“What?” I asked, dropping my mitts to take a drink of my own.
Her gaze was heavy on me while I swallowed.
“I got a job offer from Punch Fitness.”
The water stuck in my throat, and I coughed into my hand. She didn’t look very sorry about her timing as I tried to compose myself. After another sip, I was able to breathe normally.
“You taking it?” I asked. My voice was so calm and steady, but inside of my body, something roared and snarled. Another dangerous sign. Another impossible reaction to this woman. I wasn’t ready for something like this. Like her. Something big, something wild.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“That guy’s a hack,” I heard myself say. Because he was. She’d be wasted at a place like that.
I couldn’t read a damn thing on her face, not like earlier, when I’d seen more. This was the guarded Isabel, the collected Isabel. And I found I liked her transparency better. In her anger, no matter how dangerous that was to my well-being, I could see everything she was thinking.
I jammed the mitts back on my hands, even though my forearms were getting a hell of a workout. Holding them up to my face, I barked, “Again.”
She set her feet, and we started the dance all over.
But this time, there was an edge.
Each time she struck the mitts and knocked my arms back, I felt more and more coming from her. I blocked her knee when it came up a little too hard and gave her a warning look.
Her lips, full and pink, curled up in a satisfied smile, even as her upper body heaved with exertion.
“You don’t want that job,” I said quietly.
Isabel’s jaw clenched, and she ducked to the side when I was expecting her to throw the left cross. She came in with an uppercut, and I blocked it easily.
“How the hell do you know?”
I swatted her arm away when she tried to jab. “Because this is not just a job, or a paycheck for you.”
Isabel sidestepped and tried to do a low roundhouse, but I knocked her leg down with the mitts. Her eyes flashed hot, because I wasn’t holding back as much. But neither was she.
“You don’t know me,” she said, striking the left mitt hard with a jab.
“Because you don’t let me.” She hit the mitts three more times in rapid succession, the pop pop pop sound echoing around us. “But I see you, even if you don’t want me to.”
She swore.
“You treat the employees like family,” I said. She danced around me, neither one of us making a move. “You do the same to the clients.”
I slapped the mitts and she attacked, jab, cross, cross.
“Good,” I yelled. “And you know every inch of this place like it’s your own home. You may think I’m just hiding in my office every day,” I leaned in when she backed up, “but I know exactly what this building, these people mean to you.”
She didn’t say a word, but in only a few sentences, I noticed her movements change again, packed to the brim and overflowing with emotion, whatever my words were triggering in her showing in the ferocity of how she came at me.
“You don’t want that job,” I repeated, and this time, I felt my own reaction coloring the delivery of the words. I sounded, to my own ears, less steady and calm. “And I don’t want you to take it either.”
And just like that, whatever we were doing became less choreography that we were expecting and more instinctual. The moment she broke out of whatever pattern we’d established, the more I had to anticipate what she might do next. This wasn’t about hurting each other because it wasn’t a battle. What it felt like was a test.
But I was at a disadvantage wearing the mitts, not my typical gloves, but still … I blocked and spun, catching each offensive strike before she caught me. I almost smiled when she missed her opening, and when I saw her eyes flash, I knew I was in trouble.
She yanked my arm out with her own and tried to sweep my leg out from underneath me, and I caught it midair. With her shin tucked between my arm and side, she muttered a curse under her breath and lost her footing.
Isabel hit the mat with an oomph, arms splayed out and her rib cage expanding on deep, greedy breaths. I leaned over, mitts braced on my knees, doing some deep breathing of my own.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded, but didn’t move to get up.
I pulled off the mitt and held my hand out to her. Isabel visibly swallowed, and I had a moment of pause about whether this entire interaction with her was the dumbest thing I could have ever done.
Her eyes, in the overhead light of the gym, were a deep, midnight blue, something I hadn’t really registered before tonight.
I didn’t want to know the color of her eyes or the smell of her hair, but the feeling coursing through my veins at what had just happened was too potent for me to ignore.
Because it was life. When you lose someone you love, a part of your brain and a part of your heart believes you’ll never, ever feel again. That forever, you’ll walk around with numbness in this one portion of who you are. And for the past two years, it held true.
When Isabel sat up and slowly tugged her gloves off, tossing them to the side, I almost pulled my arm back. But then she took it with hers, and as I curled my fingers around her hand, that numbness was absent.
Pushed aside.
Completely erased.
In its place was ferocious need.
I pulled her to standing, and it was the closest we’d stood all night. She was taller than average, and when she lifted her chin to stare at me, I noticed that her inhale was a little unsteady. And her eyes, they dropped to my lips.
There was no one around us.
No one to see.
And for the first time in two years, I wanted to slide my hands over a woman’s body to see what her skin felt like under my fingertips. No, not just any woman. Isabel. She’d be warm and soft. She’d hold the evidence of how hard she just worked, and it made my skin tighten and my heart pound.
This woman, with all that banked fire inside her, had me holding my breath to see what she’d do next.
Because I would not, could not, be the first to move in closer.
Even if I wanted to. Even if I’d think of her like this later, imagine what we’d be like together, no matter how much I shouldn’t.
Not just because she was too young, because she was.
Or because she worked for me, which she did.
Because in two years, no one had ever made me want anything, and in a single interaction, she redefined everything, had me imagining her split wide underneath me, sharp nails, soft lips, wet tongue, and the taste of her in my mouth.
That was when Isabel licked her lips, eyelids fluttering. I sucked in a breath.
Then she yanked on my arm, sweeping her leg under mine, and I landed like a giant fucking boulder onto the ground.
She leaned over me with a grin, black braid falling over her shoulder. “You’re right,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t want that job.”
I exhaled a laugh as she walked away.
“See you tomorrow, boss,” she called over her shoulder.
Chapter Eleven
Isabel
My confident exit—which I was very proud of—lasted as far as the parking lot.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, hands shaking as I unlocked my car and slid in the front seat. For all I knew, Aiden was still lying on the gym floor because I’d put him there. “Oh, what did I just do, whatdidIdowhatdidIdo?”