But Alistair’s original reticence to visit the shop, even though he had expressed interest in doing so, stuck with me as I found myself thinking of him more and more these days. It was almost as if he had seemed unsure of his welcome in the store, though I’d invited him half a dozen times before he finally showed up. When I asked Alistair about his hesitancy, he just shrugged and changed the subject. I finally managed to pin down Artem one morning while he was watering plants. Not literally, obviously. The man was as big as a tree. I didn’t want to put him on thespot, so I mentioned my curiosity in the most off-hand way I could, and Imighthave set down a steaming hot cup of his favorite honey-flavored brew that I’d picked up for him on my way in. I could tell he wanted to be his usual grumpy, tight-lipped self as he eyed my proffered bribe, but he slowly reached out to take it and took a long sip while giving me an unimpressed look, before finally giving me a crumb of information.
“The previous owners were pretty opinionated about, well, everything, I guess,” he said, smacking his lips and giving his own little shrug.
I frowned at him, trying to decipher that, and decided to press him a little harder. “About Alistair?” I asked, wondering if something had happened between him and the previous owners, but half expecting Artem not to answer. He could be cagey at the best of times, and I was just waiting for him to get that shifty look in his deep mahogany eyes before he clammed up and sidled off to go sweep the cobwebs out of a back corner—coffee bribe in tow.
But he surprised me. “Hm, they thought the university and all of its research into new plants was snooty and high-minded,” Artem clarified in his low rumble, scratching lightly at the bark on his left cheek before taking another swig of coffee.
My frown deepened, remembering how Artem had once told me that the previous owners didn’t want to work with the “head researcher” at the university because he was “persnickety,” but one of his first pieces of advice to me was to go order some of the new trees at the university, so obviouslyhehadn’t felt that way about the research.
“They didn’t like him?” I guessed aloud, and I knew by the way Artem half-cringed that I’d guessed correctly. I could just picture sweet, excitable Alistair feeling unwelcome at the largest, most established plant nursery in the region and how that must havehurt his feelings. I thought of his wall of plants at home and the rooftop garden he so lovingly tended.
“I like him well enough,” Artem said grumpily, interrupting my thoughts, before finishing off his coffee and picking up the watering wand to continue his morning chores.
My smile was small but genuine. “I like him too,” I said, touched.
One day, several monthslater, a new yoga studio opened up a few blocks from our building. New Caelora had been peppered with tiny boutique yoga studios, usually frequented by flocks of fashionable upper-crust elves who all wanted to be part of the trendy new exercise regimen from the human world. I’d always wanted to try it, but since my friends were more the ‘mimosas and brunch’ sort, I’d never had anyone to go with me.
“Would you be interested in joining me?” I asked Alistair tentatively that Friday evening as he sat across from me on my threadbare couch. I could go by myself, but the thought of walking in alone to try something brand new with a group of complete strangers left an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I probably wouldn’t go alone.
“Yoga?” He paused briefly in his task of putting away the last of our board game pieces before hurriedly shoving the rest of them into his bag with a delighted sounding click. “I would love to try that!” he said. “I own several pieces of exercising apparel that would be perfect,” he informed me, “and would be delighted to join you.” His eagerness was palpable as we finished our tea and decided to attend the very next day.
Now, Alistair was often excitable, but I hadn’t been prepared for justhowexcited he was to wear his “exercising apparel.” I opened the door to his knock the next morning at o’dark-thirty to find he was still bright-eyed and chipper from the night before. He was wearing a loose-fitting white muscle shirt with the neck stretched wide enough to fit his expansive mane. Bold, black letters declared, ‘I [HEART] LAMP,’ with a bright red heart design in the middle. I’d never seen him wear clothing before. He was very enthusiastic about it.
“My friend Sidney brings me thebestshirts from the Void,” he said with a happy chirp, referencing the human world where most of us never ventured. “This one is rather comfortable, I must say, and Idolove lamps!”
My grin was permanently etched on my face the whole way to the studio as I trotted along beside him, peppering him with questions about his clothing. Why did he wear a shirt, but no pants? And if he was so thrilled about them, why didn’t he wear them more often?
“Mothpeople don’t wear clothes!” he said, like it should be obvious. “They just get in the way when we fly, and it’s hard to make them fit with our wings and they usually tug and pull on my fluff,” he said, carding his fingers through the tuft of gray fuzz sticking out the stretched neck hole of his shirt.
My smile grew impossibly wider.
“But,” he continued, “since my friend Sid bought me this one, it’s special. And it’s more comfortable than most clothes. I’m not big on exercise for sport, so now I get a chance to wear it!”
I felt my eyes crinkle at the corners as I failed to contain my mirth. “I don’t see how trousers would interfere with your flying.”
He gave me a haughty look that made a laugh burst out of me like a short bark. “Have you seen how my legs are built?” he asked, gesturing at the giant hocks that bent oddly halfway down his legs and the large, sprawling talons he walked on. “I don’t even know how I’d get them on,” he declared as we entered the studio and approached the reception desk. But he wasn’tfinished, disregarding the fact that a stranger now stood in front of us as he continued his diatribe with his non-existent nose in the air. “And it’s not like we need them for modesty’s sake. All our bits are on the inside, as they should be.”
The receptionist—a stoutly built bridge-troll with graphite colored skin and a cute pixie cut—went wide-eyed at that comment, causing me to dissolve into a fit of giggles as I apologized to her on his behalf, signed us in, and dragged him off to pick up our rented yoga mats.
The classroom smelled of stale sweat and cleaning solution, but not overpoweringly so, and the instructor, a cheerful, energetic elvish girl, greeted us with curious eyes as we entered the space. Bright light streamed in through two large windows off to the side and some kind of ancient lyre music filtered in from a back room. The space was small, but so was the group—a mixture of what looked to be mostly college-age kids and a few older locals. A goblin, a shifter, an orc, and several more elves made up the group, and none of them seemed to bat an eye at my mothman companion. We looked for a place to set up our mats, but there wasn’t much room left. “Here,” he told me, “you take this spot in front, so you can see.”
I ignored his offer and began to unroll my mat behind him. “I don’t want to be that close,” I whispered, not wanting to look like a fool in front of the instructor.
He groused at me that he was too big to be able to see around and I wouldn’t be able to follow the instructor, but I stubbornly hid behind him until he gave up when our teacher began to talk, the peppy young elf introducing herself as Brianna and explaining how the class would go. She talked about body awareness and mindfulness, and Alistair was right—I couldn’t see very much of her—but that was okay, because I could just watch him and follow his lead. And then I realized as she started with a series of gentle opening stretches that I actually had thebest view in the whole room. Because Alistair’s booty wasrightthere in front of me.
I’d always noticed Alistair was well-built. It would be impossible not to; he was huge. But what I hadn’t noticed—due to his large wings, which he usually kept pulled tight against his back—was that the man’s posterior wasfine. I caught myself wondering multiple times whether it stuck out far enough to balance a cupcake on it. How did a man with an exoskeleton have what appeared to be such shapely looking glutes? It made no sense.
I really did try my best to focus on participating in class, to follow his movements as he followed the instructor. But it was hard with Alistair parked right there in front of me the whole time. How was he so good at this? He was surprisingly adept for someone who claimed to never exercise and had never tried yoga before. He had muscles where muscles should not be. I also never exercised, and my body could only be described as softly rounded. Maybe a little plump, even. I tottered and struggled to form the correct shapes with my body, but his poses flowed easily from one to the next as Brianna calmly gave her placid instructions to the room.
Motes of scales drifted from Alistair as we changed positions, carrying his scent with them as they settled onto me, and something about that scentaffectedme. I was already hot, but the warm, musky scent of his scales made its own heat twist low in my belly, my thoughts turning fuzzy, and my heart pounding more than was called for by this situation. The slow, warm curl of desire pulsing and tightening deep within me was a heady distraction until he quickly darted a hand out to save me when I nearly face planted onto my mat while trying the Standing Forward Bend. “Careful, darling,” he murmured as he righted me.
It took me a second to make sense of his words.
Darling.
He’d called medarling.
Yoga with Alistair became a weekly Saturday ritual, and it never failed to amaze me how many different ways the muscular mothman could contort his multitude of limbs. I always took the spot behind him so I could continue to watch his well-rounded glutes flex and his biceps bulge, and thankfully he never caught on that I wasn’t just hiding from the instructor. It usually ended up with me laughing into my yoga mat while Alistair tried to untangle me from myself, complaining all the while about how I managed to mess the poses up so badly when I had so few limbs, but I loved it. I loved the sound of his laugh and the luxurious scent of him and the way he spoke and all of his little mannerisms and gestures. I looked forward to every planned encounter and found myself thinking about him constantly. I was in major crush territory, and I didn’t even know how it had happened. It had been weeks since I’d even thought about New Caelora.
