Cassie turned her head slightly to face Taryn. “What?”
“A British Yorkshire pudding. Made of the same batter as a pancake but it rises like a dome.” When Cassie still looked puzzled, Taryn shook her head. “Remind me to show you a photo later.”
“And that’s all the work for today. Let’s relax onto the mat. Get into whatever position you’re most comfortable in and feel your body against the floor.”
Taryn gratefully flopped onto her back. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered.
Cassie chuckled lightly. “Bit more of a challenge than you thought it would be, huh?”
When she saw the cautioning look from the coach, Taryn simply nodded and said nothing else. Instead, she followed their instructions, closed her eyes and tried to feel every vertebra against the floor, took big breaths in through her nose and blew them out slowly from her mouth. And she was overwhelmed with a sudden urge to…to cry? What the hell? If this is what slowing down did to her, she didn’t want any part of it.
She spent the rest of the meditation section thinking about the stunts they’d be performing at their residency. The new take on the Globe of Death that she and Andi had come up with was going to be their grand finale each night. They’d built the double globe two years ago but had never taken it on the road; it was too cumbersome and time-consuming to build and take down for the short-run shows they did. But this residency was giving them the chance to finally let the world see it. Taryn couldn’t wait. Her, Andi, and six more of their top riders zipping around the two giant balls at sixty-five miles per hour, with the whole rig lifted thirty feet into the air.
Yeah,thatwas the kind of feeling she lived for. She felt a tear slip from her eye and quickly wiped it away. She glanced over at Cassie, but her eyes were closed and her breasts were rising and falling slowly, indicating she was fully into a meditative state. Taryn looked up at the ceiling. Did it qualify as Peeping Tom behavior if you were already engaged in lots of hot sex with the person you were staring at?
The coach closed the session, and Cassie touched Taryn’s arm gently. “Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah, of course I am.” Taryn rolled onto her side to get up, already a little stiffness creeping in.
“How did you find it? Not too tedious, I hope?”
Cassie took a long drink of her water, and Taryn watched her lips, the slope of her neck, and the plunge of her breasts into her snug tank top. “Not tedious at all, actually,” Taryn said and pulled her errant eyes from their ogling. She stood and offered her hand to help Cassie up.
“Really?” Cassie didn’t sound convinced. “This way.”
“Really.” Taryn followed her out of the room, after they’d thanked the coach.
“You’ll come with me again?”
Taryn thought of the unbidden surge of emotion and chuckled. “We’ll have to see how much I ache in the morning.” They trotted down three flights of stairs to the locker room. Taryn stopped dead when they rounded the row of lockers and came face to face with a row of shower heads with no curtains or separation. “No cubicles? You’re killing me.” As if watching Cassie bend herself into all manner of twisty, sexy positions hadn’t already gotten her wound up so tight, she thought she might actually explode. “I didn’t get that sweaty. I’ll shower when I get back to the trailer.”
Cassie arched her eyebrow. “You’re not coming back to my place?”
“I didn’t want to assume.” She gave Cassie a wicked grin. She’d been praying that Cassie would invite her in after this torture was over, but she really hadn’t taken it for granted.
“Oh, you didn’t? I thought we’d established an unspoken ritual: a fun time outside the bedroom and an even more fun timeinsidethe bedroom. Do you want to break our winning streak?”
“I really don’t. I’d hate to be responsible for that. I mean, I don’t know who we’re competing with, but I guess that doesn’t matter.” Taryn smiled and thumbed toward the shower area. “Maybe I could shower at your place?”
Cassie pressed her lips together like she was stopping herself from a fit of laughter. “I don’t want your sweaty ass on my lovely upholstery. Why can’t you shower here?”
Taryn bit her lower lip. Cassie’s challenge couldn’t have been clearer. She should be able to control herself, shouldn’t she?
“Are you shy? Is that what it is?” Cassie persisted. “Don’t you want the other women to see your sweet ass?”
“Huh.” Taryn turned her nose up and gave her best look of indignance. “Is it sweet or sweaty? I’m not sure it can be both.”
“Yet somehow you manage it.” Cassie began to peel off her tank top and wiggled her eyebrows.
“I don’t have a towel,” she said, rapidly running out of excuses.
Cassie indicated the pile of neatly folded, white bath sheets stacked on a shelf in the back of the changing room. “Use one of those.” She tilted her head and whispered, “Don’t you trust yourself?”
Taryn shook her head and tried to reclaim some control of both herself and the situation. Cassie made her feel like a marionette dancing on her strings. “It’s you I don’t trust.” She scanned the room. Most everyone else had grabbed their personal stuff and left; only a few looked like they were about to shower. Their presence would keep Taryn’s hands on her own body instead of on Cassie’s, where they would most assuredly want to be once they were both completely naked and under a hot stream of water. She pulled off her clothes, jumped under a shower head in record time—a product of living in a trailer for years—and smiled. “Come on, stinky.”
Cassie looked vaguely shocked and offended before she fell into laughter. “You did not just call me stinky.” She stripped off her gym gear, slowly for maximum effect, and stepped into a shower three up from where Taryn was standing.
Taryn gulped when Cassie turned the water on and tilted her head back so that the jet sprayed over her neck and breasts.
