The studio had been my mother’s idea. A converted sunroom off the kitchen, bamboo floors, white walls, plants that I watered when I remembered and killed when I didn’t. It was supposed to be my space. My sanctuary. The place where I stretched away the stress of being twenty-four and unemployed and completely dependent on my father’s new wife.
Instead, it became Sloane’s hunting ground.
She was my stepsister. Twenty-eight. A yoga instructor who taught at a studio downtown but had offered to give me “private sessions” at home. “Save money,” she’d said at breakfast, her eyes meeting mine over her coffee. “And I can focus on your form.”
I’d agreed because I was stupid. Because I’d seen her in her yoga pants and knew that her “form” was something I wanted to study up close.
The first session was professional. She adjusted my downward dog, corrected my warrior pose, told me to breathe into my hips. I breathed. I stretched. I pretended I didn’t notice when her hand lingered on my lower back.
The second session was less professional.
Today was the fifth session. She’d asked me to work on spinal twists—”good for digestion,” she’d said, though we both knew digestion wasn’t the goal. I was on the mat, legs crossed, torso twisted, looking back over my shoulder at her.
“That’s not where you adjust the twist,” I whispered, feeling her hands on my waist, then sliding higher to my ribs. “Your hands are too high.”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just pressed her cheek against my shoulder, her mouth finding the place where my white sports bra strap met my skin, her lips warm and wet against the tension there. Her hands slid higher, under the elastic of my top, finding my ribs, my breast, my nipple that was already hard and aching.
“Your stepmother just knocked,” I breathed, my body arching into her touch, my twist deepening involuntarily as her fingers found me. “She wants to know about lunch. I heard her. She said ‘Girls, lunch in ten?’ and if she walks in, she’ll see your hands on my—”
Sloane reached up. Touched my chin. Turned my face toward hers until our noses touched, until her breath was my breath, until the yoga studio—the sanctuary, the safe space—became something else entirely.
The door handle turned.
“Lunch is ready!” My stepmother’s voice, accompanied by the sound of the door opening. “I made—”
She stopped. I couldn’t see her—I was twisted away, my back to the door, Sloane’s body blocking the view. But I could feel the shift in the air, the hesitation, the moment when a mother sees something she can’t quite name.
“Everything okay?” she asked, her voice uncertain.
“Perfect,” Sloane said, her voice steady, completely calm, completely at odds with the fingers that were currently inside my yoga pants, pressing against my clit, moving in a rhythm that was slow and devastating. “Just working on a deep adjustment. She’ll need about five more minutes.”
“Okay! Don’t let her skip lunch!”
The door closed. Sloane didn’t remove her hand. She just pressed deeper, her thumb circling, her fingers curling, her mouth on my shoulder blade, biting hard enough to leave a mark that my sports bra would hide but I would feel for days.
“Five minutes,” she whispered against my skin. “I can make you come in three.”
She did. She made me come on the yoga mat, my face pressed into the bamboo, my hands gripping the edge of the mat, my body shaking with the force of an orgasm that was completely silent and completely consuming. She held me through it, her fingers still moving, drawing out every wave until I was limp and gasping and completely ruined.
After, she helped me up. Adjusted my top. Smoothed my hair.
“Same time tomorrow?” she asked, her voice casual, as if she hadn’t just destroyed me on my own mat.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
She left first. I stayed on the mat for ten minutes, trying to remember how to breathe. When I finally went downstairs for lunch, my stepmother smiled and said, “You look relaxed. Yoga is doing wonders for you.”
It was. Sloane was. And every afternoon at 2 PM, I was on that mat, twisted and turned and completely at her mercy.
The studio is still my sanctuary. But now, the plants aren’t the only things growing there. And Sloane doesn’t just adjust my posture. She adjusts my sanity, one session at a time.
