Training Ch. 01

Lexys, smiling like Mona Lisa with all the patience and – he wished he could believe it – love in the world emanating from her eyes, her posture, even her very flesh, took his large, coarse, scarred hands in her own, much smaller and smoother hands. She placed one on the north slope of her breast, the other in the valley between. His hand didn't quite fit, and she covered it in both of hers and spread his thumb and smallest finger to lie underneath her breasts, supporting them with their size. Alex was nearly beyond awareness, his shock was so great, and she leaned in and nibbled his collarbone again before reaching around behind her and slipping off her bra.

In Alex's mind, a little man called "Reason" grinned and walked away, departing the scene slowly to stage left. "Lust" came on the scene, sauntering through his mind, and Alex slowly, ever so slowly, bent his head. It seemed like an eternity, his heart beating fast enough to be heard in the room, his pulse so strong Lexys could feel it through his hands. She brought his shirt, once buttoned up his chest, down to his elbows and off his broad shoulders. She leaned in, pressing against his motionless hands and took some of his pale blond chest hair between her teeth and tugging, tracing sloppy (drunken?) kisses to his nipple before playing with it in her mouth. Her warm, moist lips and her active tongue teased him, and still slowly, ever so slowly, Alex lost control, his head dipping further and further down toward her, toward her graceful neck and perfect bosom. It was only moments, but "Reason" came running back onto the scene, a picture of the woman who had nearly destroyed him for anyone he wanted to love pasted onto a massive piece of spiky lumber. "Reason" clobbered Alex upside the head with his most painful of intimate memories and his member lost all resiliency, flopping back into place in his pants.

Lexys' hips and mons were still grinding into his erection, and when it suddenly, alarmingly, became flaccid, she giggled. "Done already? You don't have much stamina, eh? I guess I'll have to fix...that..." As she finished her sentence she brought her eyes to meet his she let loose a quiet gasp of shock. His eyes, once dark with lust only moments before, were now pinched with pain at the corners and the closer she looked the more she was convinced she saw sparks in his eyes. But what scared her, frightened her to the very core of her soul, was that the eyes of the man she held in her arms were as black as his pupils, the iris and whites of his eyes gone in the shadow of his brow. She moved her hands to his shoulders and felt as his muscles locked into position and lost their warmth; she tried to bring him back to her by kissing his throat, but his muscles were locked so tight it felt as though he had lost his pulse.

Inside his mind, Alex was fighting against the old memory, the one that stopped him from ever getting close to a girl his own age, the spectre of his past that was ugly and ignorant, a horrendous crock-pot of instinct and unguided lust. As always, he tied the battle, but as always, he felt he lost it.

Alex's eyes cleared and he raised his head to look more calmly into Lexys' eyes. His slate-gray orbs, still pinched at the corners penetrated hers and dove into her soul, and he saw she was afraid. She wanted him, him for him and him for his body, but she was afraid of what she had seen. He pushed all the apology he could into his gaze and pulled away from the beautifully nude girl, seeing her pale skin and perfectly shaped nipples for the first time, her creatively-trimmed landing strip, and the long lock of red hair that curled itself over the swell of her breast and cascaded back over her shoulders in large curls.

Still feeling the effect of his mismanaged lust behind his eyes, he reluctantly pulled his hands from her chest and out of her grasping hands: he pulled a pen from his pocket and scribbled a note on a piece of paper before fleeing out the door, silent and in shock.

"It's your birthday," he had written, "and I wanted to tell you I loved you, that you're the first I ever have. But I can't...and I'm sorry."

*********

Alex sat up in his large bed and put his face in his hands. He liked to think that Lexys cried when he left, but she had refused to see him after that, refused to speak with him. She'd sent the odd Christmas note and, once, a letter thanking him for his birthday wishes, but after a year there was no communication. He had blocked her on his instant messenger, and a community-building website was available, but she ignored him for years. He wiped his eyes and limped down the stairs, dislodging Watson from his favourite perch on the railing. Swatting Pope Gregory in the chest, he triggered an unlocking mechanism in the wall inside the entry way, revealing a sterile mirrored steel elevator with antiseptic fluorescent lighting. He stepped inside, pulled the hidden door closed, locked it, and activated the lift. The elevator shaft cozied up to the ventilation system and geothermal-heating system for the house, and it had not been difficult to conceal the construction of the elevator shaft, nor of his hidden basement lair. The hidden area had been designed specifically as a private place, a means for him to sit in a realm of his own darkness and struggle with the aspects of his personality that he had yet to find and deal with effectively. His first disastrous experience with a girl had forced him to make clear delineations between what he felt he could and could not do with the "fair sex," and the realization that until he was put back together, platonic relationships with those he found attractive were out of the question. His experience with Lexys proved that, and her subsequent instant messages following their...fall-out...had convinced him that she was not mature enough for him. He was still certain she wasn't, but his patience with his own weaknesses had come to an end. His feeling of a need for "revenge" was more a revenge against his own feelings than the hurt Lexys had caused him - the epiphany startled him.

The lift door opened and he stepped into what the designer and builder of the basement had termed "the dungeon." It was a large open area about eighty feet in diameter and shaped like a breast – the elevator came through the nipple. To the far end was a gym, through the opening behind the elevator shaft was a plushly furnished room. But along the walls were devices of Alex's own design, custom built and some were even tied into the house's electrical system. Others pulled from the water system. But he knew that most of those devices wouldn't be necessary.

He hit the gym.

*********** ***********

*********** ***********

Lexys stood on the elliptical machine and moved as fast as she could. Her discovery that Alex was in town had raised every hormone in her body to their peak: she was horny and angry, frightened and relieved. At the same time though, it was as though she'd stepped into a freezing shower and crammed an icicle in a very tender area of her body. Alex raised all sorts of feelings in her, and most of her memories of the man were pleasant. It had been almost eight years since she had seen him, on the night she had seen the daemons of one of his memories raise their ugly heads and nearly take control of him. She had seen the strength of his will smash aside those memories in his desire to not harm her, but she was a casualty of his self control. Her mind kept slipping back to the last words he left her, that night, and she flushed every time, forcing herself to exhaustion, hoping to purge herself of the feelings she had, if only for a little while.

Earlier that day, eight years ago, June 17, she had met Alex for coffee at a restaurant across the street from where they worked. He'd called her out to treat her for her twenty second birthday, and she was trying to deal with her ex-boyfriend Brad, a jealous guy who was stalking her.

She had woken up a week previously and, in the course of her nude early morning wanderings (they'd had sex, so what was the point of dressing? Brad already knew her naughty bits) to get coffee, he'd rolled over, found she wasn't there to wake him in the "traditional" way (a sloppy blow job for him and frustration for her, but he really didn't care about that), gotten out of bed and shoved his half-erect member up her very dry and uncomfortably tight ass. He'd reamed her out for the better part of an hour, and since she was vocal anyway, he was able to continue his anal rape of his girlfriend without concern. Hell, he was still drunk *and* high from the previous night. He was too far gone to see that Lexys' face was screwed up in a rictus of pain, tears streaming from her eyes, and blood dripping from the cuts in her hands from her stylishly long nails and the paring knife she had taken out of the drawer when Brad had shoved his wang up her ass. While he was not particularly long, he was thick, and her tight anus was ripped to shreds as he forced his way up her virgin chute. It had taken two years and three surgeries to repair the damage to her anus and remove the rape-induced haemorrhoids and anal fissures. It had taken an extra two surgeries to repair the near separation of her colon from her rectum.

That aside, she hadn't called the cops on Brad but had promptly moved to Ryan's for a week or so. Ryan (the American-style football player) had been nursing a crush on her for years, but she felt safe around him, or, at the least, comfortable. He and Alex were good friends, and Alex had a tendency to be picky about those he took to. Alex still wasn't fully admitting his crush on her, but she was certain – a woman's intuition, you could call it – that he was almost there. When Alex called she was packing up to move her stuff into her girlfriends' place. When she sat down at the table with Alex that afternoon, she saw him massaging his left ring finger, a nervous habit he had when he had relationship issues to discuss, or, at least, when they were on his mind. Her defenses rose immediately and carefully sat down after giving Alex a hug.

**

Lexys dismounted the elliptical and got onto the treadmill. She cranked it to the highest setting and started sprinting on the moving belt.

**

Lexys had been so frightened about what Alex had to say that she let herself succumb to verbal diarrhoea. She started to cry as she told him that she was so tired of every man she came across telling her she was special and beautiful and that she was tired of the casual manner in which "men" used the word "love." She saw Alex's face fall and gulp, and watched with a breaking heart as he wrapped his hands around his glass of ice water. He had read her mood and was forcing himself into "friend-only" mode. But she still saw the hurt and the lust in his eyes as he brought his empathic side to the forefront, moving aside his own needs in favour of hers. Again. He'd been doing that for almost two years and while at first she thought he'd been easily pussy-whipped, she'd realized, as Alex had opened up to her, that it was a fundamental building block of his personality, to put the needs of those he . . . holy shit . . . *loved* before his own. And the best he could do was to listen and offer his own perspectives. She realized that it hurt him more than anything that he couldn't do more.

And she realized now, eight years later, that it had killed her to force him into a position where she used him as badly as she had for two years. Lexys turned off the treadmill and sat down on the end of it. She worked at a 24 hour fitness centre and, at 2am, no one was around. She put her face in her finely manicured hands and started to weep. At the sound of the automatic doors swishing open, she snuffled, wiped her tears and pasted a smile on her face to match the bright colours of her running suit. Well, her "running suit" was really just a spandex halter top and multi-coloured shorts that clung to her every curve. She sauntered to the front, swinging her hips from side to side, and watched a heavy-set man with a cane shamble in through the door. He was wearing a fleece jacket and a heavily woven utility vest, a university-pride ball cap and a dark gray watch. His sneakers were bright iridescent orange and he wore black shorts and a red work-out top, barely visible behind the remarkably light winter clothing he wore on top. Without saying anything he flipped his membership card open to her, signed the list and limped to a coat hook. He hung his cane, hat and jacket on the hook and, still without letting her see his face clearly (she'd had an impression of a strong jaw and a goatee), walked to a rowing machine. He got himself strapped in, raised the weight threshold to maximum, and started his set. Lexys noticed he had excellent breath-control and form. But now, since she was no longer alone in the building, she couldn't work herself to exhaustion. She stepped under a cold shower to slough off the sweat that had been cooling down her back, but made sure to keep an eye on the monitors. Lexys, standing at 5'9" and 112lbs, kept her hair out of the stream of water, stepped into a white bikini set and slipped into a blue, yellow and white halter sundress. The cold weather outside was countered by the 85 degrees inside, and she fell into a massage chair and watched the broad-shouldered man finish his eighth set on the rowing machine.

The man – blond, she saw – rotated to his left, away from her, and vigorously toweled off his head before standing, favouring his right leg. The muscles in his left thigh bunched as he stood, and she saw the muscle definition even through his loose short pants. His work-out top was sleeveless and his arms were - well, sculpted would be the best word - and Lexys could see the definition in his back as he stood. His butt was not small, but was hard, just two blocks of solid muscle mass connected to his hips and quads. Lexys wiped her mouth and hooded her eyes as he scooted around on one foot on his way to the inclined bench-press. He limped, true, but seemed to do so quite smoothly, which surprised the physically perfect young woman. She'd only ever had a stretched ACL and a twisted ankle in all the years of football playing and kick-boxing. Well, her anus had been exploded by an idiot ex-boyfriend, but that hadn't been a sports injury, technically speaking.

Still without showing her his face, the large man loaded the press-bar with two hundred pounds and lay backward. The forty-five degree angle let him flop over onto his back, and a shudder ran from Lexys' toes to her suddenly moist centre and from every other extremity to her nipples and centre too. Her head felt like it was drained of blood. ALEX!!! Alex, oh long ago Alex was pressing, quite calmly, a two hundred and thirty five pound weight at a highly uncomfortable angle. Lexys felt her face drain of colour when Alex noticed her watching, and he offered a slow, tantalizing wink encased in a suddenly impassive face. He stopped blinking. He wasn't even sweating any more. But he didn't stop moving: petrified, she watched him press fifty, sixty, eighty...one hundred and ten repetitions before hanging the press-bar on its rack. He pulled himself into a series of crunches, and for the first time Lexys saw the metal glint that ran down Alex's forearms. She shuddered, wondering to herself what possibly could have happened. She saw, as he slowly relaxed out of a crunch, a large number of scars across his abdomen that hadn't been there eight years prior. His hair was a lot shorter and thinner than before, but trendily styled. His spectacles were fogging over from his exertion, but he had stopped sweating entirely. That wasn't a good sign for anyone, even someone who had as odd a physical make up as Alex. Lexys surged to her feet.

"Alex, you have to stop. You're not sweating any more."

"Wouldn't be the first time," he grunted into his knees.

"It's really dangerous! I have to insist that you stop! You could get me fired if you don't!" she hissed.

"Might be a good thing," he said as he relaxed onto the bench.

"Stop it! Alex for the love of God, stop before you faint!"

"No love for God, so no point," he said as he surged into a lunge that took him off the bench and onto his feet. He turned to look her in the eye and he relaxed all his muscles at once, and he was deluged in sweat. The heat radiated off of him in a burst, like a forest fire that ignited her like a pine cone. She started to sweat as well, but before long, he turned away from her and headed toward the door. He bundled himself up and leaned on his cane, as though all the strength had left him in a wave. He hobbled out the door, but Lexys chased after him, stopping just short of putting her hand on his shoulder.

"It was good to see you again," she said.

"I almost wish I could say the same," he responded, his voice harsh. "Mrs. Dunham made a note saying you wanted to see me. You have. Good evening."

"It's not the same and you know it Alex! You know me better than that!" she cried, putting a hand on each of his shoulders and her head against his back. She almost drew back when she felt the shudder running up and down his back and down his right arm.

"No, it's not. But you threw away your right to anything more, didn't you? Now I'm successful, I'm well known and my body is whole again. You want something from me that you didn't want before, and you know *me* well enough to know that unless you want me for what *I* consider the right reasons, you don't have a snowflake's chance in hell. You treated me rather coldly, didn't you, last time?"

"But you left me that night!"

"No, I left before I could hurt you. I tried to get you to understand, but you turned a cold shoulder and told me you couldn't trust me any more. You remember that? You were going to help me with a painting, and after I left on your birthday, to keep *my* memories of being hurt from hurting *you*, and spending most of my day helping you through a rough spot, you didn't have the patience to return the favour."

"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I'm so, so sorry!"

"It doesn't matter. You don't want me. I can't have you as you are. You still blame me, and I can't have that hurt around me."

"I'd do *anything* to make it up to you! I haven't stopped thinking about you in eight years."

"Sure," he said, as he turned, instinctively supporting her before she fell to the floor. "But two years after you left you stopped responding, you stopped acknowledging, you stopped doing anything. You didn't even recognize me when you saw me on the telly until Laura called you." Alex's eyes flashed with anger.

"You know about that?" she whispered.

"Laura told me herself, and I didn't even have to pry." He removed himself from her grasp, knowing that if he wrenched himself away her hands would be sliced to shreds by his prostheses. "As I promised then, when you're ready, I'll welcome you back into my arms; you've never stopped being my friend, and you've never stopped being the girl I love most." He grinned to himself behind his impassive mask as she winced at the label of "girl."

"Women don't betray a man because he loves her, Lexys. Good evening."

Alex stepped out into the sleet and toward his government car, the driver looking with pity at her as Alex stopped before closing the passenger door. Without looking at her, he said into the sleet:

"Anything, eh? Hypothetically, you might want to remember that." He flicked on the speaker of his little voice recorder, replaying her words from a moment before.

The door closed.

Lexys fell to her knees as she sobbed.

Alex grinned to himself as he was chauffeured back to his home.

The driver felt pity for the girl at the gym.

Lexys still cried.

****** ****** ******

Alex swung into the office at the Ministry the next morning with a grin on his face, taking off his fedora and dumping his Inverness coat onto the antique paisley armchair across from Patty. She groaned as the sleet and snow fell off his tweed coat and onto her desk.