Afterlife (5 page)

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’l 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

casual y at her silence, offered her

that sleepy smile again.

“Just give it some thought. You can

tel me your answer at

the end of class. Though I’m not

taking no for an answer, so

you might as wel 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. Stil , 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, pul ing 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

wel 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 al

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, fol ow 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 wal 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 personal y 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 ful handstand.

He had no need of the

wal , 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.

“Al 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 swal

ow 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, fol owing

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 swel ed

in size, such that instead of peace and

calm, her stomach

had been invaded by flesh-eating

beetles from
The

Mummy
movies.

Al 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 al 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 technical y. In

the space between their paral el

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 stil

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 normal y

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

skul to push the neck

toward the tailbone, then bringing the

head back to the

floor, in al 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 fol owing 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 wel 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.

Rol ing 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 kil ed,

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