Page 9 of Claiming Genevieve

“Get over yourself,” she flings back, but it doesn’t have the same strength that her previous words did. She grabs her coffee, and I half expect her to throw it at me, but she must need the caffeine too badly. Instead, she strides away, leaving me there once again.

It’s two more days before I return to the coffee shop—days that are packed with meetings and long hours with my father in his office before he gets too tired to continue—and I feel like a man trying to kick a drug habit. Somewhere in the back of my head, I have the presence of mind to be concerned, at least, because no woman I’ve ever met in my life has had this effect on me before. I barely know her—I danced with her once and have chatted with her while grabbing coffee twice—and yet she’s completely overtaken me. She feels like an obsession, like just a moment of speaking with her is a drug that I can’t go without, and I’m dimly aware that that’s a problem. But more than anything, I just want to see her again.

When I finally manage to get a morning to myself and head back downtown to the coffee shop, she’s nowhere to be seen. I get my usual black drip coffee and retreat to an armchair near the window with a mystery novel that I tell myself I’m reading. In reality, I keep scanning the same paragraph over and over while looking at the door every few minutes to see if Genevieve has walked in.

She doesn’t make an appearance. I finally give up and head home sometime in the late afternoon, bracing myself for a reprimand from my father and questions about where I’ve been all day. I’m well aware that he doesn’t think I’m up for the responsibilities that I’m about to inherit—that I need to be whipped into shape—and that same small, nagging voice in the back of my head tells me that I’m proving him right.

I tell myself on the way home that I won’t try to find her again. I won’t go back to the coffee shop, won’t contact Vincent, won’t think of some other way to see her. I’ll stop thinking about her when I jerk off morning and night. Better yet, I’ll go out tomorrow night, and I’ll find another woman to blow off some steam with. I tell myself that I just need a good fuck, and I’ll remember that there are plenty of other fish in the sea that is New York City.

Instead, I find myself sitting on the edge of my bed in the morning, running one hand through my damp hair as I look up where the ballet rehearses.

It’s not difficult to find out. I quickly get dressed, heading downstairs and calling an Uber to avoid any unnecessary questions that my father might feel inclined to ask the driver later. Fortunately, my father is nowhere to be seen—probably already in the dining room having breakfast, expecting me. I feel a pang of guilt, but I remember all the mornings I sat at that table as a child, hoping my father would join my mother and me for breakfast—all the mornings later on that I sat there alone or with a nanny. Now that he needs me, he’s around. Now that he has something that he expects of me, he wants to spend time with me.

But I have something I want, too, and it’s clear that it’s going to take more than just willpower to get her out of my head.

The driver drops me off at the Rose Building, where a quick Google search informed me that the ballet rehearses. I’m unsurewhereexactly they might be rehearsing today, of course—on a stage or in the private rooms, but when I walk into the building I follow the sounds of an orchestra filtering dimly through the halls until I walk through a pair of double doors and into a huge, cavernous theatre space.

The sight of Genevieve, in a pale pink leotard and tights on the stage, stops me in my tracks. I’ll admit I’ve never gone to a ballet before —never seen a ballerina on stage—and the sight is so beautiful that for a moment, I can’t tear my eyes away from her.

She’s poised on the toes of one foot, her other leg stretched behind her, her back arched in a perfect ‘C’ shape that makes me ache to run my hand over that curve. Her arms are held gracefully above her head, her head tilted back, and for a long moment, I just stand there, staring.

And then she moves. She flows like water across the stage as the music swells, turning, spinning, rising up on both feet as she crosses the stage with an unearthly grace. She turns, pausing as her leg arches and bends behind her again, and then she’s darting forward, leaping into the air—as a man who is all lean muscle and that same flowing grace catches her and holds her against his chest.

Jealousy, hot and sharp, burns through me, pricking like a thousand fiery darts as I stare at the two of them. I know I don’t have any right to be jealous, that Genevieve doesn’t belong to me, but the sight of his hands on her makes my jaw clench and my entire body go rigid.

His hand touches the small of her back, and I want to break his fucking fingers.

What the hell is wrong with me?I sink into one of the theater seats, watching as the man lifts her over his head, bringing her down again as Genevieve spins away from him—and then a tall, thin, severe-looking woman strides onto the stage, clapping her hands and calling out something in what sounds like French, Russian, and then finally English.

“Enough! You are lifting a princess, not hoisting a cow,” she reprimands the male dancer, and I feel an odd sense of satisfaction, though his performance looked perfectly fine to me. Better than fine. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever laid eyes on—all of the dance—and that jealousy flickers through me again.

I’ve never been someone who had a great appreciation for art or wanted to collect it. The estate in Ireland where I’ve lived for the last fourteen years is full of old and extremely valuable art, and I’ve always had a distant sort of appreciation for it—that I know it’s all lovely, but don’t know much about it.

Genevieve makes me feel differently. Just watching her is like seeing an exquisite piece of art that I don’t understand at all, but desperately want to. I want to seek out every part of her—to run my fingers over her and learn her lines and her colors, to discover every secret that she’s hiding beneath the surface.

The thought brings me up short. The way I’m thinking about her—that’s not how someone thinks about a fling, or a distraction. I sound obsessed. The best thing I could do for myself and my future is to get up and leave right now and force myself to not seek her out again.

I look up, and she’s looking right at me.

Her dark eyes are fixed on me, a startled expression on her face. Her lips press together, and a jolt of desire shoots through me, my body tightening as heat runs down my spine. And then the severe-looking woman on the stage calls out, clapping her hands, and Genevieve turns away before I can see what that startled expression changes into.

I can guess, though. I don’t imagine she’s overly thrilled that I’m here. I feel a little insane for showing up at all.

Running one hand through my hair, I get up and stride down the carpeted theatre aisle, back out into the hall. I stand there for maybe fifteen minutes, arguing with myself internally about whether to go home or whether to wait for her, when the theatre doors burst open and the object of my obsession strides toward me.

“Mr. Gallagher.” Her voice is icy. “What are you doing here?”

“I told you to call me Rowan,” I return, and her eyes narrow.

“You don’t give me orders.”

“I’d enjoy hearing you call me ‘Mr. Gallagher’ much more if I were, I think.”

Her cheeks flush instantly—enough for me to know that the desire I feel isn’t entirely one-sided. I thought I caught a glimpse of it at the coffee shop a few days ago, and that glimpse was enough to keep me pursuing her. Now, with another small taste of it, I find it impossible to walk away again.

“You still haven’t answered my question.” She pauses, as if considering how much ground to give. “Rowan.”

Bloody Christ,my name sounds good on her tongue.My cock twitches against the front of my jeans, blood shooting straight downward at the sound of her saying my name so simply. I can only imagine how fucking hard I’d be if she whispered it. If she moaned it. If she screamed it aloud.

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