I don’t say it to sound obnoxious but that’s my immediate worry after Marcello gives me a brief smile and the sparkle in his eyes dims a little.
“Ready?” I ask once I’m lying under the bar and looking up at him. He gives me an apprehensive nod, pulls his lips into his mouth and then frowns in what looks like concentration. And it shouldn’t do things to me. It shouldn’t make my heart beat a little quicker even though I haven’t even lifted the damn bar. It shouldn’t have me wondering if that’s what he looks like when he’s tugging on himself, concentrating hard on his pleasure and only his pleasure.
Feeling a rush of blood make its way between my legs, I quickly switch off my imagination and grip the bar above my head. I refuse to get a hard-on right now. I refuse to undo all my hard work moving my thoughts of Marcello firmly into a friendship-shaped box in my mind. I refuse to let him walk back into my sexual fantasies after keeping him out of them for the last week.
“One… two… three,” I grit out as I pump the bar feeling the burn in my chest and arms. “Four… five… six!”
“Fucking hell, man,” Marcello says as he crouches down and keeps his hands under the bar like I asked. “You could at least try and make it look hard.”
“Seven… eight… nine.”
“You’re not even sweating! Do you ever perspire?”
“Ten… eleven… twelve!” I push the bar up and re-rack it. I let my arms fall to my chest and feel my ribs expand and deflate with deep breaths.
“That was… impressive,” Marcello says behind me.
“Can you add another five kilos on either side?”
“Are you pulling my leg?”
I shake my head and give him what feels like a humble smile.
Marcello tuts and says something in Italian that I’d put money on being a curse, but he moves and does as I ask.
“Ready?” I ask when the weights are locked in place.
“Shouldn’t I be asking you if you are?” He cocks an eyebrow.
“Go on then, ask me.”
“Are you ready?”
“Locked and loaded.” I kiss my biceps and expect Marcello to roll his eyes or tsk me again, but he doesn’t. His eyes dutifully watch the movement and then glaze over. But then he shakes his head and it all changes. That cute little frown is back and he squats down with his hands hovering under the bar.
“Come on then, Arnie.” He nods. “Give it your best shot.”
Those extra ten kilograms make themselves known quickly in my next set. The burn in my pectorals intensifies and I find I’m grunting out each rep rather than saying the number. When I get to nine, I start to slow down.
“Come on, Giles,” Marcello says, bending lower and closer to me. “You’ve got this. You’ve fucking got this.”
And suddenly I do. I speed up again and pump out another three reps easily. So easily, I go ahead and make it to fifteen before re-racking the bar.
“There you go!” Marcello declares. “Shall I swap those tens for fifteen?”
I quickly do the maths. I’ve bench-pressed more but that was when I was training a bit hard, more regularly.
“You know you don’t have to pretend to not want to. You can be a cocky bastard about it.”
“A cocky bastard,moi?” I place a hand on my chest and give him my most teasing smile.
“I think you’ve got it in you to be very cocky.”
That’s about one too many times I’ve heard the word ‘cock’ come out of his mouth and now my own cock is twitching.
“Rack them up,” I tell him, determined to lift my way out of this crush, to sweat away the filthy thoughts I keep on having about Marcello despite myself. “But make those tens twenties.”
He pauses in his movement. “You serious?”
