Page 164 of Facing Off
There’s a prolonged moment of silence.
“Did you hear me?” she wonders.
No. I didn’t.
My mind has wiped out, and there’s no hope of ever resuscitating me.
“Adrian,” she chides.
One of the best puck-handlers in the world, able to bank the puck off the back of the net after an end-to-end rush, and it takes me three tries to get the zipper down.
I barely hear the crinkling sound above the pounding of my thundering heart. I’m losing my mind.
And then I swallow my tongue.
Because she moves away and starts peeling velvet off her skin. Underneath it are lacy scraps and dainty, criss-crossing straps barely covering anything.
A coarse, tortured noise tears out of my chest.
Sonya turns around.
I whimper out a broken groan.
“I’m going to dance for you,” she tells me.
64
SONYA
Adrian’s palming his length,the whites of his knuckles popping out against the thickening bulge. “Sonya,” he says my name as I move to the center of the studio. “You’re going to kill me, baby.”
How he looks—the sheer longing, desperation, and pure suffering on his expression—is howIfeel. My arms shake as I lift them into position.
Two years ago.
The only person I think about is you.
Ask me who I love.
All the lights are on, there’s no music, and it’s us alone, finally together. All I want to do is run, throw myself against him, tackle him and never let go.
But first…
First, he has to see what he does to me. Ineedhim to know, and I don’t know a better way to do this. Words, I’ll trip over and choke on them. But dance? It’s a way to say what I can’t, this thorny, slivered window into my guarded soul.
My first turn is fully rotated, my feet pointed. I shiveras air glides across all my revealed skin. There are goosebumps everywhere and a thick pulse between my legs. This lingerie covers nothing.
Closing my eyes, I hold my form in arabesque. One leg lifts behind me. I’m not smiling like I normally do on stage. There’s nothing fake about this, no mask I’m wearing. Nowhere to hide as an implosion gathers power inside me, growing, reshaping?—
The only person I think about is you.
Ask me who I love.
The kind of ballet I’m used to is usually slowly built. Little moves lead into slightly bigger moves and so on until at the end, you explode into leaps.
Ask me who I love.
Unrestrained energy whips through me as I breathlessly, full throttle, go straight into my fouetté turns. Three of them. Five. Ten.
