Page 108 of Catch a Kiwi
“Oh, Bikram,” I said, feeling about twenty pounds lighter. “That sounds so good right now. Do you want to do it with me?”
“Who, me?”
“I thought this weekend was supposed to be a getaway,” I said. “Besides meeting your whanau. That’s what you said. A chance to relax. What’s more relaxing than yoga?”
He looked so horrified, I wanted to laugh. “I meant sex,” he said. “When a man says ‘relax’ and ‘getaway,’ he means sex.”
“How about this, then?” I said. “I leave a note and tell Delilah she’s free of us today. After all, shewaspretty responsible, noticing Erica’s situation and arranging to get her back here, however lacking she was in the cleanup department.”
“Works for me,” Roman said, still cautious. “She can use the credit card. I already wrote that money off, so whatever horrifying thing she does next … But we’re still talking about Delilah. If this is meant to be convincing me of something, you haven’t got very far.”
“Mm,” I said. How about if we go get a coffee and whatever else you need so you don’t starve, and then we go to a yoga class, and then out for a nice, leisurely breakfast, andthenbring our lovely relaxed selves home, take a very soapy, steamy shower together, and have some really nice, second-time sex? Sort of … slow, relaxed, yoga-type sex? The kissing kind. Now that we, ah, know each other better and can be sort of … freer. To, uh, try things.”
Was I horrified with myself? Quite possibly, but I kept remembering how focused he’d been on my pleasure last night. And how focused on mybody.Not just the major parts.Allthe parts. It had seemed like he loved my back, and my thighs, and my shoulders, and myskin.You couldn’t touch and kiss them like that if you didn’t love them, could you? All that focus could have overwhelmed me, and it had, but it had made me feel weirdly safe, too. Like hehadme.
In any case, his eyes definitely had a gleam in them now. “The kind that lasts,” he said. “And features you being flexible and bendy. Tantric sex. That’s yoga, right? Or adjacent. Focusing on you, but teasing. Going slow. Yeh, I could see my way to doing some of that. Where did this woman come from, and why am I just now seeing her?”
“You woke her up,” I said. “And yes. The kind where I’m very, very bendy and kind of … pliant. And then we fall asleep. During the day, like the people we never get to be anymore. While Delilah goes out and does her thing and tells her new friends how boring we are. And then we, ah …” Somehow, I was kissing his neck. It was right there, and it was so strong and brown. It was like I was drunk, or like the aftermath of a storm. Anemotionalstorm. “Wake up again,” I murmured, here in my drunken haze. “And eventually get pizza and some very good wine for dinner and watch a movie on TV. And be lazy and touch each other as much as we want to. And I only wear my silky robe, and you don’t have to pretend you don’t see it.”
“And all this happens,” he said slowly, “if I go to yoga with you.”
“Yep.” For some reason, I was smiling goofily. “Because it’s physical, and we do it together. Kind of like going for a hike and taking off our clothes so we can kiss in a plunge pool, buteven more so, because we’re getting the blood flowing all the way through our bodies and breathing in and breathing out and calming down and becoming so aware of every sensation. Doesn’t that sound better than sending me out clothes shopping, or buying more art, or whatever expensive thing you had in mind to impress me?”
He stood up. “Right. What does a man wear to do yoga?”
46
THOUSANDS OF CANDLES
Roman
I don’t know what I expected when I walked into the big, dim room. Wood floors made sense, and the total lack of other men wasn’t a huge surprise. All the shades being drawn and the many flickering candles in glass holders on the low stage not as much, but what did I know? I set down my towel and water bottle, collected a squashy, sticky mat at Summer’s direction, and told myself,However weird it is, you’re going to get good sex out of it. I was open to new ideas, and I didn’t embarrass easily.
The parts I didn’t expect?
First: I know itsaid“hot yoga” on the sandwich board out front, but surely notthishot. This was brain-melting hot. Lung-drowning hot. Sweating-instantly hot.Australiahot. Summer would still look good hot and sweaty. I was fairly sure I wouldn’t. I could feel the drops forming under my arms already. Not conducive to romance, in my experience.
Second: The spacey New Age music that wafted around us like steam. Combined with the heat, it produced an effecton me like when you’re starting to pass out in a sauna. Not what I’d call relaxing.
And then there was the third thing.
Or three things, to be exact. Three people. Karen, Hope, and Poppy, my brand-new cousins-in-law, who stopped talking to each other animatedly where they knelt on their mats in an extremely folded-up way I was not going to be able to achieve and uttered glad cries of welcome. To Summer.
“Hi!” Summer said, her face lighting up. The three women jumped up from the folded positions, and an orgy of cuddling followed. An orgy to which I wasn’t invited, which was good, because of the sweating thing. I don’t even want to talk about what was happening in my crotch area. It was a good thing my shorts were navy blue.
Karen, of course, was the one who talked to me first. “Wow, Roman. You are secure in your masculinity. Jax has an excuse why he can’t do this with me, and believe me, he uses it. Says the heat makes his prosthetic leg slip, and that it’s uncomfortable.Isaid that a combat-hardened New Zealand Defense Force sergeant shouldn’t be such a baby, and it still didn’t work. I may even have mentioned post-yoga sex, but he just said that ifIcame back relaxed and limber, he could manage the rest. It sucks having a husband who can out-argue you.”
“Except that that’s why you like him,” Poppy said.
“Possibly true,” Karen said.
“Well,” Hope said, “since we needed the boys to watch the kids, it’s good that they’re so uninterested. They’re all at Karen and Jax’s place,” she told me. “Three men and nine kids.”
“The levels of screaming,” Poppy said, “will be intense. And that’s just Olivia. I’d pay money to watch Hemi do hot yoga, though. Matiu would do it gracefully and beautifullyand much better than me, so I don’t want him, but Hemi Te Mana? That would be a seminal life experience. Not that you’re not equally manly and frightening,” she told me. “Almost.”
“Cheers,” I said.
Karen said, “Enquiring minds want to know—is this a normal part of your Sunday routine, or did Summer drag you here, and if so, how?”
