Sweat and Steel After the Gym Closed

The gym on Larimer had been shut for three weeks while I rewired the lighting, and by Thursday night the place smelled like cut copper and leftover lemon cleaner. I was on my knees behind the squat rack, feeding cable through conduit, when the front door thudded and boots crossed the rubber. I knew that walk. Heavy, unhurried, the stride of a man who used to step on stage and still trained like the lights might come back on. Dane. Former bodybuilder, thirty-four, built like a wall someone had taught to move.

He stopped close enough that I felt the heat coming off his legs. A gray shirt stuck to his chest from the mile he ran over from his condo. Veins stood on his forearms. A duffel hung from one hand, zipper half open on a towel and a bottle of oil. I sat back on my heels and looked up the length of him, already half hard from the way he filled the aisle.

- You always end up on your knees for me, Cole?
- Outlets don't wire themselves. You said Friday or I eat the delay.
- Friday's tomorrow. I'm not here about the lights.

He dropped the bag. We had been circling for two weeks. Comments about my shoulders when I reached overhead. His hand on my lower back when he squeezed past me in the narrow hall, lingering half a second too long. I was twenty-nine. He was thirty-four. Both of us old enough to stop pretending the job was why he kept finding me after the crew went home.

- Lock the door.
- Say you want it first.
- I want it. I've wanted it since you spotted me on the bench last Tuesday and didn't let go of the bar.

The deadbolt snapped and the street noise died. Denver sat blue and cold beyond the high windows. The space heater clicked and pushed warm air across the mats. He hauled me up by the front of my work shirt and kissed me hard. His mouth tasted like mint and the coffee he lived on. Stubble scraped my lip. I got both hands under his shirt and felt the dense slab of his stomach, the heat, the way he flexed when my fingers dragged lower. He stripped the shirt off. His chest was heavy, nipples dark, a pale scar under one pec from an old tear. I put my mouth there and he groaned, one big hand fisted in my hair. After that we stopped talking.

He walked me backward until my shoulders hit the padded wall by the cable station. His thigh pushed between mine. I ground against it, already straining in my jeans, and he bit the tendon in my neck until my knees went loose. He opened my belt. The zipper came down. Cool air, then his palm, dry and hot, wrapping my cock and stroking slow from base to head like he was learning the weight of it. I shoved his shorts down. He was thick, heavy, wet at the tip, the head flushed dark against his tan. I spit in my hand and slicked him, the vein jumping under my thumb, the heat of him filling my fist.

He turned me. My palms flattened on the black pad. His chest sealed to my back, sweat sealing skin to skin, and he reached around to keep stroking me while he rocked his cock along the cleft of my ass. The oil cap clicked. Cold poured, then his fingers, two of them, working me open with patient pressure. It burned, then gave. I pushed back and took them deeper, forehead against the vinyl, breathing through my mouth. He crooked them and found the spot that made my thighs shake. A third finger stretched me until I was open and greedy, oil running down the inside of my thigh onto the mat.

When he lined up and pushed in, the stretch was huge and exact. He went slow, one arm barred across my chest so I could not fold, the other hand still on my cock. I felt every ridge. When his hips met my ass he stayed buried, breathing hard against my ear. Then he fucked me. Long strokes at first, pulling almost out, driving back in until the pad thudded against the wall. Sweat ran down my spine into the place we were joined. He picked up speed, hips snapping, the wet sound of oil and skin filling the room. His balls slapped me. I braced and took it, pushing back, chasing the drag of his cock over that spot until my vision went white at the edges.

He spun me, lifted one leg onto his hip, strong enough that my boot barely touched the floor, and fucked me face to face so he could watch. His brow was tight, mouth open, eyes locked on mine. I held his shoulders, thick and slick, and jerked myself between us while he pounded up into me. The angle was brutal and perfect. Heat coiled low. I came first, hard, striping his stomach and my fist, clenching around him so tight he lost the rhythm and drove in deep. He stayed there, pulsing, filling me in thick waves I felt low and hot. His forehead dropped to mine. We shook through it, the heater ticking, the city quiet beyond the glass.

He held me until my leg stopped trembling, then eased out slow. Oil and come slicked my thighs. He cleaned me with the towel, big hands gentle now, mouth soft at the corner of mine.

- Same time tomorrow. The lights can wait.
- Tomorrow. And you're spotting me. For real this time.