and tell me it’s not true.”
He reached for the door handle again, and again, I slammed it shut.
The vibration rattled through my wrist. Dane glared at me, but before he could make another try for the door, I wrestled his keys from his grip and dropped them straight down the scooped front of my crop top.
The cold metal lodged firmly against my warm cleavage.
I stared at him, my chin tilted upward in an explicit challenge. For all his bluster and toxic posturing, he wouldn't dare reach in to get them back.
He let out a defeated sigh. “I’m the child? What are you doing? Seriously.”
“I'm getting to the bottom of this,” I said, my voice rising enough to make a woman unloading grocery bags three cars over stop and watch. “I don't know you. You don't know me. But for some reason, you’ve decided to give me hell. Tell me what I did to make you this hateful. If you don't…”
Dane's eyes fixed onto the small bulge where the keys jutted against my top, and he cleared his throat. “You think you have me figured out, don’t you?”
“If I did, we wouldn’t be here… doing this.”
He pushed off the truck, his chest encroaching on my space until the heat of his torso burned my face. “You're distracting. There. Now give me back my keys.”
“Wh— distracting?” I searched his face for a clue, but he was a veteran at hiding things. Clearly.
“You walk in here with your smart mouth and your cute ass, acting like… I don’t know. Just treating the place like—”
“I treat the place like a gym,” I yelled, my frustration reaching a peak. “I pay my membership dues, do my squats, and did you just say I have a cute ass?”
A group of three Muscle Mansion regulars came out, their laughter dying out as my voice carried across the parking lot.
Dane’s neck flushed an angry crimson. “Give me the keys, Jess.”
“No.” Unfortunately for him, I didn’t give a shit about having an audience. “Not until you tell me the truth.”
Dane refused to budge. He let out a dry, breathy chuckle, his eyes darkening as he tilted his face toward mine. “For a smart woman, you really don't catch on fast, do you?”
“Put me out of my dumb misery, then. Spell it out.”
“If I didn't give a shit about you, I would've let you split your skull open on that treadmill.”
The realization settled into my gut. A dense weight that rang with what Brock was just telling me inside. My pride recovered before my face could change color.
“That proves absolutely nothing,” I scoffed, although my voice sounded thin. “It means you have decent reflexes. It means you didn't want a lawsuit on your hands.”
He held that infuriating, arrogant composure that always made me wanna do two things at once: slap him, and slide my hand up his thigh.
“You were annoying, so I messed with you,” he said with a shrug. “And when I got a reaction, well, I kept going.”
“So you admit it?” His flawed logic made my skin prickle, and heat rose up the back of my neck. “You've been intentionally tormenting me for a month because you have a crush on me?”
“I thought you liked it. That it was our thing.”
“Our thing? Our thing is you being a prick and me hating you for it?”
“Keep your voice down,” he murmured, his eyes flicking to a couple loading gym bags into a sedan nearby. “And you don’t hate me.”
“Where in your pea-sized brain does this make any kind of sense?” I demanded, matching his step forward until our sneakers touched.
Dane locked his gaze onto mine, his pupils swallowing the color of his irises until his eyes looked like midnight. The air between us pulled so tight I could trace the pulse jumping in his throat by the way it affected mine.
“The way you looked at me in the locker room that one time,” he whispered. I remembered it too well to pretend otherwise. “It told me everything I needed to know.”
The defense system in my brain collapsed. The expanse of his bare skin, and the shameful, greedy seconds I’d spent cataloging every line and vein of his dick... My mouth opened, but only dry, stammering nonsense came out.
“I do hate you.” My voice was small and useless.
“No you don't.”
“I hate you,” I insisted, my fingers curling into fists as blood rushed to my ears. “I hate how smug and arrogant you are. I hate that you punched Brock. And I hate how you—”
Dane’s mouth crashed into mine, his arms gripping my waist so tightly I couldn’t move. Without breaking contact, he spun me around until my shoulders hit the driver’s door. Then… in the face of absolutely no resistance… he slipped his tongue into my waiting mouth.
The collision totally blindsided my nervous system. Hunter’s touch was an invitation. Brock’s was a command. But Dane was a demolition crew. There was no easing into it. He took my lower lip between his teeth and tugged until a soft, desperate sound fell out of me.
Every logical thread in my head snapped.
I’d spent weeks convincing myself this man was my personal rival, the ultimate obstacle to my peace of mind, but the friction of his tongue against mine told a different story.
The undercurrent that existed since our first argument on that first day erupted into something thick and scorching.
My hands flew to his neck, my fingers burying in the short, damp hairs at his nape, pulling him closer until the bulge in his gym shorts dug into my stomach.
The volume of his muscle pinned me flat against the Bronco, his thigh wedging between mine and forcing my legs apart.
I didn't think about Brock’s purple cheekbone.
Or about Hunter’s desk. I just matched Dane’s aggressive hunger, kissing him back with a vicious, starved intensity that echoed every insult we’d ever traded.
When he finally broke the kiss, his breath came in short, hot bursts that fanned across my wet lips. Neither of us blinked.
Slowly, his fingers trailed down my neck, the rough skin of his palm sending a streak of static electricity straight down my spine.
I gasped when his knuckles brushed the soft skin of my chest, sliding beneath the fabric of my top with deliberate care.
His thumb grazed the side of my breast, the contact making my core contract with a sudden throb.
As if sensing it, he smiled faintly. Then kept going until his fingers closed around the jagged shape of his keys.
He drew them out, his eyes never leaving mine for a single microsecond. The heat between us could have melted the asphalt.
“Get in,” he said, his voice thick.
He popped the handle, the door swinging open behind me. I didn't give myself time to let the cynical internal monologue convince me I was losing my mind. I slid across the leather interior to the passenger seat, my thighs trembling from the workout and the kiss.
Dane climbed in after me, his hulking mass filling the cabin as he slammed the door, shutting out the heat and the stares from passersby. The engine roared to life and I stared straight ahead, fully aware I’d just stepped over a ledge with no safety net.