Page 25 of Diary of a Biker Queen

She flapped her hand again. “Just do it, Lynx. Hold the plank until failure. Like, I’m talking you hold that thing as long as you humanly can and you do not give up. Fight the urge with everything you have. I’m going to film it.”

“Why?”

“Do you want Nyah to see you as more than a friend or what?”

I mean, I did, but I really wasn’t sure how planking was going to help that. But Amber had taken my phone hostage and was clearly not giving it back until I did as I was told. So I got down on the ground, nudged some leaves and sticks aside so I had somewhere for my hands to rest comfortably, and got into the position.

Immediately, I had to turn my core on to hold it, and again, I’d been a bit slack on the workouts since getting out of prison, so those muscles were a tad sluggish to engage.

Amber peered at me through my phone screen and pursed her lips. “Drop down onto your forearms.”

I wasn’t going to argue with her since that was a hell of a lot easier than the higher position.

I looked up at her, and she was nodding as she directed this little film, moving around me with the camera.

“Okay, perfect. Now hold it until failure. Do not be a wimp, Lynx. Hold it.”

The part of me who’d loved hockey as a teen and in my early twenties and who had loved the competition of it all reared to life inside me. “Is there some sort of record to beat?” I asked her.

She giggled. “No, no. No record. Just…hold it.”

I seriously had no idea how this was supposed to make Nyah see me in a different light, but now that the competitive part of me had been reignited, I knew I couldn’t let this go until I actually hit that failure point.

Minutes ticked by, and while at first the exercise was easy, the more time passed, the more my body began to feel it. By the five-minute mark, I’d basically lost the will to chat. My arms shook, and my core complained. My head kept shouting to give up.

I didn’t, but only because my core screaming at me was preferable to the urge to kill. It whispered sweet nothings about how good it would feel to carve my mark into someone else’s skin.

By the seven-minute mark, I was having to breathe more consciously, trying to fuel my aching muscles, and by the ten-minute point I was vaguely aware of Reaper coming back outside to find me, and Amber shushing him when he tried to ask her what I was doing.

At twelve minutes, all I could do was groan. “Fuck,” I muttered, dropping my head but fighting to keep my hips and abs from hitting the ground. The pain was intense, every muscle in my body locked tight. I breathed deep; my body shook. The only word I could get out was the occasional “Fuck” when my body threatened to give in.

The pain grew. I moaned, wishing I was the sort of person who could ignore that competitive streak and just give in.

But I couldn’t. I fought it until there was no fighting it any longer. When I hit failure point, I hit it so hard I face-planted into the dirt, my arms and core and legs and even my neck no longer able to support me.

I rolled over onto my back in agony and slung an arm over my face to protect my eyes from the morning sun. “What the fuck, Amber? Why did you make me do that?”

I peeled my arm off my eyes long enough for me to glance over at her and Reaper. Amber grinned wickedly.

Reaper just looked embarrassed.

I pushed myself up into a seated position, though my body complained profusely at the attempt. “What?”

Amber laughed in Reaper’s direction. “You want to tell him or should I?”

He was beet red in the face. “Just show him.”

She walked over and squatted beside me, holding out my phone, the video she’d taken of me on the screen. “Just forward to the last minute or so.”

I took it from her fingers and dragged the little bar at the bottom of the screen along until it got to the place she’d indicated.

When the video played it was the last minute of my plank, where I’d been fighting for my life. Sweat dripped down the side of my neck, and my entire body shook.

But it was the noises I was making that caught my attention. The moans. The guttural, “Oh, fuck…” and the whimpering.

I had fucking whimpered.

And all of it sounded exactly like someone having the best, slow, deep, mind-blowing sex of their life.