“Who is that?” Mandi asked as she unfurled her purple yoga mat.
“Oh, just someone I invited to join us,” Karma answered.
“Mmm-mmm. I sure would like to hear him say, ‘You know you want it, baby. You know you do.”’ Mandi lowered her voice in imitation of a male consumed by lust, which might have been funny if Karma were in the mood for it.
“Don’t they all say that to you?” Karma asked innocently. Mandi let out a sort of halfhearted giggle as Karma unfolded herself from her mat, where she had been sitting in Half-Lotus position. She strolled over to where Slade stood.
He grinned at her, the light in his eyes rivaling the moonlight spilling down from a clear night sky, his grin revealing teeth that gleamed whiter than the promise of any toothpaste commercial on TV. “Didn’t think I’d show up, did you?” he asked.
What to reply? She had and she hadn’t, both at the same time. One thing for sure, she had developed a dry mouth from merely being in his line of sight, and at that moment, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to open it to speak.
“Uh, glad to see you,” she managed to say after what seemed like a couple of eons. Slade looked out of place, she thought, in those jeans. “Be better if you’d worn fewer clothes,” she said, not realizing until the words were out of her mouth how they sounded.
His delighted laughter boomed out over the assembled regulars, most of whom were gawking at him with their jaws hanging down to their knees. Which was not an approved yoga pose as far as Karma knew.
“Most things,” Slade said wickedly but in such a low tone that the others couldn’t hear, “are better without so many clothes. You mind telling me which items you’d like me to discard first?”
She blushed. She couldn’t help it. “Your boots for a start,” she said crisply.
The instructor, a powerful bare-chested yogi from The Om Place whose previous address was listed as an ashram in India, sauntered over. “A new student?” he asked in precise tones as he inspected Slade from head to toe.
“Prashant, this is Slade. Slade, Prashant.” Karma made her introductions as quickly as she could and scurried back to her mat.
“How do you happen to know that big hunky guy?” Mandi wanted to know. Her favorable assessment of Slade and his muscles and his tan and his white, white teeth was undisguised and avid.
“Oh,” Karma said with a vague wave of her hand, “we met on the street.”
Jennifer arrived, running late as usual. She stopped to talk to Karma. “Isn’t that Slade Braddock talking with Prashant?” she asked, aiming a come-hither look and up-standing nipples in his direction.
“Yes,” muttered Karma. “I’m afraid so.”
“Should I introduce myself? Or do you want to do it?”
“After class,” Karma told her.
“Mmm,” said Jennifer, her gaze still on Slade. “Boxers for sure.”
“Briefs,” Mandi corrected. “He’s a briefs kind of guy.” Having made that pronouncement, Mandi leaped up, her melon-sized breasts jostling each other for room under her Om Is Where The Heart Is T-shirt. She undulated over to the corner where Slade was approaching the stack of spare mats.
“Need some help?” Mandi asked.
Karma wondered, Help? Help with what? Deciding whether he wanted a blue mat or a purple one? Putting one foot in front of the other until he reached the rest of the group? Oh, pu-leeze!
Karma shut her ears to the byplay between Slade and Mandi and forced herself to breathe deeply, trying to find her center. The trouble was that by the time Slade, looking like every dream man in every one of her fantasies since she was twelve years old, began to spread his mat out beside hers, her center seemed to have moved downward considerably to that warm place between her—
“Karma,” Slade whispered under his breath while fielding admiring glances from virtually every woman present without so much as acting as if he noticed. “Karma, what am I supposed to do?”
She opened her eyes. “What Prashant says.”
“Oh,” Slade said in a puzzled tone. He glanced from her to Prashant. “He likes you, I think.”
“Prashant? That’s doubtful.”
“He certainly came running when he saw us talking. Defending his territory, maybe?”
The observation was too ridiculous to be worthy of reply, and Karma was saved by Prashant’s settling down on his own mat at the front of the group and welcoming them all to the lesson.
Prashant began the class by chanting an Om. “Allow yourself to go with the flow, and then you will find what you’ve been looking for,” he said afterward with reverence.
“I’ll be damned if I think that’s going to get me a wife, which is what I’m looking for lately,” Slade muttered under his breath. Karma threw him a reproachful look.
“Well, don’t I have you to find me what I’m looking for?” he whispered.
“Go with the flow anyway,” she whispered back.
Prashant coached them through a few simple warm-ups. With Slade beside her, Karma, for the first time ever in yoga class, found it difficult to concentrate. As they progressed through various poses, he doffed his shirt, revealing a torso that was leaner, harder, and more muscular than she could have imagined. And she had been imagining it plenty, starting from the first moment she saw him.
It was an intense class, and the members of the group, most of whom were intermediate students, flowed from pose to pose with little recovery time in between. Sun Salutation, Warrior, Downward-Facing Dog…and Slade, who seemed to be struggling valiantly to keep up, looked slightly more musclebound with each pose. Musclebound was not good with yoga. Flexible was good. Agile was good. Slade seemed to be neither.
“Are you doing all right back there, Slade?” Prashant asked once, and Slade replied with what looked like a grin superimposed on a grimace. “Fine,” he gritted through clenched teeth, but the next pose, a backbend, drew an incredulous intake of breath from him as he lay on his back and attempted to lift himself up.
“Karma, you are the best at backbends. Will you please demonstrate?” suggested Prashant.
“Well, I—” she began, but Mandi said, “Yes, Karma, do!” and was rapidly echoed by Jennifer.
All eyes were upon Karma, but the only ones that mattered in that moment were Slade’s. He lay on his mat looking up at her with a challenging grin, and all she could think at the moment is that if they were in bed, this is what he would look like—well-muscled and fit, his grin fading into passion as he reached for her and pulled her down across his body, the better to kiss you, my dear.
“Backbends are important,” intoned Prashant, breaking into her reverie. “They help our bodies release emotion in a positive way.”
“Wouldn’t backbends be good for me?” Slade urged. “Since my chakra is blocked, I mean?”
He might have something there, but the thing that finally decided Karma was that if she were in a backbend pose, she wouldn’t have to look down at him and thus wouldn’t be tempted to reach over and unbutton his jeans, a behavior that surely would be frowned upon.
Karma forced herself to lie down on her mat; she closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, then exhaled as she firmly planted her hands behind her ears and her feet flat on the floor. While inhaling the next breath, she hoisted herself up into a backbend, keeping her eyes closed and wishing she’d