5. Giselle
Chapter 5
Giselle
I t should be illegal – illegal – for anybody to look that attractive while hot and sweaty from working out.
“Roll out your yoga mats for me!” I direct my 8 p.m. meditation class. Thirteen sets of eyes stare back at me. “If you don’t have one, there’s spares at the back of the room for you to use. Please feel free to take a drink of water before we start.”
Crossing my legs on my own deep purple mat, I scan over the room to make sure nobody needs any emergency assistance and then take a swig from my own water bottle. The lavender oil I’d furiously applied to the inside of my wrists before class began, wafts up to kiss my nostrils. It’s supposed to help keep me relaxed, in some instances, even sleepy, but it’s not even touching the edges this evening and I know exactly whose fault that is.
Him.
Hudson.
Those green eyes of his, accompanied by his pretty smirk, feel like they’ve branded themselves behind my eyelids.
I’m not really surprised I got caught looking his way as he sat astride the rowing machine. I couldn’t make myself stop looking. Not at the pretty auburn-haired girl who handed Hudson her number, which he pocketed, grinning like a fool.
Or, at the toned muscles in his legs, the masculine way he had them spread, the flex and curl of his biceps.
Then he had to go and use the hem of his t-shirt to wipe the sheen of sweat beading on his brow and I actually felt my heart miss a beat.
Even thinking about him now has my stomach swooping low.
God, what the hell is happening to me?
I just about manage to repress the soft moan building in my throat as my hard nipples rub against the material of my sports bra.
My core aches in a way it hasn’t for someone else other than my own hand or toy in a very fucking long time.
God, I’m drooling and not just out of my mouth.
“We’re going to start with just a tiny bit of yoga tonight, everybody. Only a few positions, just to stretch out the kinks from today and then we’ll get straight into tonight’s meditation.”
Positions.
Kinks.
Stretching out.
I need to get my head out of the gutter.
I need to get my head – and my greedy pussy – on board with my heart because it’s never going to fucking happen. I can’t be sleeping with a guy from work – not only would it be messy, but I don’t sleep with guys full stop until I know their intentions in a relationship, their intentions with me. Until I know they fully care for me, my heart, and not just… my body.
Otherwise, I’ll just get hurt again and that’s the whole reason I chose celibacy in the first place.
So, no, it can’t happen.
Plus, I know men like Hudson. There’s no way that a man as good looking as he is, finds it difficult to find someone to date. Women are throwing themselves at men like him all of the time, he’s probably spoilt for choice.
Nope.
It’s easier if I just don’t go there in the first place.
“Okay, we’ll start with a forward fold modification.” I smile at the sea of people I’ve got joining me tonight. The energy feels good. “Once you’re comfortable sitting, I invite you all to bring the soles of your feet together, knees bent, lotus style and to reach forward as far as you can go. Don’t worry if you’re not that flexible, just allow the weight of your head to hang low. From here, we’re going to take three big inhales, holding at the top for a few seconds and then releasing out through our mouths. Are we ready?”
The slight shuffle of fabric moving ensues as my class bends into position.
I grip my two big toes, and forward fold, peeking between my legs to make sure the wetness coating my knickers isn’t leaving a dark wet spot on my grey coloured leggings.
Not a wet spot in sight, thank fuck.
I lead my class through three more yoga poses; cat cow to stretch out the vertebrae in their backs, downward dog to stretch out the hamstrings and child’s pose to work out the knots often carried between their shoulder blades.
“Are we all feeling good and relaxed? No pain?”
A murmuring chorus of “all good” flows back to me from the participants of my class, a few of whom are familiar looking but most of who appear new to my class.
“That’s what I like to hear,” I praise, a smile causing my lips to rise at the corners. “So, we’re going to take a corpse pose. Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds. We’re going to come to lie flat on our backs, arms down by our sides, legs out long and feet relaxed.”
I stay seated, my legs crossed, so I can keep an eye on everybody.
“Bring the palm of your left hand to your heart centre and your right hand to your stomach. Inhale in deeply through your nose, feeling that stomach and ribcage expanding upwards to meet your hand. I invite each of you to allow your eyelids to droop closed, this is a safe space here, but if closing your eyes isn’t comfortable for you, perhaps you can drop that gaze. From here, I want you all to take another deep breath, as we prepare to clear the mind. This won’t be easy, especially for anyone who’s new to this practise, but I promise it will become easier with time. Eventually, you will find you have the tools inside yourself to actually quieten that often busy mind.”
For the next hour or so, I lead my Thursday evening class through their guided meditation, desperately trying to do as I’m teaching my class; to focus on my breathing, invite in stillness and clear my mind of any thoughts.
It works for a few minutes at a time, before the image of Hudson, getting all hot and sweaty on the rowing machine, bursts back into my mind.
I breathe out an exasperated sigh, noticing the way one of the women in the front row twitches in her relaxed pose. It’s as if the frustrated energy I’ve just expelled has latched onto her instead, and that’s certainly not what I want for the participants in my class.
I’m supposed to be teaching clearing and relaxing, not how to get all pent up and bothered.
“Don’t be frustrated with yourself if clearing your mind isn’t happening as quickly as you’d like it to.” I sigh, once again redirecting my attention to the beating pulse of my heart beneath my ribcage; tissue, sinews and all. “Each meditation class is different, each day is different, because we’re carrying with us different emotions and baggage of whatever may have occurred for you today, this week, maybe even this month. But I’m here to remind you, and myself, that meditation is a practise, and each time you meditate, you’re showing up for yourself. That’s the important part.”
Once my second vanilla scented incense stick of the evening has burnt to its end, I gently guide the class out of the mediative state and back into consciousness. Sleepy grins and content faces peer back at me.
“Great class tonight, everybody.” I smile softly. “I hope to see you all again very soon.”
After the last person has bid me a goodnight, I make sure the windows of the studio are shut tight, sling my gym bag over my shoulder, slide my feet into my beaten-up trainers and lock the door behind me. I zip my puffer jacket up to my chin, chastising myself for forgetting my scarf this morning, especially after I’ve just gotten over a terrible cold, and set off in the unforgiving January wind.
Thankfully, my apartment block isn’t too far away from work – a ten minute walk or so – but it feels much longer when the cold is taking biting chucks out of my exposed cheeks.
My apartment on the sixth floor is only slightly warmer than being outside.
Kicking off my trainers and dumping my gym bag, I jab my thumb into the up arrow on the thermostat. My bank account could do without it – especially since it’s already taken quite a dent when I paid my rent on the first of the month and I know the fridge and cupboards could do with a restock of fresh groceries – but I can’t afford to get sick again and miss another week of work.
Hearing the pipes clang inside the walls to signal the heat turning on, I pad to the kitchen, flick the kettle on and prepare myself a hot cup of camomile tea.
Once boiled, I take the mug into my bedroom, shoving a nearly empty tube of lip balm and my pillow spray out of the way on my bedside cabinet to make some room.
Crawling on top of the creased covers – seriously, who has time to iron that motherfucker when it comes out of the dryer? – I mindlessly scroll through my phone, not even pausing the trawl of my thumb to take a sip of my tea.
I call it simple curiosity that has me pulling up the website to the gym I work at, bypassing the ‘Welcome’ page and heading straight to the ‘Meet the Team’ tab.
Not him.
Not him.
Not him.
Not—
Found him.
Hudson Millen.
There isn’t the usual posed staff photo beside his name, probably because they’ve not yet updated the data base, but someone has written a short and impersonal description beneath his name which I can’t help myself but scour.
Hudson, 25, is a personal trainer originally from Burford, in the Cotswolds, but has lived in London for the past four years.
As well as being a personal trainer, Hudson specialises in taking the time to get to know his clients and their gym goals. A catered-to-you workout regime and meal plan based on your goals, are both included in the price of his training programme.
If you’re interested in working with Hudson, please drop us an email.
Huh.
He’s a country boy.
I wouldn’t have guessed that.
Swiping away, I reopen my social media app, heading straight to the handy dandy search bar and keying in Hudson’s full name.
He’s the first suggested profile to pop up.
Hundreds of perfectly squared images, sitting in aesthetically pleasing rows of three, load up on my feed. Each of them is filled with an attractive shock of dark brown hair, green eyes, ethereally high cheeks bones and a myriad of tattoos dotted around his muscular body.
I feel my nipples bead up again. A pleasant ache beginning to stir awake in the pretty space between my thighs.
My god.
In over half of them, he’s at the gym, posing with a protein shake encased in a familiar green bottle. The teeny tiny AD in the corner lets me know it’s a paid sponsorship; meaning for every person who buys one of the bottles Hudson is advertising, he gets paid a small commission.
Good for him.
Vehemently ignoring the rather high number of followers beside his name, I scroll down Hudson’s profile with unsteady hands, careful not to accidentally double tap any of his photos, lest he become aware that I’m snooping on him.
According to one of the photographs, he took up running last summer in Kensington Palace Gardens. Or, at least, that’s the location he tagged.
For someone who just finished a run, it’s a good picture of him, I’ve got to admit; face flushed red with a new rush of blood, mouth set into a closed lipped smile, hair slicked back from his forehead with sweat. At the bottom of the photo, a hint of his toned abs peeks out from the loose fitting tank top he’s lifting up with his free hand.
I click on the comments without a second thought.
Thousands of comments flood beneath his selfie. Over ninety percent are from beautiful women. From what I can see of their profile pictures, their faces are all smooth, pore less and wrinkle free. Some wear makeup, some don’t. Some have visible filler on their faces, others don’t. One, Evelyn_Rossi , according to her username, is even posed in her bikini.
They’re all beautiful in their own way, and they all think Hudson is attractive.
I’d be a fool to think he doesn’t follow a few of them back; the feeling of attraction mutual. He’s certainly spoken to a few of them over private message, if his replying comments of ‘DM me’ are anything to go by.
Something unpleasant wriggles in my chest at the thought.
Flying back to the top of his profile, I press on his latest photo.
Sandwiched between three other men and one curvy brunette, Hudson smiles broadly towards the camera, showcasing his straight, white teeth. It’s the only photo in his entire feed that I’ve seen him smiling like that. This photo, and his others, are a stark contrast. It doesn’t even feel like the same person.
One of these people is the real Hudson Millen.
The other, is a fake phony.
But which one is which?
Gently touching the photo, I pull up the names of the people Hudson has tagged himself.
@Noah_Millen
@BlakeMillen91
@GreyMillen
@DelilahClark_1
Oh.
Feeling silly for not having noticed it sooner, I peer at the high resolute photo again. It’s obvious now; the three other men surrounding Hudson must be his brothers. They each have a shock of brown hair and varying degrees of green eyes. Two of the brothers, Blake and Grey, I click again to see their names, could pass as twins.
Using the handy tag Hudson has supplied for stalkers like me, I press down on the only woman in the photo – Delilah Clark.
I try not to be too disappointed when her account shows up as private.
Back on the original picture, I try Grey’s tag, something in my back of my mind jolting, as if it’s an old, only half remembered, memory, trying to piece itself together. Something about the name Grey seems familiar…
The memory comes into full focus as Grey’s social media pages loads.
Of course.
Grey Millen – the great British swimming athlete.
If I remember correctly, he was on his way to the Olympics before he was involved in an awful freak accident at a skiing resort in which he broke his legs and fucked up a ton of ligaments. The details are a bit blurry to me because I was only a kid myself when it happened, but I recall seeing his face splashed across the nightly news. The British press had accused him of being drunk and taking drugs whilst at the resort, hence his delayed reaction response when he was thrown off the ski lift and into a patch of black ice beyond.
He had to pull out of the Olympics due to his sustained injuries. Only later on, did reports show the swimmer had no drugs or alcohol in his system whatsoever, and his accident was completely at the fault of the ski lift company.
He must still swim, albeit not competitively, because a few of his photos show him in the water. The others are taken up with the same smiling curvy brunette girl from Hudson’s original photograph, who I’m guessing must be Grey’s girlfriend.
Switching back to Hudson’s profile, and feeling more like a stalker by the second, I can’t help myself from swiping along so see his tagged photos, even if my gut warns me not too.
As soon as I see the first three, I wish I hadn’t.
If I thought the comments beneath Hudson’s photos were bad, then I’m in for a world of mixed emotions now I’m looking at photos of him, rather than taken by him.
He has a different girl hanging from his arm in almost every photograph.
Blondes, brunettes, redheads; it doesn’t seem Hudson has a specific type. As long as she has a pulse and is pretty, then he seems content – according to the photos, at least. He’s not smiling in a single one, but his body language tells a different story, with his arms around their tiny waists, his hands slipping dangerously close to the hem of their short, bodycon dresses.
In one particular snap, he has his hand splayed out across a girl’s neck, holding her in place while he bends to meet her in a lip lock. Her eyes are closed, whilst his are open. Strange.
Still, the position makes my blood run hot, a phantom ghost playing over my own, slightly chapped lips, reminding me exactly how it feels to be kissed like that.
I close my eyes on instinct, the imagine of my face being replaced with the nameless woman in that photo, me being held so possessively in Hudson’s grip, his to do as he pleases, popping up before I can stop it.
Fuck.
My core pulses with want.
The thrum of desire I’d felt when I’d watched him from across the other side of the gym and found myself beginning to get wet, returns tenfold.
Fuck it.
He never has to know.
Rising up onto my knees, I shove my mug of tea onto the windowsill so I can have both of my hands free. I shimmy out of my gym leggings, and pull my sports bra up and over my head. With index finger and thumb, I pluck at one of my hardening nipples, whimpering as that familiar electric shock of pleasure ripples through my body.
Wetness pools in my knickers, but I make no move to peel those from my body, instead reaching for a spare pillow and straddling it, knees spread and sinking into the soft mattress beneath.
Slowly, ever so slowly, I grind down on the edge of the pillow, searching for that spot to—
There.
Holy fuck.
I gasp and hum – the sound loud in my otherwise silent apartment.
Cupping the entire weight of my breast with my left hand, I gather my hair up and off my neck with the other hand.
It’s easy, a little too easy, to imagine it’s Hudson behind me; his much larger hand holding my hair, the soft strands slipping between his fingers, his grip becoming just on the side of painful when he becomes lost in pleasure.
The pleasure he’s giving me…
The pleasure he’s losing himself in…
I want it, I want it, I want—
I don’t try to hold back the hiss escaping past my lips as I rub my clit back and forth, back and forth, back and forth against the pillow. It feels so fucking good, addictive, the silk texture of my knickers gliding against the folds of my pussy, only adding to the heightened sensation.
The cold feel of my gold ring bites into the sensitive flesh of my breast from where I’m touching myself, but I pay it no heed.
I’m too focused on my need to come.
My breathing becomes choppy and uneven as I move my body, unconscious about the way I look, or the rolls of flesh my skin is creating. My body does so much for me – allowing me to dance, hug those I love the most in this world and create ecstasy so deep it’s practically addictive.
The cheap bedframe creaks beneath me, my knees slip, lacking purchase in the tangled cotton bedsheets and a subtle ache begins to grow in my inner thighs. But I don’t stop, I can’t, humping into the pillow until my stomach tightens and I fall forward, stomach swooping low, pressing my face into the mattress, and biting down on my blanket, hard, with a choked sound.
My pussy spasms, soaking my underwear and the pillow beneath, sending shocks of pleasure up and down my body until I’m boneless.
Barely, just barely, I manage to repress the whisper of Hudson’s name that oh so desperately wants to taint the air around me.
To remind me exactly who I want thinking of in my make-believe fantasy.
Fucking hell.
I pant into the sheets, my ears ringing with the force of my orgasm.
Only when my feet begin to tingle with numbness, do I force myself, shakily, up onto my hands and knees, peering down for a second at the visible wet spot staining my pillowcase. Evidence of just how hard I came.
I toss it off the side of the bed with a harsh exhale, crawling until I can settle against the headboard, knickers still sticky wet, and pat the rumpled sheets in the search for my phone.
Keying in my code, my social media app opens up to the last page I’d been looking at.
That photograph.
That kiss.
It’s like you’re the only two people in the world.
I miss that feeling.
My body chooses that moment to strike, my stomach swooping low and reminding me, with a not-so-subtle nudge, of all the pain a kiss like that can bring. A mixture of cloud nine happiness and terror all rolled into one.
Because a kiss that like is never simple. It’s a risk. That kind of kiss brings with it feelings and emotions and its own kind of baggage.
A rush of mixed emotions washes over me, the realisation of what I’ve just done beginning to settle in now the hormones and endorphins in my body are calming down.
It’s not that I’m ashamed of my pleasure or making myself come. It’s not that at all. My pleasure is my pleasure, my body is my body and I’ll do with it what I please, with who I please, as many times as I please.
The celibacy isn’t an issue either.
I made that choice because it felt right for me, for my body, for my soul. That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to get myself off, or I don’t enjoy it, or I don’t feel horny.
My emotions are all jumbled because of who I’d pictured in the moment with me.
That’s the issue.
Because I know a playboy when I see one and as much as I find him attractive, I can’t allow myself to even entertain the idea of getting attached to someone like Hudson Millen.
I gave my virginity away to a playboy once.
I can’t afford to give myself away to a playboy, again…
No matter how attractive I find him.