Page 2 of Training the Alpha

His cheeks glow a bright shade of magenta again. “I just mean—you’re very human looking. You look like a human. Not a creature.” I cock my head, and he grabs the pen from behindhis ear and brings it to his desk, even though there’s no paper to write on. “Any injuries I should know about?"

“I tore my Achilles early last year, but it’s been fully rehabbed. It doesn’t cause me problems as long as I don’t overstretch it.”

“Okay, we’ll keep an eye on it.”

“I can give you a full demonstration of my range of motion if you like,” I grin devilishly, because I can’t help myself when he’s looking at me so seriously. “I’m as flexible as you’d imagine.”

If the way his eyes darken is anything to go by,imaginingis exactly what he’s doing right now. Interesting.

He clears his throat. “That won’t be necessary. Alright, let’s see what you can do, dancer.”

Marcus leads me back out to the gym, and I follow him closely. He’s got a classic heavyweight build—all thick, broad shoulders that look like they could take the weight of a collapsing roof with no problems, and a low center of gravity. But he’s also stiff. He walks with the rigid posture of a man who’s spent his entire life mired in the unique tension that comes from this type of intense, masculine alpha environment. I’ve seen it plenty of times before.

He stops at a relatively empty section of rubber mats near a tall pull-up frame. “Alright,” he says, turning to face me and crossing his arms over his massive chest. His biceps bulge, forcing the fabric under his arms to bunch tightly. If any of the other alphas currently throwing me side-eyes were standing in front of me, I’d think they were posturing, but Marcus doesn’t give me that impression. There’s something easy-going about him that puts my guard down. “I want to see your core stability and upper body strength before we get a pair of wraps on you. Toss your bag on the bench.”

I slide my bag off my shoulder and unbutton my track pants, stepping out of them to reveal the leggings I wear for dance practice underneath.

I could have brushed off any reactions he had to my shameless comments earlier as an entirely normal response to being flirted with by another alpha. But the way Marcus’ eyes drop, travelling down the chiseled lines of my thighs, my calves, mycrotch—yeah, that’s something else. I know what it feels like to be eye-fucked, and this—the way his throat bobs in a slow swallow, the way the muscle flutters in his jaw as he tenses up—this is it.

“Dead hang on the bar,” Marcus grunts, tearing his eyes away and gesturing upward, clearly eager to get his eyes off my legs before anyone else notices. “Let’s see your shoulder mobility.”

“No problem,” I smile sweetly.

I walk up to the steel rig, look up, and leap.

I catch the steel bar perfectly, my body instantly locking into a rigid vertical line the second my fingers make contact with the metal, my shoulders preemptively bracing to take the strain. I don’t just dangle like a dead weight; I engage my scapula, lifting my chest slightly, completely in control of every single muscle fiber from my wrists to my pointed toes.

Marcus prowls around me in a slow circle, and this time his eyes appraise the flex of my lats and the alignment of my spine with a trainer’s eye, although I like the attention all the same.

“Keep your core tight,” he says, his voice naturally deep. “And raise your legs. Slow. Ninety degrees. Hold it there.”

I lift my legs effortlessly, keeping them perfectly straight and holding them parallel with the rubber mats. My abs lock, my breathing steady, and his hand ghosts over my ribs, tracing the line of my oblique.

“Impressive,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me, his hand moving to hover over my hip but never making contact. When another alpha walks past, letting out a low whistle, Marcus drops his hand like he’s been caught sticking it in someone’s wallet.

“Damn,” the alpha says, and I recognize him as one of the two men sparring in the ring when I first walked in. He’s wiping sweat from his brow with a towel. “Maybe you should be training Marcus.”

“Fuck off, Dyl. Keep your eyes on the big match, and out of my business.” Marcus flips him off with a smirk, and the alpha walks towards the locker rooms, laughing. At least not everyone here is as intense as my first impression. “Okay, you can release.”

I let myself drop from the bar, landing with a silent, perfectly absorbed bend of my knees.

“Your arm and core strength are fine. Clearly.” He moves us over to a taped square on the floor, grabs a couple of boxing pads, and brings them up in front of his chest. “Let’s see how you move your feet. A lot of guys who come in here think boxing is all about upper body strength, but it starts from the ground up. Shadowbox for me—just a one-two punch combination, nothing fancy. I just want to see your natural stance, how you transition your weight.”

I hesitate, feeling a little out of my depth for the first time since I’ve got here. I fall into my best impression of a fighting stance and aim a few punches at the pads. My dancer’s instinct takes over immediately: when I throw a jab, it’s sharp, but my posture is too upright, and my hips shift with an elegance that feels out of place here.

Marcus hums, dropping the pads. “You have great posture,” he says. “Just not for boxing. Here.”

He comes around to my side, pressing one palm flat against my back, right between my shoulder blades, and the other on my chest. I notice his nostrils flare, and mine do the same, the proximity to another alpha and the closeness of his scent sending a pleasurable, aggressive thrill through me. He transfers the pressure of his hands slightly, guiding my torsoan inch forward so my center of gravity shifts lower. “You’re leaning back too much. Boxers need to tuck the chin and keep their center forward, like this.”

My eyes meet his, and I feel the hitch in his breath when he realizes how close we’ve gotten. He pulls his hand back quickly, his fingers curling into his palm like he’s just touched something hot. He breaks my gaze, his eyes darting to the other fighters in the gym again.

I figure there are a hundred things I could say right now that would make that delicious blush rise to his cheeks again, but I’ve got no interest in pushing into territory that he can’t handle. It was one thing to flirt in the privacy of his office, but it would be another to do it in front of his clientele: not everyone’s as comfortable with themselves as I am, and sometimes I need to remember it’s not my job to bring it out of them. It never works out like I want it to, anyway.

Been there, done that, got the tear-stained t-shirt.

“Like this?” I say instead, taking a couple more jabs in the air with my adjusted posture. It already feels better, engaging my muscles in an unfamiliar way—something I wasn’t sure was even possible, considering how rigorous my training is.

Marcus nods, putting more distance between us, the professional trainer firmly back in control, although I can still see the frantic kick of his pulse in his neck. “Yeah. Exactly. Your impressive core holds you too straight, dancer. We’ll need to break that habit if you’re going to hit a bag without wrecking your wrists.”