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  With that thought in mind, I start pounding on the yoga studio’s glass front door. “Come on, Sage. Open the door. I really am just here for the yoga.”

  She doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t come back.

  Fuck. I’ve never felt so much like a stalker in my life, and it’s really, really not a good feeling. “Sage, please. Can we at least talk for a minute?”

  She still doesn’t answer, and I don’t know what else to do. I guess I could text Emerson, but that seems a little ridiculous under the circumstances. Besides, I’ve never been one to force my attention on a woman, and I sure as shit am not about to start now.

  By the time I give up and turn away, I’m pissed off and more than a little worried. Sage struck me as the most adult person in the bar the other night. The fact that she’s acting like a child now makes me wonder just what the hell I did wrong.

  I’m halfway back to my car when I hear her husky, distinctive voice call my name. I turn around so fast I nearly get whiplash. “Sage?”

  “I’m sorry. I was just…surprised to see you. Emerson didn’t give me your name when she asked me to talk to you.”

  “I get it. Women can’t be too careful these days.” As I walk back toward her, I can’t help taking in every detail of her appearance. She’s dressed in black yoga pants and a black tank top, with her hair tucked behind her ear and absolutely no makeup on her face. And still she looks as good as she did at the bar the other night—maybe even better. Then again, I’ve always been partial to a woman who can blush like that.

  “It’s not that.” She bites her lip and, if possible, her cheeks get even pinker as she looks down at the ground. “I just…”

  “Just what?” Her hair fell in her face when she looked down and now that I’m right in front of her I can’t help reaching out and pushing it out of her face. I love the asymmetrical cut, but I really want to see her eyes while we talk.

  She shakes her head, looks away. “I don’t normally act like that.”

  “You don’t normally run away from paying customers when they come to the door? I have to say, I’m relieved. Not sure how you’d run a business like this if you did.”

  That has her eyes snapping back to mine. They’re more green than brown this morning, and I wonder if it always happens like that when she’s annoyed. I also wonder what color they are when she just wakes up in the morning. Or when she’s happy. Or— I cut that train of thought off before I go too off the rails. And before I start to feel like even more of a pussy than I already do.

  “I mean the bar,” she tells me as she continues to glare. “I don’t normally pick up strange guys at bars and let them fuck me in a hallway at the back.”

  “I never thought you did.” I try a smile, just to see if it will relax her a little. It doesn’t work. In fact, I’m pretty sure her eyes got even narrower and her shoulders even more tense—and I didn’t think either was possible. “I want you to know that I don’t normally act like that, either.”

  Her brows go up. “You don’t normally pick up strange guys at bars?”

  “I don’t normally pick up anyone at bars, strange or otherwise.” Her hair’s fallen back into place and this time I can’t help tugging on it a little before sliding it behind her ear. “I made an exception in your case—on both fronts.”

  “Yeah, right.” She rolls her eyes before stepping back into the yoga studio, but there’s a small smile on her face as she does it. “I’ve got about an hour before the studio opens, if you want to talk about your back.”

  “I want to talk about a lot of things.”

  “Yeah, well, your back is the only one on the table right now.”

  I follow her into the long hallway she ran down earlier. “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “You have no idea.”

  I expect her to bring me into her office so we can talk, but instead she takes me straight to one of the practice rooms. It’s a lot homier than I expected, with multicolored cubbies against one wall and bohemian-looking fabric draped over the windows and numerous other surfaces. There’s a huge pile of pillows in one corner of the room, standing candles in another. And lining the back is the equipment—yoga blocks, straps, Pilates rings and a bunch of other stuff I don’t have a clue how to use.

  “Take off your hoodie and anything you have underneath it.”

  “I thought we were here to talk about my back.” I shoot her an amused look even as I comply.

  She doesn’t roll her eyes, but it’s a close thing. I wonder what it will take to get her to do it again, then decide I want to find out. Turns out, I really love pulling Sage’s pigtails.

  I reach for the waistband of my athletic shorts, start to pull those down, too.

  “Whoa, whoa. What are you doing?” she demands, hands on hips.

  I give her my most innocent look. “You told me to take everything off.”

  “On the top. I said to take everything under your jacket off. You don’t need to be naked to do yoga.”

  “Yeah, but I bet it’s more fun if you are.”

  “Yes, well, we’ll never know.”

  She doesn’t know it, but she just issued a major challenge. I’ve never been great at accepting boundaries—or the impossible. I always love to push, always love to see just how far I can move the boundaries before they disappear completely.

  Not with women, because I totally respect a woman’s right to say no. But I heard the way her breath hitched as I brushed past her a minute ago, can see the way she’s looking at my chest even now, when she’s trying so hard not to.

  “Which side is the injury on?” she asks, after I’ve tossed my hoodie and T-shirt to the side.

  “My right.” I hate admitting it, just like I hate admitting any weakness. But yoga therapy is ostensibly what I’m here for.

  “And you’re right-handed?” she asks, moving behind me.

  “I am.” I’m not sure what it is, but there’s something about having her behind me that makes me feel like I’m on display, and not in a good way. Something about having her look at me like this—from a training perspective and not a sexy one—that makes me feel vulnerable.

  And I don’t do vulnerable. Not with my trainers and sure as hell not with the women I’m sleeping with.

  “How’d you injure it?”

  “I was cliff diving.”

  “I know that. But how specifically?”

  She’s still not touching me, still just standing there looking at my back, and I’m starting to feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin. I’ve been playing ball my whole life—high school, then college, and now pro for eight years. In that time, I’ve had a million different trainers, doctors, and physical therapists look at my body, but it’s never felt like this before.

  I have to use a lot more willpower than usual to keep from turning around. To keep from looking into her eyes and trying to figure out what she’s thinking—about my back, about my physique, about the scars that are as much a part of me as my skin and bones.

  “I hit the water the wrong way and dislocated my shoulder.”

  “Dislocated shoulder? Emerson told me you strained your back.”

  I try not to read into the obvious concern in her voice. “I didn’t spread that around.”

  “You mean you lied.”

  “I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell Hunter everything. When I dislocated the shoulder, it messed with the muscles in front down to my pecs and all the way down my back. They weren’t torn, just overextended, pulled, bruised. I’ve babied them, done PT and weight training, the whole nine yards.

  “And I can use them just fine—I mean, everything works like it’s supposed to and my doc says there’s no long-term damage. But he thinks yoga might stop the last of the pain, help me perform as well as I possibly can on the field.”

  “How long ago did this
happen?” she asks as she finally—finally—puts her hands on me.

  Not in an intimate way, or at least in as non-intimate a way as she possibly can considering she’s got her hands on my bare skin. She’s pushing on my back muscles, just kind of checking them out, but suddenly all I can think about is what it felt like to have her legs over my shoulders and my mouth on her pussy.

  “Eleven weeks. It usually takes between twelve and sixteen weeks to heal completely, and I’ve got two weeks before training camp starts.”

  “That’s pushing it a little bit, isn’t it?” She’s running her hands over my shoulder now, pressing lightly on my trapezius in back and the top of my pec minor in front.

  “When you’re a baller, you’re always pushing it,” I tell her. “The injury’s healed, though. Now it’s just a matter of playing through the pain.”

  “Or, hopefully, getting rid of the pain before you have to play,” she says, and now she’s moving down my latissimus dorsi, pressing with the flat of her hand just where it aches the most. The instant relief feels so good that it’s all I can do not to groan.

  “Do you think you can help do that?” I ask even as I fight the urge to push myself into her touch. Or, worse, to turn around and pull her against me so that I can feel her all over and to hell with the rest.

  “I can try.” She presses a little harder, her fingers working the tightness I can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how many stretches I do or massages I get.

  Then she’s moving back up to my rhomboid major, and suddenly I don’t know what to do, don’t know how to respond. Because it feels so good.

  Her fingers are delicate, soft, and as they smooth over my skin all I can think about is how they felt sliding down my stomach, stroking over my dick, digging into my shoulders. I can feel myself getting hard, and I try to shove the memories down, try to concentrate on the fact that this is professional. Try to tell myself that having Sage touch me like this is no different than having any trainer touch me.

  But my dick is having none of it. And, to be honest, neither is the rest of me. With Sage’s hands on my body, the last thing I feel is pain, and it’s taking every ounce of willpower I have not to turn around and show her just what I want from her—and how badly I want it.

  “You’re really tight through here,” she says, stroking over my deltoid.

  I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling her why my whole body is tight as a drum skin right now, every muscle in my body bunched up and activated as I try to keep my damn hands—not to mention my dick—to myself.

  “Let’s do a few poses, see if they help you. If they do, we can talk about working up a program to really stretch out these muscles, get rid of the tightness and get you ready for training camp. Sound good?”

  Not as good as stripping off her clothes and thrusting myself inside her hot, wet, willing body. Getting rid of the last of the pain from my injury is a poor second to that, but I’ll take it. Especially if it will help me make up the seconds I’ve been missing in my sprints.

  “Sounds great.”

  “Okay, then the first thing I want you to do is take your shoes off and sit cross-legged on the floor.” Sage demonstrates by sinking gracefully to the ground and crossing her legs in front of her. For the first time, I notice that she’s barefoot. And that her toenails are painted a very soft, very incongruous pink.

  I follow her example, putting my hands on my knees, palms facing up, exactly as she has hers.

  “I want you to really stretch out your spine here,” she tells me. “Shoulders back, chin tilted up just a little, spine as long as you can make it.”

  I follow her directions, but to be honest I’m paying more attention to how she looks when she’s doing it—chest up, breasts thrust forward, hair falling forward to cover up the left side of her face again. She’s beautiful, really beautiful, and now that I’ve gotten a glimpse of the little contradictions that make her up, it’s even harder to ignore than it was in that bar Saturday night.

  “Good. Now I want you to breathe.”

  And there it is, why I didn’t want to start this ridiculous yoga stuff to begin with. “I’m already breathing.”

  She laughs. “Barely. That’s the point. I can hardly see your chest rising and falling at all.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing. I think there’d be a problem if I was out of breath just sitting here.”

  “Definitely not the kind of breath I want to see. Here, watch me.”

  She breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth. I do the same thing, but it’s obviously not what she’s looking for.

  “Here.” She scoots over to me, until her knees brush against mine. Then she takes my hand and puts it on her stomach, at the top of her diaphragm.

  As my fingers brush against the undersides of her breasts, I once again feel like a kid with his first girl. And yoga is the last thing I’m thinking about.

  Chapter 10

  Sage

  Shit.

  This was a really bad idea.

  I’m supposed to be teaching yoga here, but from the moment I put Shawn’s hand on my stomach, all I can think about is jumping him right here in the middle of my regular practice room.

  Then again, it’s pretty much been all I’ve been able to think about since he took off his shirt. Jesus. I felt him at the bar the other night and knew he was ripped. Hell, he couldn’t be a professional football player without all the muscles. But knowing that intellectually is way different than seeing it. And now that I am, can I just say Oh. My. God.

  I mean, his body is freaking perfect. All tanned skin and rock-hard biceps, washboard abs and a sexy little happy trail leading into the waistband of his shorts. Is it wrong that I want to lick and kiss my way down it? Want to lick and kiss my way all over him? We were rushed the other night, more concerned with the destination than the journey.

  Sitting here now, looking at that body and that face…Add the kindness in his eyes that even the heat sizzling between us can’t hide, and all I can think of is how much I want to take that journey. How much I want to—

  “Aren’t you supposed to be showing me how to breathe?” Shawn asks, all growly and amused. “Because you haven’t inhaled in at least thirty seconds.”

  The sudden tightness in my chest puts paid to his words, and I exhale in a rush the breath I didn’t even know I was holding. “Sorry. I was doing a breathing technique known as…”

  One of those perfect dark eyebrows goes up. “Known as?”

  “Known as I really want to lick you,” I admit with an uncomfortable laugh. I’ve never been very good at lying and not even the sudden need for self-preservation can change that. “But now that that’s out of the way, we can concentrate on inhaling. You need to breathe in for the count of five, concentrating on really expanding your rib cage, opening up your chest. Then, when you exhale, feel the way it all sort of collapses and your belly button sinks toward your spine.”

  When he doesn’t immediately answer, I shoot him the most professional look I can manage. “Are you ready to start?”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m the one who can’t breathe now,” he says with a wicked grin. “Especially when now all I can think about is you licking me.”

  “Yeah, well, thinking about it and doing it are two very different things. And right now”—I put a firm hand on his stomach, doing my best to ignore the hard warmth of him—“you need to breathe. Like this.”

  I take my time counting to five as I inhale, opening up my chest as much as possible as I concentrate on the feel of the ground beneath my hips and the air filling up my lungs. Then I exhale just as slowly, in a steady stream that empties my lungs and has me really focusing on the sink of my navel into my spine.

  “Now you try,” I say.

  Shawn looks a little exasperated, but he does as I instruct, breathing i
n slowly and then exhaling.

  “Good,” I tell him when he’s done. “Now let’s do it again.”

  This time we inhale and exhale together.

  “Again,” I tell him when our lungs are once again empty.

  “How many times do we have to do this?” he demands after our fourth breath together.

  “Until you’re completely open,” I tell him.

  “I’m never completely open,” he answers me, and he’s not talking about just the breathing. I think about the scars on his back, some that obviously came from football and some that just as obviously didn’t. It’s not exactly a surprise that openness isn’t a skill he prizes.

  I think about keeping him here for ten or twelve more breaths, but the clock is ticking…and I can tell he’s getting more impatient. Mastering breathing is a huge part of any yoga practice, even the therapeutic kind, but at the same time, I need to get him into some of the other poses before he loses patience completely. Breath is important, but once the other poses start to benefit his shoulder and back he might be more willing to work on the breathing, too.

  “Okay, one more breath and we’re going to move into thunderbolt pose.” I welcome the chance to take my hand off his body, and to scoot back so that he’s no longer touching me, either. I feel the loss of his warmth keenly, but there’s relief as well, because I’m not used to feeling like this.

  My mother and most of the other instructors at Soul Studio fall into and out of lust quickly—because they’re “in tune with their bodies and their needs,” or so they tell me. But that’s them. It’s never been me. I’m the one who overthinks everything, who rarely agrees to a second date without a pro/con list a mile long. So the fact that I’m so attracted to Shawn—that every single thing about him makes me hot—is more than strange. It’s bizarrely out of character, and I really don’t think I like it.