Kirsten slowly pushed herself up off the mat, balancing on her fingertips as her feet took small steps forward towards her hands, thrusting her butt up into the air.  She straightened her long, toned legs out, lowering her head between her arms.

“Deep breath in... and out.”

The studio filled with the sound of synchronized breathing.

Kirsten's arms trembled slightly, and she locked her elbows.  Downward Facing Dog was an easy pose, but Raúl Jamon's class was far more advanced than she was anticipating.  She hoped that Downward Facing Dog meant that they were wrapping up soon.

“Very good form, Joelle.”

Kirsten glanced over and stared daggers at the object of Raúl’s praise.  She couldn’t see the tall, black girl’s face, but she knew the smug, gap toothed smile that crossed the other girl’s face.  She seethed with quiet rage as she watched the gorgeous yoga instructor put his hands on the girls thighs, straightening her legs out, easing her toned butt up higher.

If looks could kill…

They did a few more cool down poses, and Kirsten forced herself to relax, pushing down the petty jealousy that had suddenly overtaken her, but as the class gathered their stuff and started making their way out the door, her eyes were drawn back to Raúl and Joelle, talking in the corner.  She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but she could hear Raúl’s dreamy accent, and Joelle’s flirty giggle.  

Slut.

She wasn’t that hot, Kirsten decided, narrowing in on the taller girl’s flaws.  She was in better shape than her, but she was too in shape.  Just like she was tall, but a little too tall, and she probably looked like an awkward giraffe in heels.  And she could probably drink water through a straw through that hole in between her front teeth.  Not to mention her left breast was a little bigger than her right.

Maybe she was too distracted convincing herself she was prettier than the girl that seemed to have captured the gorgeous instructor’s attention, or maybe she had subconsciously left it behind as an excuse to return, and maybe catch Raúl alone, but when she got home she realized she had left her water bottle behind.

She considered showering but instead only quickly touched up her makeup and straightened her blonde hair back into a tight pony tail before heading back, thinking she looked pretty damn good with the faint sheen of sweat she had going on, in her tight black yoga pants and lime green tank top.

The lights were out in the studio, and the sign said closed.  She cupped her hands around her face and peered for the glass, seeing the empty studio.  She knocked anyways and stood back, using the door’s reflection to strike a good pose.  She found a good balance between effortlessly casual and sexy as Raúl came out from the back office and strode up to the door.

“Hello, Kirsten.  What brings you back here?”

“Hello, Raúl.  I don’t mean to bother you, but I think I left my water bottle here after class.  It’s my favorite, and I take it everywhere.”

“I didn’t see it, but come in.”  He stood aside and let her enter, and she smiled.

“Thank you.”

There it was, sitting right in one the cubbies.  She regretted not putting it somewhere harder to find.

“Is this yours?”

She retrieved it with a nod.  “Yep, this is mine.  Forgetful me.”

A noise from the back caught her attention.  “What was that?” she asked, trying to look back through the cracked door.

“Oh, I was doing a private session…”

Another seething bout of jealousy roiled over the blonde.  She knew exactly who was back in Raúl’s private office, enjoying a little one on one session.

“If you’re not busy, you could join us.”

That offer, in his thick, sexy Dominican accent almost made her forget all about Joelle.

“I’m free,” she said, trying not to sound too eager.

“Let’s fix that, shall we?”  It was an odd choice of words, she thought, but she chalked it up to English probably being his second language.  He opened his office door and gestured for her to come inside.

The water bottle dropped from her hand as she stood in shock in the doorway.

She had expected Joelle, but nothing had quite prepared for her for the state she’d found her rival in.

The leggy, ebony beauty was still dressed in her tight grey yoga pants and pink sports bra, but everything else, whatever it was, was all new.  Joelle stared at her, her big brown eyes wide over the white plastic ball stretching her mouth open.  Thick brown leather straps held the ball in place, and the ball itself was hollow and dotted with holes through which her drool flowed freely down her chin and neck.  Even in her dark cheeks, her deep blush was evident over the straps digging into them.

The girl was seated in a lotus position, the backs of her feet resting high up on her thighs in an advanced pose that someone of their skill wouldn’t have been able to achieve normally, but a web of brown rope crisscrossing legs held her that way, the thin material of her tight pants doing nothing to protect her from the ropes digging deep into her muscular legs.  Her right arm extended straight up next to her face, bending at her elbow back behind her back, where her hand was no doubt clasping her left hand, which was bent behind her as well.  Judging by the network of ropes around her body and arms, Kirsten was sure her hands had to be bound clasped together.

“How are you feeling, Joelle?” Raúl asked the bound girl.

“Hnnph!” she responded incorrectly, a fresh wave of spittle rushing from her gag and spilling down, the wet patch growing on her sports bra.

“I don’t think she was expecting anyone to see her like this,” Raúl said to Kirsten.

The blonde was speechless.  Her mind struggled to come up with an explanation for what she’d just walked into, but it was so foreign that her brain simply gave up and she just stared, her mouth hanging open slightly.

“A little bit longer, and then we’ll try a new pose,” Raúl said, turning his attention back to the restrained Joelle.

She made another choked noise behind her gag and rocked slightly in her bondage.

“The only thing holding you back is your mind.  Your body wants to be free, but your brain places artificial limits on it.  So to truly be free, you have to surrender control.”

The blonde turned to Raúl for the first time since seeing Joelle.  She could barely take her eyes off the other girl.  “What?”

“It is best if I show you.  Otherwise, you’ll never truly reach your potential.”

Raúl was already getting more of the coarse brown rope.  Somewhere, deep in her brain, alarm bells were going off.  It was nuts.  It had to be.  Whatever was going on here was something she should want no part in, but as Raúl approached her again, the rope dangling from his strong arms, talking to her in that voice, it made a sort of bizarre sense to her.

“You were having trouble with the Bhujapidasana pose,” he said, placing his big, strong hand on her shoulder.  He turned her easily and guided her down to the floor.

Trouble was an understatement.  She’d tried it once, quickly figuring it impossible for her.  Her eyes focused on Joelle, who was deeply concentrating on her breathing as she was forced to endure the pose, as Raúl manipulated her body.  The blonde was putty in his hands as he bent her forward, extending her arms out and folding her knees up over her arms and crossing her ankles in front of her.  And then came the rope.  She took her eyes of Joelle as she watched, entranced as he skillfully wound the rope around her ankles and up her legs, his nimble fingers artfully tying little knots that looked dainty, but she knew would be oh so strong.

“Why the gag?” she asked, her attention drawn back to Joelle, watching the river of drool flowing down her long, smooth neck, soaking her pink bra.

“Because at a certain point, you’re going to want to say something stupid like ‘no,’ like ‘you can’t do this.’  That’s your brain talking, those artificial limits, and your body wants to listen.  So we take that away.  Your mouth is for breathing.  It needs to be your body’s ally, not its enemy,” he answered as he bound her upper arms inside her knees.  

He got up and crossed the room, and for a second, she was free, tugging experimentally on her restraints.  They held strong, keeping her body in a position that wasn’t wholly uncomfortable.  But, seated on her butt as she was, that wasn’t the hard part of the pose.  He returned carrying a long, smooth board with several holes in two places about a foot and a half apart.  She knew immediately what they were for, and when he held up the board, she spread her fingers and placed her palms flat against the oiled wood.  He threaded more rope through the holes and bound her fingers and hands flush against the smooth surface.  He then picked her up as though she weighed nothing and set her up, balancing on her hands.

She’d been able to hold the Bhujapidasana pose for less than a second when she’d tried, but now, with the ropes giving her no choice but to maintain the position, she held herself up.

“I- I’m doing it!”

“Yes.  Remember to breath.”

She nodded and started taking deep breaths.  In through the nose, out through the mouth.

Joelle made a distressed grunt through her gag.

“I haven’t forgotten about you,” Raúl said, returning to the black girl.  

He freed her from her lotus position, never fully untying her as he moved her into another position.  Kirsten’s arms started to tremble from the strain of holding herself up.  She couldn’t hold herself up any longer, yet she couldn’t move from the position.

“Please, Raúl, I can’t anymore.”  Her breath was coming in shorter, panicky gasps.

He came back over to her, another hollow ball gag hanging by its leather strap from his fist.  “You can,” was all he said as he forced the gag into her mouth, tying it tightly behind her head.  She started drooling immediately, thick rivers of her saliva running through the holes down her chin.  “Breathe,” he reminded her before going back to Joelle, and she did just that, in through her nose, out through her mouth.

With no choice, and unable to voice her doubts anymore, she maintained the pose until her arms were numb.  Raúl eventually repositioned her, again and again, never fully freeing her.  He posed his students and bound them, again and again, contorting their young, nubile bodies into positions they never would have been able to attain or hold on their own.

“Very good, girls,” he complimented them.  They’d lost all track of time, and they could have been in the back of his studio for hours, or days.  They looked up at him hopefully, this sudden praise breaking the trances they had slipped into, and they were ready for release.  “One last pose,” he told them.

Kirsten watched as he started untying Joelle first, and then began folding her up, pressing her toned legs up to her chest and forcing her into a tight ball before retying her as tightly as ever.  The yoga instructor removed her gag, and Joelle could only work her aching jaw as he got a water bottle, and put it to her lips, gently easing it back and allowing her to drink.  A wave of thirst washed over Kirsten as Joelle gulped at the water.  They’d both lost a lot of water via sweat, and even more drooled out through their forced open mouths during their rigorous session.  Raúl let her drink almost the entire bottle.  She gasped and opened her mouth to thank him when he started stuffing a cloth into her mouth.  Her big, brown doe eyes widened and she tried to fend off the invading cloth with her tongue and shake her head around, but he kept working it in.

“Mmmmph!” she cried in a panic.

“Shhhhhh.  Breathe through your nose, Joelle.  I need you to be very quiet.”

Kirsten started to panic as well, fighting for the first time really against her bonds and trying to protest through her own gag.  “Hnnff!  Aauphh!”

“Calm down,” he said, slowly, using his instructor voice.  Despite herself, Kirsten found herself settling down, sinking back into that trance-like state she’d been in.  “You girls have a long journey ahead of you, it’s important to remember your training and focus.”  Kirsten did just that, focusing on her breathing, in through her nose, out through her mouth, as Raúl finished robbing Joelle of the ability to breathe through her mouth, fully stopping up the girls mouth with cloth, the white plug bulging out of her stretched lips contrasting with her dark skin.  “Just focus on your breathing,” he reminded her, and Joelle took deep breaths through her nose as he took another long, thick white cloth, folded it into a wide band, and tied it tightly over her mouth.  He took another, even wider, and tied this one highly over her mouth and nose.

Raúl picked up Kirsten’s water bottle.  It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had left it at the yoga studio, and come back to retrieve it, stumbling onto, well, whatever this was.  A part of her brain, deep down, screamed at her that this was very, very wrong, but Raúl’s hands on her body, untying her but holding her every bit the prisoner the ropes had, quelled that distressed voice.  She calmly allowed herself to be folded up and retied just like Joelle had, and when he removed her ballgag, she stretched her jaw and opened thirstily for him to put her water bottle to her lips.  It was warm, but she didn’t care, sucking it down until she’d drained it.

She knew what was coming next, but she didn’t fight it, maybe because some part of her still wanted to outshine Joelle in his eyes, or maybe just because she knew it would be useless to fight it as he started stuffing her mouth with cloth.  Her eyes studied his face while he gagged her.  He was calm, impassive.  He spoke to her, but she only registered the soothing yet commanding tone, and not the actual words.  She concentrated on breathing through her nose as her mouth was completely stuffed and a thick cloth was tied over her mouth and then her nose.  It was all she could do; just keep breathing.

It was dark out when Raúl left his studio a half an hour later, a full duffel bag under each arm.  As he was locking up, a young woman approached him.  “You teach yoga here?”

He smiled at her.  She was young, in her early twenties, a pretty brunette with short hair and a trim body.  “I do,” he said.  “Do you have any interest in learning?”

She was immediately drawn in by his accent and smile.  “I do.  I’m not very flexible though.”

“No worries, I can show you how to be flexible.  No classes tomorrow; I have business I need to take care of,” he patted the duffel bags under his arms, “but I’ll have another class for beginners on Wednesday morning.  You should come by.”

“I’ll see you then,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to it.”  He waved to her and took his cargo to his car.  Business was very good.