It hurt, but not that much.
Her gasp was loud enough to make more than half the class turn around.
She covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes wild with horror.Then she stepped off her mat and toward me, her hand immediately going to my shoulder.“Are you okay?”
Thank goodness she wasn’t one of those women with the long, clawlike fake nails.Otherwise, I’d probably be dripping precious O negative all over the teak floor.
Chuckling, I removed my hand from my face.“Is there blood?”I whispered, my face hurting from smiling so wide.
She shook her head.“No, but it’s red.”
“Is everything okay?”Lotus asked from the front.
Before I could say that it was, Naomi grabbed me by the hand and hauled me across the studio and through the big double doors.
“I couldn’t tell how red it was in the muted light,” she said, still clearly ashamed of what she’d done.“I amsosorry.I’d offer to pay for … the damage, but it’s not like I rear-ended your car.”
That just made me start laughing again.“It’s okay.Seriously.I will survive.Not the first time I’ve been slapped.”
Her brows narrowed.“Why have you been slapped before?”
“When I played basketball, I got an elbow, fist, knees, hand, even a butt cheek in the face.And I survived them all.I will live to tell the tale of getting smacked by my students’ mom in yoga.”
She groaned.“Please don’t tell that tale.News on the island travels fast.”
All I did was grin.“My lips are sealed.But I can’t speak for the twenty other people in there.”
She glanced toward the doors and groaned again.“Ugh.”Then she spied the mini fridge behind the desk and went to open it, returning a second later with a small gel-filled ice pack.She grabbed a rolled up tea towel from the basket and wrapped it around the ice pack.“Here.To stop the swelling.”
“I’m okay,” I said again.
But she wouldn’t take my reassurance as enough of an answer and pressed the cool compress against my stinging cheek.Admittedly, it felt good.
We were quite close, and I could smell her minty breath as well as count the faint freckles that scattered across her nose.She blinked up at me.“I hear you’re quite the Hacky Sacker.”
Grinning, I had to resist the urge to lean into her touch or step closer to her, even though there wasn’t much room to get any closer.“Your kiddo is pretty good too.”
“You’ve won over both my kids.They talked about you nonstop over dinner all week.”
Now it was my turn to grow warm in the face.Well, at least the other cheek.“I’m sure it’s just a novelty.”
“I dunno.The fact that you go out onto the field every day at recess to play Hacky Sack with the kids seems to have really struck a chord with them.And Honor loves that you readHarry Potterto them over the PA system while they’re eating lunch.”
“The last school I was at let the kids watch YouTube videos while they ate.I hated that.So I started reading aloud to my students, and it became such a big deal, and so much more anticipated, that the principal asked me if I’d read to the whole school over the PA system.”
“It’s brilliant.”
My cheek was rather cold now.I gently reached up and gripped her wrist, bringing it and the ice pack down, away from my face.“I think I’m okay.”
She blushed again and glanced away.
“We should probably get back.”
Nodding, she tossed the towel into the dirty laundry hamper and set the ice pack in the sink.I held one of the double doors open for her and allowed her to go ahead of me.It was impossible not to let my gaze drift down to the perfect two peach halves of her ass and watch them wiggle and swish as she meandered through the other participants back to her mat.
We reached our mats just as Lotus instructed everyone to come up into baby cobra.Smirking at each other, we joined the rest on our bellies, hands by our ribs, chests proud.
And that’s how the rest of the class went.
