Page 47 of Barre Fight
Ivy’s mouth met his, fierce and determined, like everything else about her. This was no graze, no soft crush of lips. She kissed like she argued, like they were still disputing who deserved the credit for that review and she’d found a new line of argument. She brought both palms to his chest and dug her fingertips into his T-shirt, pulling him closer with both hands until his body was pressed hard against hers.
Justin heard a rough, needy sound and realized it had escaped from the back of his throat.
A second later, when he slid his hand into Ivy’s soft, sleep-tousled hair, she answered him with a moan of her own. The sound turned his muscles to fire, and he brought his other hand to her hip, digging his fingers into the flesh beneath her leggings and pulling her still tighter against him. Her small, soft body arched into his, warm and giving, but somehow taut with what felt like barely restrained desire. She wanted him. After all his doubts last night, after all the wondering he’d allowed himself to do, the relief was enormous.She wanted him. She pressed against him as their mouths clashed, and he knew she could feel him getting hard against her stomach.
She kissed him, her tongue slipping between his lips without hesitation, and he met her there, tasting her in his mouth and groaning again. She released his shirt and slid both hands up over his chest, over his shoulders, and then her fingers were in his hair, and he didn’t even recognize the sound he made when the nails of one hand scraped gently against his scalp. Sparks scattered down his neck, and his fingers tightened against her hip as he plunged his tongue deeper into her mouth, hoping she’d do it again. When she did, he broke the kiss and growled a curse into her neck.
Ivy gasped as he kissed and nipped at the smooth skin there, and he felt her muscles shift beneath his tongue as she leaned her head away, giving him more access to her neck, her throat, the triangle of muscle above her collarbone. She was clutching at his hair, her breath ragged and thin, and Justin suddenly knew exactly how she’d grip his hair if he got on his knees and pulled those leggings down her thighs, what she’d sound like if he peeled her panties off and tasted her.
No, when.Whenhe tasted her.
Ivy pulled her hands out of his hair, and a second later the fingertips that had scraped along his scalp were under his shirt, ten fiery points racing across his skin, over his stomach. They danced over his ribcage and up his chest, raked through the hair on his pecs. Boldly, as if she knew he’d love it, she swiped her thumbs across his nipples, and his cocked jumped against her stomach.
“Fuck, Ivy,” he hissed, and she did it again. He wanted to pick her up and sit her properly on the desk, so he could wrap her thighs around his waist. He straightened, grabbing the hem of his shirt, ready to shed it so she could run her hands over as much of his chest as she wanted, as he needed. Then someone knocked on the door.
Ivy whipped her hands away from his chest as if his skinhad burned her, and Justin whirled around as the knocking continued.
“Who is it?” he called, thinking that unless Baryshnikov himself was on his doorstep, he didn’t give a shit what they wanted. Not when Ivy was right here, her lips swollen from kissing him and her nipples hard and visible through her pajama top.
“It’s Alice,” came the voice through the door. “Did you see the review?”
Justin gritted his teeth and groaned. He turned back to look at Ivy, who was staring at the door as though she expected Alice to come barging just like she’d done herself moments earlier. But the front door was locked. The adjoining door, on the other hand, he’d left unlocked before he’d gone to bed last night. It had felt foolish, especially after the way Ivy had bolted away from him at the stage door. He knew she wouldn’t use it, but he did it anyway. Just in case. And now she was in his room, her eyes panicked even as her chest rose and fell in sharp pants that told him that kiss had been as intoxicating for her as it had been for him.
“Stay here, I’ll get rid of her,” he said, at the same moment she said, “I should go.”
They stared at each other for a breathless moment, and Justin watched as a warm pink flush crept over Ivy’s cheeks. It looked like embarrassment, like regret. Like what they’d been doing was a mistake, and she was relieved Alice had interrupted it.
“Oi, let me in!”
Ivy stood and slipped out from between him and the desk, and Justin wanted to roar in frustration. Whatever they’d just started was something he very much wanted to finish. Judging by the way she’d been kissing him mere seconds ago, he’d been certain she felt the same, but now he wasn’t sure. Before shecould disappear through the adjoining door, he grabbed her hand.
“I’ll get rid of her, and then we’ll talk, okay? Don’t go anywhere.” Maybe she didn’t want to finish what they’d started, but they at least needed to discuss it.
Ivy didn’t say anything. Alice hammered on the door again.
“One second!” Justin yelled, and it came out more strangled than he’d intended. Ivy still hadn’t spoken. “Just give me a few minutes. Please, Kurt?”
He heard her tiny intake of breath.
“Okay,” she agreed in a whisper. She darted her eyes toward the door, then reached out and straightened his shirt. It was an oddly intimate movement that mostly concealed the fact that mere minutes ago she’d had her hands underneath it, her palms mapping his obliques, and he’d been ready to tear the fabric off his body like it had done him some unforgivable harm.
Ivy darted back into her room and closed the door quietly behind her, and to Justin’s relief, he didn’t hear the lock turn. He allowed himself a small smile, then checked to make sure the front of his track pants wouldn’t instantly give him away when he opened the door. A moment later, Alice burst into the room, a copy of the paper around in her hands.
“They love us!” she cried, thrusting the newspaper at him. “They love us, they adore us, they want to marry us and have our ballet babies.”
She launched into a little jig, her face split by a huge, triumphant grin. The dance was impressively graceless given what they both did for a living, and Justin smiled at her, knowing Ivy would be able to hear Alice’s words through the door. He glanced down at the paper and saw the headline—“From down under, a long-awaited ballet wonder”—above a photo of him and Alice. He hadn’t seen the photo when Ivy had handed him her phone. The photographer had caught them inone of his favorite moments, a long stretch of simplicity and stillness in the middle of the ballet that they both used to catch their breath. They stood back to back, clasping each other’s hands, their heads tilted back so that their crowns touched. Alice extended her upstage foot in front of her in a tendu, and he did the same with his downstage foot.
He let out a shaky breath through his smile. There it was on the front page of the Arts section of theNew York Times. His freakish foot.
“This is… pretty surreal,” he said to Alice, who had stopped flinging her feet in the air and now had her hands on her knees as she thrust her chest out and wiggled her butt.
“It’s pretty amazing is what it is!” she said, the words coming out jerky because of how she was moving her torso.
“Are you trying to twerk? I don’t think that’s how it’s done.”
“Don’t care,” Alice grinned, wiggling faster.
He laughed and shook his head. “Stop, you’re gonna pull something.”
