Her Personal Best — Bonus Chapter
After Hours
by Blair Lennox
⚠️ Spoiler warning: This scene takes place three months after the epilogue of Her Personal Best. Read the book first for maximum impact. This scene is explicit, graphic, and significantly hotter than the main book. You have been warned.
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After Hours
A Her Personal Best Bonus Scene
The last volunteer left at seven.
Naomi locked the front door, flipped the lobby lights, and walked back through the corridor to the training floor where the air still smelled like chalk and sweat and the specific, low-frequency hum of a building that had spent four hours absorbing the energy of sixty people learning to hold heavy things.
Kiera was sitting on the edge of the competition platform in her coaching shirt and chalk-dusted leggings, eating a protein bar with the contemplative focus of a woman who had spent the afternoon teaching teenagers to deadlift and was now recalibrating her relationship with silence.
“Good clinic,” Naomi said.
“Great clinic. Did you see the girl from last month? The one who couldn’t hold the bar at the clean position?”
“She held it for six seconds today.”
“She held it for eight. I counted.” Kiera finished the protein bar, folded the wrapper with meticulous precision — she still folded every wrapper, a habit Naomi found disproportionately endearing — and surveyed the empty training floor with an expression Naomi recognized instantly. The particular hunger of an athlete who had been coaching all day and hadn’t touched a barbell herself.
“You want to lift,” Naomi said.
“I always want to lift.”
“Cece’s program says rest day.”
“Cece is in Colorado Springs and doesn’t know what I do in empty gyms at seven p.m.”
“I know what you do in empty gyms at seven p.m. I caught you once. It ended with a conversation about fear and a training program you hated.”
“It ended with me falling in love with you, but sure, let’s focus on the programming.”
“One set,” Naomi said. “Light. Technique only.”
“You’re not my coach.”
“Sexy. Talk liability to me.”
Kiera stood. Rolled her shoulders — the right one smooth and stable, the rehabilitation long since complete. She walked to the chalk bowl and rubbed her palms with the ritualistic attention of a woman performing a sacrament she’d practiced ten thousand times. She snapped her wrist wraps — one, two, three — and the sound echoed in the empty gym like a heartbeat.
She set up at a barbell loaded with training weight. She pulled. The clean was textbook. She stood it up and drove the jerk overhead with an authority that made the overhead lights seem dimmer by comparison.
“How’s the form?” Kiera asked, bar still overhead.
“Your form is excellent.”
“That’s not what I asked. I asked how my form looks. To you. Right now. In this empty gym. Where no one can hear you answer.”
Naomi set down the clipboard. “Your form looks like the reason I filed an ethics disclosure, gave up a federation career, and spent three months learning to watch without coaching.”
“Do you remember the shoulder correction? Week two. You stepped behind me and said set here, feel that in a voice so low I felt it in my spine.”
“I went home that night and spent forty minutes proving myself wrong about what that meant.”
“Now do what you wanted to do that day.”
Naomi’s hands found Kiera’s shoulders. The deltoids — round, powerful. Her fingers traced the contour the way they’d traced it during the correction, except this time there was no coaching cue attached. Just touch. She moved down Kiera’s arms, following the constellation tattoos, the corded forearms, the wrists still wrapped. She took Kiera’s hands and turned them over and kissed each palm.
Kiera pulled Naomi’s shirt over her head. Right there on the training floor. The sports bra followed — unclipped with practiced one-handed efficiency.
“Platform,” Kiera said.
“We are not having sex on the competition platform.”
“We are absolutely having sex on the competition platform. I have wanted to fuck you on this platform since the day you corrected my clean pull, and I have been very patient.”
Kiera kissed her. Hard, certain. Her chalk-covered hands found Naomi’s waist and the chalk transferred in two white handprints that they would both examine later in the shower with the satisfied attention of art critics reviewing a new installation.
Kiera walked Naomi backward to the platform’s edge and lifted her onto it — casual, easy, the strength that had moved two hundred and six pounds overhead applied to a significantly more welcome task.
“Lie back,” Kiera said.
“The rubber is cold.”
“It’ll warm up.”
Naomi lay back on the competition platform. The surface she’d competed on. The surface where Kiera had set a personal best. Now it held her. And the woman kneeling over her was not a judge.
Kiera undressed her with purpose. Each layer removed with focused attention. Then Kiera’s hands — chalked, calloused, warm — descended.
Handprints appeared on Naomi’s body like evidence. White chalk marks on her ribs, where Kiera’s fingers spread wide and pressed. On her stomach. On the inside of her thighs, where Kiera’s grip opened her with a gentle, implacable pressure that made Naomi’s breath stutter.
“Look at you,” Kiera said. Her voice carried in the empty gym the way Naomi’s coaching voice once carried. “Chalk marks all over you. On the platform. In our gym. You look like evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“Evidence that the ice queen of international weightlifting is about to get fucked on her own competition surface by an athlete she once critiqued on national television.”
Naomi laughed — involuntary, surprised. “I didn’t critique you. I critiqued your receiving position.”
“You’re about to find out about my receiving position.”
Kiera kissed down her body. Throat. Collarbone. The space between her breasts. The flat plane of her stomach, the oblique muscles tightening. The ridge of her hip bone. The chalk handprint on her inner thigh.
“Tell me what you want,” Kiera murmured against the chalk mark.
“Your mouth.”
“Where?”
“I want to hear you say it. In this gym. On this platform. Where you used to stand behind the chalk line and coach me through lifts with that voice that made me want to drop the barbell and drop to my knees.”
Naomi looked down at her. Kiera between her legs, chalk dust on her cheekbones. “I want your mouth on my cunt,” she said, and the precision of each word was the hottest thing Kiera had ever heard on a surface that had previously only hosted barbells.
Kiera gave her exactly what she asked for. She settled between Naomi’s thighs with the focused commitment she brought to heavy attempts. Her tongue moved with a rhythm that was slow and deliberate and devastating — the assured confidence of a woman who knew exactly what this body responded to. She flattened her tongue and pressed, and Naomi’s hips came off the platform with a force that would have earned a red light in competition.
“Stay down,” Kiera murmured against her, and the vibration of the words made Naomi gasp. “I’ve got you.”
She added her fingers. Two, sliding inside with a confidence that drew a sound from Naomi’s chest that started low and climbed and bounced off every surface in the empty gym. The cinder-block walls returned it. The metal racks amplified it.
Kiera curled her fingers. Found the angle. Held it. Her free hand pressed flat against Naomi’s stomach — the chalk handprint overlapping with the real hand. She held Naomi down and worked her with the focused intensity of a woman who had once been told she couldn’t be trusted with precision and had spent a year proving that diagnosis wrong.
Naomi’s hands found Kiera’s hair. She held on while Kiera’s mouth and hands worked together with the coordinated precision of a clean and jerk, each movement building on the last, the tempo increasing with the controlled progression of a loading scheme designed to peak at exactly the right moment.
The orgasm hit like a max attempt — total system engagement, every muscle firing. Her back arched off the rubber, her thighs clamped around Kiera’s head, and she came with a force that left chalk marks on the inside of her own legs.
When Naomi could see again, Kiera was crawling up her body with a grin so satisfied it should have had its own sponsorship deal.
“Your receiving position is excellent.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“You’re going to return the favor. On this platform. Where I set a personal best. Because I have been thinking about your mouth on this rubber surface since Minneapolis and I am done thinking.”
Naomi rolled her. The reversal was smooth — the body memory of a former world champion. Kiera went onto her back and Naomi was over her, kneeling between her legs.
She stripped Kiera bare. The coaching shirt thrown toward the bench where it landed on the chalk bowl. Brown skin against blue rubber. The constellation tattoos catching the overhead light. The broad shoulders, the thick thighs, the soft stomach, the stretch marks like silver rivers — every part of a body the internet had called too much and that Naomi had spent a year calling exactly right.
“I’m taking my time,” Naomi said.
“You always take your time.”
“And you always complain about it until you don’t.”
She kissed Kiera’s throat, her collarbone, her chest. She sucked Kiera’s nipple between her lips and felt the response in Kiera’s entire body — the hips lifting, the abs tightening, the sound that escaped through teeth Kiera was trying to keep closed.
“Don’t be quiet,” Naomi said against her skin. “This gym has excellent acoustics and I want to hear all of them.”
She moved lower. The stomach she loved — pressing her mouth against the soft skin, tracing a stretch mark with her tongue, feeling Kiera’s hands come to rest in her hair with the gentle uncertainty of a woman who still found it remarkable that someone wanted to put their mouth here instead of skipping past it.
Naomi did not skip past it. She never had. She never would.
She settled between Kiera’s thighs. “Tell me what you want.”
“Your mouth. Now. Please.”
The please undid any remaining restraint. Naomi put her mouth on Kiera with the full precision of a woman applying doctoral-level expertise to the body she knew best. She knew the rhythm that made Kiera’s hips move. She knew the pressure that made her voice climb. She knew the specific combination — tongue flat, fingers curling, tempo steady — that produced the moment when Kiera stopped performing confidence and started genuinely falling apart.
Kiera’s hands tightened in her hair. Her thighs trembled. Her breathing went from rapid to irregular to the specific broken pattern that meant she was close.
“Naomi — right there — don’t stop, don’t — fuck — right —”
Naomi did not stop. She held the rhythm with the focused endurance of a woman who had once held world records overhead and now held something heavier and more important: the trust of a woman letting herself be seen at the most vulnerable moment a body could produce.
Kiera came with a sound that filled the gym. Full-throated, full-bodied, the sound of a woman who had spent her life being told she was too loud and had decided that too loud was exactly what she intended to be.
They lay on the platform — sweating, chalk-marked, wrecked — staring at the overhead lights.
“We just had sex on the platform,” Kiera said.
“Where teenagers learn to deadlift.”
“I’m going to sanitize it. Extensively.”
Kiera started laughing. Naomi laughed too — the real laugh.
“I love you,” Kiera said. “On and off the platform.”
“I love you too. Though I have genuine concerns about our liability insurance.”
“Again?” Kiera asked.
“We should shower.”
“Again. Then shower.”
“The hot water heater in this building has a forty-minute recovery time.”
“Then we have forty minutes.”
Naomi rolled over her. Pinned her wrists — loosely, playfully, the hold of a woman applying lifetime precision to the task of making Kiera Voss completely incoherent for the second time in twenty minutes.
She succeeded.
The gym echoed.
They did not make it to the shower for another hour.
The platform was sanitized the next morning. Extensively. With industrial-grade cleaner and the focused attention of a woman who knew exactly why the cleaning was necessary.
The chalk handprints on the rubber scrubbed away.
The ones on their memory did not.
Neither of them was sorry.
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