Page 8

“Fuck. Spot me,” I grunted under the weight of the heavy bar on a bench, and Shane hurried over, standing above my head and giving me a hand.

From where I lay, he towered tall and strong, his biceps curling as he lifted the heavy weight.

He lifted it just enough to hook it on the safety pins, and I sat up with a frustrated scoff. “Pushed myself too hard.”

“I saw,” Shane said.

I shot him a murderous glare. “You did?”

He cocked his head in innocent confusion. “I was here all along.”

A laugh ripped free from my chest, taking the frustration away. I’d just spent almost two hours competing with myself for his attention, and he had no clue. Why was I so desperate? It wasn’t like Shane being impressed would improve my life in any way.

“Let’s call it for today,” I said, and Shane agreed.

We headed to the locker room, and I noticed that Shane’s legs trembled as he went down the stairs. Mine felt like jelly, too. When we got there, we both needed a minute on the locker room benches to catch our breath.

I was still sitting down when Shane tapped the screen of his phone a few times and got up.

He walked over to his locker, some five feet in front of me, and pulled out clean clothes.

He set them on the bench, not too far from me, and kicked his shoes off.

He lifted his T-shirt, still soaked with sweat, and pulled it over his head, leaving it unfolded on the bench, then bent down and took his shorts off.

Curiosity soared through me. If he’d been hiding the level of his fitness under baggy clothes but managed to keep up the pace with me all day, I had to know what he looked like.

And when he straightened, I had my answer.

Holy fuck, he was cut and defined. Skinny, yeah, but every muscle of his torso was tense, abs so pronounced that I could imagine what running fingers down his stomach felt like.

Taut, smooth skin a few shades paler than mine glistened with sweat, but it was his figure I was interested in the most. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, strong legs, and—not that I was looking—a pretty sizeable bulge packed in a pair of black briefs wasn’t something I’d expected to see here.

He took his glasses off and set them on the gym clothes on the bench, then picked up his towel and tossed it over his shoulder. “Coming?” he asked.

I swallowed. He was kind of like Clark Kent, those glasses tricking you into thinking he was someone else.

Shane was fit as hell, and this haircut suited him great.

He turned away from me and took a few steps, then dropped the towel while holding on to his clean clothes.

He bent quickly to pick it up, and I glanced at the peachy ass before me, the seams of his briefs stretched tight and sliding inward as he bent down and straightened again, and my heart seemingly pounded in my throat.

“Um, yeah,” I answered, although I couldn’t tell how much time had passed between the question and the answer.

Shane slipped into the shower, but I sat still, the image still burned into my head.

It wasn’t a terrible image. And it wasn’t like it mattered.

I was surprised, that was all. Surprised that Shane was both cute and hot.

Surprised that I found him hot…

I shook my head and undressed, my chest crushed under the weight of whatever these odd feelings were called.

I stalked into the shower and took up the stall next to Shane’s.

Hot water poured over my head and shoulders, sliding down my torso and legs.

I listened to the splashing sounds and the shallow breaths coming from the stall next to me.

I pressed my hand against the thin wall between us and shut my eyes.

Why? Why was I doing this crazy thing? Jumping ahead to what I was imagining was off-putting, to say the least. I had no interest in him or any guy. Boys just didn’t make my heart race. But Shane…

I swallowed the knot in my throat, and the wall between us melted away.

He turned partially to face me, water running down his cream skin, his brown eyes focused on me and only me.

He glanced down, teeth closing around his lower lip, ears perking up.

When I took a step toward him, he turned all the way to me.

I didn’t look down. The thought of what I would see there scared me; the thought of what I would do if I saw it frightened me even more.

I didn’t want this to stop, especially not because I was scared of him.

But I was dying to press my hand against his abs, to run my thumb over his small nipple, to lean toward him until our bodies pressed against one another so hard that we lived in each other’s skin.

Fuck , I thought, stepping back from the wall and shivering.

My body was heated up, blood simmering, fingers trembling, and stomach filling with flutters.

I was hard as fuck, and my mind was spinning like mad.

Each beat of my heart echoed throughout my entire body, muscles tensing, cock throbbing, and lungs shrinking.

I squeezed my eyes shut, unsure if I was trying to banish the images of Shane out of my mind or recall them again.

Before I could decide, he came to me. He stepped through the wall, and the wall was the steam of our showers, and I fell into the same alternate reality in which this was something I wanted .

Not me, though. Not in this universe. Some cosmic collision had transported me into a world where a geeky virgin was actually a hottie, and it turned me on.

My fingers ran through my hair, water washing the shampoo out, and I held my breath. My heart thundered like it was about to beat straight out of my chest and keep on beating away.

When the second wave crashed over me, almost pulling me under, I pressed my hands against the tiles in front of me and tried to breathe deeply.

Every muscle in my body burned with tension.

Thankfully, the fucking boner was going away, and I forced myself to think of anything and everything that would speed that process along.

I stepped out of the shower after a long time, my skin raw from hot water and hard scrubbing with the towel. I wished I had brought any of my clothes in with me, but I hadn’t. I walked into the locker room, where Shane stood in his underwear, a pair of large pants hanging from his hands.

My feet froze to the floor like the Almighty had turned me to stone, and I held my breath.

Damn, but he had a cute ass. Not at all flat like the pants made it seem, but firm, perky, kind of small but defined.

If he were a girl, I’d be leaning against the locker and trying out a few corny lines by now.

I swallowed hard and watched him bend over to push his legs through the pants, one after the other, and slide the denim up his thighs and over his ass.

He turned in the middle of it, zipping up the pants over his crotch just in time for me to glance at it.

His abs tensed, and he grabbed a hoodie out of the locker, then pulled it over his head, concealing the chiseled body that had made my head spin.

Without a word, I looked away and stepped to my locker.

I dug around for clean underwear, pulled them on under the towel, and muttered inside my head about being way too horny.

Maybe it was all this testosterone around the start of the season.

Maybe I was just running high on it naturally.

Wasn’t that what Shane had told me about the use of testosterone?

It could tweak your sexual desire in ways you didn’t see coming.

Except I knew it was bullshit. There was no way I had levels that high and for that long. I’d tested a few weeks ago for Shane and even fell a little low for a hockey player of my age.

It wasn’t the goddamn testosterone. It was the fact that I hadn’t gotten laid in almost two weeks.

It was hard to flirt when there was a guy taking notes on every breath, burp, and fart.

I didn’t feel like going over to a girl and taking Shane with me.

Where would that lead us, anyway? If I took the girl to my place, would I stuff Shane into the closet to observe?

A ripple of nervous flutters passed through me.

Was that fucking excitement? God fucking dammit.

The briefest, most fleeting thought of having sex in front of Shane—a ridiculous idea I used solely to illustrate my point, by the way—quickly flipped over, and it was Shane lying under me.

Or over me. Or both during a very long and dirty night.

My chest shuddered, and I finished dressing quickly. I unstrapped the smartwatch and carried it over to Shane.

“Chicken, rice, and beer, then?” Shane asked.

“I’m beat. I better go,” I said a tad more coldly than intended.

“Er, yeah, sure,” Shane said, picking up his backpack. He put his glasses on now, and what I’d hoped would happen didn’t happen. They didn’t make him nerdy at all. They didn’t make him into the Shane I knew before today. He was still a snack.

Fuck my life.

“See you tomorrow?” he asked.

I was already turning away. “I’ll let you know.”

If he said anything else after that, I was too far away to hear it. And it was just ten steps later that I regretted it. Fuck if I didn’t wish to hear him say, “Wait. Come back. Be with me.”