Page 34 of Out of Sight

“Oh, you’ve said that before. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now.”

“I might punch you in your micropenis.”

“You’d have to catch me first, sweetheart, and I think you’re done running for the day.”

I might have been punched in the thigh—thank god she missed—but at least I got Claire to follow me upstairs. Everything was already all set up thanks to Santa-Jim, and I led her to where the little multi-colored weights were racked on my dresser.

I figured a standard shoulder/back/bicep/tricep routine would be enough. We played around with the dumbbells for a couple minutes, trying to find the right weight for her, then began.

“I didn’t have this much trouble with my drill sergeant,” she grumbled.

I laughed. “Drill sergeant? When were you in the military?”

“I wasn’t. Duh. I went to college and studied computers like a good little geek. My dad’s Air Force. Whenever I misbehaved as a kid he would send me to camp for the day and get someone to run me ragged. But now I think they took pity on me since no one rode me this hard.”

Ignoring her choice of words, I corrected her hold for one of the reps. “A military brat? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“Yeah. God! Are we done yet?”

“Almost. Last set. What did your Dad do?”

“Does. He’s still there. He runs a lot of special ops. He’s a Colonel.”

“Damn, special ops. No wonder you know about all this secrecy and hiding and escaping stuff.”

“Yeah. He was always out of the country doing who knows what. And when he was stateside, work’s the only thing he ever talked about, so I picked up a lot of stuff.”

“That’s nice of him to teach you about his work,” I tried to point out the plus side.

“Oh, he never taught me any of it. Or really even talked to me directly it at all. But I know how to read through the lines and I knew how to use a search engine from a young age.” She laughed, but I think we both knew it wasn’t really funny.

“So you lied about the documentaries, then. It was Google articles.”

She laughed again, but this time it sounded more real. Not quite what I needed, but closer. “Yes. Sorry. I don’t usually talkabout him this much. He wasn’t ever a big part of my everyday life, so I don’t let him take up a lot of space in my everyday mind if that makes sense.”

“It does. Now stop.” She needed to take her mind off of her deadbeat dad. Time to make her annoyed with me again.

“Are we done?” she asked hopefully.

“Nope, we have to adjust your form here.” We were on the third set of one-arm dumbbell rows and each time she just couldn’t get the position right.

She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“You keep swinging that weight around, honey, and it’s not doing anything.” I leaned down behind her, putting a gentle hand on her elbow. Her skin was warm and flushed from the workout. “You need to pull up slowly, making one smooth, controlled movement. Keep it steady. Back straight and firm. Nice and slow, honey.”

She let out a ragged breath.

“Yeah, just like that, honey. Can you feel it now?”

“Feel…what?”

She wasn’t rising to my bait yet, so I tried pushing it one step farther. Hitting on her usually did the trick, and I’d been so good this morning that I figured I’d try pushing the limits just the tiniest bit. I still only touched just a couple fingertips to her elbow, but I leaned just a bit closer, pitching my voice lower and speaking into her ear.

“The stretch and pull in your muscles. The way the weight is flexing them, working them, training them to bear more in the future.”

She took a really deep breath, arching her back. Her ass pushed out, barely making contact with the front of my shorts. I didn’t move.

“Can you feel it?” I knew I could.

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