Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(39)

All I know is that my knight has come to offer me an escape.

If I am brave enough.





Chapter Eight





Jason



I need a cold shower right f*cking now.

So much so that I turn the water on, twisting the dial halfway, and get under the water.

Fully clothed.

I scream, because it's f*cking cold, but I grin and bear it. The water feels like it's boiling into steam as soon as it touches my skin. Oh, it's cold. It's freezing. It still doesn't touch the fire inside. I feel like I swallowed a locomotive. My lungs are on fire, molten rock has replaced my heart, and burns in my belly.

The erection doesn't fade until I stand back and let the frigid water flow down my front. I strip off, the wet clothes plopping at the back of the bathtub as I pull them off. Eyes pressed tightly shut, I try to think about something else. Baseball. Apple pie. The drag coefficient of a toaster. The Missouri Compromise.

Now that I've seen Anastasia's writhing, naked body, flushed and sweaty, her eyes wild with lust, I don't think I can see anything else.

There's a pounding on the door.

I shut the water off, grab a towel, and swing it open.

"What?"

Akele stands in the hallway in a pink, fuzzy robe and slippers that look like bear claws.

"I need a shower." He shrugs.

I brush past him, dry off in my room, and dress. When I get to the kitchen, the brothers are already concocting breakfast.

"Gym," I grunt, then chug down a protein shake.

"Gym," they agree.

I'm in no mood to chat, so I make it a run to warm up, carrying my gym bag in one hand, switching every few paces. My head swims, my chest clenches, and I realize the next three days are going to be among the most difficult of my entire life.

When I reach the gym, I find it mostly empty. On off days I don't use the athletic facilities. I jog down to the open student gym and work out there. More time to myself, more time to think. This early the place is deserted, save for the one staff member who sits at a rickety desk by the entrance, working on her homework.

"Hi, Jason," she says without looking up.

"Melissa," I acknowledge.

She's wearing one of the damn shirts.

I grab a locker, drop off my bag, and head out to the floor. Stretches and some bodyweight work for warmup, and then I start loading the bar for squats. I'll do a pyramid, really push myself.

On the third set, I hear the door of the gym open and close and pay it no mind. I rack the weight and throw on two more forty-five-pound plates, bringing the total up to seven on each side, plus the bar. One more and I'll be at my five-rep max and start scaling back. My legs are already on fire.

Professor Grandolf walks into the gym and acts like she's surprised to see me. She's dressed in skintight yoga pants and an athletic bra, with a towel over her shoulder and a water bottle that still has the price tag on it.

"Oh, fancy meeting you here," she says.

"Doc," I grunt.

I'm not in the gym for chitchat. Especially not with her.

"You come here often?" she asks.

"Yeah."

"Funny we've never had a run in. I come in all the time."

"Yeah. Great."

She whistles tunelessly as she sets a bar in the uprights in the squat rack beside mine and starts loading it. I keep my eyes on my own form as I start my next set, oblivious to her presence.

When I finish and rerack the bar, Grandolf is still going, counting out loud between reps, her skintight pants stretching so much I can see she's wearing a thong every time she dips.

If she thinks this is going to work, she's out of her mind. Not a chance. After she racks her weight, she takes a big gulp of water. It flows down her chin and into the open top of her bra, which is about a size too small.

"Hard workout, huh?"

"Yeah."

I go back to ignoring her, beginning the process of stepping down the weight, one set at a time.

Grandolf is still squatting when I finish, unload the bar, and move to the next station.

After I rack the weight following my warmup set of bench presses, she leans over me, grinning as she looks down.

"Need a spot?"

"No thanks, I got it."

"I don't mind."

She plants her feet and sets her fists on her hips to watch me raise and lower the bar. I push her out of my head. I can't lose focus with over three hundred pounds in my hands, over my damned head. I rack the weight again and sit up.

I feel her hands on my shoulders. She sits down on the bench behind me. I grasp her wrists. I carefully lift her hands from my neck.

"Thanks. I'm fine. Go work out."

She pouts and walks over to the dumbbells, and starts doing goblet squats. Squat, squat, squat, every exercise she does is for her ass.

Not my problem. I can't see her while I'm benching, or while I'm doing bent over rows. After that I'll be doing some heavy bodyweight work, with a belt, in the other room on the chin up and dip bars.

By the time I'm finished, she's still hanging out in the free weight area, although she's taken up a pair of dumbbells and is lying on her back, squeezing her breasts together with every rep until they look ready to burst out of her top.