Lead and Follow (2 page)

With an indulgent smile, Declan seemed to watch her with far too much understanding. “It’s my club, love. If I want something, I don’t need to ask a guest.”

Standing, Lizzie shook her head with a rueful grin. It was a rare man in their line of work who told the truth so bluntly.

She looked up to the stage one last time, just as the song ended. Dima was on his knees. He breathed heavily, with his hands wrapped around the blonde’s skinny thigh and his forehead on her hip. A tremor of hot unexpected need shot down to Lizzie’s belly.

Bar. Now.

The crowd waiting for drinks had thinned during the performance. She wove through, trying to ignore the weakness in her knees that had nothing to do with her healing injury. She needed a distraction before she threw up or cried or smashed a bottle across the nearest table.

“Hey, Paul,” she called to the cute bartender. “Got a G&T for me?”

“Anything for you, Lizzie.”

He grinned. He had the best grin on the planet, swear to God. Tan and built, he wore a tight white T-shirt and ragged jeans. His cowboy hat hung on a hook above the computerized cash register. On impulse, she leaned over the bar to check out his feet. Cowboy boots. Excellent.

Paul caught her looking. His gaze darted down to where her cleavage probably made offers she hadn’t intended. His grin widened, if that were possible. Hard-boiled sex and a coy sense of humor.

Maybe she’d intended after all. Maybe watching what was left of her old life do a strip club cha-cha with a graceless blonde had forced her to it.

He brought the gin and tonic and placed it dead center on a cocktail napkin before sliding it over. The tips of his fingers came within an inch of her breasts. Damn, he was tall. In the land of dancers, any guy over five foot eight was considered a giant. Paul was well over six foot. The possibilities spun her already dizzy brain.

He licked his lower lip. They’d flirted on occasion since he’d hired on a few weeks earlier, but he flew well past flirting with that deliberate lick.

“Thanks,” she said.

“It’s on the house. Mr. Shaw’s standing order.”

“I’ll have to thank him too.”

She took a fortifying sip. Even though customers waited for his attention, Paul stood there. Tan with golden hair. Eyes like a blue summer sky. Open and interested. She could read a thousand thoughts in that clear gaze.

Anymore, when she read anything at all in Dima’s expression, it was disappointment. Aloofness. Heartbreaking hesitancy. As if after fifteen years, they couldn’t talk to each other without dance as their language.

She downed her drink in three swallows and blinked away the image of Dima’s sensual lips and stoic reserve. Paul still stood there, watching her while wearing a bemused smile.

“When are you on break?”

He shrugged. “Now, if you want.”

That jolt to her belly turned molten. She exhaled slowly. Bad idea. Totally bad idea, although the tension holding her bones in place wasn’t going away any time soon. She liked to think she would’ve made a sensible decision had she known which way was up.

Lizzie nodded toward a door across from the bar. Dancers’ dressing rooms. One in particular. Christ, smashing a bottle would have more subtlety.

Paul fell in step beside her. He’d shoved on his cowboy hat.

Goddamn.

“In here,” she said.

The lights were off except for an alarm clock on the vanity table. Lizzie had barely flicked on a small lamp when Paul’s hands found her in the near darkness. He kicked the door shut, which freed that deep place where she’d been so nervous. So…not herself.

Just a little fun. The grin that shaped Paul’s lips said the same thing.

He tasted of Coke and maraschino cherries. Sweet. Delicious, actually. A scrape of stubble roughed against her cheeks and down her throat. Lizzie dug her fingers into the bulk of his shoulders. He wasn’t just a bartender, she remembered. A construction worker. That stray thought shot down to her pussy.

They didn’t even undress. Lizzie helped unfasten his jeans, shoving them down to tangle around his knees. She pushed him back in the chair that faced the vanity mirror. His hands climbed beneath her skirt and ripped at her panties. After a crinkle of foil, he rolled on a condom.

Rough guy. Rough hands. Rough, quick fuck.

She straddled his lean hips and sank onto his cock.

“Whoa,” she said, almost unconsciously.

“Like that?”

“
Yes
.”

He was big, thick, hard. His breath had taken on a desperate edge. To be able to get guys’ hearts pumping had steered her toward Latin dancing rather than her parents’ classical ballet. Dima wasn’t the only one who liked to show off.

She’d shown off for him for years. Somewhere along the line, his approval had come to mean more than that of a cheering crowd.

The worst part was, she knew Paul was just Dima’s type. His tastes occasionally strayed toward guys, and the ones who caught his eye held not an ounce of softness or grace. He liked them all-American with sunny looks and a sunnier disposition.

Great. In her desperation she’d picked a fuck-buddy based on her partner’s tastes. She needed to check herself into a mental ward.

One look down at Paul’s face, however, derailed that disturbing thought. He was a gorgeous hunk of oh-my-God. She ran her hands across his buzzed head, knocked off the cowboy hat and kissed him long and deep.

This man wasn’t Dima. Hell, she didn’t want him to be and she didn’t want to be anywhere else.

I am such a liar.

Chapter Two

Dmitri knew dancing. When everything else in his life busily turned to shit, he still had the stage. The rush he got off being admired was well worth the balls it took to make the first step.

Without Lizzie, it just wasn’t the same. Other women didn’t move like her. Didn’t smell like her. Didn’t feel like her body, shaped perfectly to his hands.

Most of all, they didn’t have her wicked smile.

Lizzie’s primary purpose in life was to bedevil him until he lost his mind. She’d become particularly adept lately. He needed the woman who had filled his life since he was fourteen. Since returning from her parents’ house, however, she’d been nothing but skittish. And hurtful, truth be told. They’d never done anything but support one another, yet until that evening, she’d refused to see him dance at Devant. All he wanted was her opinion. What did she think of this new direction? Was there a slim chance she’d consider joining him?

For Dima, it was something of a last straw. She was determined to break them in two out of pure stubbornness, when he’d taken the job at Devant just to stay with her.

The second he stepped off stage right, he was already on alert. Somewhere out in the crowd, he’d find her—claim her attention, even if it was only for a moment.

Christ, he had to get her reeled in soon. She’d always been a live wire. Now she buzzed with more frantic energy. The focused, determined partner he’d trusted for years was nowhere to be seen in her skittish behavior and insistence on returning to the pro circuit. That grind was no place for them, not since her injury—yet another problem to weigh on his mood. After all, Dima had been the one to screw up their tidy life together.

She’d fallen right out of his arms.

He’d failed her. Failed the woman for whom he would have done anything. His best friend and closest partner in the world.

Forcing a smile, he made his way into the main area of the club. The creative freedom he’d found at Club Devant was second to none. Being released from the strict guidelines of the competitive circuit tapped into a part of his imagination he hadn’t known was there. The hefty paycheck Declan offered in order to pull in the big names wasn’t bad either.

That didn’t mean he’d gotten used to working the floor.

Declan prided himself on a friendly, open atmosphere, despite the kink. Or maybe because of it. He wished customers to believe they could get a taste of the performers if they were lucky enough. Or hot enough. Or rich enough.

That didn’t mean Dima liked it, not without Lizzie at his side. She had been the one to talk when they were interviewed. Cameras loved her sparkle, and she loved meeting new people. It only made sense. That same sparkle turned him inside out, made his whole life brighter. Naturally everyone else would want a part of her.

Dima wanted
all
of her.

Eventually he landed at the table permanently kept for Declan. At the far end, Jeanne nursed a mineral water.

Dima gripped the back of Declan’s chair. The club owner was the only man Dima knew who could pull off a sheer dark purple shirt and still look like he used his dick the traditional way. Mostly.

“Good show,” Declan said, one arm around the waist of a woman in a tiny shimmering green skirt.

“The cha-cha wasn’t over the top?”

“For here? Not at all. And Jeanne’s promised to wear neutral shoes from now on, so next time will be perfect.”

Best-case scenario would’ve included Lizzie dancing the cha-cha with him. Always such a flirt. Always so damn good at how she played him
and
the crowd. First he needed to convince her to stay in New York. No more midnight bus trips to God knows where for the privilege of dancing the same routines on a temporary wooden parquet floor. Three championships were enough. He couldn’t put either of them through that punishing, body-cruel schedule. After four months at her parents’ house, it was his turn to take care of her again. The apartment just hadn’t been the same without her.

He made himself smile at Jeanne anyway, since she was blushing a little as she looked at him and Declan. A highly skilled contemporary dancer whose career had been cut short by crippling tendonitis, she meant well.

“Have you seen Lizzie? She said she’d be here tonight.”

He was so completely, ridiculously excited by that.
Dumb.
She never held out on him forever. It was part of what made them a unit. Although Lizzie had always trusted him in the long run, his plans wouldn’t work if he couldn’t even get her to watch him dance in this new way.

Stomach twisting, he knew the answer before Declan opened his mouth. The man’s glance darted toward the bar. Wherever Lizzie was, she was with Paul. Probably flirting with him. Occasionally Dima hoped she was doing it intentionally, purposefully trying to drive him crazy. What she didn’t realize was that she’d had his full attention for years.

Dima had met the bartender, but hadn’t been interested. Some other time, some other place, yeah, he might have enjoyed fucking Paul until they burned each other out. The man was perfection in blue jeans. When Paul had hired on at Devant, however, Dima and Lizzie had been readjusting to life in the same space—and Dima had been trying to come to terms with his new feelings and the decisions they’d prompted.

When she’d come home to their apartment, she hadn’t given Dima a chance to sit down and actually talk. To apologize for letting her get hurt. To really explain his fascination with what had started as a temporary gig at Club Devant. Instead, she’d hit the ground running: physical therapy, new costume designs, a travel schedule for the autumn season. And a parade of new guys. She was as restless as she was hurting, although she steadily ignored what had changed.

Altogether, it was enough to make a man start doubting his choices. Dima had made some huge ones since her injury.

“I’ve seen her,” Declan said at last. He stood up, lifting the chick from his lap and plopping her down in his chair like some living blow-up doll.

“But?”

The other man fisted his hands on his hips. His position took up valuable space in the packed morass of bodies, but no one challenged or even brushed him. Declan was the undisputed king of Club Devant. “But she disappeared halfway through your first act.”

Dima made himself shrug as if a pure shot of fear hadn’t just cooled his guts. After weeks of hoping she would, Lizzie had decided to see him dance. She couldn’t even stay for the whole act before turning to another man.

When she was scared or hurting, she could make some pretty stupid mistakes. Dima had thought that a part of her past—those wicked teenage years when the freedom of touring meant freedoms of all kinds. Apparently not.

“So?”

“So?” Declan echoed. He studied Dima closely. “Fine. Play it that way if you want. When you find my bartender, tell him his break’s up.”

For Dima, shutting down his emotions as he walked through the busy club was absolutely impossible. He had too much on the line. His muscles tensed, already pooling with lactic acid. He didn’t have the luxury of cool-down stretches, only a slimy, oozing sort of fear.

He didn’t know what he would find. They’d always maintained a platonic front. Affairs outside of their partnership had silently become off-limit topics. Just…safer. Throughout two years spent with Svetlana Rodchenko, his most recent long-term relationship, Lizzie had managed to keep her distaste for the fellow ballroom dancer at bay. Dima had known her feelings, but he’d been grateful that she hadn’t pressed.

Since returning from her parents’ smothering brand of care, she’d become increasingly…demanding when it came to his attention. After he and Svetlana had parted ways, Lizzie began amping those demands to exciting, dangerous new extremes. Graphic descriptions of her last date, narrated with her cheeky, wicked smile, had burned into his brainpan—and fueled his jacking off for three weeks.