Page 58 of Undone

He stalks back to his mat, and stands, waiting.

Right. Okay. Totally normal. Definitely don’t freak out.

“Lie down on your back.”

I wonder if my swallow is as audible as it feels. Still, I follow directions and lie beneath him, the position intimately familiar. He reaches and pulls at the heels of my shoes, before circling my ankles individually in his hands, back to back, while I hiss at the popping feeling.

“You still overstride,” he says, eyes fixed against the skin of my ankle where I rolled my tights up twice. “That’s why you’re always tight here.”

“My stride and my ankles are fine.” I cross my arms, avoiding his eyes as I reply. “It’s my lower back. My hips keep locking up.”

“Because you never stretch,” he says beneath his breath. He looks back down at me, and I realize I’ve tilted my head. I do it a lot, have my entire life, like compensating for my right ear. Sometimes I catch myself doing it when I have my hearing aid in. It’s like muscle memory now.

“I stretch.”

“Mm-hmm. Sure.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means . . .” he says, grabbing my inner thigh with his hands. I nearly bite through my lip to keep in the groan as he presses it up and rolls my hip joint, until my knee is headed toward the mat at my side, opening my body to his obscenely. At least, on one side. “That you rush your stretching. If you even do stretch. You always have.”

“I can do this myself,” I say stubbornly.

“Then do it,” he snips, his eyes flaring golden fire.

But he doesn’t let go of me, instead pulling my right leg straight, then mimicking the stretch in my left.

Releasing that leg, he taps my knee. “Bend. Foot flat.” I follow his instructions, but he pushes my foot closer to my glutes, fingers dusting along the curve there so lightly I’m half convinced he didn’t touch me. “More. Good. Now—right knee in.”

I try to cheat out of it, my body bowing.

“Keep your lower back on the mat.”

Toren’s hand hovers over my stomach, making my belly warm as if he’s laying it flat across. Like he has so many times before.

Only with fewer clothes on.

“That’s it, Lily. See how deep I’m inside? Taking me so well—”

“Fuck,” I curse, breathing sharply at both the tightened stretch and my body’s inability not to picture Toren Kane naked, inside me. “That’s intense.”

“I can make it worse.” There’s an infuriating half grin on his lips as he unabashedly looks down at my crotch. He can’t see anything, the legging material is stretched over my body there, where my legs are wide.

I nod. “Okay, but don’t—”

“Force it.” He nods back. “I won’t.”

He knows because he remembers. Premeets, when Toren didn’t have practice, he’d make me stretch before the run. And after, though that was usually a massage, a reward. It’s different now, and yet entirely the same. Only a darker, more intense thread through every touch, my need for him growing hungry and desperate, until it’s almost impossible to control.

The music on his phone fades into a lower, heady beat. Lana Del Rey’s “Freak” thumping just by my head where I’m closest to the speaker on my left side.

Toren’s hands are massive, taking up my entire thigh, as they press. Almost too low, his thumbs nearly at the crease of my inner thigh. A breathy sound I’m hoping seems more from the stretch and less from him works its way out of my mouth.

“You’re tight.” He pushes farther. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

“You always say that.” His eyes flare; the double meaning feels so strong I almost want to moan.

“And still, you never fucking do.”