Barbells at Christmas Read online

  “Lisa,” he repeated in his beautiful accent, and she almost melted. “What brings you here on Christmas Eve?”

  Her lust wilted. She wished he hadn’t said that. “The atmosphere?” she tried to joke.

  To her deep gratification, his lips cracked into a grin. “You like it?” He pointed at the mistletoe hanging over the power cage. “I did that. I can’t go home for Christmas, so I thought I’d make this place cheery.”

  Immediately she rekindled. There was just something so earnest about a guy decorating his place of employ for Christmas, but it was sad, too. Like her. She knew sad. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Where’s home?”

  “Cuba. All my family lives there. I haven’t been there since I was little, and most of my family I’ve only seen in photos and videos, and sometimes we talk on the phone… But there’s where my heart lives, with them.” His smile dimmed.

  She was dying. She wanted to hug him and kiss him and fuck the sad out of him. She’d be his very own Christmas elf.

  He cleared his throat and turned the subject on her. “And you? Surely a lovely woman like you has somewhere to be, someone to be with on this night?”

  Lisa laughed. She couldn’t help it. She wanted to lie and tell him she was Jewish or something, but instead what came out was the truth. “No,” she said, “not really. I haven’t talked to my dad since high school, and my mom called me two days ago and said she’d put too much flour in the Christmas cake. And by flour she meant vodka. And by cake she meant glass. And that’s why she was in Bolivia instead of here in Springfield like she was supposed to be.”

  To her relief, he returned the laugh and her toes curled. “But I mean like a husband or a boyfriend.”

  If anyone else had asked her, she would have cried. But he was not just anyone and she’d never been so happy to say: “Well, he broke up with me yesterday so he could spend Christmas in Chicago. With another girl.”

  “An idiot, then.”

  She was grinning so hard her cheeks hurt. “Yes,” she said. “A total idiot.”

  Something tugged on her and she realised she was still holding onto his hand in a death grip. Embarrassed, she snatched it away. “Sorry!” she gasped.

  “Don’t be,” he said.

  “Oh. Okay. I’ll get right on that.” Of course! Why would she be sorry? Just a friendly handshake that went on too long, haha, with the hottest man she’d ever seen, haha! Kill me!

  “Shall we continue your set?” he asked.

  He still wanted to stick around? How was she going to concentrate? How would she refrain from leaning back and sticking her face in his crotch?

  But she didn’t say any of that. Instead she nodded, her mouth dry, and loaded her second set, her pussy tingling the entire time, and when she laid down to set her form, she couldn’t get enough air. She was going to hyperventilate. Maybe she would pass out and he would give her mouth to mouth, then things went sort of hazy after that but maybe they could make use of the incline sit-up bench and perhaps their clothes would quantum tunnel across the room. That was how quantum mechanics worked, right? Ugh, she should have paid attention in class all those years ago; how was she supposed to know that it would come in handy?

  Lisa was so preoccupied with molecular physics that she didn’t even notice when he leant over her until she felt his fingertips alight on her stomach, and she gasped.

  It was like five points of fire on her belly. Every nerve sat up and sang at his touch, and she wanted them to move, up or down, it didn’t matter, just as long as he touched her more. God, he smelled good.

  His gorgeous face smiled down at her. “Breathe deeply,” he said. “Fill yourself up with air. Push your diaphragm down.”

  Say diaphragm again, she thought, then, Air’s not what I want to be filled up with. This was a bad idea. She should have run away the second she laid eyes on him.

  Lisa was never good at taking advice, not even her own. She nodded and took a deep, shaking breath.

  Somehow they got through all her sets, although she didn’t know how she’d managed it. He was so freaking distracting. He smelt like sweat and dust and cologne, and she almost dropped the bar on herself several times, imagining them sixty-nine-ing right there on the bench, his hot full lips on her pussy, her mouth locked around his cock, swallowing as much as she could, her nose buried in his petal-soft scrotum as she inhaled his musky scent at the source. She wondered how many security cameras were in this place, and if she cared. She’d never wanted anyone so badly in her entire life, not even Rick.

  Especially not even Rick. Rick who? That was his name, right? Wait, who cared? Not her!

  When the bar clanged down the last time, Lisa jumped to her feet, unable to remain eye-to-groin for a second longer. “Thanks!” she chirped, too-cheerful, too-nervous. “I’ll, um, finish my last exercise on my own. Thanks for the help.”

  “What is your last exercise?” he asked.

  Crap, Lisa thought. “Two sets of as many chin-ups as I can do.”

  “You can do chin-ups?” he asked. It wasn’t an unreasonable question; many women couldn’t do chin-ups. She still remembered how upsetting it was to go from ten chin-ups in P.E. class to zero once Aunt Flo started calling, but she hadn’t been busting her ass doing dumbbell rows and barbell deadlifts for a year just to hang from a chin-up bar like a weakling.

  She could do one. Maybe two. Three on a good day.

  “A couple,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. Her voice cracked. Thanks, body.

  “I will help,” he said. “The more you are able to do, even with assistance, the stronger you will be.”

  Now her voice totally gave out on her, so she just nodded.

  She picked up her things and moved to the power cage, acutely aware of him just behind her. Was it her imagination or was his breath a little ragged? Or was that her breath? She tossed her towel and water bottle down next to the cage and chalked her hands. Stretching up on tiptoe, she grabbed the bar and took a moment to admire herself in the mirror. This was when all her hard work showed the most, in her taut triceps and bulging lats. She loved looking ripped.

  She loved looking at the ripped guy standing just behind her, too. Jesus, were those guns even legal? Did Illinois have concealed-carry laws? Because he needed a licence.

  She needed to be committed.

  His hands alighted on her waist. Lisa bit her lip.

  “You can do it,” he urged.

  Shut up, she thought, and pulled, squeezing her shoulder blades together.

  Once her chin cleared the bar.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  Four times.

  On the fifth rep, she stalled halfway up, then she felt the slightest of pressures on her waist, and a smouldering burn oozed its way from his fingertips down to her crotch, pooling in her swollen pussy lips like melted wax. She didn’t even notice when she pulled herself above the bar the fifth time, or the sixth.

  And on the seventh pull, as she lowered herself back down, his hands didn’t stay on her waist. Instead they hovered in the place where her waist had been as she lowered her body. His fingertips trailed white-hot fire up her ribs, sliding over each one as though counting them. Then the lightest of touches skated over the outward curves of her breasts and Lisa’s grip failed. She dropped to the ground, landing heavily on her toes. Their eyes, her blue ones and his brown, met in the mirror. She hoped he was thinking the same thing she was, because she was about to take a leap of faith.

  It was more like a bump of faith. Quite by accident--really!--she took a stumbling step back, and her ass bumped into his groin.

  His cock was stiff and straining. In the mirror, their eyes were still locked. His cheeks were flushed, his dark eyes growing darker. Lisa licked her lips.

  “Locker room,” she croaked. They weren’t the sexiest words ever spoken, but she wouldn’t have known that by his reaction. His Adam’s apple bobbed, then his fingers were intertwining with hers and he pulled her out of the freeweig
ht area and across the basketball court.

  That court had never seemed so huge. It took forever to cross it, and the whole time, he walked in front of her, teasing her with his beauty. Her fingers shook where they met his, and when at last they darted into the locker room, Lisa thought she had aged at least a hundred years. She was the world’s oldest, feistiest cougar, and when he gently trapped her against the wall with his body, she hoped, dazedly, that she still had all her original teeth. Then his mouth met hers and all her ridiculous thoughts evaporated in the sudden, blazing heat.

  His mouth on hers was hard, fast, urgent, his lips moving on hers as if he wanted to swallow them. Two strong arms held her delicately against the wall as one hard-muscled thigh slid between her legs, rubbing against her clit, and her bones turned to glass. She was going to shatter, and she didn’t even care. She brought her hands up, skimming them over his chest--it was a really, really good chest, too--before travelling over his throat and up to the back of his head, tangling her fingers in his hair. She dislodged his hat and it fell to the ground, unheeded as she let her tongue slip out between her teeth to meet his. He tasted of mint and something spicy. He moaned into her mouth and she felt it down to her curling toes.

  Her hips bucked, rubbing her pussy against his thigh, and she groaned in response. “Fuck, fuck,” she whispered, not knowing if it were a curse or a promise as he broke away and dragged his tongue down her throat. His teeth nipped at her hammering pulse and her eyelids fluttered. Their mingled gasps echoed off the tiled walls of the locker room, two animals in heat. She abandoned the wild tangle of his hair and moved her hands down until the slick, smooth fabric of his shirt met her fingers. She clenched it in her fists as she rubbed herself against him. He scraped his teeth over her shoulder and she needed something, something, and she didn’t even know what. She was soaking wet, slick and ready, more ready than she’d ever been.

  She leant in and ran the tip of her tongue around the shell of his ear, like she’d wanted to do back in the weight room. At the feel of the damp tip tracing the labyrinthine folds, he gasped, made a strangled sound in his throat, and when her teeth closed on his earlobe, his hips bucked against her. His cock, hard as a diamond, pressed into her hip. She wanted it inside her and she didn’t care where--her pussy, her ass, her mouth, god, if he wanted to fuck the soles of her feet she would let him--and she trailed a hand down his body, plucking at his waistband before settling over the straining outline of his dick through his pants. She traced the soft head, could feel dampness through the fabric. She swirled her palm over it as best she could, and he rocked against her again.

  “Oh, Lisa,” he said, then rattled off something in Spanish under his breath, and distantly she cursed her fourteen-year-old self for selecting to take German. German, for god’s sake! Then she promptly forgot about regretting the ill-advised choices of her youth when he wove a hand through her hair and clenched it in his fist as the other hand slid down her back to her ass.

  He squeezed a handful of flesh. She felt the lips of her pussy pull and peel away as he tried to grab as much as his hand could hold. She hooked a thigh over his hip and urged him closer.

  Hmm, the tiny, functioning part of her brain mused over the din of desire in her head. Something about asses...

  Oh. That was right.

  She abandoned his cock, pressing her palm against him as she traversed the hard planes of his hip, until at last she crested the mountain of his glorious butt.

  It was legendary. If her hand ever took it upon itself to write its memoirs, reaching the summit of Angel’s Ass would be the crowning moment of its glory. She wished she had a camera, because a moment like this needed to be captured on film. It was firm and round and so squeezable she almost couldn’t do it. It seemed like sacrilege. Then again, she was about to fuck a total stranger in a public place on what had to be Jesus’ birthday by now, so perhaps she should stop being neurotic.

  Lisa squeezed.

  It was everything she’d hoped it would be. The flesh gave under her fingers, depressing slightly, and under that delectable flesh were glutes as rock hard as his cock. She sank her fingernails in, and he ground against her, his cock pressing against her belly, seeking entrance into her body. She liked that so much she moved her other hand to his ass and dug in with that one, too. His mouth found her breast.

  There were suddenly too many layers between them. She had to get her shirt off. Luckily Angel was way ahead of her and was already tugging at the hem, lifting it over her stomach--which was never as flat as she wanted it to be, and she hoped he didn’t think her routine was lacking because of it--moving it past her sports bra, urging her to lift her arms. Reluctantly she abandoned his ass and acquiesced, and in one fluid motion, her T-shirt was over her head and on the floor. His fingers were tugging the hair band out of her long brown hair, letting it fall down her back and over his arms in silky ropes.

  “You are beautiful,” he said, and she believed it.

  Strong, slender fingers shoved the tight elastic of her bra up over her breasts and his hot, wet mouth latched onto her nipple. She would have fallen if the wall had not held her up. She trailed her fingernails over his shoulders as he suckled, each long draw on her breast, each rasp of his tongue against her swollen nipple curling her toes and sending a jolt of electricity straight down to her begging pussy. She was white hot, burning with need, her clit like a fiery coal begging to be quenched with his mouth. Desperately she rubbed herself against him again, wild and uncertain, roaming over his landscape like a restless ghost searching for home. She tugged at his shirt, demanding that he mirror her, and when he pulled away from her, it was painful.

  “Don’t, don’t leave--” she begged. But all he did was rip the shirt over his head and it joined hers on the floor.

  He was amazing. He could have been a cover model. He could have been an anatomy lesson. He was about to be an anatomy lesson, and she wanted to stay after school every fucking day. Hungrily her eyes traced over his chest, down his six-pack abs, to the delicious lines of his hips leading down into his windpants, and she wanted to follow them with her mouth. He even had little love handles, bulging just a bit over his waistband, and for a moment, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to suck his cock or wrap him into a bear hug. Then he was back, his teeth gently working away at her other breast and her dilemma was resolved. Blowjobs all around!

  His body was burning hot. The skin against her fingers was almost blistering, a furnace of desire, burning for her. She wanted more, now. Not knowing what else to do, she tugged his mouth back up to hers, her fingers curling in his beautiful black hair, and pulled him with her farther inside the locker room. She needed him inside her, as soon as possible.

  His tongue invaded her mouth as they stumbled past lockers and benches, his hands everywhere at once, running up over her breasts, across her back and down to her ass. Skin caught against skin as he bent and tried to gather her thighs in his palms, clearly needing to be inside her as much as she needed it. They ran up against a wall, and suddenly, he was lifting her up. His burning erection pressed against her, rubbing over her clit through four layers of cloth. It was so hot she thought she would melt, burn and heal around it, keep it close for as long as she needed.

  “Oh!” she cried as he tried to suck her entire breast into his mouth. For the first time, she was glad she wasn’t so well-endowed. She wanted him to swallow her whole.

  Her fingers were on his waistband, tugging it away from his hips, dipping below the forbidden border, and through the cotton of his underwear, she felt the nest of curls at the base of his cock, springy and waiting to be drenched in her juices. She wanted to bury her face in it. She couldn’t wait much longer.

  “Let me,” she said, incoherent.

  “Mm,” he murmured around her breast, and the vibrations made her want to sing. Her thighs clenched around his hips, urging him closer, deeper, faster, harder. If he was a summoned ghost of Christmas, he was the ghost of Christmas present, because eve
rything but this had been banished from her mind. Her mother, her father, Rick and stupid Shirley, her friends with their boyfriends and husbands, her stupid job, her lonely flat, her weariness and longing heart—none of it mattered. She remembered none of it in this blazing moment of light. All that mattered was that Angel was in her arms, and she was in his, and she wanted him so badly she was going to implode and take half the universe with her.

  But first, she had to get this stupid sports bra off. As much as it pained her, she pushed against his shoulders, and immediately, he acquiesced to her wishes and broke away.

  “Am I going too fast?” he asked. His wide, dark eyes were so earnest, so needy, that she felt them pluck at something deep inside her, some forgotten heartstring.

  “Not fast enough,” she gasped, crossed her arms, and pulled ineffectually at the tight spandex binding her shoulders and chest.

  He understood her need. His fingers appeared on the elastic, and together, they freed her from the horrible contraption. Her long hair brushed against her shoulders and back, sending shivers down her spine. He took a step back, just staring at her, and she had to fight the urge to cover herself.

  “I want to watch you undress,” he said.

  She smiled at him, and she saw his cock twitch under the fabric of his pants. “Only if you return the favour.”

  He didn’t smile, just licked his swollen lips, and lifted a foot. Carefully, slowly, he tugged at the shoelace binding the shoe to his foot. She heard the lace rub over itself in the sudden, pregnant silence of the locker room, the only other sound their ragged breathing. It felt as though he were pulling at something inside her, too, unravelling her, untying her, until she swung loose and free.

  He slipped his shoe off, and repeated the actions with the other shoe. Laces abraded laces. Stocking feet were liberated. Footwear had never held such promise.

  With practiced ease, he hooked a thumb inside each sock and peeled them off. He had perfect feet. If she’d been even remotely artistic, she would have bent to inspect them and kiss them, memorise them for that moment in the far distant future, when she needed the most beautiful foot in the world to complete her masterpiece.