No Rep (Madd CrossFit #1) - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,20

to something that resembled a pull-up but actually ended up being his chest and not his chin that got near the bar. He finally ended it with regular pull-ups.

By the time that “A Whole New World” ended, he dropped down completely from the bar, his face a full grimace as he breathed deeply.

The cat, whom I hadn’t noticed until now, hissed at him from where he’d landed right next to his perch on top of a wooden box beside the rig. He blended in almost seamlessly. Once he felt his ire was known, he curled back up onto the box with his tail flicking angrily.

Taos ignored him, standing with his chest heaving, face aimed toward the ground, arms around his hips, for what felt like forever before he groaned and dropped down to the ground.

That’s when a sound akin to pain left him as he fell back onto his back and restlessly shifted his legs back and forth, likely to remove himself from the pain that had to be going on with his upper body.

“Fuck,” Taos groaned, rolling over to his side.

That was when he saw me.

He stared, his face an expression of pain, then said, “Son of a bitch. I forgot about you.”

I grinned. “It’s okay. I’ve been here for five songs, and I’ve been transported back to my childhood.”

He grinned, and a bead of sweat dripped from his nose to his full lower lip.

“I get so fuckin’ tired of hearing the same damn songs every day that I can’t help but play something different when everyone leaves,” he admitted. “When did you get here?”

I gestured toward the bar. “Somewhere around the thingies that get your upper body all the way over the bar.”

He grinned. “Muscle-ups.”

“Those.” I winked.

He snickered and got up from the ground, leaving a sweat angel in his wake.

I admired the musculature of his sweat angel, then looked at the man.

I’d seen him without his shirt off only once before, and that was a few seconds before class started the previous day. But I gave my eyes time to roam over his body as he walked a few feet away to his very large water bottle that he had sitting beside the rig.

He leaned over, and the waistband of his shorts tugged a bit low, giving me just the tiniest of glimpses of his ass crack.

A bead of sweat disappeared down it while I was watching, and I almost wished that I could follow that sweat bead with the tip of my finger.

Or would that be weird?

Though, saying that, it would not only be weird because we were very new to each other, and not even dating, but because it was just plain weird in general to want to run your finger down the crack of someone’s ass.

Wasn’t it?

“You should try one,” he suggested, momentarily jolting me out of the contemplation of his butt cheeks.

I blinked. “What?”

“Try one.” He gestured toward the bar with his bottle.

I frowned. “I can’t even do a pull-up. Shouldn’t I focus on that first?”

He snorted. “Probably. But I did all of my shit backward. Why can’t you?”

“What did you do backward?” I asked curiously.

He gestured to the wooden rings that were held by a large black strap from the ceiling. “I was able to get a ring muscle-up before I was able to get a bar muscle-up—which is easier. I was also able to do handstand walks before I could do a push-up.”

My brows rose. “Really?”

He shrugged. “I was in gymnastics when I was a kid. Something that I was able to keep up mostly. Though, just sayin’, it was ugly at first.”

I gave the bar a speculative look. “How about you teach me how to do a pull-up, first?”

He gestured to the shorter bar that was next to the one he was using. As I walked toward it, I noticed all the droplets of sweat that’d fallen down from him as I moved past his sweat angel.

I stood underneath the bar and looked up, biting my lip as I did.

“Jump up there and see what you can do,” he suggested.

I did, hanging awkwardly from the bar as I tried in vain to pull myself up and failing miserably.

I got about two inches up and couldn’t get any farther.

He started to laugh, then his big hands went on my outer thighs and he pushed me up the rest of the way.

“The way to get better at these are to do negatives,” he said. “When you get up there, try to force