Page 67 of Pas de Don't
Fifteen minutes later, Marcus knocked on Heather’s door, and she opened it beaming, her face shining with exhilaration from a successful run-through. She looked as beautiful as always, in jeans and a black sweater that revealed her collarbone and both shoulders, and those gold tassel earrings she’d worn at Café Luxor.
“Holy crap, that was the best first run-through I’ve—” she started, but the look on his face must have stopped her. “What’s wrong? Did you hurt your Achilles? Oh God, did your mom have another fall?”
Marcus gestured down at his ankle. “I’m fine, and so is Mum.”
Heather nodded, relieved, but studied his face. “Then what’s going on? You’d better come in.”
For a moment Marcus said nothing, he just looked at her, taking in the care and concern that wrinkled her forehead. Then he breathed a short, decisive breath and stepped into the house. Heather followed him to the living room, his sense of dread growing with every step.
“I need to tell you something,” he said as she sat on the couch. Marcus ran a hand through his hair and told her about Ricky andKimiko and about his confrontation with Alice. As he spoke, he watched Heather’s face sink until she looked just as grim as he felt. When he finished, she sat in silence, biting her lip.
“Is Alice angry with me?”
“I think she’s mostly angry at me,” he sighed. “She’s my best friend. I know we said we wouldn’t tell anyone, but I should have trusted her.”
Heather was silent for a long moment, and he watched her think, his heart racing as though he’d just completed one of Alice’s deadly petit allegro combinations.
“We have to stop this,” she said finally. It was so quiet he could almost pretend he’d misheard her. Almost.
Heather sat with her elbows on her knees, that now-familiar determination on her heart-shaped face. He said nothing. Marcus had a feeling that if he spoke, anything he said would be drowned out by the sudden buzzing in his ears. He knew, when he decided to tell her about Ricky and Kimiko, that this might happen. He hated that he’d been right.
“I thought we were being so careful, but we’ve already slipped up without knowing it,” she said. When he’d arrived, she’d looked exhilarated; now, she sounded exhausted. “And I know we can trust Alice and her girlfriend, but what if someone else finds out? Someone less trustworthy? Or what if someone already knows and hasn’t said anything about it yet? It’s only a matter of time, right?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Or maybe we can just be more careful?”
Heather looked up at him, and he hated the hopelessness he saw in her face. “Marcus, we can’t. We can’t risk it. If we have to hide it from the people who know us best, it’s a good sign we shouldn’t be doing it. We worked so hard to be where we are. If we get caught, we’ll lose it all.”
“And if we stop, we’ll lose each other,” Marcus said, though he knew she was right. Heather looked away, then shook her head and sighed.
“I only see one way out of this. We can’t keep pretending like it won’t end in disaster otherwise. Let’s just stay away from each other and get through the next two weeks. Then I’ll go back to New York and...and we can both keep our jobs and our careers and our reputations. Which is what we should have done all along.”
“Okay,” he managed to say. After a long, miserable moment, Heather stood, her shoulders hunched protectively around her ears, and took a few steps away from him. Slowly, as if she wanted him to stop her. Marcus reached out and put his hand lightly on her arm, and she stilled.
Her shoulders slumped, and all the determination seemed to drain out of her. Heather pulled in a shuddering breath, then blinked, tears skittering down her cheeks. Marcus’s heart ached at the sight of it, and he wanted to pull her close and stroke her hair and feel her rib cage rise and fall against him until her breath steadied and the tears dried. He took a step forward, arms open, tentative. She stepped into them, and he encircled her shoulders and squeezed tight. Heather sniffled against his shirt, and he kissed the top of her head.
“I don’t want that,” he said into her hair.
“I don’t either,” she replied, wrapping her arms around him. A stupid spark of hope lit up somewhere under his sternum, only to fizzle and die with her next words. “But it’s what we have to do. You’re risking everything, too. Everything you worked for this whole year. Your whole life. Is this really worth throwing the rest of your career away?”
Marcus thought about that moment at the lookout, the flash of perfect clarity that sliced through him as he watched Heather’s ponytail flicker in the mountain breeze.
Yes, it’s worth it,he wanted to say.Because I’m falling in love with you, and I don’t want to stop.When he looked back on this night, when he was lying in bed alone and drunk and desperate for sleep, Marcus would wish he’d said it. Instead, he pulled back just far enough to gaze into her tearstained face, then leant forward todrop a light kiss onto her trembling lips. Heather kissed him back, tightening her arms around his waist as she did.
He broke away and whispered hopefully against her cheekbone. “Let me stay. One more night. And tomorrow we’ll move on. Okay?”
For a moment she said nothing, and he prepared for her to pull out of his arms and walk him out the door. But then Heather turned and brushed her lips against his.
“Okay,” she agreed.
Heather kissed him fiercely, sighing as his lips gave way to her tongue. If she only had tonight, iftheyonly had tonight, she was going to make it count. Marcus’s hands rested on her cheeks, cupping her face as he kissed her back with equal urgency and more than lust. She walked backward, toward the stair, and he clung to her, pulling her body hard against his even as they headed clumsily to the bedroom.
Heather willed herself to stay in this moment, to commit every detail of this night to memory so that tomorrow, when she woke and walked away from the man who’d brought her back to herself, she could say she hadn’t wasted a second. She would remember the way he ran his mouth hungrily down her neck when he pushed her against the doorframe, the way his silky curls wrapped around her fingers when she slid her hands into his hair, and the way desire rocketed through her as he scooped her up and deposited her gently on the bed.
A now-familiar need gathered in Heather’s muscles as she pulled him on top of her, want pulsing through her, her skin restless for his touch. She wanted to strip him down and press her body against his, wanted to wrap her entire self around him and hold him there. Imprint every inch of him onto her body, onto her memory, and keep it forever. But now that they were in bed, his breath seemed to change. His movements slowed, and he touched her carefully,as if he too were trying to stretch the minutes and seconds for as long as he could.
His hand slid under her sweater to caress her skin slowly, reverently, and Heather arched into his palm, urging him higher and moaning against his mouth when he cupped her breast and squeezed gently. Her body begged for more, but her heart ached with the need to make this last, to slow time and stay in this moment. Marcus sided with her heart, taking his time, brushing his fingers over her, caressing her through her bra, before he pulled her sweater over her head and lowered his mouth to her skin.
Feeling his cock harden against her, Heather slipped a hand into the waistband of his jeans and wrapped her fingers around it, stroking him with the same reverence and patience he showed her. Marcus groaned and stiffened further under her touch, and for a moment, his mouth stilled on her breast. His eyes dropped closed as she stroked him, his breath hot and thin. She watched him, taking in his clenched jaw and listening to his increasingly ragged breath as need throbbed, hot and insistent, between her legs.
