The Only Way is Up

Part Eleven

A/N Sorry for the delay, this was a difficult chapter to get right, and I've had to help my sister move. Hectic times. Enjoy.

MZ

Chapter Eleven

Monday five pm. Max glanced at the clock again, yep, she was due in fifteen minutes, a couple of days after feeling so rough. He was sure it was a bit early. Feeding Gryaznyy he stared down as the scruffy wolfed down her food with all the traits of an animal that had starved for months. Who knew how long she'd been homeless. No one was coming forward to claim her; suddenly he was looking like being father to the scruffiest animal he'd ever seen.

Rolling his eyes he started to wash his hands, looking at his reflection in the cracked mirror above the sink. What had he become? He'd spent the best part of the weekend caring for a woman; he didn't DO that, not even for the rare ones he fucked more than once.

He glanced down at the dog.

"You! You are at fault, do you hear me? They'll all think I'm soft!" Leaning against the counter he watched the dog eat, unaffected by his comments. He ran a hand over the soft stubble on his chin, "they call me Devil for fuck's sake!"

That made the dog look up, but within a second was back to eating her food.

Groaning, he grabbed his water bottle then headed downstairs to the gym.

After the weekend, he intended to take it a little easy on her at the first sign of struggling, but Nicole was back to bantering, pushing all his buttons again.

"You going easy on me Chertov?"

Max looked at her from under his hooded eyebrows, "are you saying that I'm soft Nicole?"

She laughed haughtily, "no, I'm saying that you're feeling sorry for me."

Shrugging he led her to her most dreaded kettle bells, her reaction pushing him to push her, "you were quite ill, I was just assessing how much you can manage."

She squared up to him, "I can manage whatever you throw at me, you KNOW that."

"Gimme fifty...LOUD counts." He half snarled as he walked away from her. She knew the drill and as she counted slowly with each weighted lunge, he couldn't help but smile, the girl had sass, in buckets.

Nicole was barely able to breath, normally she did a couple of sets of twenty reps, but the fact that he'd demanded fifty from her was a retaliation to her calling him soft. And when he pushed those barriers back up, she had to admit she was glad. She had four weeks to push herself into a slinky dress, Maxim being a friend wasn't going to ensure that happened. As she counted loudly through the forties, she could feel his eyes scrutinising her. She checked her posture then adjusted her foot position before finishing off the set. She lowered the items of torture to the floor, then almost collapsed beside them, but not quite.

As she doused her mouth and half her face with water, she felt Maxim approach, "two minutes, then another set."

She couldn't fight the groan that escaped her lips, and it caused him to glare at her, an eyebrow lifted. Giving him a scowl, she threw an arm across her body to stretch her triceps, a pleasurable pain ripping through her arm.

Silently she circled the weights again, dreading the reloading sensation in her arms, but she couldn't let him win, and this was for the greater good, she wanted to stand amongst her business colleagues and not feel a lesser person when Vincent and Shelley appeared. He was her personal and now work nemesis, she had to save face, and hopefully she'd give him food for thought too.