“It’s fine.” I’m staring desperately up at the ceiling, forbidding myself from checking him out again. Honestly, I don’t even need to. His chiseled, glistening upper body is branded on my brain forever. But—wait. Wait. Why am I avoiding looking at him? Is this how a seductress would behave? I’m never going to get what I need at this rate. “I’m really fine,” I murmur, meeting his eyes for the first time. Gathering my courage, I let my attention travel down the front of his chest to his navel. “Don’t let me interrupt your work out.”
He tucks his tongue into the corner of his mouth. “Baby, you’re dressed to interrupt.”
“Oh this?” I twirl a strand of my hair around my finger. “I couldn’t find any other exercise clothes.”
“Is that what you came down here for?” His knuckle grazes my belly, slowly traveling up and down, stopping at the waistband of my shorts. “Exercise?”
“I love working out.”
Lie. Huge one. I hate it. Satan invented it.
But I need to buy myself time so I can set up my phone to record the seduction.
“Well, don’t let me stop you.”
“Thanks.” I turn around, celebrating when I feel his attention glue itself to my nearly bare butt. “I’ll just hop on the stair climber.”
“Be my guest,” he rasps, adjusting himself.
I make a meal out of getting on the machine and beginning to climb, exaggerating every movement and watching his jaw flex in the wall of mirrors. “So, Brody…” Discreetly, I slip my phone out of my sports bra, setting it in the cup holder of the stair climber, facing it in the direction of the squat rack. “Do you work today?”
“Yes,” he growls, tearing his gaze off my bottom, walking to a shelf near the door and chugging a full bottle of water without coming up for air. The thing between his legs is no longer a pendulum. Ah, no. It’s pushing against the front of his sweatpants like an extended fist. “I’ll be back for dinner. You’re going to stay out of trouble while I’m gone.”
“There go my plans,” I quip, sending him a teasing look over my shoulder.
The water bottle pauses on its way back to the shelf. “You’re in a playful mood.”
“I think we got off on the wrong foot yesterday.” I arch my back and really give him a show, feeling the shorts ride even higher. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but he’s even less comfortable. His Adam’s apple is tucked up under his chin, his chest rising and falling in quick succession. “Maybe we can try again?” I ask cheerfully.
“Try again,” he repeats gruffly. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
“Great.” Continuing to climb, I peel off the tank top and toss it away, leaving me in nothing but the tiny shorts and sports bra. “Any ideas how to…achieve it?”
In the mirror, I watch his jaw firm. “You can start by telling me about your fascination with roller coasters.”
I almost fall off the stair climber. “What? My what?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You heard me.”
“Of course I did, but…how did you know that?” I start to climb faster. “I know Kelli didn’t tell you. I’ve barely spoken to her about it.”
“When your things were brought here, I noticed several notebooks full of sketches.” Finally setting down the water bottle, he moves to the squat rack and settles the bar on the range of muscles that make up his shoulders. “You’ve been interested in designing them since you were pretty young. Some of those sketches were even in crayon.”
“The colors make me feel more imaginative,” I blurt, before I can stop myself. “Hey, you shouldn’t have been going through my things. A lot like you shouldn’t have been reading through my medical records.” I watch him drop into a squat, his thick ass pushing out, thighs flexing, and my mouth turns utterly dry. “Why were you interested, anyway? In the medical stuff, I mean.”
“I wanted to make sure you were being taken care of in juvenile hall.”
“It took you several reads to determine that?”
Our eyes lock in the mirror, his unreadable.
He doesn’t respond.
“You know, most stepfathers aren’t this interested in their stepchildren.”
He replaces the bar on the squat rack with a metal rattle. “I’m not most stepfathers.” He swipes a hand down his sweaty face. “So. Roller coasters.”
“You’re telling me,” I mutter. “If you’re thinking of encouraging me to become an engineer as part of your Fix London Plan, you’re crazy. I’ll never get into a good school with my kind of past.”
“Your juvenile records are sealed,” he points out, his attention once again zeroing in on my butt. Darkening. “You’re young, London. People have started over a lot later in life. It doesn’t hurt to fill out an application or two.” Once again, our eyes find each other’s in the mirror. “You can make it happen.”
My heart is sprinting in my chest and it has nothing to do with climbing fake stairs.
This guy doesn’t look at me like everyone else.
Like I’m just another screw up who will end up with nothing. A nowhere life.
His expression is…optimistic. That’s not something I’ve had associated with me before.
It’s dangerously close to hope.
I’m suddenly desperate to change the subject. To prove to me and this man that he doesn’t really care about me. That he’s not willing to put in the work. No one else has. Maybe I am a lost cause. Why can’t he just accept it like everyone else?
With a lump in my throat, I hit record on my phone’s camera and hop off the stair climber. I make my smile flirtatious, adding a side-to-side bump in my walk, slowly approaching my increasingly wary stepfather. This man who is probably double my age, but…attracts me. I can’t deny that. The closer I get to him, the more my nerve endings jangle, the weight in my tummy growing heavier and heavier.
When I reach Brody, I trace a line down the center of his chest with my fingertip, my breath catching at the way his pectorals bunch in response. “You must spend a lot of time in here.” I bite my lip, letting my finger dip into his belly button, unable to ignore the stiff rod protruding from between his thighs. “If I was committing a crime—and I’ve done my fair share of that—you’d be the last cop I’d want to chase me.”
Blazing eyes trace the slopes of my breasts. “Why is that?” he rasps.
“Maybe…just a little…” I move in close and whisper in his ear, his erection pressing against my hip. “I’d like getting caught.”
He fists my hair, tugging my head back. “What are you up to, London?”
“A challenge,” I gasp, shocked to find myself enjoying his aggression. My scalp prickles with a twist of his hand and my nipples bead, the air evaporating from my lungs. “If you can squat me twenty times, I’ll apply to one engineering school.”
Did those words just come out of my mouth?
Am I really thinking of setting myself up for that kind of rejection?
But what if I don’t get rejected?
See? That little voice of optimism is already whispering in my head.