“All right, there you go. Take a deep breath. Think we can go a bit further?” Rachel leaned on the triceps, ready to push the arm back another notch if Dana gave her the slightest indication she was ready for it, though she was pretty sure the woman had reached her limit.
Dana gave her a quick jerk of a nod and closed her eyes, focusing. Watching the tension throughout the rest of Dana’s body, Rachel cut the hold time down to half before she released. “I think that’s plenty for today. You’ve made progress since last time. You’re doing your exercises religiously.”
“Try getting out of them with an ex-captain who wants to be a drill sergeant when he grows up.” Dana managed a wan smile.
Reaching into the drawer next to the cot, Rachel withdrew a gold-foiled chocolate and put it in Dana’s hand. “Your reward. You did really, really well, honey. I know it’s slow, but you’re improving your flexibility at the rate someone like me wants to see.”
“Improving, but it will never be the same as before.” Dana pressed her lips together, showing the strain behind the words, but then she sat up with a quick snap, a shake of her head. “Sorry. Weak-assed thing to say.”
Rachel put a hand on her shoulder, but merely said, “You’re still doing the Iyengar poses I showed you, with the straps?”
“Yes.” Dana nodded, offered that half-smile again. “Peter likes the straps.”
Rachel normally would have managed a witty comeback, but it caught in her throat. She couldn’t joke today. She was too full of envy for what Dana had.
“Hey.” Dana moved her hand to Rachel’s knee. “You okay?”
“Yes. Definitely. I was just…smiling at you two. Being so in love and all. It’s a nice thing to see.”
“It’s a nice thing to feel.” Dana cocked her head. Rachel’s left hand was resting on her knee, so now her patient was touching the gold band on her ring finger, a plain contrast to the diamond engagement set that flashed on Dana’s. “I hope you’re going to tell me you still feel that way about your husband. It might keep me from bashing in Peter’s big rock head before we even make it down the aisle. Or are you still newlyweds?”
It happened on occasion. Rachel would never lie about it, but she did everything to avoid being asked. “I’m not… I’m divorced.”
“I’m sorry.” Dana’s fingers tightened on her hand, over that ring. “Was it recent?”
Dana was planning to attend seminary. Though she’d only just begun prep courses for it, Rachel could tell she was going to be a good minister. She already had that quiet, soothing way of talking that made it feel like she was inviting a confession and forgiveness, instead of being intrusive or nosy. Of course the idea of forgiveness for a passionless crime…
She didn’t want more questions, so it was best to get it out, rip the bandage off fast. “No. It’s been a few years. I wear the ring so I don’t have to fend off male attention.” She forced herself to sound light, breezy. “It’s appalling how few men are deterred by it these days, but it does help some.”
Rachel was far more curvy than Dana’s regal Ethiopian physique. Full-breasted, with a generous ass and hips that didn’t bother her, because the yoga kept it all firm and healthy, even if she didn’t match the standard for thin. She knew from experience she was far more likely to catch the eyes of passing males than the pencils in designer wear a couple decades younger. She did understand that about men, that they liked a woman to hold in bed, liked the way clothes could be made to amplify those fertile attributes of breast and backside. But it was bolstering knowledge only, not designed to catch the passing fish who couldn’t meet her needs. She’d learned it was best not to cast the line.
“So no one in your life now?”
“Do I detect a matchmaking note? If so, remember I can actually tie your body in a pretzel shape and leave it that way.”
The problem with having this kind of conversation with a blind person was they couldn’t be thrown off by visual cues—the false smile, a casual shrug. Rachel tried hard to make her tone teasing, relaxed, but the crease across Dana’s smooth brow said she wasn’t fooled.
“You feel like a woman who has so much love to give a man, Rachel. I never would have guessed you didn’t have one. Do you have other family? Children?”
I had a family. And one beautiful child.
“Oh heavens.” Rachel gave a strained laugh, one she was sure sounded fake, but she was out of courage to handle the conversation. She was too fragile today. That word kept running through her head. Master, Master, Master… With each beat of her heart, she felt anew the thrill that had run through her vitals when she’d heard it. Only now it was starting to feel like an electric shock applied to the soles of her feet. “It’s almost eight o’clock. I have to run an errand upstairs before my next appointment. I’m sorry, honey, I don’t mean to cut us short…”
Withdrawing her hands with a quick pat of Dana’s, she rotated on her stool and jumped, surprised to see Peter leaning against the wall a few feet behind them. She hadn’t heard him enter, so she guessed he’d arrived during their brief, far-too-intimate interchange.
Dana rose then, gesturing as if she’d give Rachel another reassuring touch if she was still in range. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I didn’t mean to get too personal. You don’t have to pretend. You can tell me not to be such a nosy bitch, I can tell you to bite me and we’ll be square again.”
The warmth that welled up in Rachel now was real. She liked this woman and her fiancé, so very much. There were too few people like them. Since she had no trouble being physically demonstrative in such circumstances, she was able to put her arms around the slighter woman and give her a pure warm energy hug, rubbing her back a moment before letting her go. “Okay. Nosy bitch.” She laughed as she stumbled self-consciously over the rough language, but then added, “Remember to keep up with your exercises and I’ll see you next Tuesday. Ice pack and heat when you get home.”
“Bite me. And no problem.” Dana gave her another squeeze. When she reached out, Peter was already there, putting her cane back in her hand and giving her his arm.
“How’d she do?” he asked.
“Exceptionally well,” Rachel said.
She meant it sincerely. However, looking at the two of them, another impulse gripped her. Something needy uncoiled in her belly, a desire to connect on this level, even if it was only in some miniscule way.
Knowing she could be risking a vital faux pas, she added, “Except she was a little tough on herself at the end. Thinking her hard work didn’t deserve praise because it would never restore her to what she was. Just a brief moment, but I thought you should know about it.”
“Really?” Peter arched a brow, holding her gaze an extra minute before glancing down at his fiancée. “Well, I guess we’ll have to go home and deal with that attitude, won’t we?”
He gave Rachel a significant nod then, an expression that made something quiver inside her. Her hands closed at her sides, terror at her own daring. “Most illuminating,” he murmured. “Thank you, Rachel. See you next week.”
She was relieved to see the smile playing on Dana’s lips, and accepted the additional press of the woman’s hand before it slipped away to rest on Peter’s biceps, trusting him to lead her wherever she needed to go.
* * * * *
By the time she finished the week’s appointments and three yoga classes, Rachel decided she needed to start the weekend with a stiff drink and a serious reality check. She’d been oddly euphoric right after that little interchange, but ever since, she’d been unbalanced, raw. She knew better than to go down that road, even with a seemingly innocuous tease. But for one solitary second, she’d put a foot inside a circle in which she’d longed to be all her life. Though it was only as a pathetic side character, a walk-on part where she facilitated something for the main players she couldn’t share with them, it had felt so damn good.
Of course, like most things that felt that way, it came with a crash like a sugar high. Damn it. She’d been vacillating between reliving the moment and being depressed over it for most of the week. It hadn’t helped that Jon hadn’t showed for any of the week’s classes. It just underscored she needed to have herself committed.
As she slid into her car outside the hospital, she saw her cell had a voice mail waiting. When she listened to the recording, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Rachel, this is Jon Forte. I’m sorry I missed class this week, but we had an engineering prototype due and I was burning the midnight oil. Would you be free to do a private for me on Sunday? Give me a call and leave your preferred time on my message service if you miss me. Sorry for going the impersonal tech route, but I’ll look forward to seeing you Sunday if you can do it.”
The impersonal tech route had given her a permanent recording of his voice. She could listen to it whenever she wanted, unless she made herself delete it. Yeah, right. That would happen after she got herself sloppy drunk, which she never did.
She needed to make up a lie, tell him she wasn’t available for a private this weekend. Indulging in a one-on-one class with Jon would be the height of foolishness after the way she’d been raking her emotions over the coals and dredging up dark memories that really needed to stay buried. Next week would have been her twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. The small gumball of nails rolling around her belly grew into something like a spiked mace at the thought.
Knights carried maces, right? Knights of the Board Room. Even her colorful self-deprecations were making her think of him. Great.
When she hit the button to reply to the call, she didn’t know if it was a positive or negative sign she reached his voicemail. Instead of telling him she wasn’t available, she opened her mouth and something else entirely came out. “Jon, thanks for your call. I’ll see you at 10 a.m. Sunday.”
A time most people were in church. Choosing to ignore the significance of that time choice, she snapped the phone closed. Who really cared if she stood on the slippery bank of a lake in which she could drown?
No one. Especially not her.
* * * * *
Despite a glass of wine, maybe two, she rocked herself to sleep Saturday night, her thighs pressed together over that sick, unabated throbbing. Every reformed drug addict knew you couldn’t indulge even a taste without awakening the horrible, must-have-it-or-die craving. But still, she got up the next morning, put on her yoga clothes and went, anticipation making her knees wobble, her stomach flutter. Her hands shook on the steering wheel of her battered old Corolla, fingers cold.
She’d spent a lot of time creating a peaceful environment in her yoga studio, which was an add-on room to the local fitness club. Rice shades, oak wood floors and a high ceiling with a slowly rotating fan. Bamboo plants and bonsai were displayed on a few artfully placed pedestals.
He’d arrived early, of course. With his masculine grace and inexpressible beauty, Jon looked like he belonged here, though the feelings he evoked this morning were anything but peaceful. During those few moments before he noticed her arrival, she hung back in the doorway of her studio, remembering all the guilty scenarios she’d played out in her mind.
At appropriate intervals, she joined other female rehab professionals for lunch. Since they were all of a similar age, occasionally there’d be jokes about “cougars”, women who preferred younger men. Women who fantasized about those strong agile bodies, someone who would make them feel in their twenties again, males who could match their surprisingly expansive forty-something sexual appetites. Though she enjoyed the harmless frivolity of it, that wasn’t what she felt for Jon.
She wasn’t seeing herself as the older, wiser woman, taking him over like some kind of Mata Hari, guiding his steps in her bed. When she looked at him, instead she sensed his ability to take her over, guide her steps. Why couldn’t she say it, even in her mind? She’d already opened that can of worms, hadn’t she?
Jon was a sexual Dominant, the same as Peter was. A Master. Now that she knew it about Peter, she was certain of it for Jon. In between the lines of that gossip column, there’d even been a couple of snarky hints about certain sexual tendencies the Knights shared, but nothing stated overtly enough to invite problems for the paper or confirm Rachel’s suspicions. But now she was sure, and wondered that she’d ever doubted it.
Though being a Dom didn’t make a man more mature, Jon gave her that feeling. She responded to him, far more than she had to any Master close to her age, those few she’d encountered on her Internet forays. It was as if whatever his particular brand of Mastery was, it was calling to her, and her alone.
Foolishness. The K&A men had never lacked for female companionship. They were regularly paired with Louisiana’s most beautiful women for large charity events or other prominent social occasions. But always different women. As if it was more for show than a real relationship, no commitment or meaning.
Oh God. Was she really doing the rock star groupie thing? All those other women mean nothing, because he hasn’t met me yet. The real me. For the millionth time, she reminded herself all he’d ever been toward her was warm, cordial. Anything else was her, reading things into his behavior. The few times he’d tried to draw her out about her life beyond the studio or PT, she’d firmly discouraged that. He’d been enough of a gentleman to take the hint, mostly because she’d seen his eyes fall on the wedding band she wore. She liked that about him, that he respected that, no matter how false a signal it truly was. However, now that she knew what he was, she thought it was even more than a respect for the institution.
In his world, a man did not encroach on what belonged to another man. When she thought of it in such an archaic way, a way that would appall most modern women, it sent that inappropriate thrill through her again. Men with such a code might demand a woman obey their will, but they considered that a gift that should never be abused. Their dominance wasn’t a lack of respect, but rather an acknowledgment of their responsibility to care for that woman.
Yeah, right. Damn it, she never learned, already tripping along in a romantic fantasy land again. People were far too messed up to figure things out like that. Those who understood it, on both sides, were too few. Instead, they usually crossed the lines and abused the boundaries, making it all pointless. She knew, from trying with her husband. She hadn’t known how to articulate what she needed, and Cole…
It didn’t matter anymore. She’d enjoy her avid fantasies from behind the safe gate of her mind. It was a torment she was obviously willing to endure, because she was here, wasn’t she?
He was wearing natural cotton drawstring trousers, soft and worn, like the white tank tee that showed off the well-muscled arms and chest. After class, if it was a weekday, he would shower in the locker rooms and change into his expensive suit. His dark hair would fall in sexy disarray over those thoughtful, incredibly intelligent blue eyes, the cut emphasizing the slope of cheekbones, a firm jaw and mouth that would actually cause her to stammer if she made the mistake of looking at it while she was addressing the class.
He was sliding off the shoes he’d worn from the locker rooms. As he straightened, he saw her. She couldn’t speak, looking at him there. When he walked over to her, he passed through shafts of early morning sunlight, filtering through the rice paper shades. Shadows and light.
“Good morning,” he said, and it echoed through the empty room, a resonance that enchanted the senses. She wondered if it was the same kind of voice the Virgin Mary had heard when an angel appeared and told her about her divine fate.
Okay, just because she was meeting him on Sunday morning didn’t mean she could intertwine sexual yearning with biblical passages. She’d be on a one-way course for hell for sure. She already felt the flames licking over her body, and the fact they felt good wasn’t reassuring.
As he stopped in front of her, she still hadn’t said a word. She couldn’t. Particularly when he slid a knuckle along her cheek, catching a loose curl of her blonde hair and tucking it back into one of her hair clips. They all laughed about her wayward hair that she French-braided along her nape for class. More than one student had done the same thing he’d just done. Only it meant so much more when a male hand did it, a hand attached to a body like that and intense eyes like those.
Snap out of it, Rachel. You’re making a damn fool of yourself.
The words came straight out of her dead marriage, in the same abrupt, impatient tone. They propelled her back a step, the startled jump of her heart making her clear her throat with a rasping cough. “Good morning,” she said, though “Good” broke into two syllables because of the catch in her voice. She shrugged her shoulders, a mental shake that might look odd, but it helped get her mind back in the right place. Or at least turned in that direction. “Do you have anything in particular you want to practice today, or should I follow our usual class format?”
She should have indulged in more inane conversation. How was traffic, how was your week, the weather? Did you have a Danish for breakfast? Because your breath has a sweet iced sugar scent that makes me want to devour your mouth.
However, since the rest of her class wasn’t here, she needed to get this progressing forward, before she really did do something foolish.
“You already know what I want, Rachel.” As her stomach lurched, he gave a half smile. “I prefer the more advanced sessions. Are you up for it today?”
Her advanced class met on Friday mornings. He often couldn’t make that one because of the executive staff meetings he’d told her were held on that day. When he attended her basic and intermediate classes, he chose the more intense modifications of the asanas, but he rarely had the opportunity to do some of the truly advanced positions.
“Yes, that will be fine.” She nodded like her head was jerked by a string. “Let’s get started.”
Since he was studying her curiously as they moved to their mats, she tried to relax her shoulders, loosen up some. Then his next question coiled her up like a spring again.
“What are you doing on the last Saturday of this month?”
She blinked. Was he about to ask her out on a date? The very idea could make her legs buckle beneath her, even as her mind scrambled for a way to deal with it. Saying she was knitting boots for an expected grandchild might be sufficiently off-putting, except of course she didn’t have one of those. And she didn’t know how to knit. “I’m not sure. Why?”
“There’s a Tantric yoga workshop for couples at Independence Park that weekend. If the weather’s nice, they’ll have it in the botanical gardens. It’s going to be taught by a visiting guru from Bangkok.” At her nonplused look, he lifted a shoulder. “You mentioned that some of your married students have been asking you to teach that form, but you needed to brush up on it. The setting is beautiful, of course, and we could go have a coffee at a café afterward, maybe somewhere on the riverfront.”
She didn’t know what to say to that, but Jon shrugged casually at her silence, offered her that sleepy smile again. “Just give it some thought. You can tell me your answer at the end of class. Though I’m not taking no for an answer, so you might as well say yes now.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that either. However, his easy manner about it helped make her noncommittal nod feel not so awkward. Still, to discourage further conversation, she folded herself into a sitting position on her mat and initiated pranayama, the breath control exercises.
In through the nose, pulling energy up, then out through the mouth, trying to release tension in her shoulders. Though yoga required focus and concentration for maximum benefit, within three breath cycles she knew that was a lost cause for her today. But an intensely physical workout would be good. She’d work both their asses off, and then she’d be too exhausted to think. Saying no to that Tantric class would be automatic, no more than a reflex she’d conditioned and used countless times to maintain her privacy and solitude. That was best.
They went from breathing to standing and stretching asanas as warm-up, and then from there she worked them into the more difficult poses. Unfortunately, it was hard to let exertion numb her when Jon gave her a yoga experience like she’d never had before.
Even in advanced classes, she couldn’t move at this pace, not at this level of difficulty, because the class couldn’t read her mind. But he seemed to anticipate her every choice and moved easily with her, so it was almost as if they were bridging the gap between a hatha approach and ashtanga, which used flowing, dance-like movements to transition between postures. It was exhilarating.
And no level of exhaustion could help her overlook how well those poses displayed the male body. It made one that was already beautiful even more so. When they transitioned into Sleeping Thunderbolt, she found herself studying him in the corner of her eye. As he folded himself to the floor on his knees, he aligned his feet on the outside of his hips, planting that fine ass on the floor between his calves. His torso elongated in mouthwatering display as he arched back, his knees remaining on the floor as his upper body became a crescent and the back of his head touched the floor, his hands settling into a prayer pose on his open chest.
She’d put herself at a diagonal position to him so that she could watch his posture as his teacher, but that was an unnecessary adjustment, because his form was flawless. Watching those taut buttocks resting on the floor, she wished she could see the strain of his thigh muscles beneath the loose pants. She was all too aware of the camber of cock and testicles emphasized by the upwardly canted position of his hips. She wanted to crawl over there, slide her hands under the baby soft cotton of the tank, caress his abdomen, follow it with mouth and fingers…
Sleeping Thunderbolt was a misnomer, because it awakened a storm inside her. Giving herself a fierce internal shake, she brought them out of that for the next phase, the inverted asanas, head and handstands. When she used the wall for hers, he waited until she pushed up and balanced. It was the only time during the class he hadn’t been in sync with her, and she realized he was spotting her, ready to catch her if needed. It wasn’t one of her personally easier moves. Though most of her students wouldn’t have noted that, he obviously had. While she was qualified to teach yoga, yogis could spend decades perfecting the moves, and she’d only been doing this for a few years.
She’d turned up the room temperature to maximize the benefit of body heat for their practice. It had put a loving sheen of perspiration on his muscles, which became more pronounced as he stripped off the shirt, put it aside and then pushed up into a full handstand. He had no need of the wall, those gorgeous shoulder muscles creating a work of art as he held his weight and balance on his mat.
The ache in her limbs after that sequence and a glance at the clock, showing they’d been going at it for ninety minutes, told her it was time to take it down. She moved them back into a few sun salutation repetitions, then down for some floor stretches, easing into the closing nidra. Her limbs had turned to spaghetti, such that she wobbled when she went from a standing pose into a half-lotus.
“All right?” He was watching her so closely. That, plus the gentleness of his tone in the quiet room, made her feel like his question was directed to something far beyond her mere physical state. She had to swallow before she answered.
“Yes. Just overdid a bit. Joints aren’t as resilient as they once were.”
“You look superbly flexible to me. But sometimes we push ourselves too hard when we’re trying to outrun things.”
He had a way of saying things like that, with such unruffled calm, as if it was completely normal to venture past the intimate edges of a person’s psyche.
“Like time?” The halfhearted joke, the attempt to turn him away from the sharp boundaries, didn’t do the trick. His attention didn’t waver.
“Things you’re afraid to want.”
Candlelight, heated room, heart rates slowly evening out. At his words, hers stepped up a pace, making her feel a little lightheaded, though she was already sitting down. She made what she hoped was a noncommittal noise, gave him her practiced distant smile that warned he was stepping over a line. As she put her hands on her knees, she adjusted the fake wedding band with one finger, knowing the sparkle would catch the candlelight. When his attention went to it, she shut him out further by closing her eyes, starting their breathing sequence again.
She kept her ears attuned to it, knew when he was matching his breath to hers, following her deep inhale, the slow exhale. She focused on her posture, on grounding and centering herself. Supposedly yoga practice helped a person connect to divine energies. Today her focus cavorted outside her grasp like a not-so-playful poltergeist. The demons she’d hoped to leave behind had only swelled in size, such that instead of peace and calm, her stomach had been invaded by flesh-eating beetles from The Mummy movies.
All because of one simple, utterly truthful statement. Things you’re afraid to want. Damn him. Didn’t he understand she couldn’t afford these types of games? She’d long ago lost her ability to risk the playful nature of romance. Like a child who pretended to play dead during heroic games, but then saw actual death, she knew what such games meant now. The reality of love was dark and damaging, a morass she couldn’t face again.
When she lay down on her back, straightening out her arms and legs for the savasana, the Corpse pose, the sad irony wasn’t lost on her. She refused to let herself look toward him, until she heard the shifting of his mat. She cracked open an eyelid to see that he’d aligned his mat next to hers and was now lying down, emulating the stretch. His spread fingers were within an inch of hers.
She wasn’t sure how to react, what to do. He was doing nothing at all wrong. Maybe he was inside the personal space margin, considering there was the whole classroom floor to use, but he wasn’t touching her. Not technically. In the space between their parallel bodies, she felt the compressed heat of two auras, and was hyper aware of every long, lean portion of the body next to her.
“Having trouble hearing?” Another weak joke, delivered with a touch of desperate acid. She wished she could take it back, because she didn’t want to be mean to him. She just needed him to leave her alone. But she also needed him to never stop coming to her class, so she could still have the guilty pleasure of dreaming impossible dreams.
“I wanted to be closer to you.”
She turned her head then, but he had his eyes closed. “Walk us through it like you normally do,” he said. “I want to hear your voice.”
Rachel resolutely closed her eyes. She took them through the steps of putting the body in a neutral position, pushing out the legs, lifting and flattening out the pelvis, softening the groin area. Lifting the skull to push the neck toward the tailbone, then bringing the head back to the floor, in all ways easing the body. Then she enhanced the effect by mixing it with a relaxation exercise. “Starting at your feet, relax your toes, one by one. The arches of your feet, your ankles…”
She progressed up the body, one muscle group at a time, and for each he relaxed, she was sure hers tensed and quivered further, because her mind was following that progression up every inch of his body. Things were throbbing between her thighs that never throbbed. Or hadn’t in recent memory. She wasn’t going to survive this. She became vicious with herself, imagined the humiliation of jumping him like some sex-starved spinster… She wasn’t able to be anything like what he would want. She wasn’t young, beautiful. Her breasts weren’t bad, but they certainly didn’t sit up high and firm as they once had. She had stretch marks, as well as the soft pouch at her stomach many mothers and post-forty women had, only she didn’t have the child to show for it.
Most importantly, she wasn’t able to have an orgasm. That cinched it, right? Faking one for her fantasy would shatter her soul.
Thank God, the five minutes were up. Rolling away from him, she went into the fetal position. It was supposed to comfort, a symbolic return to the womb, a lovely way to finish a practice and come out of it energized, as if newly born. Instead, it reminded her of the many days she’d spent in that position beneath her covers after Kyle was killed, after Cole had left her for good. She hadn’t bathed, hadn’t brushed her teeth. She’d embraced her malodorous self. A shower was an offensive mockery, a dead heart pretending to be alive.
A few more minutes and it would be over. She’d thank him for coming, offer the namaste, say she had an appointment of some vague origin and make her escape. She’d go home to her sanctuary and pull it back together again.
Then he shifted on his mat. He was right behind her, his arm sliding around her waist, his body curving in behind hers, that incredibly emotional spooning position, her bottom cradled in his lap as he brought his knees up behind hers. His chest was against her shoulder blades, his breath on the back of her neck. He was so close to her, he had to have his other arm crooked beneath his head.
“What are you doing?” She didn’t pull away, despite the alarm her tone revealed. He was firm in all the right places, strong and male. Rather than a frontal attack, a kiss or a pass she could rebuff, he’d chosen this, something warmly intimate. What she’d assumed were fanciful imaginings might be frightful truth—that he could read her needs so easily it was like breathing.
“What I want. Sssh. Be still. And I mean that at all levels. Still your mind, Rachel, the same way you just stilled your body, one tense bundle of thoughts at a time, and give yourself to me. You don’t need to think.”
In truth, all she could think about was that arm around her waist, his hand against her abdomen, the fingers spread so his forefinger rested right below her breast, his smallest finger on her lower abdomen, near the crease of hip and thigh that made a lap. With her backside nestled into his lap, she felt the shape of him, the way his cock stirred against her. It made her worry, her hand closing over his anxiously.
“Sssh. Obey me, Rachel. We’re going to lie here. That’s all I’m going to allow to happen.”
Not, “I’m not going to ask or demand anything of you”. This was all he required and would permit. It amazed, aroused and soothed her at once, a peculiar triad that made her hand tighten over his further until he loosened her grip, reversed it so he had her wrist manacled, their two hands tangled beneath her breasts. Then he touched the wedding band. When he pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, taking hold of it, her hand curled into a defensive ball. He stilled.
“Open your hand, Rachel, and stretch out your fingers.”
A simple command. No coaxing, no reasoning. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t get lost in this. She couldn’t. But her fingers were listening, straightening, no matter the rapid-fire protestations from her brain. Whoever said the body couldn’t function separately from the mind was full of crap.
When he slid the band off, she looked down at it. A fifty-dollar wedding band from a jewelry store. Cheap, yes, but she’d still felt like a liar when she’d bought it, knowing it mocked something supposed to be sacred. It was why she’d put her own wedding set away and then ultimately pawned it, though it had torn something loose in her soul when she did it, all that symbolism now up for sale.
He set the fake ring on its side on the wood floor in front of her. With a deft flick, he sent it rolling. She watched the candlelight flash off it as it traveled a few feet away and then toppled on its side, rocking back and forth, devolving into that tinny vibration as it settled.
“What do you want, Rachel?” His voice was a breath in her ear. “Tell me.”
Had he known this was the best time to ask a person for a truthful, painful answer? There were no lies during yoga nidra, because there was no room for artifice. Of course, what she wanted was a tangled mess. “I don’t know,” was a pitifully inadequate answer, but what she wanted had been buried under others’ expectations and her own disappointments. Nearly twenty years of them.
Yet she knew something was still buried alive under all that. There’d been a time when she’d woken from nightmares, imagining it screaming with terror and need, afraid that it wasn’t being heard or—even worse—heard and ignored. But she’d learned her needs weren’t relevant, and never had been. There was nothing so pathetic as a false sense of importance in the universe.
Rolling away from him, she got to her feet. As she did, she stepped on the wedding band, which made a harsh squeak against the wood floor. Bending, she picked up the ring. As her fists clenched, it cut a circle into her palm. It was a pose more suited to a self-defense class than yoga, but the body adapted to what was needed, a preservation instinct.
“I can’t do this, Jon. I appreciate it, but…” She shook her head, started over. “I’ve learned not to want things, at least not so fiercely. I don’t have that kind of energy anymore.” That kind of strength.
Settled wasn’t as horrible as it sounded. Like sediment at the bottom of the lake, she could look up and appreciate the sparkles of sunlight on the water, the change in seasons. The things that flitted by so fast, so vibrantly, leaving her behind, she’d accepted. There was no getting it all. She’d traded everything for peace, because her life had literally depended on it. She refused to regret it. Couldn’t afford to regret it.
He was still lying on his side, his head propped on his hand, and it flustered her, that he could lay there, looking up at her, and still seem so in control. That steady gaze was taking in every detail of her flustered condition, lingering over her breasts, their rise and fall betraying the shortness of her breath. Then he rose, one graceful flow of motion that nevertheless had her skittering back two steps as if he’d leapt toward her like a wild animal. He cocked his head.
“Do you want to know what I want?”
She couldn’t answer, but it didn’t matter. He took silence as assent.
“I’d like to do that routine we just did, but I’d like to see you do it naked. I’d like to see you in that Sleeping Thunderbolt pose, make you hold it while I stroked your thighs, and let my fingers stray up your body, from your clit to the base of your throat. I want to feel you quiver under my touch.”
Her mouth opened, soundless. But he was continuing. “I’d do that for as long as I liked, then I’d take you into the shower. I’d blindfold you, make you kneel in the corner where the steam would keep you warm. I’d enjoy looking at you while I washed myself. You’d sit up straight, your hands clasped at your lower back, your breasts thrust out for me. Your knees would be spread, steam teasing your cunt lips, making you even wetter. You’d stay in that position, knowing nothing was required but to sit like that while I took my fill of viewing what was mine. And it would drive you as crazy as it would drive me, until I’d be so hard I’d have to fuck you against the shower wall.”
As he’d spoken, he’d started moving toward her. Slow, deliberate steps, and it wasn’t until her back hit two walls she realized she’d matched his pace, letting him back her into a corner. He laid a palm against one wall, then the other, so she’d have to duck under those long arms to get past him. Nothing was touching her, but she could feel every plane and curve of him, wanted all of it.
When she moistened her lips, she could tell his eyes registered not only the motion but the thoughts behind it. It wouldn’t surprise her if his mind could follow hers like a hound tracking a scent, see what she was imagining in such detail.
I want to be on my knees in that shower. If I stayed very still and on display for him, he might give me permission to taste his cock, make him even harder. And when he came, I’d take every drop down my throat. Then he’d lift me up on the wall and pin me there, take me hard as he said, until I screamed out with every raw, painful need bottled inside for way too long. I would die that way, and that would be okay.
He leaned up close, breath a heated touch on her face like the imagined shower steam. “Your eyes are so hungry, Rachel. You hear what I want and you tremble, your skin flushing and nipples hardening.” His body was against hers, a brush of contact against the tight points, and she bit down on a moan. “You say you’ve learned not to want things so fiercely. Next time I see you, I dare you to say that to me again.”
She closed her eyes. His mouth touched hers, another featherlight contact. Then coolness enveloped her, a draft of air. When she opened her eyes, the heavy sense of loss warning her, she was alone. Her body was doing everything he’d said it was, but it was her heart that reacted the most strongly.
It ached, as if engulfed in an oil fire that would never stop burning.