This was a terrible fucking idea.And that’s not me reverting to the sour mood I was in when I arrived…that’s me stating facts. It’s like Liamwantsme to spring a boner because of him, I swear to God.
“Why are your gym shorts so short?” I ask when he strips out of his sweatpants in the small resort locker room.
He laughs, “So I can squat deeper. Full range of motion is essential for quality lifts.”
“Li, if you ‘squat deeper’ in those shorts, I’m going to have to leave.”
Smacking his own ass—which has no jiggle and is tighter than a drum—he says, “This really does it for you, huh?”
Maybe I was wrong when I said he wouldn’t hold my attraction against me…I just didn’t expect him to embrace it with this level of enthusiasm. But that’s my fault. I should’ve known better. Li embraceseverythinglike it’s the greatest thing he’s ever seen/felt/heard/tasted. I envy him a little for that.
I groan and roll my eyes. “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
“’fraid not.”
“Fuck’s sake, Li, can we just get on with it already?”
Honoring my request, he leads me into the gym, which is mercifully empty at the moment, and we start with an easy run on the treadmill to warm up. At least this I can do…until Liam reaches over and taps the incline button on my machine, making it rise.
“Hey!” I shout, batting his hand away. “Mind your business.”
“You want an ass like this?” he asks, grabbing a handful of his left ass cheek. “Then you gotta put in the work.”
“How aboutyouput in the work, and I’ll continue to admire yours from afar like I’ve done for the last decade and a half?”
My pouty suggestion only makes his smile widen.
“You can do both.”
I’m basically fucking dead by the time we finish the two miles.Warm up, my ass.
“Do you want to start with Romanian deadlifts or Bulgarian split squats?” he asks, like I have any idea what either of those things is.
To put this in perspective for him, I ask, “Well, that depends, Li.”
“On what?” he asks so innocently.
“On whether you’ve ensured comprehensive detection and response to all zero-day exploits within the SIEM and EDR stack?”
His eyes narrow, but my face remains stony, my hands on my hips.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“Exactly! I don’t know what the hell a Portuguese squash split is. Just pick something, and show me how to do it.”
He moves behind me, planting his hands on my shoulders and steering me toward the bench, laughing the whole way.
“Fine. You’ve made your point. We’ll do bench presses. You know that one, right?”
“Barely.”
As we walk to the bench, I follow our reflection in the mirror. Liam is roughly three inches taller than me. He’s scruffier than my clean-cut look, and he looksdamngood behind me like this.
The gym itself isn’t big, but it was built with thought and care. The cardio equipment faces floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the slopes. There’s a circuit of machines in the middle, three squat racks line one short wall, and a rack full of dumbbells, yoga mats, medicine balls, and resistance bands sits against another wall. In the very back are the doors that connect to the locker rooms, the water fountain, and a large empty space for those using the aforementioned free weights and such.
“Okay, I’ll go first and talk you through how to do it on my easy sets, and then I’ll help you.”
I nod, mesmerized by the way the gaping armholes in his tank top somehow make his chest and arms look even bigger than they actually are—which is pretty fucking huge.
