"What?" I giggle.
"That look. Wow. You just checked me the fuck out."
"So? Did you hate it?"
"Not at all, button. I'm diggin' it hard."
"Button?" I snort.
"Yeah." He pauses, smiling all the way up to his gleaming eyes. "You're like… cute as a fuckin' button."
"Oh, my god."
"I'm lame, right?"
"Well… yeah. But…" I let out a breath. We're flirting. And I love it. "Totally lame. Please don't stop."
His smile lingers a few moments too long. Like he's really thinking about this interaction. "So… let's go," he says, and there's something different in his voice now—lower, rougher around the edges.
He steps a little closer, not crowding me but close enough that I can smell whatever clean, woodsy scent he's wearing.
"I'll show you exactly how to turn your already amazing body into something so goddamn fuckable that every single man within a two-hundred-mile radius will be lining up, practically begging for the chance to take you out."
My brain short-circuits.
Fuckable.
He just saidfuckable.
To my face.
Like it's a completely normal thing to say to someone you're training.
My pulse is hammering so hard I'm pretty sure he can see it in my throat. My face is burning. Every nerve ending in my body just woke up at once, screaming.
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
Nothing comes out.
Ryan's watching me with that same easy confidence, like he didn't just detonate a bomb in the middle of my carefully maintained composure. Like he knowsexactlywhat that word did to me—and he's enjoying it.
Then he turns and heads toward the machines—casual, confident, like he didn't just rearrange every single thought in my brain.
While I stay rooted in place.
Mouth open.
Heart pounding.
The wordfuckablelooping on repeat in my head like some kind of filthy mantra I can't shut off.
He wants me.
The realization crashes through me. Hot, and disorienting, and impossibly real.
He actually wants me.
Not hypothetically. Not in some vague, distant, maybe-someday sense.
