Breathless (Yoga in the City Book 1)

by Leigh LaValle

  “Let me mark this corner here.” I leaned forward to mark the wall and pressed even closer. Her shampoo smelled clean and sweet. Her breath quickened. The air between us sizzled, and I loved it. I was fucking alive. Finally fucking alive.

  It was dark here in this back hallway. Dark and private.

  She took another ragged breath, and I marked out the right corner, mindful not to press my hard cock against her ass, even though I wanted to.

  “Can I put it down now?” Her voice was more breath than sound.

  I dipped my head. My lips grazed her ear, and she jumped.

  Electricity shot up my spine. Hannah was better than free climbing a two-hundred-foot cliff.

  Then I stepped back, and she lowered the painting to the ground. Slowly, she turned to face me. Only heat separated us. My hair stood on end. My heart hammered.

  She raised her face to mine. Her chest rose and fell sharply with her breath.

  “Hello?” a woman called from the front of the studio. “Anyone here?”

  Hannah’s eyes widened and she scurried away to the front of the studio calling, “I’m here. One moment.”

  I was left alone in the dark with my hard-on and ragged breath.

  I quickly hung the painting while Hannah chatted with the woman at the front. I checked my work twice to be sure my cock hadn’t stolen all the blood from my brain. Then I came back to the front.

  Hannah smiled at me, standing alone by the door. “Thanks for doing that. Like I said, I could do it but, you know, I don’t walk around with a tool belt and you were here so it’s done. And, wow, they are putting in the new window. That’s exciting.”

  She swallowed and looked away.

  Whatever it was between us—attraction, chemistry, heat—she was fighting it. I needed to coax her into enjoying it instead.

  I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms. If I came on too strong, I’d scare her away. If I gave her space, she’d run away.

  I needed to just be honest. “You’re cute when you get flustered.”

  Her eyes went round, and her hand did a funny butterfly dance before it dropped back to her side.

  “I’m still interested in getting to know you better,” I said. “In a personal way.”

  “I see.” Her voice was high-pitched.

  “I’m not looking for anything serious. Just a few dates. See what happens.” I tilted my head to the side and gave her a slow smile, just for her. “What do you think?”

  Say yes.

  She blinked rapidly, like there was something in her eye. “Um, what do I think?”

  “Go out with me.”

  Her gaze flew around the room, looking anywhere but at me. “I don’t date guys I work with.”

  “You don’t work with me.”

  Her gaze snapped back to mine. “Well, we have a professional relationship.”

  I sighed. “So, you’re worried we’ll break up and I’ll get revenge on you through the building?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? Like raising our rent. Or refusing to fix things.”

  “That would be a shitty thing to do.”

  She opened her mouth, and I could hear the words she was about the say. I held up my hand. “Men can be pretty shitty, right?”

  She closed her mouth, and I frowned. “Some guy… Did this happen to you before?”

  She shrugged.

  Shit.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Nope.”

  Thank God. I didn’t want to talk about it either. I cupped her cheek, and a zing shot through me—everything was just better with her. “Go out with me. One date. We’ll get dressed up like adults and drink fancy wine.”

  She bit her lip and didn’t say anything. The air between us crackled, and I knew, if I kissed her again, she would kiss me back. Something else was going on inside her head. “If you won’t date me, how about you just come over to my place? We don’t even have to talk.”

  Her lips tilted up. “Nice try.”

  “I can be persuasive.” My hand on her cheek, I stepped even closer.

  Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her face flushed, and she didn’t look like she needed much persuading.

  “I have to keep this clean.”

  “But dirty is so much more fun.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Okay. I tried.” I winked and dropped my hand.

  She glanced down at my lips, then back up.

  She bit her lip.

  “So, what time works for a private lesson?” I asked.

  “Oh, you still want to do that?”

  “Nice try, Hannah. I’ll be here tomorrow at six a.m.”

  Chapter 11

  Hannah

  I had eleven hours until my private lesson with Jake. Eleven hours to plan, stress, and dream.

  Distraction seemed like the best course of action, so I brought my laptop and a glass of wine out to my garden. Well, concrete jungle, really. But I was determined to make it a garden. I would do some brainstorming for Yoga Week. Then, I would reward myself with planning my new green retreat in my backyard.

  I would not think about Jake. About kissing Jake. About tearing Jake’s clothes off.

  I opened Google to look up Yoga Week and typed Jake Marshall instead.

  No self-control at all.

  I checked out his LinkedIn and his Facebook profile. I read more about the architectural awards he’d won and the cool environmental projects he’d been involved in. I zoomed in on the daring shots of him out in the big mountains.

  I was crushing so hard on this guy.

  I clicked on Google again and forced myself to research things like “dangers of dating your landlord” and “girls who make the same mistake twice.”

  A new email chimed in. My credit card was due in ten days. I clicked over to my bank account, and my heartbeat thudded hard.

  I didn’t have enough money to cover my bills this month.

  And I didn’t have any savings left because I’d sunk all my cash into Bloom Yoga Studio. The same studio that was losing money by the day.

  I gulped down the rest of my wine.

  Little bugs flung themselves at my laptop screen. Bewildered. Relentless. Foolish.

  My fear for my future was this living thing, like a breathing, lumbering creature out in the night. I tried to contain it like a rational person would. I made a list. I thought of all the things I was afraid of. I thought about how likely it was that they would come true.

  Top Ten Things I Am Afraid Of:

  I lose all my money.

  I end up hungry and homeless again.

  Construction noise drives all the students away.

  Building catches on fire.

  Someone embezzles all the money from the studio.

  Girls cheat me out.

  Suddenly yoga becomes totally unpopular and no one comes.

  Yoga Week is a flop.

  Everyone realizes I’m a fake.

  Global warming.

  Cancer.

  Jake.

  I poured myself another glass of wine.

  The list was not helping.

  I needed to think about something else. Something solution based. I picked up the handful of Yoga Week flyers on the patio table beside me. I’d been collecting them around town for days, trying to get an idea of what other teachers were offering. I just wanted to copy what they were doing. Use their ideas, change their words enough that they sounded fresh, and throw my picture on it.

  I was far from the yoga teacher one would expect. I wasn’t twig-like, wasn’t Hindu or Indian, nor was I a serene fashionista-new-age hottie with an Instagram account. I was just a girl who loved doing yoga. One might even say it saved my life. I’d practiced and studied for years, I’d completed multiple teacher trainings, I’d apprenticed with a master teacher…but what the heck did I know about anything? Yoga was the Great Mystery wrapped up with biology and science. My understanding was infinitesimal.

  Come on Hannah, you can do this. You
can win Yoga Week. Think!

  I tapped out a few words on the blank screen.

  Top Ten Ideas for Yoga Week:

  Yoga for Girls with Boobs–How to do a shoulder stand without suffocating

  Yoga for Boring Regular People

  Yoga for People Who Wear Yoga Pants to Watch TV and Eat Junk Food

  The Yoga of Oreos

  Yoga for People Who Don’t Really Want to Do Yoga but Think They Should

  um…

  so…

  maybe…

  well…

  shit…

  I slammed my computer closed.

  Why was this so hard for me? Usually, when I put my mind to a task, I solved it. But this…I was freezing up. The clock was ticking down, and there was no running away this time. I had to figure something out.

  I scrubbed my hands over my face. I wasn’t going to figure it out tonight, apparently. Yoga Week kryptonite had struck once again.

  Speaking of kryptonite, I had nine hours to go until my private lesson with Jake.

  I cleaned up outside and crawled into bed with my anatomy books. I had a good idea of what I could do to help his knee, but I needed to be 100% positive. The man used his body like a yogi, with power, focus, and intention to reach great heights. The last thing I wanted was to exacerbate his injury.

  I’d go with Iyengar’s standing yoga series to begin, highlighted in the appendix of Light on Yoga. It’s a simple series, great for the joints in the legs, and would give me a good idea of Jake’s general range of motion.

  I turned out the light, determined to rest. But when I closed my eyes, I saw Jake’s crooked smile. His thick chest. His tight ass.

  Despite my insistence to keep things professional and distant, there was a slow smolder going on under my skin.

  I’d watched a documentary once about wildfires in the Rockies. Fire can hide out underground, eating through the roots of trees, spreading unseen. Smokeless. Odorless. Dangerous. Unsuspected, it flares up out of the earth at its own time, licking up the sides of the trees. Rootless, the trees fall over. The forest burns.

  With a muttered curse, I turned on the light and grabbed my computer. I opened Google and typed in Jake Marshall again. I drooled over his pictures, scrolled through a few pages, then something stopped me. A picture of someone in a wheelchair with “Welcome Home” signs around him. I clicked on the photo, and my heart froze. It was Jake, wearing an army uniform, his face a hardened mask of…nothingness. I couldn’t find the article associated with the photo, only a caption. It was dated from 2012. I enlarged it, my eyes scanning the words, a lump in my throat.

  Today, Boulder welcomes home football star Jake Marshall from Afghanistan. Jake joined the Colorado National Guard in 2007 along with his childhood friend, Cody O’Donnell. They were called to Afghanistan in 2010. Tragedy struck six months ago, and Cody was killed. Jake was badly wounded and may never walk again. Town mourns the loss of Cody O’Donnell, and rejoices in the return of Jake Marshall.

  My God. I closed my computer and lay back on my bed.

  Jake.

  I rubbed my chest. My heart was a heavy weight of pain.

  What had happened to him? Was he okay? What about Cody?

  Jake. I wanted to squeeze him, hold him.

  I took a deep breath. He wouldn’t want my sympathy. He wanted my help. To get better. To heal.

  And I would give that to him.

  I woke up twisted in my sheets, a fire smoldering down deep, uprooting me.

  I flung myself out of bed like I’d been shot, right into the bathroom, where I took an extremely cold shower, pulled my hair back into a high ponytail, and put on a little makeup. I tried the new green smoothie recipe Crystal gave me—mango, pineapple, kale, and coconut milk—and I was surprised that it tasted good-ish. Not good good, but good enough.

  Jake was already at the studio when I got there. And, no joke, he was doing pull-ups on the scaffolding. He was a machine. He let go with his right hand and only used his left to do ten pull-ups, then ten on the other side.

  Wow. Just wow.

  How could the guy get any hotter?

  I’d never seen a man like him. I knew lots of guys who worked out, who pushed their bodies, who were in great shape as yogis or runners or bikers. But I’d never seen the strength and grace that Jake had.

  He operated on a whole different level of physical fitness. The man climbed the biggest mountains in the world. For fun.

  He’d been hurt in the war. Told he’d never walk again. And overcome it all.

  “You make that look easy,” I said.

  He dropped down at once, a sheepish smile on his lips. His arm muscles were pumped up. Not crazy like a body builder, but enough that I noticed. Oh boy, did I notice.

  The fire licked at my roots.

  “I’m behind in my training.” He raked his gaze over me. “I need to get in what I can, when I can.”

  “Well, hopefully today will be helpful.” I unlocked the door, but I didn’t flip on the lights. I preferred to work in the natural light, even if it was dim. Jake didn’t have a yoga mat with him, so I pulled out one of the studio’s black mats and unrolled it next to mine. I put my iPhone in the dock and turned on my Mellow Mood Pandora station. Iron and Wine filled the studio, and I rubbed my hands together and turned to face Jake. I wanted to hug him. To tell him I was sorry he’d lost his friend in the war.

  “Any questions?” I said instead.

  He shook his head, his shaggy hair in his face. “Will this hurt?”

  “No.” I huffed a laugh. “It definitely should not hurt. Let’s start sitting down.”

  We both sat down in the middle of our mats, cross-legged, facing each other. I led him through Dirga Pranayama, the three-part breath. We breathed deep into our bellies. My diaphragm warbled with nerves. Next, we breathed into our bellies and up into our rib cages. His torso filled and emptied with breath. Itching to touch him, I placed my hands just below his pecs, on his lower ribs.

  “It’s important to exhale from your ribs first and your belly last.”

  “I do this when I’m climbing at high altitude,” he said, surprised.

  “That would make sense. This breath uses the whole surface area of the lungs. It brings more oxygen to the blood so the heart and central nervous system can relax.”

  He took another breath. He was doing great. I had no reason to keep touching him, unfortunately. I pulled my hands away.

  “Now, for the full three-part breath, draw your breath deep into your belly, up into your ribs, and up into your heart. Let your collar bones float up and open. Then, as you exhale, release heart first, then ribs, belly last.”

  I was trying to do the breath as I talked, and I got a little light-headed. Or maybe that was from watching him, his focus and control.

  I closed my eyes and brought my attention to my own breath. There were little ripples on the exhale, a product of my nerves. I listened to him breathe, and I could feel the air going in and out of his broad chest.

  Years ago, I’d walked out of a ridiculous yoga workshop that had taught this very thing, though not so well. The instructor had paired up the men and the women. The idea was to do some breathing exercises and combine energies. The woman exhaled when the man inhaled, then inhaled when the man exhaled. So that the partners were sharing one breath. The workshop had been skeevy and unprofessional. I’d been nothing but irritated at the time.

  Now, sitting across from Jake, the front surface of my body lit up. And I understood the purpose of the breath work. I inhaled as he exhaled and drew him into me. Then I exhaled and imagined I could slide inside his warm skin.

  Heat pulsed, heavy and thick, in my core. My muscles quivered, wanting him.

  I took a deep breath out of sync with his. It was shaky and brought his scent into me and it did not help. Nope, did not help at all.

  The fire was leaping now.

  Jake. Strong, sexy, scarred Jake.

  I wanted nothing more than to help rel
ieve some of his pain.

  I swallowed. “Let’s start in standing,” I said softly. “Do you remember the sun salutations from class?”

  His eyes snapped open. “Uh, maybe.”

  We both came up to standing and I guided him through some sun salutations to warm up. He was surprisingly flexible. But then a climber needed to be limber to reach all those holds.

  His shirt was snug and hugged his shoulders as he dropped into chaturanga. He made the push-up look easy, and my pulse pounded as he swung through up dog to down dog.

  I managed to keep it together and led him through the standing series. Warrior I, II, III, triangle, reverse triangle. You know, the usuals. We both noticed his bad leg was weaker and tighter. I brought him back to Mountain Pose.

  “The nice thing about these asanas is that you do one side at a time,” I said quietly, my gaze on his knee. I could see the slight bend, the way he favored it. I could almost feel it, like I was inside his knee. I looked at it a second longer, then my gaze tracked up to his. “You can hold your right side a little longer. Really focus through your feet. Just make sure your knee stays over your ankle.” His gaze never left mine. It felt like we were touching, even though four feet separated our bodies. I pointed at the mat as I went down on a knee. “Come on, let’s try Warrior II again, and I’ll show you.”

  He dropped his right knee into the pose, and I did my usual adjustment. Kneeling before him, I ran my hand down the inside of his thigh, over his scars, to his knee. Desire swooped through me.

  “Keep this open.” My voice quivered.

  “Are you trying to kill me,” he asked, his voice strangled.

  I glanced up at him, biting back a smile. “Does your leg hurt?”

  “Not my leg.” He pushed up out of the pose, then dropped into Warrior II on the other side. This time I just poked him in the knee for an adjustment.

  He was sweating when we finished the standing series. “I thought you said it wasn’t going to be a workout.”