Page 18 of Lair

Jason unclips his radio. “Right away, sir.” He points at me. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I grin. “Okay.”

I look about. Emmie has missed all of this, intent on bossing Thea around. But Mrs. Colding is watching me with a speculative expression.

When Jason returns minutes later he’s pale in the face, eyes distant. I approach him with a smile. “So? What were you gonna say?”

He looks at me, opens his mouth—and turns away. “Let’s go, boys!” he calls. “Wash that tender down!” And like that, he’s gone.

It eases into me like a delayed blow, a creeping, prickling bottoming of my guts. What just happened? And then the queasy humiliation: Was I too forward? Was he not into it?

But Emmie interrupts. Thea is hopping up and down, pointing at a family of dolphins swimming by in sparkling arcs through the water, and Emmie couldn’t care less. She groans from her sun lounger, flawless skin glistening with oil, arm flung to brow. “I am so bored. We don’t even have a yoga instructor onboard.”

I unroot myself. Fuck it. Here’s my chance to get on her good side. “I teach yoga.”

She peeks at me from under the shade of her arm. “Really.”

I square off with her. “Yeah. Internationally certified.” I turn to Mrs. Colding. “I could do it now, if I can be spared from my duties for a bit.”

Mrs. Colding stares daggers at me.

But Emmie’s eyes flick me over. She sits up. “All right, then. Let’s do it.”

Warm triumph spreads through me.

We do it in the sun on the aft main deck, laying out mats over the closed panels of the pool roof. Everyone changes into leggings and sports bras, as Emmie demands that all the stews participate—out of self-consciousness or wanting an audience, I can’t tell which. Mrs. Colding glowers and follows along as if submitting to some humiliation, and a few of the deckhands loiter to watch Emmie stick her ass out in cat cow pose. So an audience, then.

It feels good to teach again; I haven’t done it in a while. The instructions flow out calm and clear, and even Emmie listens when I walk about and adjust her posture.

It’s only when I’m in cobra pose, arching my back up from the mat with my breasts thrust out, that I lift up my eyes and notice Mr. Voper watching from the shade of the bridge deck overhang.

I instantly blush, faltering in my suddenly too-sexual-feeling pose, and all heads turn to look. The deckhands have suddenly disappeared.

I can’t process it at first: Mr. Voper is undoing the buttons of his coat, one by one. He shrugs it off and casually hands it to a passing deckie, begins slipping off his thousand-dollar Italian shoes. “Mind if I join?”

The stews share dumbfounded looks. Apparently, something unprecedented is transpiring.

Mr. Voper raises a brow at my silence.

“Y-Yes,” I manage at last. “Be my guest.”

He smiles at my phrasing and chooses a mat within the overhang’s shade. Waits, barefoot, like some eloping CEO. The sight of him there is so bizarre it takes me a moment to snap out of it. “Um, right.” Let it go, Aurora. Be yourself. “Plow pose.”

He isn’t too bad. It’s obvious he has never tried yoga in his life, but there is an athletic grace to him that takes to it with startling ease. His presence, however, frays all concentration. Whispers begin and heads constantly turn, as if he were a black hole in the group’s center. Emmie doesn’t miss the opportunity to play it up, going off-script and trying the puppy dog stretch and wheel pose, arching her ass at him and glancing temptingly over her shoulder. But he ignores her, watching me with an unwavering intensity that is disconcerting. I shift, feeling a flutter between my legs, and when I see Mrs. Colding looking between us with narrowed eyes, it’s too much. I stand and begin to circle the class, scrutinizing postures.

After a while, I realize I can’t ignore it: Voper’s is off.

I cut through the group—heads turn—and come to his side. He’s in a kneeling lunge position, back arched and back leg bent, one hand reaching up and behind to grip the foot. He stilts a few fingers to the mat to steady himself. “Here, let’s get you back on track,” I say, lifting a hand. “I’ll show you.”

And I touch his shoulder.

There are audible gasps. Mrs. Colding shoots to her feet.

But Voper’s eyes only glitter with amusement. Even with him kneeling, I look half his size. I take a breath. “You’re strong, but you need to relax your chest.” I place a hand there. It’s cold, strikingly so, and I think of how I saw him last night, and what’s hidden beneath this fitted white business shirt. I swallow and put a hand to his back, gripping his ribcage. The dense, torsional webbing of muscle there is undeniable. “Breathe,” I say, and realize I’m saying it more for my sake than for his. I clear my throat. “You’re not breathing.”

For some reason, this only amuses Voper more. A seam of a smile appears at the corner of his mouth.

I sigh. “A little deeper. Just breathe. Can you breathe for me?”

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