Page 16 of Gym With Benefits

The crick in my neck protested as I stretched my back to sit up straight. Poring over these love letters had totally derailed me. Marcus wouldn’t be too happy about that, but the pronounced, poetic yearning over time and space had unspooled something in me.

“New project,” I said, rubbing my eyes. It was always a shock to my system, looking up from the pinpoint lighting illuminating the past and seeing the world as it actually was. “Got a little sidetracked.”

“As one does,” Walter said, flicking his bangs out of his face. “Anything good?”

Only the greatest love story in the history of ever.

“The usual.” I shrugged out of my lab coat and discarded the gloves. The process usually severed the thread between myself and history. Clean. Absolute. Until the next time I walked into this basement.

But today was different. Today I suspected Constance and her beloved ‘R’ would be following me home.

Leaving the museum always felt the same. After breathing recycled air and the sour tang of decomposition for hours on end, breaching the doors was like crossing an invisible atmospheric border.

“Need a lift?” I squinted into the sunlight, my skin prickling through the change in climate. Controlled to chaotic. Just like that.

Walter flashed a sheepish half-smile. “Actually, I’m not going straight home today, but thanks.”

That was all he gave me, but the look on his face was far less mysterious than his words. He had a date. And if he wasn’t even going to freshen up and change, that meant he’d found a woman who matched his particular air of dishevelednerditis.

The spring in his step as he walked off is what finally changed my mind. A suffragette from the early 1900s and a lanky tech geek a millennium later seemingly had no problem finding love. And here I was, still salty over a cheating ex from college.

“Well, guess what, Walter,” I muttered to his ghost as my Civic coughed to life, “I’m not going straight home either. I have plans. I happen to have a life. Interests that don’t involve harsh fluorescent lighting.”

Less than twenty minutes later, the harsh fluorescent lights of Capitol Fitness greeted me. Far more impersonal than thegreeting I got from Hunter, who all but launched himself from behind the front desk.

“Jess!” A genuine brightness took over his features, doing wonders for my bruised ego. “You’re back. And on a Monday. I’d say I’m surprised, but I prefer to think our facility possesses a magnetic pull.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, though the tension in my shoulder gave way a fraction. My work pants and slightly wrinkled button-down felt totally out of place amidst the sea of Lycra milling about the juice bar, and I clutched my gym bag a little tighter. “I had a day. A very long, microscopic day under a fume hood. If I don't expel the residual fumes of the centuries-old dead, I might actually lose my mind.”

“Say no more.” The digital reader beeped as he cleared my entry, his eyes dancing with curious amusement. “What’s the prescription today? More aggressive pacing on the elliptical to shut out the noise?”

“No ellipticals,” I said, the memory of Dane’s smug face threatening to surface before I forcefully jammed it down. “I need actual exertion. Something heavy enough to derail my brain train.”

Hunter’s voice dropped to a pitch that shrank the distance between us, and a shrewd look flashed across his face. “If you want to truly annihilate a bad day, you need the iron.”

“Iron?”

“Go hit the weights in the back chamber,” he said, motioning to the muscle mansion with a marked jerk of his chin. “There’s nothing better for burning off a historic amount of stress than forcing your body to lift something that fights back.”

“Iron. Got it.” I walked toward the locker room, then stopped. “By the way…” My gaze raked over his lean, muscular form fromhead to toe when he turned back. This time his reaction was better than the smile I got when I’d walked in. I could’ve sworn he blushed. “...it’s not the facility that has a magnetic pull.”

His eyes flashed a sharper blue but I didn’t stick around to see the rest of it, smiling to myself as I pushed into the locker room.

It felt different today. I paused at the threshold, keeping my back pressed against the drywall while I craned my neck to peek around the thick panel of frosted glass. The immediate entryway was clear, and I slipped inside, moving with a silent, hyper-alert vigilance more fitting for a cold war thriller than a luxury fitness center.

But after what happened last time— Dane’s beautiful, semi-erect dick shoved into my mind and sent an electric, horny jolt straight to my pussy.

“Not today,” I whispered, carefully navigating the row of mahogany lockers with intense caution. Every blind turning point was a potential hazard zone.

Thankfully, the way to the last empty locker was devoid of naked meatstacks, and I dropped my gym bag on the bench. First win for the day. Promising. Now all I needed was to go out there and discover that the Great Dane decided to skip the gym today.

“What the—?”

My hoodie and tights were missing. Instead, my fingers met the slick, highly compressed texture of midnight-blue nylon and a matching, armored sports bra. A neon pink sticky note fluttered out as I lifted them from my bag.

Time to stop hiding, Seymore. Go get 'em. – D.

"You sneaky motherfucker." I hit his contact and tossed my phone onto the bench. One ring was all it took before his voice floated into the empty locker room.