Page 27 of Gym With Benefits

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…

“It’s good, right?”

She bit the inside of her lip. “It hurts like a motherfucker.”

We laughed, and I pushed deeper, which shut her up real quick.

The proximity was a disaster. Her breathing was ragged, her chest rising and falling inches from my knee. Tiny beads of perspiration appeared on her upper lip and a dark lock of hair was plastered to the curve of her neck. As I pressed forward, herthigh brushed against my hip, and my body betrayed me with a sudden surge of blood.

The professional cage I lived in rattled. My dick was suddenly, undeniably hard, pressing against my gym shorts with all the truth I’d managed to keep hidden until now.

I let go of her leg so fast she let out a muffled "Oof."

“Just gotta… uh…” I turned my back to her, and grabbed the iPad from the bench. My fingers tapped the screen like crazy but I saw nothing.

"Brock?" Her voice was small, confused. I could hear her shifting on the mat behind me. "Is everything okay?"

"Fine," I said, my eyes fixed on a random bar chart.

But my hard-on wasn’t going anywhere.

All the ducks on all the fucking ponds weren’t going to save me.

“I’m just, uh, checking your heart rate data.” Deep breaths. I’d thought my way out of arousal before, and I’d do it again. “Hold the stretch on your own. I need to… calibrate the next phase.”

"Calibrate?" I heard the skepticism in her tone. "I’m a human person stretching, not a telescope.”

"Just hold the position thirty seconds," I said, my jaw tight enough to crack a tooth. I waited for the blood to recede, for the world to stop smelling like her, and for my pulse to return to something that wouldn’t give me away.

“I don’t really know if I’m doing it right,” she said. “It doesn’t feel like it did when you—”

"We’re calling it.” Mental exertion had forced my voice into a hollow monotone. I turned around, finally limp enough to pass.

Jess blinked, tired and not quite sure what was going on. "Already? I thought w—"