FIVE
Lea
My avoiding Shane plan started with agreeing to go with Fee to the sex shop where we had loads of fun, but refusing to go back to her place for lunch because that sounded like it had ‘ambush’ written all the heck over it.
From there, it was easier since Fee was married with a litter of kids and therefore not exactly an ‘out on the town’ kind of friend. So I stayed away from Chaz’s and I checked for his bike in the lot of my apartment building.
It was smooth sailing.
Yeah, that was until the following week when I walked into my new gym, a little too excited to wear out my new galaxy yoga pants and the obnoxious purple racerback tank that boasted a picture of an avocado on a treadmill with a sweatband on his head, intent on getting my body moving.
I had never been, and would never be, a fitness freak. I just wasn’t built that way.
But that being said, I had an inactive desk job. I needed to get my ass in motion before it went from an appealing kind of jiggly to a tapioca pudding kind of jiggly. Plus, it got me out of my crummy apartment for a few hours. It was my way of treating myself.
That was until I stuck my earbuds in after a grueling session with the stair climber and punched up the speed on the treadmill. Just when I started getting into it, a motion at the corner of my eye stopped me. Why it drew my attention, I had no idea. But it did and I turned my head to see none other than Shane freaking Mallick walking toward the mens’ locker room.
“Of course,” I grumbled, turning off the machine with a mix of relief and annoyance. Relief because, well, it was my personal belief that anyone who actually enjoyed running was a fucking masochist. Annoyance because, masochism aside, I was pumped up for getting a good workout in.
Maybe more than a small part of that had to do with the fact that I was about as sexually frustrated a person could get before it drove them plum crazy. I thought the gym would be a good outlet for all that as well as the chronic worry I had about someone finding me, dragging me out of Navesink Bank, and then what would happen after.
On top of all of that, it got me out in the public for a little while. Which I needed. I lived alone. I worked alone. I slept, ate, showered, shopped, I everything’d alone. It was nice to be around people.
But not Shane.
Hell no.
I hopped off the treadmill and made my way down the hall toward the womens’ locker room, keeping my head ducked as I did so.
I would just have to find a different time of day to workout. Chances were, the afternoons were just his time. I had been in gyms enough to know that guys who worked out as much as Shane must have worked out, generally kept a tight schedule. They went in at such and such a time and did such and such things and talked to such and such people, then they left. So if I maybe switched my workouts to after my overnight shift, I would be good. Or maybe even right before my shift. With no one in the office, there was no one to care if I showed up sweaty.
With that, I grabbed the stuff out of my locker and headed toward the long row of closed doors that were the shower rooms. Really, it was a nice gym. All the equipment was state-of-the-art. Everything was clean. But the shower rooms, oh yeah, they went all out on them. You closed and locked a door that led into a very small seating area with a mirror, vanity, and blow dryer. Then through that room there was another door that led into a full shower room with a drain in the floor and warm sand-colored tile.
I stripped out of my sweaty clothes, taking my clean ones out of my gym bag so I could toss the old ones in, grabbed a towel and my bath products, slipped into my shower flip-flops, and let myself into the shower room.
In there, I let almost an hour pass, enjoying the fact that it wasn’t a shitty building with a shitty hot water tank that made my showers turn glacial after eight minutes exactly.
And, as all women knew, a shower was a cure-all. I swear as the soap circled the drain, so did all the stress I had been feeling.
I toweled my hair a bit then dried off and wrapped up in the white towel the gym offered that smelled comfortingly of heavy bleach, and made my way out into the dressing room.
“Going for the shower world record, baby? How fucking dirty could you be?”
I shrieked as I jerked backward, my spine crushing into the door jamb as my eyes landed on Shane across the small room from me, leaning back against the wall, arms crossed, as if he had all the time in the world.
“Get the fuck out of my dressing room,” I snapped, too shocked to be anything other than angry, not really factoring in the danger thing. Not because I thought he would hurt me, but because he would do just the opposite of that. And I wanted that a bit too much.
“No.”
“No?” I sputtered. “What do you mean, no? Get out or I will scream for management.”
“Won’t do you any good.”
“Why not?” I asked, my belly clenching a little, having a feeling I knew what was about to follow.
“Because I am management. I own this gym.”
Of course he did.
The man owned everything in my fucking life.
“Regardless, you’re being a creep right now. Get out.”
“I don’t think you mean that,” he said, pushing off the wall and closing the four or so feet between us. He seemed to suck up all the air in the room, making my chest feel tight and my head feel light. He moved into me, but didn’t quite make contact, his entire body a mere whisper from mine. One of his hands braced on the wall beside the top of my head. I swallowed hard, trying my best to stand my ground, not duck down under his arm and run from the building in my towel and shower flip-flops. “Right?” he asked and I literally could not remember what he was supposed to be wrong about. Though I wasn’t too stupid to know that he was definitely, definitely wrong.
“Shane, I…”
“Skipped out on that incredibly transparent set-up after your outing with Fee?” he asked, his free hand sliding down the side of my ribs. “I saw that bag she came in with. Phallus-opy, huh? Wonder what you might have picked up there.”
“Nothing,” I lied, my skin buzzing where his fingers drifted, across my belly, then down toward my hip, sinking in slightly.
“And I bet I can tell you who you were thinking about while you were pressing a vibrator against that pussy,” he said, voice low, rumbling; the sound reverberated through my body and settled with a very strong pressure in my lower stomach. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he said, his face getting closer to mine. At my hesitation, his lips pressed into mine hard. His tongue pushed forward and parted my lips, sneaking inside to toy with mine. My body arched into his, my hands going up and around his neck, angling my head up to give him better access. His hand moved down, toying with the skin of my knee before sliding upward, inching the scratchy material of the towel up. His finger slipped inward up my inner thigh. My sex clenched hard just a second before I felt his finger finally move to where I needed it most, sliding up my slick cleft.
And it was right that second that I realized something.
And it was an ice bath to my overheated system.
Because his hand was between my thighs.
Where I hadn’t shaved in months.
Months.
Jesus Christ.
“Stop,” I demanded against his mouth, dragging my hands from around his neck, and pressing them into his chest until he went back a step.
Shane’s brows drew together as he looked at me. “You alright?”
My hand moved up and clutched at the tuck in my towel, resisting the urge to die of complete and utter mortification. I had been shaving since I was freaking twelve years old. Never, never did I miss a day. Not even when I was between men. “I’m… fine. I just don’t want this,” I said, my voice cracking a bit in the center at the obvious lie. He had felt how much I wanted it. I had moaned how much I wanted it against his lips.
“Lea…”
Oh, God. He needed to not say my name in that sex-gruff voice of his.
I pressed my thighs together hard and took a deep breath. “Please go,” I said and my voice held a sort of sadness that I couldn’t really understand. But Shane’s shoulders went a little slack at the sound and he nodded, moving toward the door.
“Alright,” he said before turning back to me. “See you around, Lea.”
The door closed behind him and I slumped back against the wall, fighting back the completely irrational sting of tears at the backs of my eyes. What was wrong with me? I wasn’t the crying type. I had left everything and everyone I loved to move across the country to live in fear, in destitution, and completely and utterly alone in the world and I hadn’t cried about it. That wasn’t how I was raised- with softness, with nurturing of my feelings. I was taught to nut-up and deal with whatever came my way. So that was how I handled things- with a stiff upper lip, squared shoulders, and a middle finger up.
I was pretty sure the last time I cried was in middle school.
And I was damn sure not going to cry over a little embarrassment and unfulfilled desire.
That was not the kind of woman I was.
But I was, apparently, the kind of woman to change her schedule to avoid a man she needed to not give into. Which was, in and of itself, a little pathetic. But that was a fact that I was trying to ignore.