HOOKED: An Erotic Romance
Read HOOKED: An Erotic Romance Online
Authors: Vivie Rock
CHAPTER FOUR A Jab In My Chest
CHAPTER ELEVEN I'm Your Teacher
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Privacy Glass
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Warrior Sprit
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN More Than A Taste
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A Haze Of Lust
CHAPTER NINETEEN Public Humiliation
CHAPTER ONE
I'm A Tough Nut
‘Of course I’ll come to a kickboxing class with you,’ I’d said to my best friend Rebecca last week, ‘anything to help a friend.’ Inside, though, I’d been dreading it.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a tough nut. I’m the boss of a successful company - we shift thousands of tons of letterhead and copier paper every week - we make over a million pounds profit a year. I manage a rowdy bunch of fifty-four employees, more men than women. And they all respect me. I’m a no-nonsense sort of boss, firm but fair. As long as you don’t cross me, I’m amiable enough.
But… kickboxing? I’d never done anything like that in my life. In my teens, I’d been a dancer. Took part in local, and even national, ballet-dancing competitions. I’d have carried on with it if work hadn’t taken over. I’m a workaholic, see, and the long hours of overtime soon stopped me from continuing with evening activities. All I had time for was a quick trip to the gym twice a week, just to keep, at the bare minimum, in some sort of shape. I was naturally muscular anyway, so I was lucky - as Rebecca often reminded me.
But yeah, I was short on free time, and didn’t do much other than work. It’s the reason I hadn’t had a boyfriend in over a year, too. I was in a relationship with my job, I guess.
Rebecca, though, had been going through something of a crisis lately. Her bully of a boyfriend had dumped her, trading her in for a younger model, and Rebecca was doing all the things that spurned lovers do - getting her hair cut, getting a navel piercing, and taking up a martial arts class. I assumed that was what spurned lovers did, anyway. I’d never let myself fall for anyone enough to let myself be hurt by them.
So I agreed to go to this kickboxing class with Rebecca, until she felt comfortable enough to go on her own. Then I could get back to my own life, having done a good deed for a friend. Hopefully, it would only take a couple of weeks for Rebecca to get her confidence back, and she’d be back to her fun and flirtatious self in no time.
‘The problem is,’ she told me, as we headed for the address on the kickboxing leaflet, ‘I just don’t trust men any more. You think you’ve found a nice one, and then they turn on you.’
I nodded occasionally, letting Rebecca rant and release all that bitterness, knowing it would be good for her. Really though, I was only really half-listening. Instead, I was feeling a strange fluttering inside me. As I say, I’m a tough nut. I wasn’t used to feeling - what was this? Nervous? Yes, that’s how I was feeling now. It was like I was reliving my first day at school, wondering what everyone would be like, if I’d fit in, if I’d be able to keep up.
I watched my legs striding forwards, long and tanned, in a pair of tight, white hot pants, and wondered if we were really dressed in the right gear for a martial arts class. My white low-cut sports bra and tight, pale pink vest felt provocative, all of a sudden. So taut around the bust, and out here, shivering a little, I could see my nipples poking through the fabric.
Thank God we were going to an all-female class. I wasn’t here to impress anyone, so I wasn’t bothered about making a fool of myself, but I didn’t want the toxic combination of men and women in one small garage, exercising and getting sweaty together. Men had wandering eyes, and I suspected they came to the mixed classes for the wrong reasons. Like those pervy guys at the gym, lifting weights while they licked their lips, watching me on the running machine. I had good figure, I knew that. But it was mine. I wasn’t a display model for anyone else’s eyes to try out.
‘This must be it,’ said Rebecca, holding up the flyer and re-reading the address. The flyer, which Rebecca had been given at her work, looked pretty corny if I’m being honest. I’m surprised Rebecca had gone for it. The entire background was taken up with the picture of a man’s torso, a perfect six-pack, each ab an angular, chiselled, masterpiece of Photoshop no doubt. No-one had a stomach that good.
I looked up from the flyer at the building in front of us. ‘This can’t be right,’ I said, puzzled.
In front of us was a small row of what I can only describe as dirty old garages. Each one had rusting, dark blue corrugated metal covering over the entrance, and beside that a grimy black door. ‘This place is a dump,’ I said. ‘It can’t be here.’
Rebecca looked at the flyer again, screwing up her eyes because she’d left her glasses at home. Really, she was so forgetful it’s a wonder she managed to get anything done. Take this evening, she’d forgotten her water bottle, then her wallet, then her car keys. We had to go back into her house three times before we could leave. We were already running ten minutes late.
‘Look, we’re
obviously
in the wrong place,’ I said to Rebecca. ‘Let’s just cut our losses, go to a bar, get a nice bottle of white or something.’ God, I could use a drink. I was almost glad Rebecca had messed up.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Rebecca, pointing at the door, and suddenly I heard the noise of hands thumping against hard fabric. It was the sound of people punching. There was no mistaking it.
We were here.
CHAPTER TWO
Late To Class
We shuffled in the door, to the sound of some thirty or forty people, rhythmically punching pads in pairs. Each time they punched, they let out a loud hiss, and I almost stepped back through the door and left. I’d heard there was a good yoga place down the road. Surely Rebecca would be up for that instead? It was meant to be really good for your core.
But the main thing I noticed as I stepped through the door was this: the place was full of men. It was a small, dank old garage, absolutely chock-full of them. What the hell?
Rebecca must have made yet another mistake and brought us to the mixed class. And with all these men, it absolutely stank in here. Sweat and testosterone. And even the women in here looked like men - everyone had short hair, tribal tattoos, and hard, angular bodies. I couldn’t have felt more out of place if I’d tried.
‘We’ll creep in round the back,’ whispered Rebecca behind me.
‘Fuck’s sake, Rebecca,’ I whispered back, dying to turn back, but determined not to wimp out before she did. I could do anything she could. I could do it twice as hard.
I tired to squeeze past a guy holding up pads while his partner threw punches at him, but the guy took a step back, stopping me in his tracks. ‘You’re gonna get it,’ he said, in a low, threatening voice. I noticed that one of his teeth was missing, and he had a scar running across his lip.
‘Get what?’ I asked, standing straighter, throwing my shoulders back, a technique I’d learnt for disciplining the more unruly members of the male population at work.
The guy just winked, looked at my breasts, straining out of my tight pink top, gave me a lecherous smile, showing yet another missing tooth, and then he turned to the green-haired punk punching him.
Well, this was just great. What had Rebecca got us into? She was my friend, yes, but I wouldn’t be coming back here next week to ‘support’ her, that’s for sure. This place was a hive of carnal chaos.
As I stepped forwards, trying to catch up with Rebecca, who was slipping off her shoes and putting down her water bottle, the punching and hissing suddenly stopped, and the room went silent. Everyone stood with their legs together and their bodies rigid with attention.
At the front of the room, where I hadn’t yet dared let myself look, the instructor stood, arms by his side. Everyone in the room had their gaze fixed on him, and his gaze was fixed on us.
Now I’ve seen a lot of men in my life, I’ve even seen a fair number of them up close and personal, but I’d never seen a man like this. He must have been six foot five, at least, tall and imposing, with tanned skin and short black hair. He wore black pants, slung loose at the hips, with mysterious Chinese lettering scrawled tantalizingly around his groin, and a black belt tied in a complicated-looking knot, drawing attention to the space between his legs, where it hung down. And his torso - it was magnificent. He wore a tight, black vest, which his thick arms practically ripped their way out of, and his broad neck and shoulders made the fabric pull apart, almost translucent, over his pecs.
‘Looks like we’ve got latecomers,’ he said, pulling back his lips to reveal big, white, angry teeth. His voice sounded barely human, it was so low and gruff - almost like a growl. ‘You know what happens now,’ he said. I noticed a twang of a foreign accent. What was it? Spanish? French? It was exotic, and made me think of dark, hot Arabian nights.
All forty people in the room looked at him obediently for a moment, and then got down on their knees. They shuffled their hands forwards, so that their flat palms were directly under their shoulders, and then lifted themselves onto their toes, with perfectly straight backs.
‘Ladies. It’s your fault everyone’s got to do this now. Find a space. Get into the plank position.’
I looked at Rebecca, and she raised her eyebrows at me and then shrugged.
Fine
,
I’ll do what he says
, I thought.
But how humiliating
. I hadn’t been told off for showing up late to class since I was ten years old. Rebecca would pay for dragging me along to this pay money for this bully to humiliate us later.
I found a tight space at the back of the room and got down onto my knees. As I put my weight onto the palms of my hands, leaning forwards, I noticed that my sports bra really didn’t keep that much of me in place. My breasts almost fell out of my top, dangling beneath me as I got unsteadily onto my feet. I could see Rebecca was struggling too. Her arms were shaking, barely holding her up. Still, at least she was wearing a tracksuit. At least she still had her modesty.
The instructor marched to the back of the room and observed our positions. ‘
Straight
backs, ladies,’ he said, looking at Rebecca first and then me. I tried to pull my stomach in, to concentrate on straightening out my spine, but I felt like the core strength just wasn’t there. Now if I’d been doing yoga…
Suddenly I felt a large hand pressing down on my back.
‘This needs to come down,’ said the gruff voice. Slowly, expertly, he guided my hips down towards the floor. Then, a big hot palm touched my stomach. ‘And this needs to come up.’ He pushed gently on my stomach, sending waves of feeling around my abdomen.
It was the first time a man had touched me in months. I felt a strange tingle, somewhere deep with me, and tried to steady my breathing. I could smell him, this animal man so near to me, could feel his hands so firm against my stomach and the small of my back, pushing against me, and for a second, I almost felt myself willing his hands to slide down a little further…
No! Stop it! What was I thinking? This guy was a beast. He stank. And he was obviously a bully.
I focused on getting my body rigid, and waited for him to walk away. Instead of walking away to examine Rebecca’s posture, though, he lingered by me a little longer. I don’t know how I knew, but I felt his eyes on my cleavage, taking in my tight pink top, my breasts spilling out of it. He was probably thinking how inappropriate my gear was for martial arts. He probably hated my guts.
His hands still pressed against me, and I could feel their heat, getting warmer and warmer as my body ached under the pressure of holding still. Then, slowly, his hand slid another inch down my back, then another, until it was over my coccyx. He applied a little more pressure, then a little more, until I was fighting not to fall to the floor. My legs trembled under the strain.