Page 35 of Cruel Debts
Especially not if Hawke thought I would fail. Now, it was even more imperative that I succeeded, if only to prove to him I could.
But I would've been lying if I'd said it didn't sting a little to be rejected by Hawke so easily. My pride was wounded, and with a last little huff of annoyance, I slammed the door to my room behind me, stewing as I adjusted my plan of attack.
So sex appeal didn't work. Okay, no worries. I'd just rearrange the method of attack.
Next, I'd try guilt. Then maybe, if that wasn't enough, I would play on their sympathy. And if all else failed, there was always the tried and true method: insulting their pride.
I'd get my way one way or the other. But damned if I didn't wish it were a little easier to do.
SIXTEEN
TRINITY
I got up early today.The asshole on my target list always hit the gym early as sin on his days, and I wasn't about to miss the opportunity to use his habits against him. I had some really tight clothes for working out in, and I hoped that he'd fall victim to their charms as I lifted weights with him or whatever it was he did in the gym all the time.
I hadn't planned for the asshole to turn all 'intensive trainer mode' on me. He critiqued everything, from my form to my weight limits, and didn't pull his punches when I complained that I wasn't a gym rat like him.
He bent over me as I lifted, like, I dunno, a hundred or so pounds on the bench press, realizing too late that I was way out of shape.
Too out of shape for this shit.
"Liam, comeon,"I pleaded, arms shaking as he pretended to spot me. Or maybe he was for real, I didn't know. But every time I thought I'd drop that damn bar, he barely put a finger on it and made me lift it the rest of the way before he helpfully lowered it again, frowning the whole time.
These men were world-class scowling champions, I was sure of it. I bet if you looked their names up in the record books,they'd be right there, one after the other, all scowling in their award photos.
"You're not trying hard enough," he growled, his eyebrows looking suspiciously like they'd never rise again. "Again."
I shoved the bar back up and sat up, done with his shit. "I'm not lifting another rep on this damn bench, and you can't make me."
"Fine." He shrugged, turning his back to me as he lined up his own bar, with four times the weight I'd had on mine. "Just don't try anything stupid or high intensity while I'm not watching you."
I rolled my eyes. "Are you kidding? I've worked out before." Once. "I think I know what I'm doing." I didn't. "I'm an adult." That part was true, at least. "I can handle a little workout."
The last one was a lie.
I watched as Liam squatted to pick up his bar full of weight, and holy hell, the brain cells in my head suddenly flew the coop. I couldn't have looked more like a dog had I sprouted fur, with my tongue lolling out the side of my open mouth.
His thighs were so toned that the shorts he wore to work out in hid nothing. Not a single ounce of him was fat, and it showed. As he rose and fell with the bar full of weights, I drooled silently in the background, aware I should be doing something but too distracted to care.
It continued like that for five minutes before he looked over his shoulder and sighed. I wasn't fast enough to hide my obvious interest, and he put away the bar and walked over to me, sticking a finger under my jaw to shut my mouth.
"Can you try to keep your eyes on the equipment, maybe?"
I batted my eyelashes, hoping to disarm him with a bit of charm. "I am. I mean, maybe not the equipment you're considering, but it's equipment." I grin, eyeing him up and down as he stretches. "I'd certainly use it to work out."
His eyes harden. "Trinity McCoy, you get that idea out of your head right now. There's no way in hell we're going down that train of thought, you hear me?" He reached for a weighted medicine ball and sat on a nearby mat, prepared to start the side-to-side movement I knew would work his core. "Now, either pick something to do and do it, or leave me alone while I work out. And maybe keep your eyeballs in your skull. I don't come here to be ogled."
I suspected he didn't mind it as much as he claimed to, but that wasn't the question in play. The real question was whether I could convince him with my body to do what I needed him to. What he agreed to do when he signed the contract with Minnie.
I moved across the room, sighing heavily every time he grunted behind me. I didn't put my eyes on him directly, but there was nothing stopping me from watching him in the mirror as he started to sweat, his brows drawn down in concentration, legs lifted just a few inches off the floor to increase difficulty.
An idea sprang to mind, one borne of the only working out I'd ever managed to do without giving up or spraining something. "Are there yoga mats here? Or maybe some elastic resistance bands?"
I tried to look as innocent as possible, cocking my head to the side as he stared at me with suspicion in the depths of his eyes. "Yoga mats are over in the far corner," he said with a nod in the direction of the door. "Resistance bands are in the closet to their left."
"Gee, thanks!" I trotted over to the mats, taking my time selecting one while I let him fall back into a sense of ease. After I'd picked a mat, I pulled a few resistance bands from the closet and set to work enacting my plan.
Yoga was low intensity and high effort, and the stretching one did while doing it required a litany of slightly suggestive poses. Ones I was pretty sure I could lure Liam into helping mewith, if I were smart about it. Once I had him in the trap, it was only a matter of laying the right bait to really suck him in, and then slamming the lid on the container shut, trapping him like a rat in a maze.
