Page 13 of Training Maisy

Chapter 8

Maisy was half glad to see him go, seriously needing to get herself under control. She tried to blame her reaction to Carter on her recent lack of physical intimacy over the few past months, but something told her it was more than that. Starting the treadmill, she hopped on and started her workout, focusing on the repeated motion of her run to avoid the questions her mind was asking of her.

Carter sat behind his desk, wondering what the hell had just happened to him out there. He had begun just wanting to help her ease her joints so they didn’t hurt too much for the day’s workout. It had turned into an almost make-out session. One more minute with her in there and he would have given into the temptation of placing his teeth on the smooth expanse of her neck she had exposed when her hair fell back. This wasn’t the first time he had been attracted to someone he was working with, but it was the first time he had acted so unprofessionally. And while a part of him was ashamed of his actions, as natural as they were, another part, a part that seemed to be having the upper hand, was pushing him to throw caution to the wind. The little horned figure in his ear telling him he deserved a little respite from years of stellar behavior. Besides, it wasn’t like he heard Maisy complaining. He had noticed the way her breath became choppy when his hands circled her neck. The twin peaks of her nipples through the tank top that was spread tightly across ample breasts he wanted to wrap his palms around. He remembered how it had felt to have her thighs under his palm. Just a couple more inches up, and he could have felt how—

He blinked hard, jarred from his imagination by the sudden discomfort in his gym shorts, and looked down to see he was sporting a massive erection. Surprised by how much she was affecting him, he decided enough was enough. He wasn’t a schoolboy to get excited at just anything. She was his client, nothing more, and it was his job to help her lose some weight, and that was what he was going to do. After the weight jutting between his legs subsided, of course, he told himself.

After a few minutes, he came out of the room and saw Maisy on the treadmill. She had already worked up a sweat. Her breathing was a little labored, but her motion was fluid enough that he decided she must have hit her stride.

“Remember, breathe from the mouth, not the nose, and try to find your rhythm,” he advised her. “Fifteen more minutes of that, and we can move to working on the weights.”

Maisy gaped at him as if he had just grown an extra eye. “Fifteen more minutes?” she shrieked, struggling to keep up with the pace of the machine. “I can’t do fifteen more minutes of this. Hell, I doubt I can do this for three minutes longer. Yesterday, I only did twenty, and look at how hard that was for me.”

“That was yesterday, and this is today; today you’re working on that treadmill for the next fifteen minutes. Now stop whining and concentrate on what you’re doing.”

She opened her mouth to complain again and immediately lost her footing, slipping a little, but righting herself at the last second to continue her run.

“See what I was telling you? I’m already too tired to—”

“Keep quiet and concentrate on your run. I don’t want to hear another peep from you, or so help me God,” he said in a voice that was just loud enough for her to hear, but filled with so much authority Maisy’s mouth snapped shut and her eyes returned to her front as she kept on running. After a few minutes, she quipped under her breath, “I can’t believe I thought working with you would be fun. You’re a mean, horrid person,” not expecting him to hear her. So, she was surprised when she heard from him loud and clear.

“Yes, I am, and that’s why you pay me. Don’t slouch forward or drag your feet; remember the best way to do it is the right way to do it.” They continued like this, her complaining that her legs were aching, him ordering her to continue and turning a deaf ear to her whining, and then the begging, and finally the cursing that came after. When it was nearing the fifteen-minute mark, he told her to start winding down from the run. By the time the clock on the wall showed that her time was up, Maisy didn’t wait for him to tell her to get down from the machine before she switched it off and got down herself.

“Good girl. Now tell me you aren’t proud you stuck with it till the end?” he asked, giving her a dazzling smile she couldn’t fully appreciate because of the ache in her knees.

“No, I’m proud I have so much control over my hands that they aren’t wrapped around your neck,” Maisy replied, baring her teeth at him.

“Funny. Now, take a break, and we’re moving to the weights,” he replied, smiling as he went to bring the weights they would be using. By the time they were done for the day, Maisy was sweating so much her clothes felt like they weighed about a hundred pounds; if she could shoot laser beams from her eyes, Carter would be a pile of smoking ash on the floor. It didn’t help that he had joined her in her workout, using weights that were four times heavier than hers yet handling them with so much ease that only the sweat from his body would have made her know that his weights weren’t made of foam. She couldn’t even begin to count how many times she wanted to kill him when he told her to lift her elbows higher in that calm, commanding tone of his. Thinking of his tone, she couldn’t deny a part of her felt a secret thrill from hearing him tell her what to do. It was a part she was surprised to find she had and blamed it partly on her sexual attraction to him. But there was just something about hearing him tell her what to do that made her weak in ways she wasn’t even ready to try to figure out. One thing was clear, though; he wasn’t interested in her in any way apart from as her personal trainer, and Maisy was fine with that. At least she thought she was.

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