Morning Stretch
331 Words
Julian wasn’t looking for her when he came around the side of the cottage that morning. He had a toolbox in one hand, coffee in the other, and the half-serious intention of fixing the crooked screen door before noon. The air was cool and wet with dew, cicadas still sleepy in the brush. But when he rounded the hedge—
He stopped.
She was on the patio, barefoot, in a loose ivory wrap knotted below her chest, legs parted into a stretch that made him forget why he’d ever gone to school.
Her body moved like it remembered every rhythm it had ever known—hips dipped forward, arms lifted to the sky, spine uncoiling like a ribbon. She wasn’t trying to be watched. She simply was. The curve of her calves. The soft swell of her thighs. The firmness of a belly that refused to be sixty anything, much less seventy-five.
He stood still, mesmerized.
She opened one eye.
“Good morning, boy wonder,” she said without turning her head. “If you’re going to stare, at least bring me a towel.”
Julian blinked. Heat flooded his ears.
“I wasn’t—I mean, I was, but I didn’t mean to—” He set the coffee down with a clatter and turned to leave.
“Relax,” she purred, rising slowly. “If I were modest, darling, I’d be dead.”
She walked toward him, unbothered, glowing. Her wrap clung to her in all the wrong places. Or all the right ones. He couldn’t decide.
“I do my yoga every morning. The only thing that keeps my knees from turning into vintage furniture.”
“It’s… working,” he mumbled, then winced. “I mean—you look, uh—”
“Fit?” she offered, arching an eyebrow. “Sensual? Impossibly well-preserved?”
He let out a breath. “All of the above.”
She smirked. “Careful. That almost sounded like a compliment.”
- Writer
