Page 19 of Once Upon a Dream
She hadn’t gotten to this point in her ballet studies to let her posture betray her for anything, and so she knew she remained perfectly composed as she turned to face him. In the indoor light, she could see him so much better than last night, and the effect it had on her was…disturbing. He had the kind of gold-infused skin that hinted at Latinx heritage, thick black hair trimmed short, military-style. His eyes were a dark green framed by thick, black lashes, framed by eyebrows that seemed permanently fixed in a suspicious furrow. His jaw was squared and dusted with dark stubble, his cheekbones and forehead were high, his nose the only imperfection in an otherwise perfect face. A crook at the bridge, like it had been broken.
But for some reason that twisted Tamsin up even more. Cal Dugan seemed like the kind of man who would take a punch to the nose and keep fighting, like the kind of man who would refuse to see a doctor about it. Like he’d drink half a bottle of whiskey, grab a mirror, and reset the broken nose himself. So different than the meticulously groomed ballerinos she danced with. So different even than the sleek suits that frequented Persepolis. This was a man who worked and fought with his hands.
And she wanted those hands on her.
“You didn’t tell my father about last night,” she said, skipping past his question and any of the other normal greetings. “Why?”
“You,” he said simply. “I need you to tell me that you’re going to be okay if I tell him, and you haven’t yet.”
And she wasn’t going to. There was a difference between taking her father’s blows and lying about them, and the closer to freedom she got, the clearer that line became. But still, that Cal cared, even as a casual stranger, about what happened to her felt foreign, exotic and enticing and good.
Cal studied her for a minute, then took her arm and led her without asking to a chair in the back. She expected him to offer the chair to her, but instead he sat and pulled her into his lap. Within an instant, she was enfolded in muscle and warmth and a heady masculine scent, wood smoke and skin.
“What are you doing?” she asked breathlessly.
“Enough people here know what I do for a living. It’s going to raise questions if I’m here interrogating you, and neither of us are ready for that. We’ll blend in better this way.”
And they did blend in this way, just another couple getting ready for the show, anonymous in their pose of affection. But the upshot was that Tamsin couldn’t restrain her body’s reaction to Cal like this, not with so much warm, hard body pressed against hers.
The lights fell and the couple took the stage to applause, the Dom fastening his submissive wife to a St. Andrew’s cross. Which was when Cal leaned forward and whispered in Tamsin’s ear. “Now, what am I going to do with you?”
He meant about telling her father. She knew that, yet it was hard to remember with his lips at her ear and his warmth at her back. Hard to remember he didn’t mean the kinds of dangerous, dark things she wanted him to mean.
“Whatever you like,” she said, meaning that he should do his job or not—she didn’t have any expectation of changing his mind. But the moment the words left her mouth, she knew they sounded much more breathless and eager than she intended.
“Is that so?” he murmured. A couple walking past glanced down at them, and Cal stroked a warm hand on the outside of her thigh to maintain the illusion that they were just a couple snuggling up for the show. She was only in a leotard, and it was bare skin he was touching, sending goose bumps rippling everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
She was hardly able to stand it, the feeling of that calloused hand so possessive on her skin, the solid wall of his chest big enough that she could curl against it. Never had she felt like this, never had she imagined a man could be anything stronger or harder than the ones she’d already met. But those men barely qualified for the label of man, not after meeting Cal, who seemed like he’d already lived three lifetimes in the time it took most people to live half of one.
“You used to be a cop or something?” she asked. It was out of nowhere in terms of their conversation, but not of her thoughts—she had to know what made a man like him. What scars and horrors added up to the hulking mass of raw danger he was now.
“Soldier,” he corrected, still stroking her leg. “Iraq and Afghanistan. Left a few years ago.”
Suddenly she wanted more. More contact, more of his face and his voice. She twisted in his arms and he allowed her, watching her with that same expression of aloof suspicion that he watched everything with. She turned so that she was straddling him and facing him, her pointe shoes tucked delicately under her folded legs, her center resting directly against—oh.
He was hard.
He watched her face as she realized t
his, as her lips parted and her face flushed.
“Go on,” he said, and there was a hint of lazy admiration in his voice. “Sit on it.”
She hesitated. If she went any further, she was pushing this conversation past the casual—or whatever passed for casual in their situation—and into the territory of the sexual. She’d be admitting she wanted him. She’d be acknowledging that he wanted her.
Suddenly, there was nothing she wanted more than just that, to push them into something glittering and sweaty and raw. She sat on it—on him—feeling the impossibly thick, impossibly long ridge of him flush against her center. Through the thin fabric of her leotard, she could feel every seam of his jeans, the line of his zipper, the exact width and heft of his penis. There was a part of her—a big part—that wanted to rub against it like she’d rubbed against Hell’s riding crop last night. To grind down until she worked off some of this tension that he knotted inside her.
He seemed to read her mind. “Go ahead, princess. Make yourself feel good.”
“It seems wrong,” she said, even as she started swiveling her hips against him.
“This is a club full of wrong, sweetheart.”
It was different, surely he saw that. “But you’re old enough to be my father. That’s bad to like.”
A flash of teeth in the dim light. “Very fucking bad.”
“And you could ruin my life if I didn’t do as you said. It’s wrong to like that you have that power over me.”
