Page 52 of Fall for You
Man, she probably should get back to the snowboarding circuit as quickly as possible if she was looking for an adrenaline spike from some games in a glorified playground.
“A race,” he declared. He pointed to the different equipment in turn. “Five muscle-ups, followed by thirty burpees, then forty push-ups…” He went on, laying out the rules like a guy used to being in charge.
He was bossy.
And you like it.
She pressed her lips together and gave her head a shake to silence the voice in her head. It sounded distinctly like her teenage self, which…was worrisome, honestly. She’d already been worried about her mental state, and now here she was holding conversations with teen Ronnie.
Cool. Nothing to see here.
Once he finished laying out the rules and the obstacles, he turned to her with a gleam of challenge in his eyes. “You ready,champ?”
She made a show of stretching her neck and cracking her knuckles. “Don’t worry about me, office boy.”
He grinned. “Then on your mark, get set…”
They both crouched down, eyeing each other with barely suppressed smiles.
“Go!”
She shot off, immediately taking the lead. But Dallas surprised the heck out of her by tickling her side, making her stop with a gasp of laughter—and he raced ahead. “Oh no, you don’t!”
She chased him and gave his side a pinch.
“Hey!”
She ran backward. “What, you can give but you can’t take?”
He narrowed his eyes, but he was grinning, and—whew! Either the temperature had just risen twenty degrees, or he was having an effect on her.
Really? You’re gonna blame the weather?
“Better watch yourself, champ!” he called after her.
“Those are some awfully big words for the guy coming in last place!” she shot back.
“All right, that’s it,” he growled, and her belly clenched like it was trying to clamp down the sudden rush of desire flooding her system.
A sound frighteningly close to a giggle escaped when he was hot on her heels and talking trash.
They were side by side as they did their muscle-ups and…well, she hadn’t realized she was into men’s arms until that exact moment. But now she had a new requirement if, and when, she ever had time for dating.
He had to be strong. And he had to be able to keep up with her at the gym, and…he had to have arms like Adonis.
Dallas finished first, by a mere second, but he showed off by plucking her off the bar and setting her on her feet. “Time’s up, tiny warrior.”
She burst out laughing.
Yeah. If she ever got around to dating—he had to make her laugh.
He moved on to the next obstacle, but she beat him to it with a very mature “Ha!”
“Oh, it’s on,” he growled again, sending another sizzle racing through her body.
Turned out, for all her sportsmanlike behavior on the professional circuit, she kinda liked playing dirty. It soon turned into a competition, not just of strength and endurance but of pranks and tickles and shoves and hip checks.
When they were both laughing and panting, and time was almost up, Ronnie saw her chance to stop him from winning, and she took it.
