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taking hold of it, her hand
    curled into a defensive
    bal . He stil ed.
    “Open your hand, Rachel, and stretch
    out your fingers.”
    A simple command. No coaxing, no
    reasoning. She
    closed her eyes. She couldn’t get lost
    in this. She couldn’t.
    But her fingers were listening,
    straightening, no matter the
    rapid-fire protestations from her
    brain. Whoever said the
    body couldn’t function separately
    from the mind was ful of
    crap.
    When he slid the band off, she looked
    down at it. A fifty-
    dol ar wedding band from a jewelry
    store. Cheap, yes, but
    she’d stil felt like a liar when she’d
    bought it, knowing it
    mocked something supposed to be
    sacred. It was why
    she’d put her own wedding set away
    and then ultimately
    pawned it, though it had torn
    something loose in her soul
    when she did it, al that symbolism
    now up for sale.
    He set the fake ring on its side on the
    wood floor in front
    of her. With a deft flick, he sent it rol
    ing. She watched the
    candlelight flash off it as it traveled a
    few feet away and
    then toppled on its side, rocking back
    and forth, devolving
    into that tinny vibration as it settled.
    “What do you want, Rachel?” His
    voice was a breath in
    her ear. “Tel me.”
    Had he known this was the best time
    to ask a person for
    a truthful, painful answer? There
    were no lies during yoga
    nidra , because there was no room for
    artifice. Of course,
    what she wanted was a tangled mess.
    “I don’t know,” was a
    pitiful y inadequate answer, but what
    she wanted had been
    buried under others’ expectations and
    her own
    disappointments. Nearly twenty years
    of them.
    Yet she knew something was stil
    buried alive under al
    that. There’d been a time when she’d
    woken from
    nightmares, imagining it screaming
    with terror and need,
    afraid that it wasn’t being heard or—
    even worse—heard
    and ignored. But she’d learned her
    needs weren’t relevant,
    and never had been. There was
    nothing so pathetic as a
    false sense of importance in the
    universe.
    Rol ing away from him, she got to her
    feet. As she did,
    she stepped on the wedding band,
    which made a harsh
    squeak against the wood floor.
    Bending, she picked up the
    ring. As her fists clenched, it cut a
    circle into her palm. It
    was a pose more suited to a self-
    defense class than yoga,
    but the body adapted to what was
    needed, a preservation
    instinct.
    “I can’t do this, Jon. I appreciate it,
    but…” She shook her
    head, started over. “I’ve learned not
    to want things, at least
    not so fiercely. I don’t have that kind
    of energy anymore.”
    That kind of strength.
    Settled wasn’t as horrible as it
    sounded. Like sediment
    at the bottom of the lake, she could
    look up and appreciate
    the sparkles of sunlight on the water,
    the change in
    seasons. The things that flitted by so
    fast, so vibrantly,
    leaving her behind, she’d accepted.
    There was no getting it
    al . She’d traded everything for
    peace, because her life had
    literal y depended on it. She refused
    to regret it. Couldn’t
    afford to regret it.
    He was stil lying on his side, his
    head propped on his
    hand, and it flustered her, that he
    could lay there, looking up
    at her, and stil seem so in control.
    That steady gaze was
    taking in every detail of her flustered
    condition, lingering
    over her breasts, their rise and fal
    betraying the shortness
    of her breath. Then he rose, one
    graceful flow of motion that
    nevertheless had her skittering back
    two steps as if he’d
    leapt toward her like a wild animal.
    He cocked his head.
    “Do you want to know what I want?”
    She couldn’t answer, but it didn’t
    matter. He took silence
    as assent.
    “I’d like to do that routine we just
    did, but I’d like to see
    you do it naked. I’d like to see you in
    that Sleeping
    Thunderbolt pose, make you hold it
    while I stroked your
    thighs, and let my fingers stray up
    your body, from your clit
    to the base of your throat. I want to
    feel you