Chapter 22
Harlan
Seeing Katie in her cute blue yoga pants, that tight pink yoga top, and that sexy, swishy ponytail? Well, let’s just say it frazzles my brain.
But I’m a good boy.
I’m in the zone.
The cat, cow, dog zone.
We are just a yoga teacher and a client, not the man and woman who cancelled a hot date last night.
In a private room at her studio, designed for one-on-one sessions, Katie takes me through several poses, then says it’s time for a lunge twist.
“This is critical for a receiver. It’ll help as you lunge for catches,” she says.
I’ve done plenty of stretches over the years, just like this one. But Katie studies me like a scientist, then shifts my body like asculptor, setting her hands on my hips, urging me to deepen the rotation.
I’d like to deepen other rotations.
“There! That’s perfect. Now just hold it,” she says, so damn encouraging as she sinks into the same pose, twisting her elbow against her thigh, looking supple and flexible and all sorts of bendy.
“Show-off.”
“I just like to move my body,” she says with a smile.
And that’s not helping, because I like all the ways she movesmybody, as well.
Like when we switch to a frog pose. “On your hands and knees,” she says.
“Things I’d like to say to you,” I mutter, and dammit, that’s not the cat-cow zone. That’s the naughty zone.
Must stay out of it.
“Harlan Taylor,” she admonishes, but there’s a sexy note in her voice that tells me she, too, is savoring every flirty morsel we allow ourselves.
Which isn’t much, but I’ll take what I can get.
“Then you need to slide out your knees a little bit, like a frog.”
I settle into the awkward AF pose. “I look like a dork.”
“Yes, but who cares?” she asks with an easy shrug, a sexy jut of her shoulder. I swear, everything this woman does is sexy to me.
But I also like talking to her.
Chatting with Katie is one of the easiest things I’ve ever done. Always has been, ever since the first night at that wedding. We just clicked. She’s a kindred spirit.
“Doesn’t matter if you look dorky. Or silly. Just…laugh,” she suggests.
“Aren’t you supposed to say…I dunno…omornamaste?” I tease.
She settles onto her mat next to me, getting into the same pose, first on her hands and knees, then sliding her knees out to the side. Looking like a frog, obvs. “I take the poses seriously, but I don’t take myself too seriously,” she says, then her lips curve into a sly smirk. “Ribbit.”
I chuckle. “I’ve got some animal noises for you right here.” As I hold the weird pose, I give her my best roar. “Rawr!”
She cracks up, falling face-first to the mat as she slaps the floor.
