Tori
DURING THE THIRD week of his training, Carter attacks the program with a renewed sense of urgency. Apart from the occasional joke, he says very little, which has the unfortunate effect of making me hyperfocused on his actions. When he bends, thrusts, grunts, or stretches, my mind travels along Dirty Imagination Boulevard—and it’s a long stretch of pavement. He does appear to be lifting his T-shirt and licking his lips more often than usual, as though he’s engaging in subliminal foreplay, but given the inappropriate direction of my thoughts these days, I’m probably projecting here. Still, I’m strung tight, and if Carter so much as breathes on me, I’ll unravel.
When Carter walks into the gym Thursday evening, my senses are on high alert.
He’s wearing red high-top sneakers and black athletic shorts that end above his knees. That’s it. No shirt, people. No fucking shirt. I know this isn’t a recipe for disaster. No, it’s a recipe for lust: Mix one sexy man with one horny woman and this is what you get. Go ahead, take a sniff: Those are my pheromones in the air.
“Where’s your shirt?” I ask.
He points to the nylon bag strapped to his back. “In there. I decided to jog over tonight. The shirt was messing with my flow.”
A streak of warmth passes over my cheeks. “Do you want a minute to put your shirt on?”
Please say yes, please say yes.
“No, I’m good. Let me make a quick pit stop, and then we can get going.”
“Sure.”
As he passes me on the way to the restroom, he pulls the straps of his bag off his shoulders and arches his back. My gaze zeroes in on the muscles on display. Nothing wrong with that, right? It’s my job to ensure he’s meeting his fitness goals.
While he’s gone, I flip on the lights in the gym. All of them. Dim lighting and Carter’s sweaty chest will not coexist today.
Carter exits the restroom, pulls out his water bottle, and tosses his bag on the rubber tile floor. “Damn, I’m still hot.”
“Want me to turn up the air-conditioning?”
“Nah. I’ll just cool myself off with some water.”
I’m not sure what he means, but then he raises the water bottle over his head and squirts it on his head and chest, running his hands through his hair to slick it back.
The fucker. When did the gym become the set of a J-Lo music video? Whatever game he’s playing, I’ll beat him at it, and I’ll start by ignoring his antics. “Let’s get going.” I glance at my clipboard. “We’re working legs today, so let’s start with squats, hip circles, and lunges.”
He winks at me and gets into position. “I’ve been thinking about your fitness class at the community center.”
That draws me out of my shell. “You have?”
“Yep. Have you thought about getting a permanent location for the class? Your own exercise studio, maybe? You could have multiple classes per day. That way, you’d reach more people. And you won’t have to worry about scheduling conflicts at the center.”
I’ve toyed with this idea before. But owning an exercise studio is a big endeavor, and it requires money. Lots and lots of money. Even leasing a space is beyond my current cash flow. “I’ve thought about this, too, Carter, but I don’t have the funds.”
“Investors?”
“I tried that a few months ago, when Ben and Nate were giving me the runaround about teaching a class at the gym. Only one group expressed interest, and they ultimately rejected me.”
He swings his arms in circles before he drops to the floor. “But there are more investment groups out there, right? And what about a bank? I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud . . . and I . . .”
My head snaps up. “What?”
He lowers himself into a full-seated squat. “I think you’re talented. It would be a waste not to share it with as many people as you can.”
There he goes again. Being nice. And thoughtful. And almost irresistible. “Thanks,” I murmur. “I’ll think about it.” I take a deep breath. “Okay, let’s start with leg presses.”
Carter wrinkles his nose, and one of his eyebrows disappears under his forelock. “Shouldn’t you check my weight and measurements first?”
The answer per Personal Training 101 is yes. Weight and body measurements should always be assessed preworkout, before the muscles are engorged with blood and appear larger. But the answer per horny Tori is most definitely no. In my mind, I’m stamping my feet like a two-year-old: I don’t want to. Don’t make me do it. To him, however, I say, “Yes, let’s get you over to the scale.”
Carter precedes me to the far end of the gym, where the scale and the trainer’s desk sit in a corner. His back is more defined than it was just two weeks ago. It’s coming along nicely, thanks to me.
Whistling, he steps onto the scale and slides the counterweight to 150 and nudges the small scale to the right until it balances at 173 pounds.
“Good work, Carter. That’s another four pounds.”
“Excellent.” He waggles his eyebrows. “I have a great trainer.”
We smile at each other, and then we’re left with nothing but silence.
Do something, Tori.
Which leads us to the moment I’ve been dreading: measurement time. Carter hops off the scale and dutifully stands in front of me. I swipe the tape measure off the desk and wrap it around his waist. We’re inches apart, our torsos almost touching.
Carter lowers his head. He’s so close, I can sense his breathing everywhere, in the slow rise of his chest, in the puffs of air near my ear, in the expansion and contraction of his oblique muscles.
“Here, let me get this out of your way,” he says.
He slides his fingers across his waistband and lowers his shorts to reveal his happy trail, the action pulling the fabric away from his body so that I catch a glimpse of the goodies beneath it. The urge to slip my hands inside and caress him, in the most intimate of places, forces me to bite down on my lower lip. The prick of pain reminds me that doing anything with Carter beyond training him will not serve my best interests.
My head falls forward as I read the measurement, and Carter pushes back a curl that’s escaped my ponytail.
I stumble backward, and the tape measure falls to the floor. “Okay. We can do this later,” I say as I pick it up. To be safe, I back up as I wind the measure.
“What’s the measurement?” Carter asks, his voice low and breathy.
I shake my head at him. “What?”
“My waist size, Tori. What’s my waist size?”
The honest answer? I have no idea. How am I supposed to function when the man is within arm’s reach and his shorts are riding low on his hips? “It’s . . . um. It’s thirty-one inches.”
“Is it?” he whispers.
He doesn’t move, nor does he have to. Because his voice alone can summon kinetic activity apparently. How else to explain the way my feet step in his direction, without any prompting from me? “Yes. Closer to thirty-one and a half.”
“Is that your final answer, Tori?”
There’s a hint of humor in his voice. More troubling than that, the laughter’s coupled with something else. Something I don’t want any part of. “Yes, that’s my final answer.”
“I don’t think you’re right. Can you check again?”
He’s testing me, and if I don’t do well here, I will surely flunk the class. So I stomp back to him and wrap the tape measure around his waist, my eyes focusing on the wall behind him.
“You seem agitated,” he says against my ear. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. See? Thirty and a half inches.”
“But you said I was thirty-one and a half.”
“Did I? It’s not a precise science.”
Now I sound like a pendeja. It very much is a precise science.
I take a step back.
“Do you want to touch me, Tori?”
I take in a gulp of air. Lie, lie, lie. “What? No.”
“That’s a shame,” he says. “Because I want you to touch me.” He takes a step forward and crowds me, positioning his mouth near my ear. “So. Fucking. Much.”
A strangled moan escapes my throat, but the pounding in my ears makes it hard to decipher how he’ll receive it. Does it sound like an objection? An invitation? Maybe both?
He holds his hands out. “May I?”
God, yes.
No, no, I shouldn’t. But I want to give in so badly. Just this once. I answer by giving him my hands.
He turns them palms up, raises them to his lips, and plants a soft kiss in each center.
“Carter . . . this isn’t a good idea. We shouldn’t do this.”
Avoiding this kind of entanglement is critical to my professional and personal well-being. Getting involved with Carter was never part of the plan. At most, I thought I’d be able to whisper about him decades from now, perhaps telling my grandkids that I kissed him on vacation long before I married their grandfather. With guys like Carter, there’s always an end and an after. I’d much prefer that he remain my “what-if.”
His gaze pierces mine. He’s trying to test the truth of my words. With nothing more than a look. I drop my head to hide my heart. We both know it’s a lie. This I want. Very much. Everything else that goes along with it? Not at all.
He cradles the back of my head and guides it to his chest. We exhale at the same time, as if we both know that simple connection is a turning point for us. “What do you think will happen if you touch me? The sky won’t fall, the earth will still spin, I promise.”
Every inch of my body is taut, bending toward him, eager to give in to this attraction. But my hands, the last defense in this uneven battle, are fisted so tightly that my nails are digging into my palms.
Carter covers my hands with his, so now he’s aware of the tension, too. “Relax, Tori.” He slowly spreads my fingers, flattening them against my thighs. Then he leans against the wall and tugs me to him. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Okay,” I whisper. I don’t trust myself to say anything else. A few more syllables and I’ll be begging him to take me on the floor.
“I think about you all the time. When I’m getting dressed, when I’m taking a shower, when I’m eating—”
“Even when you’re—”
“Don’t kill the mood, Tori.”
That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I don’t want to hear this. He’s rallying scores of troops while I huddle in a straw bunker with no weapons or reinforcements. It’s an unfair battle.
His mouth sweeps across my forehead. “I think about you when I’m in bed, too.”
“You do?” I ask, my voice more high-pitched than I’d like. Even though I should silence him, I’m desperate to hear what he’ll say. “Tell me.”
“In explicit detail?”
“Everything.”
He positions his mouth close to my ear. “I think about all the ways I could have you,” he whispers. “I think about my tongue between your legs. I think about fucking you long and hard. I literally picture my dick plunging into your pussy. Then I think about pulling out and taking your wetness with me. Over and over. And the vision is so fucking hot I touch myself, Tori.” He lifts one of my hands and slides it over his length. “My cock grows, thickens just like this. I get so hard it’s painful. But it feels so fucking good, too, because in my mind, you’re there with me. Pleasure. Torture. It’s all there.”
“Sorry, not sorry.”
His mouth widens against my ear.
“Are you laughing at me?” I ask.
“Never. I’m enjoying you. So where was I?”
“You’re so hard it’s painful, but it feels good, too.”
“Right. My entire body locks, and my brain is focused on relieving the pressure. Can I show you how I stroke myself?”
Am I hearing him correctly? When he masturbates, he thinks about having his tongue between my legs? And he wants to give me a demonstration? I won’t survive this, but I raise the white flag anyway. Because how could I say no to that? This time, I brush my cheek against his chin. “Show me.”
“Pull down my shorts.”
This is wrong, wrong, wrong. And risky. And it will complicate my life in ways I can’t even imagine. But my attraction for him, this cloying need in my gut, propels me to touch him. My fingers fumble at his waistband, but I manage to lower his shorts and boxer briefs to midthigh, and his cock springs out. It’s long and thick and heavy.
He guides my hand up and down his erection. “I tease myself, too, because I don’t want it to end. And I go slow, from root to tip, squeezing myself along the way.”
I’m taking shallow breaths as I listen to him knock down every pillar holding up my rationale for avoiding this intimacy. Who needs common sense when a man can get you this turned on just from petting him? “You’re killing me, Carter.”
Slowly, he removes his hand, and it’s just me stroking him. “I’ve been dying for a while now, Tori.” His hooded gaze is fixed on mine, and I can’t look away. I apply more pressure, and he drops his head back and hisses. “Yes, keep doing that,” he urges.
I step closer. Carter does, too. And then he cups my jaw with both hands and pulls me forward for a searing kiss. Aruba was a taste, whereas this is a full meal, and we’re both ravenous. He grabs my ass, and I drop my hands to the sides because there’s no more room for them between us. His erection presses against my stomach, and he slides it up and down against me as he masters my mouth.
“I don’t want our first time to be in a gym,” he says when we come up for air. “Let me take you to my place.”
Let me take you to my place.
Wait. What? No.
I pull back and cover my mouth with one hand.
His eyes are glazed over. His lips are swollen. He’s a wall of sexy male sprinkled with lust and pixie dust, and he looks edible and utterly wanton. I want him so badly I’m shaking. But it’s not going to happen. “We can’t do this, Carter.”
My sharp tone signals that I don’t want to be persuaded otherwise, and Carter apparently gets it.
He pulls up his briefs and shorts slowly, as if he knows time is on his side, and then he threads his fingers through his hair. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
My laugh is anything but cheerful. “You can’t be serious, Carter. I’m your personal trainer.”
He gives me a slow smile and sags against the wall. “Is that all? Well, there’s an easy solution for that.”
“There is?”
I cringe at the hopeful tremor in my voice.
“Yes, you’re fired.”
My jaw locks so hard my face aches. I fold my arms over my chest. “That’s not funny.”
“I didn’t mean it to be. Nate can take over from here.”
My eyes will pop from the strain I’m putting them under. “That’s insulting, you jerk. Consider what you just said. You hire me for my expertise, but then you fire me because you want to sleep with me? I should drop-kick your ass into next week for thinking that’s appropriate.”
He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his noise. “Sorry. That was a dick thing to say. I’m just so fucking frustrated because I want you, and I don’t know how to convince you that we could work. And I don’t just want to sleep with you, as you put it. This isn’t a game for me, Tori. I want you in my life. And when you want something badly, you sometimes say and do stupid shit. So can we pretend that never came out of my mouth?”
I watch him warily, my gaze narrowed on his face. “You get one pass. Is this how you want to use it?”
“Yes. I will never screw up like this again. But tell me why you don’t want me.” His eyes plead with me for understanding. “Is there something else you’re not telling me?”
He looks so earnest with his hands against his chest and that ridiculous lock of hair sweeping over his forehead. I can’t offer him anything but the truth. “I want you. I won’t pretend about that. But I don’t want everything that goes along with being with you. I dated someone who desperately wanted to be in the limelight, and it didn’t end well for me. He’s a city councilman, and Philadelphia’s notoriously light on celebrity gossip. It wasn’t fun. What would that say about me if I put myself in the same situation?”
“Always forward, never backward.”
Thank goodness, he gets it. I’m relieved he does. “Yes.”
He shakes his head. “But I’m not your ex-boyfriend.”
No, he isn’t—and that doesn’t work in his favor. “Don’t you see? The risks are even greater with you. I don’t want to go down in the annals of history as someone you slept with. That doesn’t ever go away. What happens when I try to secure investors? Is that the first thing they’ll see about me when they search Google? And when we fizzle, what happens then? With Mason, I learned about my breakup on a local radio show. With you, I’ll hit the big time. And I just don’t want to swim in the fishbowl you live in. So you’re right. It’s not the same situation. You’re Mason times ten.”
He stares at me for several beats before he speaks. “Mason. He’s your ex?”
“Yes.”
He grabs the back of his neck and gives me a bitter smile. “I hate him.”
“No you don’t.”
“I hate how he’s affecting my life, then.”
“Fair enough.”
I’m thinking about Mason differently now. Maybe I was meant to go through that experience with him so I could avoid going through one on a grander scale with Carter. Maybe the universe was preparing me for Carter?
I lean against the wall, claiming a spot beside him. “So you understand?”
Still leaning against the wall, he turns to his side, and I do the same.
The fiery determination in his eyes is my first clue that he’s not fully ready to accept defeat.
“Yeah, I understand,” he says. “You should know this, though. I will always take no for an answer, but the minute you say otherwise, you’re mine, and I won’t hold anything back.”
That’s the second clue.