As he’d expected, his comment set the thread on fire. Everyone thought he was talking about sex. Flame emojis. Tongue emojis. Eggplants. And it degenerated from there.

“What?” he said innocently when she glared at him as her notifications went nuts. “I was talking about the cookies.”

Still glaring, she stomped out—which was difficult to achieve since she was wearing those blades that made her move with a light bounce to her step. But her grace wasn’t only because of the prostheses. It was her. He’d seen her in motion on the track, and holy hell, the woman was pure liquid lightning.

He was a runner too, burst into punches of motion on the field, but he didn’t move like Catie. She moved like she’d been born to run, where to him, running was just one part of his toolbox for the game. After a lifetime of training, her entire body was streamlined for her chosen sport. But as a sprinter, she had curves aplenty. Especially those glutes that were toned and round and—

Whoa.

Wait.

Where the fuck had that come from?

He did not think about Catie’s butt!

Okay, fine, he’d admired it now and then—hell, it was fantastic. He’d have had to be blind not to notice. But he’d noticed in a way that wasn’t this conscious. It had just been a passing thought. That hey, Catie was curvy there and it was hot, and then the thought had been gone because it was Catie.

Except now they were pretending to be in a relationship and he was going to be getting a lot closer to those tight, round curves.

His cock reacted.

Horrified, he glanced down with a stern “No.” He was permitted the odd admiring thought or two, but never would he actually act on them.

It would mess up their whole thing.

She was his nemesis, and that brought him an immense amount of joy. It’d be so incredibly awkward to turn that into a sexual thing that, given his track record, would no doubt crash and burn—and then they’d be familiar strangers. The thought made him want to shudder.

Nope, nope, nope.

His thoughts about Catie’s curves—and the attendant physical reaction—could go right back into the mental box in which they belonged. He repeated that admonishment more than once as he went through his workout.

What he could actually do with was a hard run. Since he couldn’t go out on the streets, he powered up the treadmill, set it to his preferred speed and incline, and got on with it. After breaking once to check on the cheese-and-ham muffins he had in the oven, he picked up where he’d left off.