The studio was called Prana, a converted loft downtown with bamboo floors and mirrors that made the room look infinite. I’d been coming for six months — vinyasa on Mondays, restorative on Wednesdays, and the private sessions that Sloane offered on Fridays to “advanced students only.”
Sloane was the owner. Thirty. She had a body that looked like it had been designed by someone who understood leverage, and a voice that could make you hold a pose until you forgot your own name. She wore white tank tops that showed her collarbones and black leggings that showed everything else.
Tonight was the private. A hip-opening sequence, she’d said. “You carry tension in your pelvis,” she’d told me at the front desk. “We need to release it.”
The studio was empty except for us. The sunset was bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the bamboo gold and the mirrors into portals. I was on my back in reclined butterfly — soles of my feet together, knees open, completely exposed. Sloane was kneeling beside me, her hand on my inner thigh, her thumb pressing into muscle that was definitely tense.
“Class ended at seven,” I whispered, looking up at her. My heart was already hammering, and we hadn’t even started the sequence. “It’s 7:20. And you’re adjusting a hip opener that I never signed up for. Your hand is on my thigh. Your face is inches from my stomach. And the lights are still on. Anyone can see us through these windows. Anyone walking past will see—”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just leaned down, her cheek brushing my inner thigh, her breath warm against my skin through the fabric of my shorts. Her hand slid from my hip to the waistband, her fingers dipping below the elastic with a gentleness that was completely at odds with the violence of what she was doing to my sanity.
“If someone looks through the studio window,” I breathed, my back arching off the mat as her fingers slid lower, finding me wet and ready and completely misaligned, “they’ll see the instructor’s hands inside my yoga shorts. They’ll see your mouth on my hip and your fingers pressing into places that have nothing to do with chakras or alignment or the eight limbs of—”
She turned my face toward her with a hand on my jaw. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like sandalwood and surrender and the exact moment when a stretch becomes something that can’t be taught in any certification course. Her tongue slid against mine, her hand sliding deeper inside my shorts, her thumb finding my clit with a pressure that made me gasp into her mouth.
The studio door chimed.
“Hello?” The owner’s voice — not Sloane, but the co-owner, Maya, who taught the morning classes. “Forgot my keys! Anyone here?”
Sloane didn’t pull away. She just pressed her other hand over my mouth, her fingers still moving inside me with a precision that spoke of every adjustment she’d ever given, every body she’d ever read, every tension she knew exactly how to release.
“Just finishing a session, Maya!” Sloane called out, her voice perfectly steady, completely serene. “We’re in savasana!”
“Okay! Don’t forget to lock up!”
Her footsteps retreated. Sloane looked at me, her eyes dark in the sunset light.
“Your root chakra is blocked,” she whispered against my mouth, her fingers curling inside me, her palm grinding against me with a rhythm that matched my breathing. “And I know exactly how to open it.”
She made me come on the yoga mat. My legs still open in butterfly pose, her mouth on my breast, her fingers inside me, the sunset turning everything gold and holy and completely profane. I came with her hand over my mouth, my cry swallowed by her palm, my body shaking so hard the bamboo floor creaked.
After, she rolled up the mat. Helped me stand. Pressed her lips to my forehead.
“Same time Friday?” she asked.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
I still go to Prana. I still take Sloane’s private sessions. And every Friday at 7 PM, she finds a new way to adjust me — new poses, new releases, new ways of making me forget that there’s a world outside the studio windows. She says my flexibility has improved dramatically. She says I can now do full splits.
She’s right. I can. And the only thing more flexible than my body is my schedule, which I have cleared permanently for Friday nights.
