She didn’t stop the rep she had just started until she was done and set the weights down. The earlier hint of interest in her eyes had disappeared now. "Neither." She said, reaching for a towel just beside her. "Just training."

"Right." Edward said, leaning against the rack beside her. "Haven’t seen you here before. Are you new here?" He asked. Her identity wasn’t exactly public knowledge, so he didn’t want to act as though he knew who she was.

"Sort of, just passing through." She answered, direct and without warmth. It was in a clipped way of someone who wasn’t being rude exactly, but wasn’t leaving any gaps either. Edward couldn’t help but notice how up close she was even more striking, her face most beautiful, and her figure even more alluring.

’She’s not interested,’ he thought, watching her fold the towel over the bar. ’Or she’s pretending not to be.’

"Passing through for long?" he tried.

She almost smiled. "Long enough to finish my workout." She picked up her bag and slung it over one shoulder. "Which I’d like to get back to."

He read it clearly, this one was a dead end, there was no need pushing further. ’I guess looks aren’t everything after all.’

"Fair enough." He stepped back and gave her the space. "Enjoy the rest of it."

She nodded once and walked away without looking back.

Edward turned back to his bench and sat down.

’That was nothing,’ he told himself. ’She just wasn’t interested.’

He reached for his water bottle and took a slow pull from it, replaying the exchange. ’Maybe she just doesn’t like men. Maybe she has someone. Maybe she just didn’t like me.’

With a sigh, he just let it go. There was no use getting worked up over it.

While Edward decided to get back to his workout, still scouting around to see if he could find another girl, the lady he just spoke to was besides herself on the other side of the gym, her mind lingering on the encounter.

’He was something,’ she conceded internally, watching her form in the mirror. ’I’ll give him that.’

While she had seen a lot of attractive men in her time in different events and places, Edward was something, perhaps, a couple leagues above those pretty boys. Then again, handsomeness had a way of showing.

’Control yourself, it’s still a no anytime.’ She told herself in her mind.

Without realizing it, she increased the weight and let the faint burn do whatever clarifying it could to her thinking.

The last time she had been intimate was in a high brow hotel within another city, and while she had tried to be careful, as she always was, a particular moment arrived with its particular intensity and her hand had been behind his head and she had not been as careful as she needed to be...

She didn’t let herself finish the memory.

The time before that had been worse in a different way. He had survived and would walk again eventually, the doctors had said. She had sat outside that hospital room for three hours before someone recognized her and she had to leave. This one, she was only riding him, but as it normally happened, she lost control of her strength under the wave of pleasure and crushed his pelvic bone.

After all of that and the accidents, she decided it best to impose celibacy on herself, forced celibacy.

This time she didn’t expect to see such a tempter. She had come to this city for a small work, didn’t expect such an encounter.

’He was something,’ she thought again, almost against her will.

Then she pushed it down and focused on the weight, which she soon left and headed out of the gym, done for the night.

Either way, with the gym being somewhat packed, it didn’t take long before Edward found another lady. She was decently pretty, not a face that had every head turning, but not ugly either, perhaps average. Though that was the story with her face, her body was totally different, small waist, an ass that only qualified to be referred to as a bunda, nice breasts, at least through her tight top, Edward was drawn in immediately.

She was mid way through a set on the cable machine, headphones in, in a world of her own. Edward simply watched, with his water in hand, observing. Once he noticed she was done, he gave it a moment and crossed over.

A he walked closer, he noticed she added more weight, and it was just the right moment. "You’re going to need more than that," he said, nodding at the weight she’d just added.

She looked at him, then at the stack, then back at him with something between amusement and skepticism. "Is that right."

"Based on what I just watched, yes."

"You were watching."

"Hard not to."

She let out a small breath that was almost a laugh. "That’s either a compliment or an excuse."

"Little of both," he said.

She couldn’t help but look at him, studying him properly as she now got a good look at the man hitting on her, cause that was obviously the case as she saw it. She was going to shut him down outright, perhaps even rudely, but it seemed like she found something in him that passed some threshold, because the corner of her mouth moved slightly, the thought of dismissing him evaporating like mist.

"I’m Maya."

"Edward." He answered, noting how she went straight to the point.

Even then, Edward took things a little slow. They talked for a bit without either person pushing particularly hard, without the stiff scaffolding of obvious effort. She was funny in a dry way, and he matched it without trying to outpace her. She asked what he did, which he answered in a vague way that made her curious rather than suspicious. She told him she was a physiotherapist, which he noted was a very specific lie for someone with her particular build, but he kept that to himself, since it could very much be true.

At some point her hand had brushed his forearm and she hadn’t moved it immediately. He shifted slightly so that his leg pressed lightly against hers. She didn’t shift away.

Everything was going smoothly.

"I was going to head out soon," she said, in a tone that left a question inside the statement.

"So was I," Edward replied. "Why don’t we continue the talk elsewhere?" He asked.

Reading her smile and the way she looked at him, he didn’t wait for a response.

"There’s a place not far from here. Decent rooms, quiet."

She raised an eyebrow slightly, reading the suggestion for exactly what it was.

"Confident," she said.

"Practical," he replied with a warm smile.

She held his gaze for a moment. Then she unhooked her bag from the machine, pulled out her phone, and said, "Alright Mr. Practical. You better deliver. Lead the way, then."