Full Contact: A College Reverse Harem Romance

by Cassie Cole

But she had proven herself to be a knowledgeable physical trainer. And as I forced myself to consider what she said, I realized she was probably right. I had been doing them wrong all this time. I had allowed myself to get lazy.

  “How do I keep my back arched?” I asked. “What muscle group should I focus on?”

  She smiled. “Step under the bar and I’ll show you.”

  We spent the next ten minutes focusing on squat form. She had me think about engaging my chest muscles, pushing them out to help exaggerate the proper back arch and build muscle memory.

  “Alright, I think you’re good there,” she said. “Ready for some deadlifts?”

  She moved her bar to the floor mats and bent over it. I ignored how sexy her heart-shaped ass was and tried to focus on the exercise itself.

  It was not easy.

  22

  Roberta

  The workouts went well. Feña listened to what I had to say, even if he did bristle when I told him that his form was flawed.

  I really liked Feña because he stayed focused throughout the entire lifting session. There were plenty of opportunities where Lance would have made a joke about my ass, or would have taken a dozen photos as if I were a model in a photo shoot. But Feña remained polite and professional, listened to what I said, and then replicated it himself. A perfect student.

  It was always nice working with people who wanted to improve.

  The only downside to the morning was that our workout was interrupted when Brett and the other football players came into the gym. I ran to the stairwell to hide just as they came around the corner into the main weights room.

  “Oh, Fernando,” I heard Brett say. “You’re here early. Uh. Are you doing deadlifts?”

  I reached the top floor and glanced over the railing in time to hear Feña say, “Just cleaning up the mess someone left last night. Plates everywhere.”

  Brett made a disapproving noise. “Probably the damn softball team. Women don’t know their way around a set of weights.”

  I gritted my teeth, but said nothing. Feña responded to the comment with a fake laugh, then glanced up at me.

  I gave him a what can you do grimace, then began jogging around the track again so I would blend in.

  The next couple of days blended together as we got into a routine. Wednesday meant Feña went back to his resistance band exercises while everyone else lifted heavy. Lance set a new PR—personal record—for squats, and high-fived everyone in a 30 foot radius while flexing. I smiled as I watched from the second floor, wishing I could celebrate with him.

  But later that workout, I saw him walking tenderly, and occasionally reaching down to rub the back of his thigh. I made a note to talk to him about it later.

  Then on Thursday Feña and I met again before everyone else. We did more squats, and overhead press with the barbell, before I had him try the next workout for his lower back: good mornings. That involved holding a weighted barbell on the shoulders, then bending at the waist like someone bowing to a crowd.

  “I can really feel that in my lower back,” Feña said after the first set.

  “Is it bothering you?”

  “No,” he said with an impish grin. “I meant it in a good way. These are the lifts I’ve needed to do.”

  That simple comment lifted my heart for the rest of the morning.

  But as fulfilling as it was to see Feña making progress, it only made me more annoyed that Brett had ignored him. Someone with a persistent injury to a muscle region should do more weight-lifting to strengthen the area, not less. Allowing the muscles to atrophy only made things worse long-term.

  No wonder Feña’s field goal distance had been declining. Hopefully by the second half of the season these workouts would improve that noticeably.

  That night, while reviewing my notebook for the three football players, I saw the note I’d made the day before. I pulled out my phone to text Lance.

  Me: Everything going well with your hamstring?

  Lance: Actually, there is a problem.

  Me: Oh? Is it tight again?

  Lance: Worse. It’s TOTALLY FUCKING SHREDDED.

  Lance: My body is too ripped, Babs. Every time I see a mirror I stop to admire myself. It’s becoming distracting.

  Me: That’s definitely not what I meant ;-) I saw you rubbing it yesterday

  Me: After you hit your new squat PR

  Lance: You probably just saw me scratching myself. Us guys get itchy.

  Lance: Especially those of us with extra surface area. You know. On account of all the MUSCLE.

  Lance: You can’t see it right now, but I’m flexing in my bedroom.

  Me: I can feel the flex through the phone!

  It was good to see him joking around. Maybe things weren’t awkward since our kiss at the party.

  Friday night I visited their house again to talk about what I’d noticed during the week, and to talk about their nutrition. Lance’s door was closed, so I figured he was already in bed. Danny commented that he thought the extra supplements I put them on were helping. I nodded along, but knew it was too early for him to tell. But if he thought they were helping already, then that was a good thing. The placebo effect was powerful.

  “Nutrition is an easy thing to overlook,” I said while we hung out in their living room. “Good habits only stay good habits if you keep doing them.”

  “Dude, no kidding,” Danny said. His hair was still wet from his shower, which made it look more honey-colored than blond. “Especially since we have to eat about 5,000 calories a day just to maintain our current weight.”

  “Very much so,” Feña agreed. “Sometimes our diet becomes a matter of simply eating a shitload of food and worry about the macros later.”

  I beamed at him. “Which is why I’m here. Okay, so nutrition is going well. How’s your body feel after your first week of real lifts? Any soreness?”

  “General soreness, yes,” Feña said. “And my calf muscles are tight.”

  “I figured they would be, since you’ve starting lifting after such a long hiatus. Let me work them out.”

  I retrieved a chair from the kitchen table and put it in front of Feña on the couch. I sat down and pulled up one of his legs into my lap and began kneading the hard muscle like dough.

  “Feel that?” I asked while pushing back on his foot.

  “Sí,” he breathed, wincing. “Ahí. Right there.”

  “It’s partly your achilles tendon,” I said while moving his foot around. “If the tightness becomes painful, let me know.”

  I admired his legs while I worked. Most women didn’t consider the legs to be an especially sexy part of the male body, but I definitely appreciated a nice set of muscular legs. Feña’s had almost zero body fat on them, allowing me to see—and feel—every fiber of the muscle. His tibia bone was sheathed in a layer of lithe muscle, with the bulbous calf underneath made of hard planes and straight lines. The lower quads, just above the knee, were raised up in wonderful contrast on his tan, delicious-looking skin.

  Yeah. Putting my hands on chiseled men was a nice fringe benefit in all this.

  I turned to Danny. “What about you? I noticed you’ve been doing more quick-release throwing drills during practice. Is that bothering your triceps?”

  A surprised look came to his face. “Actually, it feels great,” he said while testing his right arm. “Whatever you did to it last week really helped.”

  “That, and the dynamic stretching,” I said simply. “Still, it would be a good idea for me to work on it tonight and stimulate blood flow.”

  “I won’t say no to that,” he said with a grateful smile. “Thanks, Roberta.”

  “Just doing my job.”

  “Well, we’re not paying you,” he replied. “You know that, right? It’ll be awkward if you’re expecting a paycheck since it’s Friday…”

  I laughed and said, “Work credits are more valuable than money.”

  “It is still bullshit that Brett received the physical trainer position in
stead of you.” Feña cursed to himself in Spanish, then said, “Our entire team would be better off with you.”

  “Don’t get me riled up,” I said as I put down his leg and scooted my chair over to Danny in the recliner. “Every time I see Brett in that gym I start fantasizing about him befalling some unfortunate accident that forces him to leave the position.”

  “Oh yeah?” Danny said while I took his arm and massaged the triceps. “Any good fantasies?”

  “Well,” I said quietly, “my personal favorite right now is that someone drops a barbell plate on his foot.”

  “Ouch,” Feña said. “That would not force him to quit the position, however.”

  “You didn’t let me finish.” I smiled sideways at him. “The broken foot forces Brett to amble around on crutches. The crutches forces him to use the elevator in the athletic building rather than the stairs. One day the elevator breaks down between floors. Brett…”

  “Oh God,” Danny laughed. “He’s going to end up cut in half, isn’t he?”

  “No!” I protested. “Nothing that dark. He’s stuck inside the broken elevator for days. Drinking his own urine drives him insane, and once he’s rescued from the elevator he drops out of school to form a cult that worships the god of elevators in New York.”

  “That went in a very strange direction,” Feña said, though he wore a big grin.

  Danny was rumbling with silent laughter. “I have to admit, that’s a creative—and non-violent—way to fantasize about him losing his job. I would have just fantasized about him getting hit by a bus or something.”

  “Women truly are the gentler sex,” I replied with a saucy grin.

  Both of them laughed heartily.

  The fun banter was a reminder that one of them still hadn’t come out of his bedroom. “How’s Lance doing? Any more tightness?”

  They both glanced at each other. “Uh, Lance told us he talked to you,” Danny said.

  “He told me his hamstring was fine!”

  “It has been bothering him all week,” Feña said. “He has been taking extra ice baths after practice.”

  “Son of a bitch…”

  “Ow!” Danny yelped, pulling his arm away. I’d been digging into it extra hard.

  “Sorry!” I got up and went to the hallway leading to their bedrooms. I pounded on the one door that was closed. “Lance, get your chiseled ass out here.”

  “He’s out,” Danny said.

  I blinked in surprise. “The night before a game?”

  “He informed us that he intended to study at the library,” Feña said. He frowned to himself. “However, it now seems that he may be avoiding you.”

  “Is he really at the library?” I asked. “Or is that just an excuse?”

  “I can’t think of anywhere else he’d go,” Danny admitted. “Not the night before a game. He’s been there for… maybe two hours?”

  I stuffed my notepad into my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “I’m going to go find him. Good luck in the game tomorrow.”

  Feña grinned. “We do not need luck. We have Roberta Gallo.”

  His compliment made me smile, but only for a few seconds.

  It was a short walk halfway across campus to the Pullman Library. There were six stories of books with a computer lab on the first floor, and the place looked deserted when I arrived. The librarian behind the information desk blinked with surprise when he saw me, and gave me a look that said: what are you doing at the library at 10:30 on a Friday night?

  I ignored him and searched the building. The first floor and computer lab held a few students, but no Lance. The second and third floors were even more deserted.

  Finally, on the fourth floor, I found him. His bulking shape was seated at an individual study table wedged between two wide bookcases, with his back turned to me. Rather than confront him outright, I took a seat on the other side of the library floor and pulled out my phone.

  Me: What’s the point of having your own dedicated physical trainer if you skip the Friday meeting?

  Across the library, he pulled out his phone. He stared at it for a little while, then took a long time to compose a response.

  Lance: Had to study. Got an exam on Monday. How do these professors expect me to catch bombs from Danny tomorrow if all this education get in the way?

  Me: It’s almost like this is a university or something ;-)

  Lance: I prefer to think of it as an oversized football campus with too many books.

  Me: If you have all of Sunday to study, why are you staying up tonight? Sleep is an important part of muscle recovery. Like, the most important part.

  Me: Pulling all-nighters is a good way to lose all those SHREDDED MUSCLES you were texting me about in CAPITAL LETTERS.

  Across the room, I saw Lance’s shoulders rumble with silent laughter. I felt a tingle in my stomach knowing that I could make him laugh like that.

  Lance: This class is no joke. Sunday alone isn’t enough time to study. I won’t stay up too late, Coach Babs. I promise :-)

  Me: How’s the hamstring?

  Lance: Totally awesome. It’s the Cadillac of hamstrings. Even the French judge would give it a 10/10 in a hamstring beauty contest.

  Lance: Mick Jagger is writing a song about my hamstring.

  Lance: My hamstring is so awesome they should take photos of it and put it in human anatomy textbooks, though it might distract all the ladies because of how fucking perfect it is.

  Despite his funny texts, I saw him reach down and massage the underside of his thigh.

  My smile disappeared.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I was striding across the room and into the narrow room between the bookcases.

  “You’re lying!” I shouted as a greeting.

  Lance whirled, eyes wide. “Babs?”

  I loomed over him, finger pointing. “You’re lying to me! I saw you rubbing your leg!”

  “Uh, when?”

  “Just now!” I snapped, playfully smacking his arm. “Don’t even try to deny it!”

  He put up his hands and winced. “I’m sorry! Yeah, my hammy is a little tight. It’s no big deal.”

  “No big deal,” I repeated in a mocking tone. “You’ve got the second game of the season tomorrow, but it’s no big deal.”

  “I’ve got most of my mobility,” he said defensively. “I’m at 75 or 80 percent.”

  I pulled out the chair next to him and sat down angrily. “My question earlier was serious. What’s the point of having a dedicated physical trainer if you avoid her, or keep stuff from her?”

  “I don’t know,” Lance said, sounding exactly like a little boy who had gotten caught in a lie.

  I glanced at the open book in front of his desk. There was a three-ring notepad next to it, but he had only written down two lines of notes.

  “It doesn’t look like you’ve been working very hard.”

  “I just got here.”

  “Danny said you’ve been here two hours.”

  Lance hesitated before saying, “Well, I’ve been reading the chapters more than taking notes.”

  I let out an exasperated sigh. “Why are you avoiding me?”

  “I’m not,” he said, though it was clear he was embarrassed. And I knew exactly why.

  “The kiss at the party.”

  He didn’t say anything. He only tightened his lips while looking anywhere but at me.

  I thought we agreed to not make it weird.”

  Finally he met my gaze. “You know it’s not that easy, Babs. I mean… I want it to not be weird. But then—”

  I shut him up by kissing him.

  23

  Roberta

  My kiss caught him totally off guard. I leaned forward with my lips against his, then grabbed a handful of his shirt to keep him from backing away. He tasted like vanilla coffee, sweet and earthy, and his tongue pressed into my mouth hungrily. I let it swirl with mine before finally pulling away.

  “There,” I said bluntly. “Now you can stop being stup
id about it.”

  Lance still looked shocked, but recovered quickly. “Your idea of taking away the weirdness of one kiss is to do it again?”

  “Yuuuuup,” I said. “It should cancel out. Like double-negatives. It’s no longer not un-weird.”

  “That’s like… a triple negative,” he pointed out with a hopeful smile.

  “Whatever. Can we just move past it? Because I don’t like you avoiding me. And I really don’t like you hiding injuries from me. How do you think it will look on my eventual work credit report that one of my subjects got injured, and then hid it from me? You’re not just being annoying—your jeopardizing the entire reason I’m doing this.”

  That finally made him wince. “I didn’t think of it like that.”

  “So if there’s still a problem, how about we talk it out right now?”

  Lance’s massive chest heaved as he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He ran his fingers through his hair and then nodded to me.

  “It has to do with the party.”

  “Yeah, I surmised that,” I said. “It was a kiss. So what?”

  But he was shaking his head. “It’s more than that. I don’t like hooking up with girls at parties. Or any time they’re drunk, really. Taking advantage of someone who’s tipsy…”

  “You weren’t taking advantage of me!” I insisted.

  He grabbed both of my hands, engulfing them in his massive palms. His grip was strong and gentle at the same time, and his skin was warm to the touch as he stared into my eyes.

  “Give me a chance to explain. Without interruption.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “One of my best friends from high school came to Appleton with me. A girl name Suzie. She was in the nursing program. We’d grown up living on the same street, totally platonic. Like a sister to me. We thought it would be great to go to the same college, but we kind of grew apart once we were here. She lived way over in the Rodgers dorms, and I was in Whitecliff. Plus we didn’t have any classes together. So we made our own friends and kind of drifted apart. Which isn’t a big deal. That happens to lots of people. Plus, we were both doing our own thing and loving it.