I’d stayed after class to stretch, my body still warm from the vinyasa flow, my yoga mat the only island in the sea of polished wooden floor. Jules had stayed too. She always stayed. She’d been “adjusting” my poses for weeks, her hands lingering on my hips, my shoulders, my lower back in ways that felt less like instruction and more like exploration.
Tonight, she stood over me while I was in a seated forward fold, my legs spread, my chest pressed toward the mat.
“Let me help,” she said, kneeling behind me.
She placed her hands on my waist, her thumbs pressing into the muscle above my hip bones. I felt her shift, felt the fabric of her loose sweatpants slide against my shoulder as she leaned over me. And then I noticed—her pants had slipped. Down on one hip, revealing the sharp curve of her pelvis, the bare skin where her underwear should have been.
“Your pants are slipping,” I managed, my voice muffled by the stretch.
“So are your limits,” she whispered.
She didn’t pull them up. She just leaned down, her hands sliding from my waist to my shoulders, and she kissed me. Deep and slow, her tongue tracing my lower lip, her bare hip pressing against my arm. I reached up, my hand finding her skin, sliding up the bare curve of her waist, pulling her closer.
The sweatpants came off on the yoga mat. She stepped out of them, kicked them aside, and climbed over me, straddling my hips, her hands pressing my shoulders back onto the mat.
“Stretch,” she commanded, her voice low.
I stretched. But not in the way she’d taught in class. She stretched me in ways that had nothing to do with flexibility, her mouth on my throat, her hands on my waistband, her body moving against mine with a rhythm that was ancient and devastating.
When she finally pulled my yoga pants down, the mirrors showed us everything. Every angle. Every touch. Every moment I stopped pretending I wasn’t hers.
