Mr. Dark 4 (Tamed #4)(12)

"Good afternoon Marcus!" the staff member on duty said as Sophie and I came through the door. I was on strict terms with the owner that I was not to be called sir or Mr. Smiley by anyone in the gym. I may have been thirty five percent owner, but I was still just there to do a workout just like everyone else. "What's on the agenda for today?"

"Legs," Sophie answered for me. I inwardly winced, as I knew that Sophie's idea of a good leg workout usually left me feeling like my muscles were made of burning kerosene and my heart pounding somewhere between my throat and my eyeballs.

"Did I do something to upset you?" I asked as we headed towards the one nod I had to being the owner, an executive locker room that Sophie and I could use together. "I thought you felt good after last night."

"Oh, I did," Sophie replied with a twinkle in her eye. "In fact, the better you do during your workout today, the sooner you get to do that again."

During the course of my free-wheeling, scattergun approach to higher education after leaving high school, I took a course on basic human psychology online from Stanford. In it, we covered quite a few lessons talking about motivation, and I still remember from the videos that the professor was talking about the difference between internal and external motivation.

Internal motivation, as you can guess, comes from inside, the professor had said, while external motivation is imposed on us from an outside source. Both of these can be either positive or negative methods of motivation, but what psychologists have found is that for most people, in most circumstances, internal motivation is greater than external motivation. Basically, the fire that burns inside of us will often far outstrip anything that is imposed on us from outside.

Of course, I thought as I cinched my back support belt tight for my last set of squats, when internal and external motivational factors worked together, the results were damn near nuclear. That was what that day felt like. Sure, I knew Sophie's promise for more sex was just a silly tease, but it worked, even though I knew exactly what she was doing. She was pushing me to get my leg back in tip-top shape after I’d been shot. I was almost there, but not quite.

I nodded and positioned myself under the bar. The deep criss cross pattern of knurling cut into the bar bit into the skin in between my shoulder blades even with the t-shirt I was wearing, a welcome pain. I knew the bar wouldn't slip and screw me up. Taking a final deep breath, I squared my feet and stood, clearing the bar from the hooks. I had worked this pattern over and over, three steps back, the first for distance, then adjusting my feet to exactly where I needed them to be. My back and shoulder muscles trembled with tension of supporting the bar. Sophie watched me with a careful eye. She would call me on my downs and ups. "Down!"

The pressure in my head increased with every inch that I descended. I knew my face was almost bright pink, and would only get worse as the set wore on. I focused on pushing my hips back, keeping the bar moving straight up and down, with as little forward and back motion as possible. Just as I felt like I was about to be crushed, I heard Sophie call. "Up!"

I pushed hard, about halfway between my heels and the balls of my feet, driving my head up as I accelerated. A deep grunt came through my clenched teeth as I pushed, and I knew why some very heavy squatters would wear mouthpieces to prevent dental damage. With a slight rattle, I reached the top of my squat, and I grinned as I took a deep breath. "Down!"

Sophie was relentless, giving me enough of a break in between heavy pushes to get another deep breath before commanding me down again. My leg where I'd been shot screamed in fire, and I knew Sophie would have to help me out of the car when we got home to Mount Zion. "Up!"

I pushed, my deep bellow of effort becoming an epic roar as I put everything into getting that bar two more inches up, and then the next two, and then the next. It felt like the squat took days, and dark spots danced before my eyes when I finally got up and could breathe again. Sophie leaned next to me, speaking quietly. "You can do one more. Don't think about the pain, or the weight, or anything else. Listen to my voice, and think about the fact that I love you."

She stepped back and reassumed her studying stance. "Down!"

For me, the entire world became the narrow focus of my eyes in the mirror in front of me, and Sophie's voice in my ear. She kept up her command, repeating down in a calm, quiet voice that cooled the fire in my spine and legs. Even the pressure of the bar seemed to disappear as Sophie's voice switched from "Down," to "UP! PUSH!"

The fire in her command gave me the energy, that's all there was to it. My mind went blank as I pushed, and the next thing I knew, I was standing up, my entire body trembling. Sophie was there along with two other gym members, who helped me take the bar into the hooks. As soon as the bar rattled into the hooks, I pitched forward, stopped only by Sophie's arms around my chest. She guided me down onto my hands and knees, rubbing my back the whole time.

"Beautiful, baby," she whispered into my ear as sound started coming back into the world. “Sorry, I know you’re good, but I need that leg back one-hundred percent, I worry enough as it is.”

Sophie reached around and pulled the lever release on my back support belt, letting my stomach expand and my body to flood with precious oxygen. I stayed there for a good minute, until the black roses stopped blooming in my vision.

"Ready for a massage and about two straight hours of nothing but Netflix and popcorn?” Sophie asked.