Dismissing the absolutely filthy image in my head, I try for something neutral. “Good morning. Seems like you’ve got an early start to the day.”
He looks up at me from his bent-over position, his eyes wary. “Yeah, thought I’d get a workout in before the day started. Hope that’s okay, hoss.”
He’s called me that a couple of times now, and I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me, or what. Whatever, I let it slide.Anything’s better than Keto Spice.“Yeah, that’s fine. One of the perks of the job.”
Given the dark smudges under his eyes, I wonder what keeps him up at night and has him working out at damn near four o’clock in the morning. I mean, fuck, I’m dedicated to keeping my body within regulation, but I still need my beauty sleep.
Once he’s finished with the weights, he points over to the space for prosthetics we talked about on his first day. “Did you see the wall? Your prosthetics folks sent me a picture of their setup and links to where they bought everything. I had Roly order everything, and it got in yesterday. I think it’ll work just great for those classes where they have to take off the prosthetic.”
The kid can be counted on to be a bit mouthy, but he does seem to want to impress me. I’d like for him to impress me by taking my entire cock in that ripe mouth of his, but once again I redirect my one-track mind to the subject at hand and walk over to the space in question. I find myself actually… impressed. He didn’t just set up a pegboard system, which by the way is plumb as fuck, he installed handrails so people can get up and down when removing and reattaching their limbs.
I grab a rail with one hand, then reach down and unlatch my leg attachment with the other, leaving the socket in place, then hang it up on one of the industrial hooks sunk into the pegs. Looks pretty good, and even though my leg is a little heavy, it holds up well.
“What do you think?” he asks as he brushes past me, accidentally knocking into me. I stumble slightly but grab the handrail to right myself. Those icy, bottomless blue eyes open comically wide, and he thrusts his hands out to stabilize me. This of course has the exact opposite consequence, ripping me from the handle rail, ending with both of us in a lump on the floor with me more or less straddling him.
“Oh shit, I am so, so sorry,” he says, groaning, attempting to move out from under me. I’m not too proud to admit I’m allowing my weight to settle in on top of him a bit longer than is totally necessary. Fuck, he feels amazing underneath me, and those eyes… dammit. I roll off him quickly before my dick plumps any further.
He rolls away in the opposite direction and takes a minute to get up. “Man, you weigh a ton. I’m calling it—you actually are a robot with a fake prosthetic leg.”
I chuckle at his stupid comment, and heat flashes through his eyes like maybe he likes my smile. I try to redirect the conversation to something serious so I can maintain some level of dignity.
“Pro tip, kid. Amputees fall all the time, because their balance is severely compromised. And I’m not even talking about leg amputations. People with upper-body amputations also lose a sense of balance. You’ll notice every training area has either rubber mats or green turf,” I say, slapping the rubberized floor beneath my palm. “I’m trying to make this the safest place possible for people to be able to fall and pick themselves back up. Knowing how to fall and knowing how to avoid falls is a big part of what we do here.”
Elijah rubs his hand over the back of his head, eyes down. “Got it. Really, really sorry about that.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it, kid. It’s a common mistake people make when they see me struggling with my balance. The biggest lesson you’ll learn around here is that sometimes you gotta let someone struggle to get stronger, and sometimes you got to lend a helping hand. And knowing when to do which is a bit of an art… that you will get wrong from time to time.”
“All right,” he says, getting up and dusting himself off. Turning away from me, he starts putting serious distance between the two of us. “I’ll get the yoga area set up.”
“Hey! Aren’t you going to help me off the floor? You did knock me down.”
He turns around quickly, a bit flushed. “Oh, shit, I’m…” He stops when he sees the shit-eating grin on my face. A devilish smile I like way too much slides across his lips, as he starts walking backward. “Dude, I’m just letting you pick yourself up. Part of your therapy.”
He cackles, laughing at his own joke, so I decide to teach him a lesson. I roll up to a kneeling stance, then hop up, landing perfectly on my well-balanced foot, and stand there smirking with my hand on my hip. His jaw drops, and I’m pretty sure I see a little bit of drool as his eyes slowly burn their way up my body. Damn. He looks hungry. I cock my head at him, and his gaze immediately shifts down. I hop over to the pegboard and grab the handrail, putting my leg back on one-handed so as not to break eye contact with him. “These handrails are an excellent addition. Good thinking.”
“Thanks.” He gulps, his pretty blue eyes blinking wide. “And thanks for load testing it. I’m pretty sure at least three of my ribs are bruised from you landing on me, but the pegboard wasn’t fazed in the slightest.”
With that he starts setting up the yoga mats. I’m not sure who won that little interchange. Probably not me.
* * *
Elijah
When Nick’s severe eyes are on me, I feel a bit like a mouse being tracked by a bird of prey, one with hazardous taste in gym wear who can sense my every weakness. Of course, I’m not going to be following my dick around because I need this job.But… if he wanted to bend me over a weight bench, I’d be hard-pressed to find the desire to stop him.
On a less sexually frustrating note, it makes me feel good that I’ve done something of value with the peg-leg pegboard, as Roly has started calling it. I’ll keep trying to find ways to be helpful, and hopefully that’ll be enough for them to keep me here.
Just as I’ve got the floor laid out with yoga gear, in walk, crutch, and roll the folks who are about to get their asses kicked in the next spin class. I saw him run the class for the first time two days ago, and my legs hurt just watching it.
Thankfully, Nick is okay with me coming in early. Couple of my neighbors were getting into it, and I decided to leave before the police got involved. I just need a couple of paychecks and I’ll be able to get a better living situation. In the meantime, I’ve got a dangerously sexy one-legged man to avoid.
* * *
Turns out, it’s pretty hard to avoid my boss, especially now that he’s seen me work with more of the vets and knows I can take whatever they dish out. Yesterday he had me run an errand down the street, and today I’m riding with him in his car to check out a mega gym that is closing and selling their equipment.
We walk around the space, and at this point it looks like a multilevel auction house and smells like indoor chlorine. We agree that most of the equipment is too beat-up, but I convince him to buy the rock-climbing wall. It’s structurally sound and not at all expensive, and might be a cool option for our amputees. We head over to the main counter and discover that they carry a lot of the same local protein shakes we carry, and all are well within their sell-by dates.
We shove the components of the climbing wall into the bed of the truck and the huge tubs of protein shake into the extended cab, then head out, tapping our fingers to Guns N’ Roses as we make our way back to the gym. Pulling into his designated space, surrounded as I am by buckets of protein shake, I can’t help myself. “It’s kinda sketchy, though, right? Buying, like, thirty pounds of protein powder from those guys? How do we know that this isn’t some kind of Soylent Green situation?”
