Page 19 of Cruel Debts (Killers of Port Wylde #4)

SIXTEEN

TRINITY

I got up early today. The asshole on my target list always hit the gym early as sin on his days, and I wasn't about to miss the opportunity to use his habits against him.

I had some really tight clothes for working out in, and I hoped that he'd fall victim to their charms as I lifted weights with him or whatever it was he did in the gym all the time.

I hadn't planned for the asshole to turn all 'intensive trainer mode' on me. He critiqued everything, from my form to my weight limits, and didn't pull his punches when I complained that I wasn't a gym rat like him.

He bent over me as I lifted, like, I dunno, a hundred or so pounds on the bench press, realizing too late that I was way out of shape.

Too out of shape for this shit.

"Liam, come on," I pleaded, arms shaking as he pretended to spot me. Or maybe he was for real, I didn't know. But every time I thought I'd drop that damn bar, he barely put a finger on it and made me lift it the rest of the way before he helpfully lowered it again, frowning the whole time.

These men were world-class scowling champions, I was sure of it. I bet if you looked their names up in the record books, they'd be right there, one after the other, all scowling in their award photos.

"You're not trying hard enough," he growled, his eyebrows looking suspiciously like they'd never rise again. "Again."

I shoved the bar back up and sat up, done with his shit. "I'm not lifting another rep on this damn bench, and you can't make me."

"Fine." He shrugged, turning his back to me as he lined up his own bar, with four times the weight I'd had on mine. "Just don't try anything stupid or high intensity while I'm not watching you."

I rolled my eyes. "Are you kidding? I've worked out before." Once. "I think I know what I'm doing." I didn't. "I'm an adult." That part was true, at least. "I can handle a little workout."

The last one was a lie.

I watched as Liam squatted to pick up his bar full of weight, and holy hell, the brain cells in my head suddenly flew the coop. I couldn't have looked more like a dog had I sprouted fur, with my tongue lolling out the side of my open mouth.

His thighs were so toned that the shorts he wore to work out in hid nothing. Not a single ounce of him was fat, and it showed. As he rose and fell with the bar full of weights, I drooled silently in the background, aware I should be doing something but too distracted to care.

It continued like that for five minutes before he looked over his shoulder and sighed. I wasn't fast enough to hide my obvious interest, and he put away the bar and walked over to me, sticking a finger under my jaw to shut my mouth.

"Can you try to keep your eyes on the equipment, maybe?"

I batted my eyelashes, hoping to disarm him with a bit of charm. "I am. I mean, maybe not the equipment you're considering, but it's equipment." I grin, eyeing him up and down as he stretches. "I'd certainly use it to work out."

His eyes harden. "Trinity McCoy, you get that idea out of your head right now.

There's no way in hell we're going down that train of thought, you hear me?

" He reached for a weighted medicine ball and sat on a nearby mat, prepared to start the side-to-side movement I knew would work his core.

"Now, either pick something to do and do it, or leave me alone while I work out.

And maybe keep your eyeballs in your skull. I don't come here to be ogled."

I suspected he didn't mind it as much as he claimed to, but that wasn't the question in play. The real question was whether I could convince him with my body to do what I needed him to. What he agreed to do when he signed the contract with Minnie.

I moved across the room, sighing heavily every time he grunted behind me.

I didn't put my eyes on him directly, but there was nothing stopping me from watching him in the mirror as he started to sweat, his brows drawn down in concentration, legs lifted just a few inches off the floor to increase difficulty.

An idea sprang to mind, one borne of the only working out I'd ever managed to do without giving up or spraining something. "Are there yoga mats here? Or maybe some elastic resistance bands?"

I tried to look as innocent as possible, cocking my head to the side as he stared at me with suspicion in the depths of his eyes. "Yoga mats are over in the far corner," he said with a nod in the direction of the door. "Resistance bands are in the closet to their left."

"Gee, thanks!" I trotted over to the mats, taking my time selecting one while I let him fall back into a sense of ease. After I'd picked a mat, I pulled a few resistance bands from the closet and set to work enacting my plan.

Yoga was low intensity and high effort, and the stretching one did while doing it required a litany of slightly suggestive poses.

Ones I was pretty sure I could lure Liam into helping me with, if I were smart about it.

Once I had him in the trap, it was only a matter of laying the right bait to really suck him in, and then slamming the lid on the container shut, trapping him like a rat in a maze.

And if it ended up turning into something hotter than a game of cat and mouse? Well, you wouldn't hear me complain.

And I doubted he would, either. If he did, it wouldn't be for long.

"Is it okay to set up wherever I want?"

He didn't even look up as he lay down and held the ball above his head, his heels and shoulders rising just barely off the floor with a grunt. "Yeah, sure, do whatever. Just stay clear of the heavy equipment in case someone else comes in."

It was the asscrack of dawn. The only other people coming in here at this ungodly hour to work out were either really, certifiably insane, or masochistic.

I was just horny and really desperate.

I stretched out my limbs first, uneager to get cramps even for the sake of my mission. When I finished, I stood up, catching the first of many sideways glances Liam shot in my direction. He looked away quickly, thinking he hadn't been caught, but I pegged him from a mile away.

Liam wasn't as immune to my physique as he liked to pretend.

"Ahhh," I groaned, stretching my arms above my head. "I missed the yoga classes we used to do back home. Mom got so into them at one point, she was dragging me to a lesson twice a day."

"I'd think your mother has enough money to hire a personal trainer," Liam said with another grunt. His hands reached for a bigger medicine ball, and I watched as his brow beaded with sweat, his concentration failing him any time his eyes betrayed his interest.

"Oh, she did," I quipped back, looping a resistance band around my ankles as I got into position. "But we went to the local arboretum to have the yoga lessons, because she insisted it boosted her absorption of the health benefits."

"Dumb," he mumbled, and I laughed, the sound reverberating off the walls around us.

"Agreed." I leaned over, letting my shoulders roll forward as I shifted just slightly, so that Liam could see my head when he looked directly at me, but my ass was on full display in the mirror.

If he tried to look away, he'd get an eyeful of it in these tight pants, which was exactly what I was hoping for.

"They always did have more money than common sense. "

"Your parents are good people," he said slowly, his eyes flicking to the mirror as I spread my legs a little bit and bent further forward, reaching for the band with a hand so I could really fold myself over. "They raised you and Keehn to be great people."

At the mention of Keenh, I faltered, just a little, as my memory reminded me why exactly I was even in this shithole town to begin with. "Keehn raised me, not them. And he raised himself, with the help of his nanny, if we're being honest."

"Your parents?—"

"Paid for the very best of everything, sure, but that's all they did. Let's call a spade a spade." I stood back up, getting on my hands and knees, to run through some more challenging positions. "Do you work out this intensely all the time?"

He hadn't moved in at least two minutes, the medicine ball in his hands stationary as he watched me. "Ah," he muttered, clearing his throat. "I go easier twice a week, but usually, I'm always intense."

"Oh." I bend forward, arching my back as I wriggle my fingers across the mat, stretching as far forward as humanly possible to put my ass in the air. "Sounds—unghhhh—like you really take care of your body."

He licks his lips, and I watch in real time as his pants grow a little tighter. "I try." His eyes were on me as I leaned back up, but they redirected just as I turned my head. "What about you? Do you keep up with the yoga or whatever, now that you're up here, and not back there?"

"I try," I echo him, grinning into the mirror. "But it's hard when there's nobody to stabilize some of the poses I like to do. The really challenging ones."

"Challenging? Yoga?" He said it like there was no way in hell anything related to yoga was difficult. Like the very thought was hilarious. "What could you possibly need more than one person for in yoga?"

"Why don't I show you?" I waved him over, and he came slowly, though the fact that he abandoned his medicine ball for me is promising. "Here, just grab onto one of my ankles and help me straighten it when I go up."

I kicked a foot in the air and watched his eyes as they trailed down the length of me, surveying where my outfit clung to every inch of my skin like a second layer. I mean, duh, it was spandex, after all. Lycra, or whatever they made these things out of these days.

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, his eyes no longer bothered enough to look away.

He gripped my ankle in one hand, and then I brought the second up with the first, giving him a chance to grab it as well. When he had both of my legs in his hands, I twisted my body and spread them forward and back, pulling a midair split with his head directly above me.