Page 25 of Resistance Training

VIVIAN

I t’s hard to believe that only one week ago, I was on this sofa with Hairy Styles on a Saturday night, in the pajamas I’d been wearing since the night before, eating old-fashioned donut holes and potato chips while watching Practical Magic on my iPad.

I enjoyed that a lot. But this is maybe just a little bit more fun.

Brad slowly pushes up the sleeves of his Henley, exposing his forearm candy, smirking as he watches me stare at those veins.

Evil. He’s just evil. Then he grabs the ankle of my bent leg with one hand and unzips the boot with the other, real fast this time, yanking it off my foot, tossing it away.

Every muscle in my body is sore from working out, but it’s my clitoral muscle that is suffering the most. Is it a muscle?

I don’t know. It’s an angry, horny bitch right now, and if I don’t start humping Brad’s leg immediately it will somehow make its way to the vibrator in my bedside drawer all by itself.

“Take your shirt off,” I say in my most commanding voice.

“No.”

“Fine.” I shrug, super nonchalant. “I’ll take off mine, then.” This was my plan anyway—force him to deal with my amazing tits. And I would definitely pull this shirt off over my head right now if my stupid sore arms would let me.

“No,” he says, way too calmly. “You won’t.”

He’s rubbing my heel with the palm of his hand, digging his fist into the arch of my foot, kneading the flesh of the ball of my foot.

“Shit,” I whisper. That feels amazing. Why does it feel like you’re stroking between my legs, damn you?

“You’re sore all over, aren’t you,” he says. It isn’t really a question.

“Not really.” I almost believe myself.

“Liar.” He massages my entire foot with both hands, and my stomach dips. “You can’t fool me. Your legs are stiff.”

“Wanna bet?” I probably wouldn’t be able to walk right now, but I will wrap my legs around his neck to win a bet if I have to.

“No,” he says. “I don’t.” He massages my ankle. Circling, tracing figure eights around the outside of my ankle bone.

What?

Jesus. The flutters in my belly. I didn’t know ankle massages were a thing or that ankles were an erogenous zone, but my ankle is stimulated and responding to his rhythmic touch and my hips are doing figure eights, rocking to that same rhythm.

“Brad… Shit.” So good.

“You shouldn’t have worn high heels after working out all week for the first time ever and not stretching enough, Vivian.” His hands slide down my leg. “That was not a good decision.”

I gasp when he digs his knuckles into my calf muscle. “But I looked hot in them.”

“True.”

“I look hot out of them too,” I manage to say before whimpering and clenching my core and rubbing my thighs together. Rocking. This is pure agony. My pelvis is desperate to find something to bump and grind against. God, the tension—fuck you, Bradley—don’t stop.

“You do, Vivian. You look really hot tonight.”

“Brad…” I can’t decide if I love hating this or hate loving this, but I know I hate not kissing him.

I am gripping the edge of the sofa cushions, but my back arches in an attempt to raise myself to him.

I have to kiss him. I need him to kiss me.

My eyelids are so heavy, but I can see his tight jaw.

My vision is blurry, but I can see him staring at my breasts.

I am offering them to him because it’s easier than lifting my head all the way to his face.

I know he wants me. I know he wants this as much as I do, but he’s being a fucking asshole.

“You didn’t stretch or give yourself a rest day like you were supposed to,” he says—as if that’s really what’s on his mind right now—and his voice is deep, but I can hear the struggle to control his desire and it’s giving me life. “You worked out too much?—”

“Again,” I interject, “you did not properly convey the importance of the muscle-recovery phase.”

I can sense every muscle in his body and his entire soul tensing up, and it’s delicious. “And then,” he continues, as if he didn’t hear me, “you wore high-heeled boots out to a bar. Where…you drank a large strawberry daiquiri and ate loaded nachos? And you didn’t text me first.”

Cindy, you genius Judas.

“Yeah, that’s right. And I loved them.”

I don’t know how he does it, but he grabs both my ankles and swings me around so I’m face down on the sofa with my legs straight out behind me.

I lost track of his phone and the beanie a while ago—they’re probably somewhere in the cracks between the cushions.

As for my own cracks, well, they are swollen and soaking wet and dying for anything of his to come between them.

“There’s strength in resistance, Vivian. You know what happens when you do something you regret. Why do you keep doing things you know neither of us will like? All you had to do was be accountable to me.”

Oh. God. I can’t tell if this is a game or not and he might not know either, but I’m going with it.

“I don’t regret a single thing about today. I feel great.”

“You sure about that?” he asks from somewhere behind me. “Because if you’re tight anywhere, I will give you a massage.”

“I did a lot of booty work,” I declare without hesitation.

“Booty work, you said?”

I turn my head to say very clearly, “Yeah, there’s a lot of inflammation in my glutes.”

He grunts. I feel the weight of him on my lower legs. He’s straddling me. One of his legs is bent alongside mine, one foot on the floor, I guess.

“Whoop!” I shout out when he flips up my skirt. There’s a sudden rush of cool air on the backs of my thighs that’s surprising and satisfying.

“Fuck. Vivian.” He groans. But he doesn’t touch me.

“God dammit, Brad.”

His hands are on my hips now, over the skirt, pressing his thumbs into the small of my back, and it feels so good. He massages my hips. “You sure this is what you want?”

Oh, Jesus. “Brad. Mitch. Bradley. Hottest Brad of All Time. Once again—I consent. I consent to this.”

And hallelujah, his big, warm hands stretch across my butt cheeks and he squeezes.

He squeezes so hard. “This is a fucking great ass, Sparks.” He cups both cheeks gently, lifting them up and letting them drop and jiggle into the palms of his hands.

I should be embarrassed—a little, maybe—but I can tell by his grunts that he likes what I’ve got going on back there, so I feel great about it.

He strokes up the sides of my hips, under the skirt, softly slides his hands, one following the other, across my waist from hip to hip.

He lightly caresses the entire surface of my badonkadonk.

Over my cotton panties. Grazes the skin of the backs of my thighs with his fingertips.

With the backs of his fingers. Down and up.

Around the sides. To the inner thighs. I’m trembling, and I can barely feel the pressure of his touch anymore. It’s so mean.

“Brad.”

“Vivian.” He grips one side of my panties and rips them apart at the seams—thank God. He yanks them off of me, tossing them away. “Hold on to the arm of the sofa.”

I do that. I reach up and grip it tight. Suddenly he’s on the floor, on his knees beside me, aligned with my waist. He unzips the back of my skirt, and I wriggle around to help him pull it down my legs, and off it goes. I turn my head, trying to see him.

“Close your eyes,” he demands.

“I want to see you.”

“Kind of impossible for you to see me while I work on your glutes.”

I huff and squirm around. “You need to work a lot harder,” I say before burying my face into the sofa cushion. “So bossy.” I feel a rush of cool air again, and he’s gone. “Brad.”

He’s back by my side. “Lift your head a little,” he says, softly this time.

I lift my head and feel soft material slide over my eyes.

I can smell my own perfume. I know what this is.

It’s the long, skinny velvet scarf I ordered from Etsy last month because it had the words Stevie Nicks in the item description.

One of those purchases I never would have made when I was living with Jeremy.

Brad makes sure the edge of the scarf sits at the bridge of my nose so I can breathe. He ties it at the base of my skull, over my hair, just one knot, not too tight. I can’t see, and the fabric feels so good on my face when I move my head from side to side.

“That okay?”

“Yes.”

“This is what you want?”

“Yes. I mean. I wanted you to fuck me, but this is fine for now.”

I hear him breathe out a laugh, but the tiny laugh doesn’t affect his tone. “You gonna relax?”

“Maybe.”

I get a quick slap on my left butt cheek and an electric charge all the way up my spine for that, and then his hands slide over my waist, toward my right hip.

Sliding back and forth across my waist again, and then he kneads the flesh and muscle, pinching and rolling, at my hips, my waist. The palms of his hands graze the top of my bottom, gliding across my skin, even though there’s no oil or lotion.

There’s a little friction, in a way that feels so good, in a way that I need.

But he does not give me the butt massage I was hoping for, and it’s making me furious and it feels amazing.

He rubs deeper and deeper, above my ass, and if my desire and senses weren’t awakened before, they are wide awake and screaming for him now.

I am not relaxed. My breaths are heavy and ragged, my heart is racing. My lower body is still squirming because of all the pressure and slick arousal between my legs.

I get this flash of a realization that this is Bradley , my nerdy best friend from high school, who’s doing this to me, and it’s so strange, but it also is relaxing.

Finally. I melt into the overstuffed sofa cushions, sighing on an exhale.

I melt into the sensation of being touched by this man who means so much to me, even though he means to punish me, and I can’t tell if he’s going to do it by not letting me come or by making me come so hard that I black out.

I really hope it’s the latter.

I think?