I drop the towel and clasp the bra behind my back, and my small nipples begin to harden against the translucent fabric. I gently trace a circle around each with the tips of my index fingers, and then I give each pebble a forceful tug, which stiffens them fully. I stare at them in the mirror and wish they were between Hunter’s teeth.
Next I pull the panties up along my legs and over my firm booty. I smooth the mesh along my cheeks and admire my rump in the mirror. Then I give it a little spank. It’s a habit I’ve developed, and while it’s fun, it’s a far cry from being spanked by someone who can apply some decent force. Maybe the next time I see Hunter, instead of giving him a leash to hold, I’ll give him a paddle.
I decide to leave my hair wet—my own little homage to the pool scene in Wild Things, which I used to catch David watching every time a cable network replayed it late at night. I’m loosely running a brush through it when my phone buzzes on the bed.
For a fleeting, happy moment, I imagine that it’s Hunter calling to tell me when and where I’ll be spreading my legs for him next. The thought excites me so much that I skip to the bed in my panties and bra. But when I pick up my phone, the sight of David’s number on the screen hits me like a softball to the gut.
“Hey,” I say. I still don’t know how to hide from him. I feel as though every extra syllable is a chance to slip up and let on that I’ve fucked another man.
“Hello, darling,” he says in a tired voice. There was a time when his words could make me shiver—when all I could think about while he was away was when he’d be home to wrap his arms around me and whisper in my ear. Now the sound of his voice just makes me feel distant and dirty.
He tells me he’s still in San Francisco—that one of his meetings spilled over into two days, and he had to book another flight.
“And you’re telling me now?” I say. “I thought you’d be home any minute now.” I feel like a dork, sitting on the end of our bed in my expensive black lingerie. Not that I would have been able to put it to good use anyway.
“I’m sorry, Faith,” he says. “It’s been a hectic trip.”
David’s never had a hard time with apologies, but it’s too late. Anger is bubbling up from my belly. Suddenly I’m glad I fucked Hunter. I almost want to lash out at my husband by telling him.
“Whatever,” I say. “I guess I’ll just keep sitting around and waiting.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he says.
“Nothing,” I say. “Have fun in California with your nerdy business pals.”
He lets out a long sigh and then says my name. There’s no follow-up. Just my name, as though he’s too tired to argue. I know I’m being bratty, but I’m an emotional wreck. If he weren’t away so often, I wouldn’t have fucked Hunter and I wouldn’t have anything to hide. I’d probably still be just as unsatisfied with him, but at least I wouldn’t have had the freedom to step out of bounds.
He tells me he’ll be home late tomorrow, and we exchange terse goodbyes. I’m still amped up, so I decide to channel my anger into something positive. Or at least something that will distract me from my cravings.
#
With my wet hair in a ponytail, I arrive at Rev just as the day’s last class is ending. I know there’s nothing scheduled this late, but Chad always hangs around after the workout to help stragglers with their form or to do some lifting for himself. The late-shift warriors are gathering their gym bags and filtering out, and Chad’s in the centre of the room. He’s chalked up and towering over a barbell loaded with forty-five-pound plates. I count four per side—with the bar’s weight, that’s a total of four hundred and five pounds.
Chad turns back and waves at me, flashing the white calluses of his chalked palm, and he looks excited to see me. He’s invited me to stop by whenever to work on my lifts, and I’m not sure whether he’s extended that offer to the other members.
He returns to his formidable task and sets his stance. With the bar an inch from his shins, he bends at his hips, thrusting his muscular ass in my direction as I stand at the wall and watch. He wraps his strong hands around the chalk-caked barbell, and then he straightens his arms and bends his knees just enough to flatten his back. Every muscle in his incredible physique twitches and tenses in unison, and he begins slowly deadlifting the bar up along his bare shins.
However heavy the weight, it’s child’s play for him. But he moves slowly and cautiously through the movement to set a good example for his students. Snapped spines aren’t good for business, and he doesn’t want anyone rushing through their reps. After locking out at the top of the lift, standing fully erect with the steel bar against his groin, he reverses the motion, slowly pushing his ass back and lowering the bar along his thick, striated legs. I’m unable to look away from his twitching hamstrings as the bar descends.
When the plates clank back down on the floor, Chad resets his stance and hoists the weight for three more perfectly executed reps. Watching him lift is like watching a slow-motion scene in a nature documentary. Here in the gym, in his element, he’s an apex predator on display, a perfect beast impeccably evolved to suit his ecosystem. And standing against the wall watching him, I can’t help feeling like a frightened meal that his keepers have lowered into his enclosure.
With the bar settled on the rubber floor, Chad stands back up and shakes the tension out of his frame.
“Come on over,” he calls out to me. “Your turn.”
I walk toward him, feeling like a nerdy schoolgirl who’s been summoned to the smoker’s pit, where only the cool kids belong.
“I think that’s a little out of my range,” I say. I feel intimidated, like it’s my first day all over again. I might have toned biceps, but standing next to a silverback like Chad makes me feel as dainty and girly as a blushing belle.
“We’ll strip a few plates off,” he says. “What was your last deadlift max?”
I tell him it was two hundred and five. I don’t think I have it in me to hit that number again tonight, but I’m still pissed off enough to give it a try.
“So let’s go for two twenty-five,” he says. “I think you’re ready.”
“There’s no way,” I say with a laugh.
“Trust me,” he says. “Those legs can definitely handle it.” And before I can launch a rebuttal, he turns back to the bar and strips three plates off of each side, leaving just one hundred and thirty-five pounds. Not long ago this was my one-rep max. I guess tonight it’ll be my warmup.
Chad stands close and coaches me through five reps, and they feel smooth. Having him behind me, watching my every move, makes me extra keen to arch my back and push my ass out, which bodes well for my form. Lifting the weight feels good, but showing him my hard body feels even better.
I slowly lower the bar after the fifth rep, and Chad adds a twenty-five-pound plate to each side. I don’t have to count or add anything up. I already know that the bar now weighs one eighty-five. These days, tallying weight plates is my only source of math.
The bar sails up to my hips with surprisingly little effort, and Chad adds a pair of tens when it’s back on the floor. Again, I have no trouble locking out at the top of the lift, but I can tell my back is rounding a little.
Chad sees it too. “Gotta keep that arch,” he says. “I’m going to put another ten on each side, but let’s work on that setup again.”
He loads the barbell and then guides me into position, governing every movement. “Shins just an inch away from the bar,” he says, and I follow his command.
“Now take a shoulder-width grip,” he says. “Keep it tight, like you’re choking the life out of the bar. One hand over and one hand under.” I follow his order, taking a staggered grip so that the bar can’t slip out of my hands.
“Good,” he says. “Now bend your knees until your shins touch the bar, and arch your back.” Again, I do as he says, presenting my ass for him.
“You should be tense all over,” he says. “Do you feel that tension in your glutes?”
“How do I know if I’m doing it right?” I say. “Where should I feel it?”
I know exactly what I’m doing, but I can’t stop myself.
This is not my secret ploy to make a muscular trainer touch my ass.
“It’ll be here,” he says, and he puts his hand on the top of my glutes. His intensions are purely professional, but once he makes contact, I can sense his desire through his fingertips. I feel his palm trace downward to grip the meat of my ass, and I push myself, almost imperceptibly, into his hand.
“And you’ll feel the tension all the way through here,” he says. Except he’s not using his trainer voice. His breath is hitched and he’s hesitating before every word.
I capitalize on the sudden surge of electricity and begin pulling. The bar leaves the floor and travels up my legs as I flex my ass in the palm of his hand. I stand erect, locking out and clenching with his hand still on me, and then I return the bar to the floor. Then, elated, I turn and hug him to celebrate the new personal record.
Still riding the jolt of connectivity between us, I embrace him a little to tightly, and he wraps his arms around my skinny waist. It’s not a professional hug. It’s not even a friendly one. There are no awkward taps on my shoulder blades—his arms are fully wrapped around my waist, squeezing me like the thick coils of an anaconda and pulling my body into his hard abs. And I’m wrapped around his neck, pulling him down toward me. He reads my cue and bows his head, and just before our mouths connect, the steel door screeches open.
Instantly, we push away from each other, and we try to sell the hug’s celebratory guise with an awkward high five that claps a faint cloud of chalk dust into the air.
“Sweet PR,” Chad says.
I thank him and look back at the door, where one of the older warriors is sheepishly scanning a bench along the wall. He plucks his phone off of it and holds it up to show us. “Forgot my iPhone,” he says, and then he shoots Chad a look that says Sorry, bro.
“Glad you found it,” Chad says, and he distracts himself by stripping the plates off of the bar and carrying them to the rack. I pitch in, but neither of us says a word.
The straggling warrior leaves, and I gather my things and exchange an awkward goodbye with Chad. If it weren’t for that errant iPhone, we’d probably be humping like bunnies on the rubber mats right now.
Instead, I’ll probably celebrate my new PR alone at home with a protein shake and some gym-themed Internet porn.
Chapter 10
My phone is sitting on my desk beside a layout of useless women’s fitness advice when it finally vibrates.
I don’t need to look. I already know it’s him.
It’s been more than a week since the night Hunter and I hooked up. I feel a rush of lusty adrenalin—the kind that’s usually reserved for clueless teens in their first high school relationship—and my tingling body mimics the phone’s vibration. But I can’t bring myself to pick it up. I stare at the shiny device and then look back at the sad layout. In every issue we have a “Fit Chicks” section that guides gym-fearing women through simple exercises they can do in the privacy of their living rooms—probably so they can remain meek and barefoot and close to the pie they’re baking instead of sweating and actually getting strong.
Susanne, a former senior editor who now works for Oprah, started the column, and I foolishly asked to take it over when she left a few months ago. It seemed like a good fit at the time, given the drastic physical changes I was undergoing, but I had no idea just how wrong I was. I figured I could take all of the amazing things I’ve learned—that women can lift weights without getting bulky, and that they actually need to lift if they want to see any real changes in the mirror—and reshape the message to make it useful. But fat chance. It turns out that this is one of the magazine’s most popular sections, and it generates more positive emails than anything else in the mag. Angela read a few of them to me when I made a play to change things up, and she specifically called out the readers who loved our accessible and easy-to-follow approach to go-nowhere fitness platitudes. Which means they loved that we didn’t make them feel guilty about never mustering the will to get off of their fat asses.
Suzanne’s greatest coup was securing a self-fashioned trainer of B-list celebrities to write the section, so I now have to look at her headshot and fake, pearly smile in the top corner of every layout. Her useless pointers have included gems like how gabbing on the phone while you walk will burn more calories and how women should never lift anything more than three pounds so they don’t get “man arms.”
I guess newborns who want to be carried by their mothers are out of luck.
Meanwhile my ass is still twitching from my squats this morning, and all that heavy lifting has done nothing but bless me with a body that strange men want to fuck in front of floor-to-ceiling windows in their loft condos.
Speaking of which, there’s still the matter of that text I’m too scared to read.
I hold the phone with my eyes closed and draw in a deep breath. If I can chalk up and deadlift with the warriors at Rev, I can read a silly little text, right? One more breath, and then I enter my passcode. The text is from an unrecognized local number since I don’t have his info in my contacts list, but it’s clear who’s asking the blunt question on my screen.
“What are you doing?”
A deluge of Cosmo-esque dating advice rushes through my mind. Do I text him back right away? Do I actually tell him what I’m doing, or do I say something coy and sexy and beaming with fuckability. Do I let on how eager I am to have his cock inside of me again, or do I play it cool and aloof? Should I pretend I don’t remember him? What make-them-want-to-fuck-you strategies would a frat boy use?
It occurs to me while I’m fumbling with this simple social transaction that Hunter and I have already fucked, and the first-time games and hookup protocols of two people feeling each other out without having felt each other up don’t apply.
I steady my nerves and thumb something innocuous into the keypad.
“Bored at work. What are you doing?”
As soon as I touch send, my heart sinks. The ball’s back in his court, and what if he takes another week to contact me again? I giggle with relief when another text pops up almost immediately.
“Just finishing up a shoot. I want to see you.”
Good God, his ability to tell me exactly what he wants is so hot. I feel myself getting wet as I think back to all the other ways he imposed his will on me in his loft.
I don’t even bother thinking about what David’s doing in San Francisco. I just think of the empty bed I’m going home to, and for the first time, it feels more like freedom than loneliness.
I text back, “I’m free tonight.”
Not ten seconds later, he’s imposing his will again. “I want you sooner. What time do you get off?”
“I can leave at four thirty,” I answer. But given how hot his texts are making me, I’m pretty sure that my getting off has more to do with his schedule than mine.
Thank God for the early Rev workout. I used to sleep past eight and then rush to the office in a whirlwind of stress. Now I’m usually at my desk sipping my protein shake and answering emails an hour before anyone else gets here. It’s crazy how getting off your ass and getting to a gym can affect every other area of your life. I stare down at my phone as I wait for Hunter’s next text. Especially when it comes to sex.
Finally it vibrates. “I’ll be out front. We’ll have a little adventure.”
Adventure? What could that possibly mean? Wasn’t our little carnal rendezvous adventurous enough? How can you possibly turn the dial up further than fucking a scorchingly hot stranger who’s not your husband while wearing a makeshift leash in front of one of the Garment Factory windows? I can’t help wondering what more he wants from me—and whether I can keep up.
And what’s this business about him waiting out front? Is that maybe a little stalkerish? I think back to something Nicole once said: the only difference between a s
talker and the leading man in a romantic comedy is whether or not you find the guy sexy. Right now I can’t imagine a guy getting much sexier than Hunter—he can stalk me any time, anywhere—but the way he fucked me is anything but romcom material. I snicker at the thought of him in John Cusack’s Say Anything trench coat, holding a 1980s boombox over his head outside of my office.
Then my laughter hushes and my face flushes as I picture him opening the coat to reveal his engorged cock, pointing right at me and throbbing.
It occurs to me that if he’s waiting out front when I leave, someone’s bound to see me get into a cab with him. Christ, half the people in my department have office windows that overlook the street. Maybe he’ll be tactful enough to wait in the cab—he doesn’t seem like the type to make a big show of waiting with flowers—but even that will look suspicious. Everyone here knows I live close enough to walk, so I’ll need some kind of alibi. Picking up family at the airport? Seeing a medical specialist on the other side of town? I’ll need to think of something.
And there’s another challenge I haven’t even considered. What the fuck am I wearing? I push my chair back from my desk and give myself a scan, and I hang my head. One of the perks of being an editor is that you never have to worry about dressing to the nines. Or even to the sixes.
OK, skinny jeans that my proud ass is bulbing out of—I can work with that. And my shoes aren’t awful. A casual pair of Sperry Top-Siders aren’t the end of the world—they could have just as easily been a pair of scuffed Nike Frees, considering how quickly sportswear items are overtaking my closet. But what the hell is this? A white button-up top covered in little printed—what are those—foxes? Good God, I’m going to look like a total dork. Hunter works with oiled up, half-naked fitness models all day. He’s not some bespectacled corduroy- and Clark’s-clad lit major who’s going to be into the quirky librarian in the fox-print shirt. I want to make his mouth water—not make him curious about my favorite Wes Anderson film.
Behind His Back Page 9