Page 23 of Gym With Benefits

I tracked Sloane, still on the dance floor being felt up by Antoine. The image of David added to the mix crashed into my brain uninvited. She was sandwiched between them, basking in their joint attention.

“Rather you than me,” I said, shaking my head to free myself of the imaginary emotional load. “The mechanics of it just… It’s confusing.”

David let out a husky laugh. He seemed drunk, but it wasn't alcohol. “Two words: sexual symmetry. Also, Antoine isn’t wearing any underwear and I got a preview of his—”

“Okay.” I rocketed out of the booth so fast it sent our empty glasses skittering along the table. “I gotta go. Get another drink. Or something else that doesn’t involve witnessing your direct path to an expensive therapist.”

“I brought you here to loosen up, remember?”

I balked at him. “Are you telling me they’re looking for a fourth? Because if you thought—”

“Relax,” his laughter bubbled over the drone of voices that now lifted in the quiet of a track-change. “Two’s my limit when it comes to sharing what’s on the menu. I was just trying to get you to understand. It’s pleasure multiplied, not labor.”

It was messy, is what it was. Totally outside the bounds of my neat and tidy and ordered life.

"You're actually going to do it," I said, the realization settling in.

"More than that. I'm gonna enjoy it. Now go get that drink and come find me on the dance floor. I’ll be your wing man.”

“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Looks like you have your hands full.”

A heavy, driving house beat surged, pulling David back out of the booth and onto the floor. He was a blur of motion between Sloane and Antoine, his jacket discarded somewhere in the velvet depths of our booth. It looked so easy. Letting go. Just giving it all up to the music and the heat.

“Fuck the drink,” I muttered to the matronly prude in my head. It was high time she took a back seat.

I drifted into the center of their triad, the pulsing heat of the crowded floor pressing in from all sides. For a few minutes,the museum and the mounting dread of Amberleigh’s wedding vanished. I was just a body moving with other bodies in the erratic glow of a strobe light.

Antoine grabbed me by the waist and gave me a taste of what David had alluded to back at the table. The man was hung. No Dickhead Dane, but good enough.

Hands came to my shoulders. Soft skin, but firm grip. I spun round and came face-to-face with the flawless Sloane. She pressed up close and my breath got caught somewhere between what the actual fuck and how is this my Tuesday night?

“David never mentioned you were such a good dancer.”

“Because I’m not.” I gave a nervous laugh, searching the immediate surroundings for David. “This is just the effects of good lighting and lots of alcohol.”

Where the hell was he? He promised there’d be no fourth. And yet.

Across the expanse of the sunken dance floor, perched at a high-top table in the VIP tier, was a face I instantly recognized. Dane. But not the rigid, ice-cold fixer I’d encountered at the gym. He wore an expensive suit and an easy smile, a glass of whiskey loosely gripped in one hand. A guy at his table said something, and Dane laughed, his head thrown back and eyes crinkled. Schmoozing, probably. Because I refused to believe he was capable of any setting that wasn’t full-on asshole mode.

I faltered, my rhythm breaking.

“You’re not flatlining on me, are you?”

I pushed out of Sloane’s arms and held onto David. “Where the hell were you?”

“Having a moment.”

Over his shoulder, Antoine swiped a thumb across his lower lip before going to dance with Sloane again.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied, forcing my feet to move again. This wasn’t the gym, and Dane wasn’t part of my night.

He was a pustule on the face of D.C. society. Which had nothing to do with me.

"I need a break," I said, and gestured toward the bar. "And more gin. I'll bankroll the next round."

"You're a saint!" David blew me a kiss before being pulled back into Antoine’s orbit.