Fast & Hard (The Fast 1)

“I was just strolling around campus and heard the music,” I bald-faced lie. He studies me silently, not even winded from that torture machine he’s been abusing and, out of sheer nervousness, under the scrutiny of his stare, I keep talking. “I didn’t get to talk to you after the race very much but I wanted to tell you I really liked the race and I was,” I pause, rethinking saying something vulnerable and honest to him, “I was proud of you.” My head lowers and I’m waiting for the sarcastic comment or barb from him.

“Why would you be proud of me? You barely know me and it was only second place,” he answers as he looks down at his hands, wiping them off in the gym towel for longer than it should take. Is he nervous? Impossible.

“I’ve never seen a race before. Matty had to explain to me what was happening the whole time, but it was amazing. And then watching you pass all those cars… I know I don’t understand how everything works, but I was proud of you for doing so well.” I shrug my shoulders and realize I probably sound like an idiot fangirl.

Good job, Mallory. Now he’s going to demand you go home, again.

“Well, I’ve got forty-five minutes left or your friend Matty will have my ass.” He turns his back to me and returns to pulling the machine’s cables, both at once this time with his arms going wide to the side and his forearms rippling with each elevation of the stacked weights.

“Most people say ‘thank you’ when they’re complemented, Lennox,” I chide him as I get off my bench and make my way to his side. Bad idea, now I’m up close and can feel the heat coming off him.

“I’ll thank you properly in 45 minutes if you’d like,” he muses in that delectable accent, arms still working the machine and the metal clink of the weights tapping down every few seconds.

Nope, he can be a human and thank me. Or respond with any variety of socially acceptable acknowledgment. I raise an eyebrow, fold my fingers together in front of me and stare at him. We’re going to have an old fashioned Mexican standoff until he grows some manners.

After several moments in which it’s growing harder to keep quiet and not gawk at him too shamelessly, he finally drops the weights and they slam to the base with an echo in the room. “Either join me or go back to your flat. You’re creeping me out, you stalker.”

“Join you? In what? I can’t do that…,” I point to the machine with what’s surely sixty tons of free weights attached. I’m a treadmill and elliptical kind of girl, never could get those sculpted Michelle Obama arms.

Before I can protest more, he’s grabbed me around the waist and has planted me in front of the machine. “Take this off,” he takes the hoodie from my shoulders and pulls it down and tosses it aside. He’s standing right behind me and I can see him in the mirror in front of us.

He puts the pulley handles in my hands and says to pull straight back. “Yes, haha, you’re a big strong man, I get it,” I groan as the weights don’t budge an inch from their resting place even when I struggle with all of my body weight.

He chuckles and adjusts the weights on each side of the machine before returning to his stance of towering over me from behind. “Square your hips up,” he says and steps closer, his two hands firmly gripping my hips, his long fingers wrapping around my pelvis and controlling my core. I shiver at his touch, the warmth of his hands penetrating my thin leggings.

“Pull,” he commands and I do, watching him watch me in the mirror. This time the weights move up and then slam back down as I release them. “Don’t let them slam down, controlled descent.” His eyes are on mine in the mirror every time I dare to look. I can feel his breath on my neck and I’m going to soak through my panties if we don’t stop this.

Stop this, Mallory.

Several revolutions more and my muscles are on fire from the weights, my body on fire from Lennox. “Keep your back straight,” he says and takes a step closer to me then pressing his chest against my back to force my form. His feet are planted on either side of mine, his body swallowing mine up. I suck in a deep breath at the feel of his hard chest and stomach pushed against me, his body temperature and sheen of sweat making our tees cling between us.

My arms and shoulders go through the motions on autopilot but I’m speechless and dazed. Surely I look just like one of his awestruck groupies waiting for him to sign my breasts.

He stays pressed up against me and I start to feel what can only be his growing length getting hard and pressing into my lower back. I want badly to push back against it but this is insane, I cannot do this. “Lennox, unless that’s a barbell between your legs, we have to stop this.”

“Don’t know what you mean,” he whispers and drops his head to the side of mine, his nose lightly brushing my hair just above my ear. Oh god, he’s going to make me say it.

“You’re hard,” I whisper, still watching him in the mirror.

His head lowers even farther until his lips are nanometers away from my skin, the warmth of his breathing just below my ear. “And you’ve got goosebumps,” he whispers and runs his nose along the valley of my neck.

“Ok,” I exclaim, dropping the pulleys and letting the weights slam down, “we’re not doing this!”

God, I want to do this.

I step away from him and put my hands on my hips. The loss of his body heat is immediate and I’m sure my nipples are betraying me at this very moment and pointing at him like daggers.

“If you say so,” he smirks and fidgets with the machine to put the weights back to his herculean levels, then he’s right back in the swing of his workout while I stand like a statue trying to regain any sense of composure. So cool and controlled at all times.

Stupid sexy asshole.

I glare at him for a moment while he utterly ignores me, before I run my hands over my pulled back hair and pace a few steps trying to rid my body of these traitorous hormones coursing through my veins. I take several deep breaths and then step onto a treadmill. I’m already sweaty, I need to do something with this pent up energy inside me now, and goddamn it, I don’t want to leave.

I push the buttons on the machine and ramp up into a decent clip, running and running the desire away, while Lennox continues his assault on the strength machine. In m

y peripheral vision, I can see he’s still watching me in the mirror in front of him but I keep my eyes straight ahead and stare at a very interesting flaw in the drywall in front of me.

Thirty minutes later he finally lets his weights drop and I slow my machine down until I can step off. He wipes himself off with his gym towel and I do the same with a clean one from a wall rack. Both of us wipe our machines down. Neither of us speaks as he turns off the stereo and flips the light switch on our way out.