Page 55 of Pas de Don't
“Uh-huh,” Alice said sceptically, and he walked over to his bag and rummaged for his second water bottle, glad for the excuse to avoid her eyes. “Hey, what are you doing this weekend? Want to come over for dinner with me and Will?”
Marcus took his time swallowing, trying to think of a plausible lie. “I’m going to check on Mum. She put on a brave face last weekend, but I think she was pretty shaken up. And Davo won’t let go of this selling the house thing, so I need to be there in case he brings it up with her.”
Alice shrugged. “Okay, well, that’s not your whole weekend, right? You should come hang out with us. Will’s been getting really into that British baking show. He won’t stop making cakes, and I can’t eat them all myself.”
“I can’t, I’m sorry. Next weekend, maybe. And actually”—he inwardly winced, hating that he followed a lie with a request for a favour—“I was wondering if I could borrow your car. Just so I can get out to Mum’s a bit more easily. Weekend buses are so slow.”
Alice shrugged again, but this time it looked more like she was shooing a fly from her shoulder.
“Yeah, fine, whatever you need,” she said, and his stomach sank at her annoyed, disappointed tone. “I’ll give you the keys on Friday, okay?”
“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it. I appreciate everything you do for me.”
“Uh-huh,” she said again, stooping to retrieve her bag. As she headed for the studio door, he thought he heard her grumble something that sounded a lot like “You better.”
As a younger dancer, Heather had never understood the appeal of a ballet likeGiselle. The heroine went mad and died at the end of act one, then spent all of act two trying to save the man who broke her heart and got her killed. And then he got to go off and marry his duchess, and she had to spend eternity as a woodland ghost? It didn’t seem fair.
Not that she’d been sorry to be cast in the role last year. It was an iconic ballet role, one little girls dreamed about dancing, and she’d loved the challenge of finding something modern and relatable in an eighteenth century German peasant teenager that would allow her to understand the character a little better. When she’d been promoted and proposed to on a night when she performed the role, it was harder to roll her eyes at the ballet.
Now, of course, she understood Giselle a littletoowell. A foolish woman who thought she was living in a fairy tale, who threw herself into the arms of a man who wasn’t who he said he was? A silly girl who thought she was about to get everything she’d ever wanted, who instead went a little mad when she learned the awful truth? It all cut a little close to home.
If Heather never had to dance another step ofGisellefor the rest of her life, she’d die happy. It was Thursday afternoon, and she’d spent the last hour running through a particularly challenging scene in the second act in which Giselle was raised from her grave by Myrtha, the queen of the wilis, and initiated into the ghostly sisterhood. The choreography called for lots of long, slow, controlled extensions, and there were only so many times she could lift her foot up to her ear before sheactuallywanted to murder a man in the woods.
“Lovely, Heather, lovely,” Peter called from the front of the studio. “Really stretch that last developpé as long as you can.” His voicewas a little more clipped, a little less friendly, than usual. Opening night was just over a week away, and they only had one more day of rehearsals in the studios before they moved to the Opera House and began rehearsing on the stage. Understandably, he was a little tense.
Still, Peter gave Heather an encouraging smile as she finished the section and the accompanist stopped playing. That was one thing she appreciated about Peter: he didn’t take his feelings out on his dancers. She stood in the middle of the studio with her hands on her hips, panting. Thankfully he took pity on her.
“That’s looking really good. You can take a break if you want, and come back in”—he glanced at the clock over the studio door—“fifteen minutes?”
Heather nodded gratefully, grabbed her trash-bag pants, and made for the door as he turned to Anabelle, the dancer who was playing Myrtha. A coffee would help, and then she was going to lie on the floor of the dancers’ lounge with her feet up on a couch. Once she had her flat white in hand, she headed back down the hallway and let herself into the lounge.
Marcus sat up on one of the couches as she entered, and she checked to make sure the lounge was otherwise empty. A second ago she’d been exhausted. Now her stomach did giddy backflips at the sight of him.
“Hi,” Heather whispered, closing the door behind her quietly and walking over to him. Instead of tights, he was back in the sweatpants he wore for physical therapy—sweatpants he’d pulled on this morning, when they’d woken up together in her bed. His bare feet were propped on a pillow, revealing the long silver-pink scar at the back of his ankle. She’d seen it up close this morning, when she’d returned to bed with a to-go coffee in each hand. He’d let her run her hand over it gently, feeling the slightly raised skin under her fingertips as he explained why his first surgery had failed.
“Hi,” Marcus replied. His curls were slightly mussed from lying down, and he gave her a sleepy smile as she approached. He yawned wide.
“Boring you already, am I?”
He rolled his eyes, then smiled at her. “I was napping. Justin’s class nearly killed me this morning, and I had a late night last night.”
Heather’s eyes widened in warning. Despite glancing over her shoulder, she bit her lip to keep her smile from becoming a grin. Last night had been...Well, she hadn’t known she was capable of coming so hard, or so many times.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said evenly. She took a sip of her coffee. “I hope you get some rest tonight.” He wouldn’t. She’d make sure of it.
“Oh, me too.” He yawned again and gave her the tiniest of winks.
She wanted to leap over the back of the couch and kiss him. They’d spent four of the last five nights together, and she must have kissed him hundreds of times in the last few days, but it was always the same: the touch of his lips to hers, the way he ran his hand up her neck to cup her cheek, felt both electric and deeply soothing. She wondered how many kisses it would take for that feeling to wear off.
Instead of kissing him, however, Heather took another sip of coffee and offered him a polite smile before walking around to the couch opposite his and flopping onto the floor. She groaned as she put her feet on the couch, feeling the swelling drain out of her toes and ankles as blood flowed easily down her legs. She could feel Marcus’s eyes on her, but she kept hers on the ceiling.
“Does that feel good?” he asked, his voice neutral, and she bit her lip again. He’d asked the same question in a very different tone last night, when he’d teased and tasted her neck, her collarbone, her shoulder, flicking his tongue over her skin for what felt like an hour until she was breathless and writhing, desperate for him to take off her panties and touch her.
“Yes,” she said, just as neutrally.Yes, she’d moaned, when he’d finally lowered his mouth to her clit and slid a finger inside her, stroking her until she came so hard she might have blacked out.
Her feet felt cooler and less swollen, but her cheeks were hot with the memory, and she grew wet remembering the feeling of his tongue swirling around her swollen, throbbing clit. This wasn’t technically a violation of Rule #2, but it sure felt like one. Heather took a few deep breaths, trying to settle her heart rate.
She sat up and faced him. He still lay on the couch, watching her, and she could tell from the look on his face that he was thinking about last night, too. Or perhaps looking forward to tonight.Only a few more hours, she thought. Then they could be together again. But until then, they had to keep it professional.
