Every Inch of You

Sapphic Body Worship Romance
by Aurora North

Free with Kindle Unlimited

Pairing: FF (Sapphic)
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Body Worship, Praise Kink, Bi Awakening, Slow Burn, Teacher/Student, Hurt/Comfort, Found Family

A broken athlete. A devoted teacher. The worship that put them both back together.

Cara Jensen was a hockey star until her knee shattered on the ice. Two years later, she’s drifting — bartending, barely sleeping, and one bad night away from the bathroom floor. When her physio sends her to a yoga studio as a last resort, she walks in expecting spiritual nonsense and walks out unable to stop thinking about the teacher’s hands on her shoulder.

Mira Patel left a corporate career to build Anchor Yoga from nothing. She’s warm, grounded, wickedly funny — and she has a strict rule about not dating students. A rule that becomes increasingly impossible to keep when a sarcastic, guarded, devastatingly handsome athlete shows up in her back corner and starts responding to every adjustment like her body’s been waiting its whole life to be touched with care.

As Cara’s body begins to heal, something deeper opens between them — a connection built on breath and trust and the slow, devastating discovery that the person undoing you might be the one putting you back together. But when Mira’s caretaking instinct crosses into control and Cara’s defenses turn her love into a weapon, they’ll have to decide: play it safe, or fight for the thing that’s harder than any pose — staying vulnerable with someone who’s already seen you break.

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:

✅ Body worship + praise kink sapphic romance
✅ Teacher/student with real ethics and real heat
✅ Bi awakening that hits like a freight train
✅ Slow burn that DETONATES (🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — graphic, explicit, 12 on-page scenes)
✅ Yoga teacher voice as a weapon of mass seduction
✅ Found family studio with the best side characters
✅ HEA guaranteed

Buy Now

Get the Bonus Chapter →

⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains graphic explicit sexual content (FF scenes including body worship, praise kink, and light bondage), strong language, sports-related injury, PTSD/flashback depiction, chronic pain, and themes of identity loss and recovery. Intended for readers 18+.

📖 Read Chapter One Free

Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.

Chapter One: Broken Things in Cute Leggings

The parking lot of Anchor Yoga smelled like rain and regret.

I sat in my car for eleven minutes. I know because I watched the clock on my dash tick past each one like it was personally disappointed in me. 4:49. 4:50. 4:51. Class started at five. Dr. Sam’s voice echoed in my head — yoga or surgery, Cara, and I’m not clearing you for another surgery — and I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel and called him a very creative string of names under my breath.

I’d rather have the surgery. I’d had three of them already. I knew how surgery worked. You went under, someone cut you open, they fixed the thing, you woke up in a paper gown with a morphine drip and a clear enemy: the healing tissue. You attacked rehab the way you attacked everything. You won.

Yoga was not something you could win.

4:53.

The studio was in a converted warehouse at the end of a block that also housed a coffee roaster and a vintage furniture store. Exposed brick, big windows, a wooden sign that said ANCHOR YOGA in hand-painted letters with a little lotus underneath. Through the glass I could see warm lighting and plants — so many plants — and people carrying rolled-up mats over their shoulders like pastel-colored bazookas.

They all looked like they’d been born flexible. Long limbs, lean muscles, the kind of bodies that folded in half without screaming. One woman walked in wearing leggings that cost more than my car payment and a crop top that showed off abs you could grate cheese on.

I looked down at myself. Old BU hockey shorts, the ones with the fraying hem. A hoodie I’d stolen from Rae three years ago that had a coffee stain on the chest shaped vaguely like Florida. Running shoes I’d grabbed because I didn’t own whatever special shoes yoga people wore.

They didn’t wear shoes. I knew that. I was stalling.

4:56.

Yoga or surgery.

“Fuck it.”

I got out of the car, grabbed the mat Dr. Sam’s office had lent me — purple, foam, smelled like a middle school gym — and limped across the parking lot.

My left knee announced its displeasure with every step, that deep, grinding ache that lived in the joint now like a tenant who’d stopped paying rent but couldn’t be evicted. Two years post-ACL reconstruction and the damn thing still swelled if I looked at it wrong. The meniscus they’d trimmed was growing back weird. The scar tissue was a roadmap of everything I’d lost.

But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about how I was about to walk into a room full of people who bent like pretzels and try to touch my toes without crying.

The door chimed when I opened it. The lobby was small and warm — exposed brick, a tea station in the corner with little ceramic cups, a corkboard covered in flyers for workshops and community events. It smelled like sandalwood and lemon and something green, like the plants were photosynthesizing aggressively.

Behind a small desk, a woman with dark curly hair and red lipstick looked up from a laptop and smiled like I’d just made her entire day.

“Hi! Welcome to Anchor. First time?”

“Yeah. I, uh — my physio sent me.” I held up the purple mat like it was a hall pass.

“Love that. I’m Lena. What’s your name?”

“Cara. Jensen.”

She typed something, then slid a clipboard toward me with a waiver on it. “Fill this out, shoes go in the cubbies, and the room is right through there.” She pointed to a set of double doors. “Mira’s teaching tonight. You’re in excellent hands.”

I scribbled through the waiver — yes, I understand yoga is a physical activity, no, I won’t sue if I fall over — and shoved my sneakers into a cubby next to someone’s immaculate white Birkenstocks. My socks had a hole in the left big toe. Perfect.

The studio itself was bigger than I expected. High ceilings, more exposed brick, a wall of windows on one side letting in the last gray light of the afternoon. The floor was wood, warm-toned and worn smooth. More plants — trailing from shelves, sitting in corners, hanging from macramé near the windows. Candles flickered on a low shelf at the front of the room. It looked like the living room of someone who had their life significantly more together than I did.

Which was everyone, probably.

About fifteen people were already on their mats, stretching or sitting quietly or lying on their backs staring at the ceiling with expressions of determined peace. I picked a spot in the back corner, unrolled Dr. Sam’s purple monstrosity, and sat down with all the grace of a baby giraffe on ice.

My knee popped when I crossed my legs. Loudly. The woman next to me — crop top, cheese-grater abs — glanced over. I gave her a tight smile that said please don’t talk to me and stared straight ahead.

That’s when I saw her.

She came through a side door near the front of the room, and every cliché I’d ever mocked in Rae’s romance novels landed on me at once. Time didn’t stop. The room didn’t go silent. But something shifted in my chest, some tectonic thing I didn’t have a name for, and I sat up straighter without deciding to.

She was shorter than me — most people were — maybe five-five, with a body that was all curves and quiet power. Strong arms, the kind you got from years of holding your own weight in positions that would make an engineer weep. A waist that flared into hips that flared into thighs that looked like they could crush a watermelon. Her hair was black, long, pulled into a braid that hung over one shoulder. Brown skin, warm-toned, and when she turned to adjust a candle, I caught the edge of a tattoo on her inner wrist. Small. A lotus, maybe.

She wore a fitted tank top — dark green, nothing fancy — and black leggings that fit her like a second skin. No shoes. Her toenails were painted a deep, matte red.

I noticed her toenails. Her toenails. What was wrong with me?

She turned to face the room and smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made you feel like you’d been cold your whole life and someone had just handed you a blanket.

“Good evening, everyone.” Her voice was low, warm, steady. Not the breathy whisper I’d expected from a yoga teacher. It sounded like someone who could talk you through a crisis or read you a bedtime story, and either one would work perfectly. “Welcome. If you’re new tonight, I’m Mira. I’m glad you’re here.”

Her eyes moved across the room. They found me in the back corner, and she held my gaze for exactly one second. Not long enough to be weird. Long enough to make me feel like I’d been specifically noticed.

“Let’s start in a comfortable seat. Close your eyes if that feels okay, or soften your gaze. Hands on your knees or in your lap.”

I did not close my eyes. I watched her settle onto her mat at the front of the room, cross-legged, spine straight, hands resting on her thighs. She breathed, and I swear the whole room breathed with her.

What had I gotten myself into?

The first twenty minutes were a masterclass in humiliation.

Everyone else flowed from pose to pose like water finding its level. I lurched. They folded forward and put their palms flat on the floor. I made it to mid-shin and my hamstrings screamed like someone had set them on fire. They twisted into shapes I was pretty sure required removing a few ribs. I twisted and got stuck.

Warrior II — which sounded cool and aggressive and like something I should be good at — turned out to be a form of slow torture. Front knee bent, back leg straight, arms extended. My left knee, the reconstructed one, immediately filed a formal grievance. The joint swelled with heat. My quad shook. I gritted my teeth and held it because that’s what you did — you held it, you didn’t quit, you pushed through, that’s what every coach I’d ever had told me —

“If anything doesn’t feel right in your body, modify.” Mira’s voice cut through the room like a cool hand on a fever. “Shorten your stance. Bend less deeply. Use a block. There is no prize for suffering.”

She was looking at me when she said it. Not obviously — she was scanning the room — but her gaze lingered on my shaking front knee, and I knew she could see exactly what was happening.

I shortened my stance. The pain dropped from a seven to a four. I hated that she was right.

She moved through the room as she taught, adjusting people with a touch here, a word there. She had a way of teaching that was nothing like I’d expected — no Sanskrit I couldn’t pronounce, no talk about chakras or energy or the universe. Just clean, specific instructions. Press through your heel. Stack your knee over your ankle. Breathe into the space between your ribs.

She reached my corner. I was in some pose that involved my arms over my head — which shouldn’t have been hard except everything was hard — and she stopped beside me.

“Can I offer a modification?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

She didn’t touch me. Not yet. She knelt beside my mat and said, “Widen your feet to hip distance. Yeah, like that. Now soften your knees just a little — you’re locking them, and that’s putting pressure on your left side.”

I adjusted. The pose got easier by half.

“Good.” She said it quietly, like it was just for me. “That’s already so much better. You’re listening — that’s the hardest part.”

Then she put her hand on my shoulder.

It wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t remotely inappropriate. It was a correction — she pressed down gently to drop my shoulder away from my ear, where I’d been clenching it like I was bracing for a hit. Three seconds of contact, maybe four. Her palm warm through my hoodie, her fingers precise and steady.

Something happened in my body that I did not authorize.

It was like a key turning in a lock I didn’t know existed. The tension in my shoulder released, and the release cascaded — down my spine, through my ribs, into my hips. I exhaled and it sounded embarrassingly close to a groan. My whole left side softened, and for one disorienting second, I felt what the pose was actually supposed to feel like.

Open. Grounded. Present.

Mira moved on. I stayed in the pose, breathing, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

The rest of class was a blur of poses I was terrible at, modifications I grudgingly accepted, and an increasing awareness of exactly where Mira was in the room at all times. I tracked her like I used to track the puck — peripheral vision locked on, always knowing her position relative to mine.

She adjusted other people too. Of course she did. That was her job. But I watched her hands on other people’s shoulders and backs and I felt something petty and irrational that I absolutely was not going to examine.

By the time we hit the floor for what she called “cool-down,” I was sweating through Rae’s hoodie and my knee was throbbing and I was more tired than I’d been after a full practice. My body felt like it had been taken apart and put back together slightly wrong, or maybe slightly right — I couldn’t tell yet.

“Find your way onto your back,” Mira said. “This is savasana. Corpse pose. Your only job is to be still.”

Corpse pose. Finally, something I was qualified for.

I lay on my back on the purple mat, arms at my sides, eyes closed. The room was warm and dim. Someone had turned off the overhead lights and the candles were doing their thing, casting soft shadows I could see through my eyelids.

Mira walked the room. I heard her footsteps, bare and quiet on the wood floor. She spoke softly, something about letting the practice settle into the body, about not needing to hold on to anything.

“Let your body be heavy,” she murmured. “Let the floor hold you. You don’t have to hold yourself up right now.”

I don’t know why that broke me.

Not broke me like crying — I didn’t cry, I don’t cry, not in public, not in front of strangers — but something cracked. Some wall I’d been bracing against for two years shifted, and behind it was this vast, terrifying emptiness that was actually exhaustion. I’d been holding myself up for so long I’d forgotten what it felt like to let something else take the weight.

I lay on the mat in a yoga studio that smelled like sandalwood and let the floor hold me, and for the first time in months — maybe years — my body was quiet.

Not painless. My knee still ached, my hamstrings were screaming, and I was going to be so sore tomorrow I’d need a forklift to get out of bed. But the noise in my head — the constant loop of you used to be strong, you used to matter, you used to be someone — went quiet. Just for a minute. Just for the length of one slow exhale.

Mira rang a small bell. “When you’re ready, begin to deepen your breath. Wiggle your fingers and toes.”

I did not want to get up. I wanted to lie on this mat in this warm, dim room forever while a woman with a voice like that told me I didn’t have to hold anything up.

But I got up. Because that’s what I did. I got up. Even when it sucked, even when everything hurt, even when getting up meant admitting I was the kind of person who needed a yoga class to function.

People were rolling up their mats, chatting softly, filing toward the lobby. I took my time, hoping to be the last one out so I could avoid small talk. I was stuffing my mat into its bag — badly, the thing kept unrolling — when a voice behind me said:

“You did well tonight.”

I turned. Mira was standing a few feet away, hands clasped in front of her, head tilted slightly. Up close, her eyes were dark brown, almost black, with these tiny flecks of gold near the pupils that you’d only see if you were standing too close, which I now was.

“I was terrible,” I said.

“You showed up. That’s not the same as terrible.”

“I couldn’t touch my toes. I couldn’t do a single pose right. My knee —”

“Your knee has been through a lot.” She said it simply, without pity. Like she was observing weather. “Dr. Sam mentioned you when he referred you. ACL reconstruction?”

“And meniscus trim. And some bonus cartilage damage because my body is an overachiever at falling apart.”

She smiled. Not the big, room-warming smile from the beginning of class. Something smaller, more private. Like I’d said something that amused her specifically.

“Bodies don’t fall apart,” she said. “They adapt. Yours adapted to protect you. Now we help it adapt to something new.” She paused. “Are you coming back?”

I should have said something cool. Something casual and noncommittal that preserved the tough exterior I’d carefully constructed to keep the entire world at a safe distance.

What I said was: “Probably not.”

She nodded, still with that small smile. Like she heard what I actually meant.

“Tuesday and Thursday at five, Saturday at nine. Door’s always open, Cara.”

She remembered my name. She’d met fifteen people tonight and she remembered my name. I was sure Lena had told her, that it was on the sign-in sheet, that this was standard customer service and meant nothing. I was sure of all that.

My stomach still flipped.

“Yeah. Maybe. We’ll see.”

I grabbed my mat bag and walked out before I could say anything else stupid. My knee protested every step. In the lobby, Lena waved goodbye with a cheerful “See you next time!” that assumed I was coming back, and I pushed through the door into the parking lot where the rain had started again.

I sat in my car. The clock read 6:18.

I’d survived.

My left knee was swollen and I was going to hurt tomorrow in places I didn’t know I had. My pride was bruised from being the worst person in the room by a significant margin. I smelled like someone else’s sandalwood candle, and my hoodie was soaked through with sweat.

But my hands had stopped shaking. That low-grade tremor I’d had for months — the one Dr. Sam said was anxiety, the one I said was too much coffee — was gone. My hands were steady on the steering wheel for the first time in weeks.

And I could still feel the ghost of her palm on my shoulder. That precise, warm pressure. The way my whole body had unlocked at the contact, like she’d found a switch I didn’t know I had.

You’re listening — that’s the hardest part.

I pulled out of the parking lot, turned toward home, and did not think about her eyes or her voice or her hands or the tattoo on her wrist or the way she said my name.

I thought about all of it.

Every single mile home.

Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.

Buy Every Inch of You

🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?

Props — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon

Cara comes home to find Mira has brought studio props to the bedroom. A bolster, two blocks, and a yoga strap — repurposed for things that would get her teaching certification revoked. Body worship with elevation. Praise kink in the teaching voice. And the strap marks Mira wants to wear to class the next morning.

Get the Bonus Chapter →