HOOKED: An Erotic Romance (2 page)

‘Arses should be lower than shoulders,’ he said in a strange low voice, and then he drew his hand away. My backside, where he’d touched me, throbbed with feeling, as if it had just been smacked. It was as if the heat and strength in his hands had travelled into me.

I looked up, desperate to catch a glimpse of him, to see if he was going to do the same to Rebecca, but instead, he just walked back to the front of the room. ‘Twenty press-ups,’ he said to everyone, his eyes only on me.

CHAPTER THREE

Almost Michael

For the next hour of class, thankfully, Rebecca and I were able to hide in the corner, throwing jabs at one another’s pads with all the skill of two-year-olds trying to wrestle with their parents as their diapers get changed. Our postures were both terrible - you didn’t have to be a World Champion to figure that out. Every time I caught sight of myself in the long mirror that ran across the front wall, I winced at how amateurish I looked. I was getting my jabs mixed up with my crosses, I didn’t understand the first thing about upper-cuts, and as for my hook… my right-hook looked like I was batting away a fly.

I also noticed, looking in the mirror, that my outfit was even more inappropriate than I’d at first thought. Not only did my breasts come dangerously close to falling out of my top, but my hot pants rode up at the back every time I flung my first forwards, and the taut curve of my buttocks was visible just beneath the hem of the white fabric. I was practically naked; it was obscene.

Luckily, I was too distracted by the endless instructions being growled at us to worry about it for long. While I was working with Rebecca, the instructor didn’t come near us. We just did our beginner thing, while the others in the room jabbed and crossed and hooked and hissed, and the sweat flew off mats, until we became enveloped in the stench, and we were part of that muskiness, that thick testosterone scent. By the end of the hour, I was surprised to hear myself actually groan as I took a punch. The atmosphere of masculinity in the room was heady, and I could see, then, I think, how something like this could grow addictive.

At the end of the session, as people packed their bags with gloves and focus mitts, Rebecca looked at me. ‘Well?’ she asked, pulling a stray strand of her red, wavy hair away from her lips. ‘What do you think?’ I couldn’t tell from the glint in her eye whether she’d loved it or hated it.

I looked over at the instructor, who was packing up some kick pads at the side of the room. His muscular arms bulged as they bent to pick things up, and I found myself daydreaming about what it might feel like for him to pick
me
up. I shook my head to dispel the image. ‘It was okay,’ I said, in my most carefully measured tone.

I had been so sure, when we had arrived late, and the whole class had been given the punishment of a plank and press-ups because of us, that I’d never dare set foot in this place again. But right now, I didn’t know. I feel like the experience had filled me with a strange sort of adrenaline. An adrenaline I just didn’t get from selling paper all day at work. This was
animal
. This was
wild
.

‘Yeah, it was alright, wasn’t it?’ said Rebecca. ‘Shame the instructor’s such a dick though. I thought I was bringing us to the women’s class tonight. Never mind, best to stick with this one now we’ve started, I suppose.’

I felt myself flush when she mentioned the ‘instructor’, desperate for her not to notice the powerful effect this man had on me.

‘Anyway, listen,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and pay him for today then we’ve got to shoot off I’m afraid. I’m meant to be sorting through Darren’s stuff tonight. He’s coming to collect it tomorrow morning, although I’ll probably have burnt it all by then.’

‘Hey,’ I found myself saying, ‘why don’t you just go and get on with that? I’ll pay, and then I fancy walking home tonight. It’s a nice enough evening, and I’m boiling. Fancy a bit of fresh air.’

‘You’ll be okay walking in that?’ she asked, looking at my outfit.

I looked down at myself, covered in sweat, which made the fabric cling to my clothes even more, leaving very, very little to the imagination. ‘It’s only a twenty-minute walk,’ I said. ‘And I’d be too hot to wear a jacket, even if I had one with me.’

‘Okay,’ Rebecca smiled. She kissed me on the cheek, and I could smell her saltiness from working out. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant. ‘Listen, thank you for this. It means a lot.’ She handed me a ten pound note. ’Tonight was on me.’

I smiled back at her, and she ran off, mumbling something about what a prick Darren was.

I noticed, by this time, that the room was empty, apart from me and the instructor. I walked over to him with my ten pound note, checking my cheeks briefly in the mirror, hoping they weren’t scarlet, that I didn’t look too tragic. In actual fact, I was glowing, I saw, with a healthy pink flush spreading up my neck and onto my face, that made my features look fuller, somehow. My lips looked red and pouty. I looked, more than anything, like I’d just been making love.

The instructor was bending down over a sports back when I coughed. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘My friend and I haven’t paid yet.’

He stopped whatever he was doing and looked up at me. I felt guilty, weirdly, like I’d just disturbed him. He looked deep into my eyes, holding my gaze for so long it almost felt like he was testing me, and then he stood up, his enormous body towering over me.

‘First lesson is free,’ he said gruffly.

‘Oh,’ I replied, holding the ten pound note, a useless offering, then I let my hand fall to my side. I noticed that I was still a little out of breath after the session.

‘I need your names though,’ he said. ‘For my sheet.’ He pointed to a sheet on a clipboard in his sports bag.

‘Ah,’ I said, trying to regulate my breath. For some reason, even though I knew I had at least a reasonable level of fitness, my heart rate wasn’t returning back to normal. ‘My friend is Rebecca,’ I said.

‘And you?’ he asked, twisting his chest around a little, so that he was facing me head-on, his eyes piercing me.

‘I’m Michaela,’ I breathed, almost in a whisper.

‘Very masculine,’ he said. ‘Almost Michael.’

‘I suppose it is,’ I said, feeling embarrassed of my name for the first time in my life. It was strange, being around this overtly manly man. For some reason, he made me want to play up to my feminine side, to take my blonde curls out of their high ponytail, let them cascade down my back, to start giggling and pouting and doing the things that girls do. The things I never normally bothered doing. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked suddenly. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘It’s Raoul.’ He pronounced each vowel in the middle of his name separately.
Rah-ool.
All that exhalation of breath. It was the sexiest name I’d ever heard.

‘Nice name,’ I said, full of wonder.

‘It’s Anglo-Saxon for “wolf”,’ he replied, and bared his teeth at me.

‘Wolf,’ I echoed, feeling my legs go weak. Must have been from all that standing and punching. I must have exhausted my muscles. I felt like I could drop to the floor.

I felt his eyes, which, up until now, had been looking steadily into mine, wander a little lower, resting for a moment on my chest, rising and falling heavily with my big breaths, and then they wandered lower still, to my tiny waist, my plentiful hips, my tight hot pants.

‘I’ve got to pack up now,’ he said, turning back to his sports bag and undoing the knot of his belt, before I’d even had a chance to say goodbye to him. ‘Don’t be late next week,’ he said gruffly.

Well. What a brute this guy was. I’d never come across such a bad-mannered teacher in all my life.

I turned to walk out.

Why was my heart still beating so fast?

I walked out of the garage, burning with rage - and something else.

CHAPTER FOUR

A Jab In My Chest

I was so angry, as I walked home, that I was barely looking where I was going - just striding across the sidewalks, not even watching the traffic carefully, muttering under my breath.

How could a man make me feel like this? I’d always been so in control in the past. People rarely ruffled my feathers, and when they did, it was over something important, like work. Not this - a night-time exercise class I’d only gone along to to help out a friend.

It’s not like I
fancied
him or anything. I could never be attracted to a man like that. I was attracted to men in suits. I liked my men successful; real go-getters, men who wined me and dined me, who bought me flowers and treated me right.

Or at least, I thought that was what I was attracted to.

So why had I rejected almost every guy that had asked me out in over a year? I’d only dated two guys since I’d been promoted to manager. One of them was the manager of a rival company. It felt good at first, to date someone at my level. A man that knows how to manage a team sure knows how to manage a woman. At first it had been fine. We’d been out to a few restaurants, to the theatre… even a weekend away in the Cotswolds. But soon enough, I got bored of it. Even the sex, which was alright sex as far as it went, began to bore me. It felt like a distraction, something I just had to
get through
so that I could make my excuses and leave, get back to my spreadsheets and my work.

And then there’d been the photocopier man. I didn’t normally do things like that, but I’d had a bad day and I was feeling harassed and horny, and he was trying so hard to impress me while we were left alone in the office that evening. I knew he wanted me. We did it there and then, against the photocopier, just like the old cliché. But I don’t know what it was ; I just couldn’t get properly excited about it, even though it was so different from the wining and dining approach I’d stood by resolutely for the rest of my life. I think the photocopier guy had maybe just wanted me
too
much
. It’s really unattractive to see someone trying so hard. Maybe that’s what it was.

I crossed the road, barely looking at the lights to check the green man was lit up, and then passed some office blocks.

Yeah, I was married to my work. That was my problem. If only something could take me away from that a little, help me let off some steam.

I walked towards the underpass, barely noticing how dark it was getting.

Maybe that’s what I was feeling now. Getting out some of that aggression had opened something up inside me. But what was inside that space I’d opened up? Was it just an empty hole, gaping like an open wound?

Suddenly I felt a sharp jab in my chest, and for a moment I thought maybe I was having a heart attack, but then I became aware of two big guys with shaved heads, tackling me to the ground.

‘How much you got?’ snarled one of them, grabbed the ten pound note I hadn’t noticed I was still holding in my fist.

The other guy put his hand over my mouth and pinned me down to the ground. ‘What’s a pretty thing like you doing out here alone, dressed like this?’ he asked, running his hand down my thigh. I tried to scream but all that came out was a muffled, garbled noise.

I needed to do something. Fast. But I didn’t know what.

I tried to bite down on the fingers in front of my mouth, but the hand was clamped down too hard for me to open my lips.

Behind me was a shout, and I braced myself. There were more of them. This was it: I was about to die - or worse.

As I lay on my back, looking up at the sky in terror, I saw a silhouette move over me, heard the heavy thwack of flesh on flesh, and saw the guy who had taken my ten pound note fall back onto the ground.

I saw the dark shadow of a muscular leg, flicking out, and then another thwack, and the hand flew off my mouth and the other guy was on the ground as well.

‘Come on,’ said a low voice, giving me my ten pound note back, and then taking my hand and lifting me to my feet. Two strong arms picked me up, right off the ground, and carried me, with ease, away from the thugs, who lay groaning on the ground, grabbing their limbs, shocked and in pain.

It wasn’t until we reached a car under the safety of some street lamps that I dared look up at my rescuer.

‘Are you okay?’ asked that same gruff voice I’d been cursing just a few minutes ago: Raoul.

‘I… I think so,’ I said, suddenly feeling the cold upon my skin, shivering.

Raoul lowered me to the ground, checked I was steady on my feet, and then took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders. ‘Those guys won’t be bothering anyone again for a while,’ he said.

I looked back towards the underpass, saw them still lying there, groaning. ‘That was amazing,’ I said, breathlessly. ‘The way you took them both down like that. So quickly. Thank you.’

Raoul nodded and put a hand on my shoulder. I felt electricity fizzle where his palm touched me. ‘I was driving past and saw it happen. Didn’t realise it was you, though.’

Something about the way he said that sounded dodgy. Had he been following me home? Surely not. Why did I think this guy would be interested in me in any way?