“Why don’t you go away and flex your muscles for the nurses up front? Show them your tattoo. They can coo over you while Rachel and I get some real work done.”
“What if one of them wants to stroke my impressively large ego?”
“Give me back my cane.”
Chuckling, he bent and caught her mouth, which softened under his. Though Rachel stayed ostensibly occupied with her calendar, her ears caught his quiet admonition to behave and work hard, that he’d be close by. Dana’s serious response was a bare whisper Rachel nevertheless managed to hear.
“Yes, Master.”
She gripped the edge of her desk, hard enough that the rough underside cut her hand, but she bit her lip to keep from making a noise of distress. The cut was the least of it. Yes, she’d been sure for a while, but it was the first time she’d heard it confirmed so baldly. The painful vindication had her floundering in an appalling swamp of self-pity, envy and an old fury that welled up to choke her.
Damn it, Rachel, stop it.
To hear it, to know it existed in such a desirable form, didn’t just double her over in pain. It thrilled her with a charge of sensual lightning through her extremities. She’d have to ground the energy into the solid earth beneath her feet—or in this case, the beige tile floor—because it had nowhere else to go.
That had always worked in the past, but maybe it was how much she genuinely liked these two that made it more difficult to ignore the effect they had on her. From the moment they arrived for each appointment, she strained for every word between them, absorbed every touch and gesture, as if she was living vicariously through them, and maybe she was. Recently, she’d been waking from dreams that left her thighs damp with perspiration, her gown knotted up around her waist as if a man had pushed it there.
While Peter and Dana might keep those old demons awake and tormenting her, they hadn’t resurrected them. It wasn’t Peter who’d invaded her dreams. It was the man who’d referred Dana to Rachel’s PT practice.
Jon Forte.
* * * * *
When not doing physical therapy for the hospital, Rachel ran a small yoga studio. Jon had started attending her classes once a week almost a year ago. Because of his work schedule, he came to different classes, varying his attendance, but she suspected that was a good thing. If he was a dependable regular in any of them, that class probably would have had a mile-long waiting list for female attendees.
There was a different kind of beauty to him. Unlike Peter, who was a broad mountain of muscle, Jon had the build of a Baryshnikov, all compact strength. Though not overly tall at around five-ten, it made him quite a bit taller than Rachel’s five-three. His eyes reminded her of striated sodalite, the vivid blues infused with the fire of the earth that had created it. His hair was thick, black silk that feathered temptingly over his forehead.
Like everyone else in her class, she’d done a double-take the first time he spoke. Not only did he possess the velvet tones of a late night DJ, spinning languorous R&B tunes in the loneliest hours of night, but it was impossible to imagine arguing with him, doing anything to interrupt those fluid, resolute syllables from flowing over the skin like the reassuring brush of angel feathers.
He was always courteous, talking to each woman in a way that suggested he took a personal interest in her life and how her day was going. He had that still, attentive way about him as Peter did. If another male attended her class, he handled that interaction in a relaxed, friendly way, seamless male bonding amid a sea of estrogen.
He was a K&A management scion as well. Following impulse rather than good sense, she’d looked up articles on the company. Like Peter, he was one of the brilliant five-man team that ran K&A. They’d been given various nicknames in both the business and society pages, including the wunderkind, because of what they’d accomplished at a relatively young age in the manufacturing world.
However, one gossip columnist gave them a different name. Knights of the Board Room. With the calculated indiscretion that a gossip columnist could dare, the reporter had noted they had a closely bonded intuition usually shared by fetuses in the womb. Another reason for the nickname was that they were well known for their support of charitable efforts, both with money and hands-on time. They’d been deeply involved in relief efforts for Katrina and supposedly always had personal bets running between them where the winnings went to the charity of the winner’s choice. In the pictures taken of them at different functions, she knew they were all handsome as sin, though her gaze always strayed to Jon’s face, and sometimes her fingers, slipping over the image with guilty shame at the girlish act.
With his mechanical aptitude and inventor’s spirit, Jon was called the “boy genius” of the group. He held dual financial and engineering degrees and already had multiple patents for innovative manufacturing processes and gadgets. He also had impressive diplomacy and negotiating skills, and was considered the calming yet irresistible influence of the group. Business rivals had dubbed him “Kensington’s Archangel” with grudging admiration.
Knowing he was an engineer and inventor explained why the knuckles of his long-fingered hands were often scraped, his palms calloused. She’d not only had the shameful, secret pleasure of touching them, but some of the rest of him as well. Enough to know firsthand his trim frame truly was solid muscle. Because his upper body strength made the more extreme positions easier for him to execute, she’d fallen into the despicable habit of using him to demonstrate those. Despicable because she used those innocuous visual cues as an excuse to make contact.
Note how Jon has his weight balanced. A quick touch of his thigh, braced and holding in Warrior One. Pay particular attention to the position of the neck here, the angle of the hips… She’d almost gone too far that day, because when she’d stepped up behind him to lay her hands on his hips, she’d accidentally brushed the upper rise of his taut buttocks with her thumbs. She’d blushed like a girl. Thank heavens for the dim lighting, the flickering candles that created a tranquil environment and hid such reactions. His skin was fueled by a heat that warmed her whole body at the casual touch.
She assumed he came to the class for the camaraderie of others, because he was more proficient in the ancient practice than Rachel was. Some days she wished he would stop coming; other days she could hardly wait to see which day he turned up. In less rational moments she blamed him for reviving all these feelings.
He’d given her direct permission to touch him, after all.
* * * * *
It was a ritual she performed with all her new students. At the beginning of a class, she would take a seat on her mat and ask the first-timer the same question. “May I touch you?”
The reason for the question was innocent enough. At the end of each session, they would perform the yoga nidra, the students lying on their mats, entering a state of deep relaxation. She would visit each one, kneel at the crown of his or her head and massage the temples with herbal-coated hands, her thumbs slowly rotating over the third eye, spiritually located above and centered between the eyebrows.
When she’d met his gaze that first day, at the beginning of class, those blue eyes had been deep and mysterious in the candlelight, almost causing her to lose her train of thought.
“May I touch you? Jon.” She added the name as an afterthought, but it felt wrong, as if an honorific was needed instead. Particularly when something indefinable entered his gaze as if he heard the pause and—unlike her—had no doubt about what should go in that empty space.