Page 18 of Not That Ridiculous

I felt as if I’d walked into a clothesline, throat-first. “What?” I wheezed, and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

“If I don’t do enough physical stuff, I get worked up,” Kevin said.

“What…what does that mean, exactly? Worked up?”

He lifted his brows a fraction. “Sexually.”

I flailed. Emotionally.

He leaned in and said, lowering his voice, “If I didn’t come to the gym and burn some of the energy off, I’d be wanking all day long. And picking fights with my mates.”

“I…nooooo. Uh. You…? Um.”

Wanking?

All day long?

…allday?

My imagination threw up a quick image of whatthatmight look like, and I made a weak noise.

I couldn’t believe I was here. In a gym, talking to Kevin Wallis about his intimate habits like we were discussing whether he wanted an almond croissant or a chocolate muffin today.

He was as placid, unbothered, and frank as ever.

I was a seething mess of embarrassment and fascination.

This was not good.

“Right,” I said, backing up. “I’m going to go and shower—no! No no, do not come with me. It’s fine. You…you know.” I waved a hand vaguely at the barbells and racked plates. “Do your thing. Your routine. Burn all that…burn it off.”

“You sure? I don’t mind skipping it for once.”

“Yes!” I was sure.

I was sure that I didn’t want him to follow me into the changing room. Into the showers.

I was sure that I didn’t want to stand there, knowing he was naked in the stall beside me, big body wet and covered with suds.

I was very sure I didn’t want to stand there, hyperventilating, while I pondered the odds of him jerking out a quiet one because he skipped a few exercises in his usual routine and his uncontainable sexual energy was about to boil over.

“Cool,” he said, and turned towards the squat rack. “I’ll do some of these, then I have to wait until I can find someone to spot me while I do some bench presses. Oh, hey. You want to hang around and do that?”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times.

“I’ll do the bench presses first and you can spot me, then you can go and shower while I finish up with the squats. How’s that sound?”

“Amazing,” I said.

And so for the next twenty minutes, I stood at the head of a weight bench and soul-gazed with Kevin Wallis while he lay beneath me, body stretched out long, arms and chest flexing as he heaved the barbell up and down.

He was, he informed me, pressing well over three hundred pounds these days.

Since he clocked me as weighing one fifty after a big meal, he said, if I went rigid and held still, he could do this to me, easy.

I already was rigid and holding still. At the thought of him bench-pressing me, I went even more rigid.

Once he was working through his sets, his face turned blank and distant. His breathing was deep and steady. He raised and lowered the bar with the regularity of a metronome.

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