“Yeah,” he agreed. “Totally, I know what you mean.”
“Do you?” she said, her voice returning to its normal register and a sly smile creeping onto her face. “Do you really, drunky?”
He laughed at the jab, and playfully pushed her hair into her face. She brushed it away, moved his hand to the back of her head, and turned to look down. Before Danny even had time to process what was happening, her mouth was on his crotch, her breath hot. The pressure of her lips transferred through the fabric of his shorts, and he could feel himself get hard in an instant. Without moving her mouth, she nimbly undid his shorts and tugged them down, revealing his rock hard erection.
Tossing her hair out of her face, she looked up at him, both hands coming to hold him firmly, beginning to move slowly up and down. “Not so drunk, I see,” she murmured, and her voice was like liquid heat being poured down over him.
He could only moan in response, but thankfully she wasn’t expecting a reply. The next moment, she’d turned back down, and her hot, wet lips were on his cock. She took him inside her mouth, at first just the tip, swirling her tongue over the head, and then another inch, then another, until she’d taken all of him, all the way up to the base.
He moaned again, more loudly this time, as she slid her mouth up and down, her tongue dancing over his shaft as she did so. The pressure was almost unbearably blissful, and with each throb he felt as though he could go over the edge at any moment. She ran her fingernails lightly over his inner thigh with one hand, and caressed his stomach and chest with the other. She slid her mouth up to the tip, taking him all the way out of her mouth, and then teased him with her tongue. A whimper escaped his lips before he could stop himself, but the next moment, her lips were surrounding him once again.
She began to slide up and down faster, and he gripped the couch cushion as if that would help ground him. As the pace quickened, he began to thrust back against her, staring up at the ceiling in blurry-eyed pleasure.
He glanced down at her just at the moment that she flicked her eyes up to him, her mouth still moving up and down on his cock. Locking eyes with her, he knew there was no point in fighting anymore. He surrendered himself to his orgasm, thrusting up against her mouth, a wave of ecstasy sweeping through his entire body, keeping his eyes on hers the whole time.
As the last shudders of his orgasm faded away, he fell back against the couch yet again, breathing heavily. A moment later, Adele had climbed up from the floor and was curling up beside him. She rested her head on his shoulder and stroked his chest. He closed his eyes.
The air was cooler outside than usual, and the ocean breeze stronger. It felt good, especially with the heat of his orgasm still on his skin, and the blanket of Adele’s hair on his shoulder. He could feel his breath slowing, his thoughts blurring, the heaviness of sleep overtaking him.
Then Adele shifted slightly, and he felt her breast against his side. His eyes snapped open, and he lifted her head gently from his shoulder.
“Hey!” he said.
“Hey,” she drawled sleepily.
“No going to sleep yet,” he said.
She furrowed her brows. “Why not?”
Danny grinned mischievously. “My turn,” he said, and carefully pushed her onto her back on the couch, arranging a pillow beneath her head before burying his face between her legs.
Chapter 18
Dawn came quietly, its warming glow creeping its way over the sparkling ocean and tide-dampened sand, across the dewy lawn, and into Danny’s cabin. When the first tickle of its rays hit Adele’s face, she opened her eyes. Instead of the anxiety and disorientation that normally hit her upon waking up in a place to which she wasn’t accustomed, she smiled serenely.
She let her eyes wander around Danny’s room, taking in all the details she hadn’t had the light—or interest—to observe night before. The books, the journals, the surfing paraphernalia, the collection of empty coconuts. When her gaze alit on him, lying fast asleep across from her, she wriggled over next to him, sliding one arm around his waist and fitting her body against his. She smiled at the mental image of her as big spoon and him as little.
She lay like that for a few minutes, savoring the smell of his skin and the sound of the waves; but soon, the room had brightened to the point where she knew it must be time for her to go back to her cabin and get ready for asana practice.
As she gently separated herself from Danny, he awoke. He looked at her in surprise for a moment, and then a candid grin blossomed on his face.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” she whispered back, smiling down at him. “I’ve gotta run. I need to get to practice.”
He looked disappointed for a moment, but quickly recovered. “Okay babe,” he said, and she felt her stomach flutter at the term of endearment. “Have a great morning.”
“I will,” she said, and leaned down to peck him on the lips. “You too. Go get your surf on.”
“I will.”
She climbed out of bed and pulled on her clothes, which had somehow wound up in all corners of the room the night before. Giving Danny one last kiss—she just couldn’t help it—she stepped gingerly out of the bedroom and across the large main room. Reaching the front door, which had stood open to the porch all night, she broke into a light jog as she crossed the path toward her cabin.
As soon as she reached the edge of the main lawn and passed onto the field of tall grass that led to her cabin, a figure stepped out from behind the shadows of the palm tree that stood nearest Danny’s cabin. With smiling eyes and somber lips, Val strode toward his porch and the door beyond it, which still swung open in the gentle morning breeze.
In retrospect, Adele would remember that the walk to practice the next morning was peculiarly quiet—as if all the normally noisy birds and bugs and other critters of the isle had suddenly disappeared. At the time, however, she couldn’t be bothered to notice anything around her. She was walking on air, supported and surrounded by a bubble of happiness that the external world couldn’t penetrate.
Now that the beautiful simplicity of her and Danny was revealed, she laughed aloud at how complicated she’d managed to make it. She felt a tinge of regret at having wasted so many days being angry and angsty that they could have spent enjoying Bali together—especially now that she and her yogi peers were about to leave the beach resort for the inland town of Ubud, where they’d complete their training—but felt confident that they had many more happy days before them. Sure, she wasn’t quite sure how they would make it work, since he was based here on the island and she had her life to return to back in the States, but she knew they would figure it out.
The yoga room hummed with a restless energy. Rather than sitting quietly on their mats, centering themselves before practice as they normally did, her peers were shifting from foot to foot, fiddling with their clothing, adjusting their mats on the floor. Drawing her attention to the outside world for the first time since leaving Danny’s bedroom, Adele felt the strange energy shift to her. It reminded her of the way the air felt before a big thunderstorm back in humid St. Louis where she’d grown up.
“Come to your mats,” Ajuni said, his voice low and resonant as always. It was the first time he’d initiated class with a verbal command rather than by sitting silently on his mat.
The class obeyed, and a quiet finally came over the room. Adele followed Ajuni’s instructions to connect to her breath, to bring her awareness only to this room, to her mat, to her body, to her breathing. Reluctantly, she forced herself to let go of the thought of Danny for now.
Soon into class, it became clear that Ajuni had become bored with Adele and was now directing his intimate “adjustments” toward Liesse, a tall Parisian woman; Adele surprised herself by feeling no reaction to this—she was usually so sensitive to any perceived rejection.
Practice was fairly uneventful, though Adele noticed that she fell out of balance poses a bit more frequently than usual. Probably the sleep deprivation.
A
s they sat in their final meditation at the end of the long three hours—never had a practice seemed so long before!—Ajuni spoke again, and it wasn’t his usual Namaste and a bow.
“Open your eyes,” he said. He looked around the room slowly. It seemed as though he was deciding what to say next, if anything. “Only a few days remain on this part of our journey. That is a large shift, a transition for which we must prepare, being as mindful of the transition as we are of the phases we move into and out of.”
A few stray nods
“I feel the awareness of that coming shift,” he continued. “But I also feel something else. There is a new aura on the island. Have you noticed?”
Adele heard someone next to her open her mouth and begin to speak, but Ajuni quickly went on.
“The intuitive creatures have noticed. The birds and bugs have retreated inland, as have the dogs. The proprietor’s baby, who I hear crying day and night, has been silent since midday yesterday. Several people complained to me of fitful sleep last night. Others?”
A sea of bobbing heads.
“This happens,” Ajuni said, his voice knowing. “It is nothing to be alarmed about, and I sensed it would come. On an island like Bali, where old rituals and spiritual tradition are deep in the land, the earth responds to the energies vibrating above it. The earth knows about our impending transition. It is also a full moon tonight, and the summer solstice is tomorrow. There are cosmic shifts interacting with our pedestrian ones.”
People fidgeted on their mats; the class felt collectively awkward and rapt. To Adele, jaded as she was with Ajuni’s teachings, it seemed like the first true thing he’d said in weeks.
“Not to be alarmed,” he repeated. “I only ask that you take the remainder of the afternoon to be silent. To observe the earth and be mindful of her movements. We will meet just after sunset on the beach for a final group meditation, after which we will break our silence.”
Silence?? Adele briefly panicked, and suddenly realized that she’d been spending all of Ajuni’s speech thinking about how she wanted to talk with Danny about it. But calm soon overrode the panic, as she remembered the comfort she’d felt before class—the secure feeling that Danny wasn’t going anywhere. One silent afternoon wouldn’t ruin anything. They could talk after her meditation that evening.
After Val had left his cabin, Danny had tried to go surfing. He needed to do something physical, something all-consuming, to rid himself of the horrible anger, disappointment, and loss he felt. But he’d been too shaken—and shaky, literally—to put on the ankle leash, and that frustration on top of everything else made him throw his surfboard across the porch. He’d been lucky to only break an empty coconut shell.
So he’d settled for a walk. He walked for a full two hours, but later couldn’t recall where he’d been or what he’d been thinking about. It was a hazy, hectic blur. The one piece of clarity at which he arrived was that he needed to confront her. He’d let avoidance of difficult things dictate his life, and he knew firsthand how claustrophobic and damaging it could be. He would just confront her, get it over with, and move on. End of story.
When he returned from his walk, there were still about forty minutes left in asana practice, and so he stood on the lawn outside the yoga hut and waited. The door was slightly ajar and he could see her (In the front row, of course. Of course she’d want to be up front.), which made his stomach involuntarily flutter, which in turn made him double down on his rage. He clenched his fists hard, digging fingernails into his palms.
He waited.
The more he waited, and the longer he watched her, happy and oblivious in her little yoga land, the more steely his resolve became.
He’d let himself attach. He’d begun to open up to someone again. Just a few hours before, he’d been thinking that she might be the one he could talk to about everything—his deep unhappiness with his job, his guilt, his first marriage—and now he felt idiotic and humiliated and above all angry that she’d conjured these feelings up in him.
When the class finally emerged, the hot rage that had been vibrating quietly inside him flooded through his veins all at once. He had to focus all his energy on standing still.
Toward the back of the group (Of course she was at the back. Probably stayed extra for some hands-on assistance.), Adele appeared in the doorway. She wore those unfairly sexy little yellow shorts that perfectly cupped her ass, but the carnal desire her body lit in him only made him angrier in this moment.
As soon as she stepped out, she spotted Danny and trotted toward him, an enormous grin stretched over her face. Approaching him, she slowed to a walk, and began making hand gestures. She pointed to herself, then pressed a finger to her lips in the universal sssh sign, then drew that same finger across her sealed lips and threw away an imaginary key. Finishing her charade, she broke into that same grin and stepped forward, her arms reaching out to touch his.
Fighting against the urge to enter her embrace, Danny recoiled. He took two big steps backward and held up one arm to stop her from coming closer. The grin dissolved.
“Stop it,” he said. “So you’re doing a silent thing. Cool. Great. Probably really awesome for your yoga practice.”
Adele’s face looked baffled, on the verge of being upset, but mostly confused, seeking. One corner of her lips still looked like it was trying to turn up into a smile. She opened her mouth as if to respond.
“Don’t,” Danny said. “Don’t break your little silent yoga game for me. I already know I’m pretty low on your priority list, so you go do all the shit you have to do to become enlightened or whatever.”
He paused, gauging her reaction. She still looked perplexed, but the sad attempt at a smile was gone.
“And if that includes fucking some bullshit-spewing guru with a waxed chest, by all means, go for it,” he said. The confusion left her face, and he felt his heart sink. Only then did he realize that he’d still been holding onto a shred of hope that he’d been wrong. Sadness and anger overwhelmed him, almost buckled his knees. Panicked shimmered in her eyes, and she opened her mouth to speak again—
“Don’t’,” he said again. He wanted to say more—he had pre-rehearsed lines while he’d been waiting, he had a great one about karma—but didn’t trust his voice not to break.
“Danny,” she said, and took a step forward.
“Ha!” A cruel laugh erupted from him. “So now you’ve abandoned your yoga, too. Wasn’t that priority #1? No wonder the lower priorities get shit on. Real glad you were lecturing me about integrity. Real solid moral footing you’re on there. Good luck in life, Adele.”
He jerked his face away from her and turned toward the ocean. A confusion of feelings coursing through his veins, he strode heavily toward the beach and, before he could stop himself, turned to see if she’d followed him. She stood exactly where he’d left her, looking tiny and frail and broken. Her chin lifted at the sight of him turning, as if believing he was about to come back.
He clenched his fist tighter and, needing to save face, said, “Go back to being a back-stabbing, opportunistic corporate lawyer. Seems like that’s your thing.”
This time when he turned toward the ocean, he broke into a run. There was no looking back.
Chapter 19
Sunset was hazy and anticlimactic that evening, the dull yellow orb slipping between a layer of blue-gray clouds before it reached the horizon line of the ocean. Adele’s eyes followed its path, remaining affectless and hazy themselves.
This day. What a day. Thinking back to the way it had begun—snuggled up in Danny’s warm arms, blissful, believing that nothing at all could shake their newfound happiness—sent a cruel pulse of misery into her stomach. If she could only go back in time, somehow fix things. It seemed so close, that happiness.
How had she not thought that her tryst with Ajuni would come out? How could she have been so stupid, so trusting, so confident in the universe ensuring things went her way? Hadn’t the world proved to her, again and again at this point
, that that’s not the way things worked?
The thoughts piled on top of each other until she abruptly brought her hands to her face, rubbing her palms over her eyes and cheeks vigorously as if to physically erase the discord in her mind. Removing her hands, she stared back at the last rays of the disappearing day with bloodshot eyes. Sunset. It was time to go to the beach for group meditation.
She felt an impossible lethargy, coupled with a deep apathy—what was the point?—and yet the good, obedient student in her prevailed. She wouldn’t disobey a teacher—even if that teacher was strange and power hungry and was, in some ways, the reason that she’d lost a man she….loved?
With great effort, she pulled herself up off the front steps of her cabin and walked toward the beach.
Most of the class had already gathered by the time she arrived, and she settled herself as quietly as possible in the back of the group, farthest from the shoreline. Her peers sat peacefully, facing the ocean, most in lotus pose, all with eyes closed. For a few moments she watched the waves, strangely churning and restless, before she, too, closed her eyes.
It felt silly to be consciously meditating, since she’d been alone with her own protectively blank mind for most of the day, but she would try. Perhaps she could even get a few minutes of real peace, though she didn’t think she deserved that.
She couldn’t settle into a calm meditation, which wasn’t surprising. However, she felt similar agitation around her as well. She could hear and sense her classmates shifting, clearing their throats, swatting at mosquitoes. The ocean, too, continued to roil, the normally steady and hypnotic ebb and flow of waves replaced by an erratic and uneasy tossing. The mild ocean breeze had taken on a sharp chill, and Adele found herself wishing that she’d brought her sweatshirt.
Clear your mind, she thought. At least focus on the one thing you truly came here for. Breathe. Just breathe.
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