Dance for Me (Fenbrook Academy #1) - New Adult Romance (23 page)

I reached back and unhooked my bra, then peeled it off and let it fall with a wet slap of fabric. Then his body was against mine, my breasts mashing against his chest as he drove me back against the wall. His mouth was at my throat, kissing the water from my skin as he worked his way down to my shoulder, to that magical bit of skin along my collarbone where his lips made me go weak.

My hands were on his back, tracing the hard contours of his muscles. As his hands cupped my breasts, mine were sliding down his back and around to the side. One palm felt the ridges of his scars and he drew back again, looking into my eyes. I tensed, thinking he was about to push my hand away....

He put his own hand over mine and held it in place. I nodded and held him close, my body molding to his, my lips against his chest.

Then he gently moved back and started to kneel down in front of me. I had to clench my fists to keep from stopping him, feeling his eyes track down my stomach, down to my thighs. The hot wave of shame as he saw my scars close up. He moved forward and kissed them, a feather touch against the brutal lines, and I had to bite my lip to let him do it, force myself not to turn away. He kissed them again and again, and with each kiss the hot shame lifted just a little, until finally I could accept his eyes there, his touch there.

He felt me relax, and his mouth moved away from me. A second later, his hands hooked under my sodden panties and peeled them down and off my legs. Then my shoulders were pressing hard against the tiles as his lips and tongue found me, his shoulders nudging my legs wider as he began long, long minutes of licking and plunging and circling until I turned my face up into the spray, eyes squeezed tight shut, and gasped and panted into the water as I came.

I stood under the spray as he went over to the bathroom cabinet. Through the steam I saw him roll on a condom, and then we was back in front of me, moving between my thighs, and I kissed him hungrily as he drove up into me, his hands on my ass. I felt myself lifted and wrapped my legs around him. He took each nipple in turn into the slick heat of his mouth, letting the spray lash the other one, until I ground and panted against him. He started to move inside me, pinning me to the wall as he thrust, long glorious strokes that made the heat within me spin faster and faster. I dug my fingers hard into his shoulders, writhed and trembled and finally, as we both reached our peaks, I called out his name.

Chapter Thirty One

Darrell

I woke up sweating and gasping, the hot desert air still in my lungs. She was asleep next to me, naked—I’d managed to pull the sheets off both of us during my nightmare and she was sleepily protesting at the sudden cold.

I allowed myself one long look at her body’s smooth perfection and then covered her up and sat there for a while, until I was sure she was fully asleep. Then I pulled on some jeans and padded downstairs. I could feel the rage building up inside, but I’d long ago learned how to clamp down on it until I reached the workshop.

When I was safely down there, I turned the music up loud, pulled the sheet off the missile and went to work. I could hear the screams in my head even over the music and smell the sickly scents of the burning wreckage. I moved faster and faster, my fingers barely able to keep up with my brain’s commands. I’d been a fool to even think about going against this, to fight with Carol. However much I loved Natasha, it didn’t change a damn thing that had happened. Mom and Dad were still dead, and I wasn’t going to forget them. I had a job to do.

I’d finally figured it out, the strength of the nightmare forcing my brain to make that last, vital connection. I could see it, as clearly as if I’d already built it. The missile’s internal parts, even its fuel tanks, strung on cables so they could move inside it, allowing it to shift its weight. It would be able to curve and dodge in the air as gracefully as a bird—as gracefully as
her.

I thought of her as I worked, and she did a better job than the music or the physical work at pushing the memories back. I’d almost driven her away, with my questions and my need to understand everything, to fix everything. I knew now she was running from something in her past, something that maybe, eventually, she could share with me. Maybe we weren’t so different. I could have easily wound up clinging on to self-harming, or alcohol, or something equally bad. I’d been lucky that I’d found this way of venting my anger—

I froze.

Had I, though? Had I really been lucky? Natasha only hurt herself. How many was I hurting, every time I built something? How many would this new creation kill?

I killed the music and stood there staring at the missile. A month before, I would have been proud of it, reveled in its brutal efficiency. Now it made me sick. I was creating something that couldn’t be undone, something that would destroy cities, orphan children. I was twenty-four and my entire career to date had been spent making things that killed. Was this going to be my life?

Carol’s words in my head.
You’re a hero.

Was I? Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure.

Chapter Thirty Two

Natasha

I woke naked and alone in his bed, the pre-dawn light making the curtains glow. I reached out a hand and the sheets where he’d lain were cold. He’d been gone for hours.

My underwear was a sodden pile on the bathroom floor and my dress was out by the hot tub. I wrapped a sheet around me instead and crept downstairs, blinking myself gradually awake. He wasn’t in the kitchen making a snack, or in the lounge watching TV. He wouldn’t leave without saying something...would he?

Then I saw the elevator door. The indicator above it showed that the lift was down at the workshop. I sighed. The work, again—in the middle of the night? I thought about leaving him to it. I didn’t want to seem like I was trying to possess him, and I knew that this was how he lived. I’d been angry when he’d tried to stop me cutting. What right did I have to stop him working, especially if—as I suspected—throwing himself into his work was his way of coping with his demons?

But he’d tried to help me, and I should try to help him. Wasn’t it the duty of the wife or girlfriend to drag her man to bed when he pushed himself too hard?

I rode the elevator down, the trip underground weirdly claustrophobic without him. When the doors opened, he was still in the process of throwing a sheet over his mystery creation. I got just a glimpse of something smooth and white.

“Hi.” He sounded abashed. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”

I shook my head. “No, but...it’s nearly morning. How long have you been down here?”

He looked at his feet. “I don’t know. A while.” He sighed. “Sometimes I can’t sleep, you know?” He looked exhausted, and somehow lost.

I knew then that I’d been right—the work was his way of escaping from whatever his dreams unearthed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I saw him hesitate, and held my breath. But he shook his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

I nodded and held out my hand. “Come back to bed.”

He shook his head. “I’ll just toss and turn and disturb you. I don’t think I could sleep right now. You go ahead.” And he turned away.

I was new to the girlfriend thing, but I was pretty sure what I was meant to do at that point. I let go of the sheet and felt it unwind from my body, dropping to the floor with a soft rustle of fabric. He turned at the sound and gaped at me.

“I didn’t say you had to sleep,” I told him, and held out my hand again. This time, he took it.

***

Back upstairs, it was languid and tender, his body like rock beneath me as I straddled him, his hands on my breasts as he drove his hips up into me.

When I woke again, it was morning and this time he was sleeping soundly, my head on his chest. I lay there for a while, enjoying the moment, but eventually my growling stomach nudged me in the direction of coffee and food. Fortunately I’d thought to leave my panties on the heated towel rail in the bathroom when we’d come back upstairs, and they were just about dry. I teamed them with one of Darrell’s t-shirts, and while the result wasn’t exactly fashionable, it was better than walking around naked.

Downstairs, the morning light was blasting through the windows: when we’d dashed inside, we’d been in too much of a hurry to lower the blinds. I winced at the muddy footprints that led from the front door up the stairs.

In the kitchen, I fumbled around for milk and mugs and figured out the coffee machine, then discovered there was no coffee left. I sighed and rested my forehead against the cupboard door, remembering using the last of it. I needed coffee. I had the second audition at two that afternoon, and classes before that. I had to find something dry to wear, say goodbye to Darrell and get back into the city, fast. The thought of doing all that in my current sleepy state didn’t bear thinking about.

Then I remembered the coffee pot down in the workshop and sighed in relief. I’d make a couple of mugs and we could drink it while we waited for a cab.

I took the milk and mugs downstairs and—yes!—there was coffee. I waited for the machine to do its thing, yawning and glancing idly around. It was a few minutes before my eyes fell on Darrell’s project, hidden beneath its sheet.

Chapter Thirty Three

Darrell

I’ll never be sure what woke me. I’d been in the soundest sleep I’d enjoyed for years, Natasha’s head cradled on my chest. And then suddenly, something was wrong and I was struggling back up to consciousness, my brain still fuddled. She wasn’t there. Okay, no big deal—it looked like it was morning. So why did I feel so unsettled?

The bathroom was empty. I pulled my jeans back on and headed downstairs, calling her name. Had she left already, rushing back to Fenbrook for classes? Wouldn’t she have woken me, or at least left a note?

In the kitchen I saw the cupboard open, the coffee machine standing ready but unused. Why had she—

God,
no
.

I rushed back into the hallway. We’d taken the elevator back up just a few hours ago, so it should have been right there on the ground floor. But however much I willed it, the indicator above the door said it was down at the workshop.

I thumped the elevator button as hard as I could, as if that would make it come faster.

Chapter Thirty Four

Natasha

It seemed to draw me to it. Partly it was that outburst of Carol’s—I needed to understand what had happened between them to make her so angry. Partly it was jealousy. I knew he struggled to put anything, including me, ahead of his work. What was it that had him so deeply ensnared, and why did he choose it, and not drugs or sex or one of a million other things, to escape into? And partly it was just wanting to see what he did—he got to see my work every day, but aside from the whiteboard I’d never seen the results of his efforts.

I figured I’d take a look and never tell him. A little voice inside me whispered that maybe that’s exactly what he’d thought, when he’d opened the cigarette case. But I squashed that voice—it was just his
work,
for God’s sake. It wasn’t some deep dark secret. How bad could it be?

I was trying to work out what it was as I approached, and some of my curiosity was because I knew that it was inspired by me—however crazy that sounded.

I tried to think about all the things that a highly-paid designer might design. A car? I’d heard of car designers being inspired by nature and animals. A car inspired by a woman—by how a dancer moved—didn’t sound completely nuts, although I had visions of him pointing to flaring wheel arches, telling me they were based on my hips, and me slapping him. But the thing only looked to be about eight feet long—too small for a car.

Suddenly it clicked.
A motorbike!
Of course—he was into bikes, after all. I’d seen the Ducati parked outside the mansion, that first time I’d visited. He’d built some sort of super-fast sports bike. And weren’t bikes all about leaning into corners and using your weight to stabilize you? That would make perfect sense.

I smiled to myself. I had a boyfriend who designed cool motorbikes. Maybe he’d take me for a ride on it, when it was finished. Then I caught my breath. Maybe he’d even name it after me! Every dancer knows the story of Ana Pavlova, and how a chef named the dessert after her.

My hand was already lifting the sheet to confirm my guess when I heard the elevator doors open behind me.

“Natasha, no!”

I turned to smile at him and was amazed at how worried he looked. Perhaps he didn’t want me to see it before it was finished, like an artist with a portrait. My smile widened. How like him, to want everything to be perfect.
It’s okay,
I started to say,
I know what it is.