Page 5 of Secret Twins for My Ex's SEAL Best Friend

I glanced over at Kassandra, who gave me an embarrassed smile, and then we giggled a little.

“All right, on the count of three. One, two, three,” Robert said, and we all screamed ‘Stay back’ from our stomachs, our shouts piercing together.

He nodded without a smile and signaled to us to stand on our feet.

After about an hour of warmups, we got into lines of two. Half of us were in a line with Heather, and half of us were in a line with Robert.

Kassandra and I were at the back with our hands on our hips, chattering away to each other as we watched the other womenmove fluidly through the line, assaulting our instructors easily and then moving to the back behind us.

When it came to my turn, I looked back at Kassandra, and she gave me a thumbs up, which I lamely returned, unsure. “You can do it,” she whispered, smiling, and gave me a tiny push forward.

I bumped into Robert, and he responded by wrapping his arms around my waist.

My body reacted instantly, my nipples hardening and my thighs tightening. I felt breathless and hot instantly, his arms weighty and strong, pinned against my ribs.

I looked up at him, into those familiar eyes that I couldn’t place, and licked my lips. He nodded, his face serious and his jaw set, and said, “Go ahead. You can do it.”

“Stay back!” I shouted shakily, from my throat instead of my stomach.

He shook his head. “Find your inner strength,” he told me, looking disappointed.

“Stay back!” I shouted again, this time from my stomach. My voice was so loud that it rang through my own ears, and he nodded.

He crowed, “Good! Beautiful! I’ve got you around the waist, you can’t move. All you have is this amount of movement right here.”

He looked down at the space between us. There was so little of it. I could feel his body heat emanating off of him, and I wanted to melt into it.

“Now, feel your legs, feel that you can still move them. This is all about getting more in touch with your body. I want you to stomp my toe in 3…2…1!”

On one, I lifted my leg and sent it slamming down into the ground. He moved back quickly and nodded at me, an approving glint in his eyes. “Good. Now you know what comes next.”

I slid my hands up his chest to his shoulders, feeling self-conscious of how the proximity was turning me on.

I hovered my hands over Robert’s shoulders so that just my fingertips touched his skin, and he reached up and grabbed the back of my hands, pulling them down onto his shoulders.

His hands over mine were warm and strong, and I felt a strange jolt of excitement at his touch.

His fingers lined up perfectly with mine, and he used his to direct mine to sink into his flesh, saying, “Delia, you really have to hold me. Otherwise, you won’t get the leverage you need to knee me in the groin.”

Something about him saying my name ignited awareness in my brain, and I looked up at him in shock as I finally remembered how I knew him.Robert.

He was my ex, Jeremy’s, best friend.

I didn’t know how I managed to forget him. Being that my ex was my practicum supervisor at the master’s program I was in, I saw him every single week of the year since we broke up, usually multiple times a week. But I had managed to wipe his best friend from my memory.

I narrowed my eyes as it all came flooding back to me, the way he had undermined our relationship the whole time, always in Jeremy’s ear about me until he eventually listened.

When he dumped me, it broke my heart. I had depended on Jeremy, loved him, and respected him. Seeing him afterward, seemingly completely fine, as if we’d never happened, had been even worse.

It tore me up to see him in his element all the time, and now, seeing Robert here, the reason I had to rebuild my life, resentment coursed through me. I could practically taste all the negative emotions I had.

“Hey, where’d you go?” he asked, right before I dug my fingers, nails included, into his skin and pulled my knee back enough to really pack my blow with some force. I pulled his shoulders into me as I drove my knee into his crotch, watching the look on his face as I did.

His green eyes teared up and then instantly closed. He pulled away from me, bending over to put his hands on his knees and breathe through it.

He peeked up at me under one dark brown curl that was caught in his wet eyelashes.

“Wow, okay. Hey,” he croaked, his voice hoarse, “good job.”

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