50 Shades of Drake 1 and 2

Chapter Seventy-Two

    The following morning, Destiny felt Aubrey remove his arm from her, felt him shifting in bed. She lifted her head up and blinked sleepy eyes at him.

    "Morning workout," he explained, his voice groggy.

    She loved his groggy morning voice. Hell, be honest. You love everything about the man. Well...almost everything.

    "You should come work out with me," he said, standing up from bed and looking around for his boxer briefs.

    It was too early. She barely felt capable of thought, much less capable of jogging around on a stationary machine without falling and busting her face. She almost protested, but then reality hit her and she remembered whose offer she was about to decline. After all, yes it had sounded like a casual suggestion, but this was Aubrey we were talking about here. She couldn't tell if she had a choice or not, but she did not want to take the risk of angering him or disappointing him. She raised up on her elbows and tried focusing her eyes so she could see through the darkness shrouding the room. A glance at the window told her that the sun hadn't even risen yet. "Um... sure," she responded finally. "I'd love to, Sir."

    He angled a look down at her and laughed. "That wasn't an order. You can stay in bed, if you want."

    She lifted a hand and ruffled her hair. "I'm awake now. I can work out with you."

    "Good." He found his boxer briefs and pulled then up his legs. "You're going to want to put on a t-shirt and shorts."

    Yeah, yeah, I was getting to that, she thought. She wondered how he was able to be so chipper this early when he'd woken her up throughout the night, nudging her and poking her and kissing her and nibbling on her shoulder to let her know that he was turned again. Not that she had complained in the least. Well - she hadn't then. She kind of wanted to complain now that he was up at the butt crack of a dawn and in need of a workout buddy.

    He turned on the nightstand lamp and they moved around the room, collecting articles of clothing - him from the closet and her from the dresser drawers. She started to reach for her collar, but he called out for her to leave it. "Don't wear it while working out. It's real leather. Sweating on it isn't good for it."

    That wasn't how you felt last night, she thought, several mental images coming to mind. But she turned away from the nightstand and pulled her hair up into a ponytail.

    The home gym was located beneath his home office. There was a door underneath the staircase. The gym wasn't huge; there was only so much space in the condo. But it had most of the essentials. An elliptical machine, a bicycle machine, free weights, a few weight machines, a couple of weighted fitness balls, and something that resembled a Bowflex machine. A television was mounted on the wall.

    He stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. "You can pick a machine," he told her.

    Up until that point, she'd been staring at him. He'd thrown on a pair of gray sweatpants over his boxer briefs. No shirt. Just sweatpants and boxer briefs. And muscles and tattoos. And beautiful skin the color of an Irish cream latte. Skin that tasted just as delicious as it looked. At the sound of his voice, she tried to look alert. Like she hadn't just been checking him out.

    "I will...take the elliptical machine," she said, already moving towards it.

    He smiled at her and crossed the room over to the weight rack. He bent at the waist near where the weights were stored and flipped open a compartment. He pulled out a pair of gloves. He put on one glove while watching her try to figure out how to work the LCD screen on the elliptical machine. He walked over to her and coached her through the different selections. He backed out of the selections he'd chosen and had her go through the menu options again, to make sure she got the hang of it. He strapped the second glove around his left wrist as he watched her pressing the different selections on the screen. "You got it," he said as the machine started up. He gave her ass an encouraging smack.

    Startled, she looked down at him, reaching back and rubbing her left butt cheek.

    He backed away from her with a devilish grin on his face.

    Destiny was no stranger to working out. She'd slacked a bit towards those last several months leading up to graduation. But she'd played volleyball and soccer in high school. All throughout her college years, she ran on the track at night, usually after leaving the news room. That was before Chad, before Aubrey. She increased the speed and resistance settings on the elliptical machine.

    Aubrey walked over to the free weights. He bent down and wrapped his hands around the bar of a long dumbbell with a seventy-five pound disc on each end. He lifted the bar and performed several curls. His arm muscles rippled and flexed as he curled the bar upward towards his chest and downward with his arms extended. He kept his elbows tightly tucked in at his sides.

    She didn't even know how her legs were moving. At this point, they were moving on their own, because all she could concentrate on was how amazing he looked. Her eyes lowered from the focused expression on his face to his bulging biceps and flexing triceps. Sweat started to bead on her forehead and she couldn't tell whether it was from her own workout or what the sight of Aubrey was doing to her.

    His eyes slid over to her as he pulled the bar up to his chest. His eyes scanned down the length of her body, to the brown legs pouring out of her tight, white shorts and back up to her red tank top that was beginning to stick to her skin with sweat. He grunted as he pulled the dumbbell upward.

    She bit her bottom lip and lowered her eyes down to the LCD monitor in front of her. Again, she increased the intensity and speed on the elliptical. She increased the speed until she was practically sprinting on the stationary machine. Her curly ponytail flopped around behind her and she pumped her arms as she ran.

    He set the dumbbell down and turned away from her.

    That was how the rest of their workout progressed. Working out quietly, while sneaking lustful glances at each other. He moved from the dumbbells to one of the weight machines. She moved from the elliptical machine to a workout mat, where she proceeded to do a set of one hundred crunches.

    He appeared out of nowhere and helped her to stand after she finished her hundredth crunch. He was extremely sweaty. His arms glistened and sweat droplets ran down his forehead. He moved forward, forcing her backward until her back hit a wall. The look in his eyes was intense as one of his hands slid beneath her tank top.

    She boldly slid her hand down the front of his sweatpants and wrapped her fingers around the length of him.

    He groaned and closed his eyes. "I didn't give you the permission to do that," he told her.

    Her hand froze.

    He opened his eyes and stared down at her. "But you have my permission."

    She stood on her tiptoes and caught his bottom lip between her teeth before sucking on it.

    The workout they'd just completed paled in comparison to the workout that soon followed.