The Dance Off (9 page)

His eyes roved over her, the beautiful bone structure, the sultry dark eyes, the sensual way she moved. “Hit me.”

“I’ve spent the past year convinced I left because of a relationship that went embarrassingly south. But I’ve been dancing professionally without a break since I was sixteen. I wonder if it wasn’t really a blessing in disguise, if my body told me this was my chance to get away from it all for a while so that it could recuperate. If my ego saw the chance to eke out some time to just grow up.”

She shrugged and sat back in her chair, her nose buried in the empty wineglass in her hand.

While Ryder couldn’t quite feel his centre on the chair any more.

Because somehow things had...shifted. As if in the daylight, in her unassuming little flat, the normality of it all, having an actual honest conversation, caught at him, raw and arresting. Here sat a beautiful woman, slightly broken, but rich with substance and grit. And with his feet no longer pressing into the cracked old floor, there was nothing stopping him from perusing what his instincts had long since been screaming for him to do.

“Nadia.”

“Yes, Ryder.”

“You look plenty grown up to me.”

The faraway gaze came back into sharp focus and her mouth curled into a smile. “I can assure you I am. All the way grown up.”

And in the way that mattered most to Ryder, she was. What you saw was what you got with Nadia Kent. And there’d never been any question that what he saw he wanted.

“You missed some sauce,” he said, eyes honed in on her lush mouth.

Her tongue flicked out to swipe the corner of her mouth. “Better?”

Better than what?
“Still there,” he lied, then lifted himself from his chair and leant over the table.

Her eyes darkened. “Ryder Fitzgerald. Not two hours ago you promised to be a good boy.”

“And inside the dance studio, I’m yours to do with as you please. But I never made any promises about my behaviour elsewhere. And you never asked me to.”

With a flare in her eyes that told him all he needed to know, Nadia hopped onto her knees on her chair, and bent forward, met him halfway. “Care to help?”

“Hell yeah,” he said, leaning the last inch to cover her mouth with his.

He knew she’d be warm, knew she knew what she was doing; what he didn’t expect was the complete shock of pleasure that knocked against his insides like a pinball gone rogue.

Her hand lifted to his cheek, her fingernails scraping his unshaven chin, and he had to grip the table edges to keep himself from taking them both down in a heap.

She pulled away, leant her forehead against his a moment, then lifted her head to look into his eyes, her irises swallowed by the pupils. “All fixed?”

He breathed in deep, out hard and said, “Not even close.”

With that, she was on the table, crawling across the thing as it shook beneath her, the plates and cutlery bouncing to the floor with a crash. If she didn’t care, neither did he.

He hauled her against him, light as a feather, sinewy and soft, every movement pure grace, pure sex. No sweet kisses, all voracious hunger.

She tasted of lemon and honey and contradiction and heat. And her hands were all over him. Tearing at his clothes till he was naked from the waist up. Running through his hair. Scraping down his back till he growled from the pure deep pleasure of her touch.

Fearless, she was, and with a mouth that drove him wild.

Pulsing with a craving he could barely contain, he whipped her top over her head, her tight belly twitching beneath his palms, then her small breasts perfect in his mouth. So sweet, so firm, so sensual. The power in her warm, supple body was killing him.

Mouths open, hungry, a hand at his neck, she dragged him down. As she arched into him her hands found his zip, freed him. She enclosed her palm around him and slid down the length till he had to brace his feet so hard into the floor he saw stars.

She freed him only to wriggle out of her jeans, her body shuffling against him. His blood rushed so hard through his veins he felt as if his very cells were reconstructing, like some damn werewolf at the full moon. Man, he wanted her, with a ferocity he couldn’t remember ever feeling.

“Got something for the big guy?” she asked.

“Wallet,” he managed, “back pocket.”

With a sure hand she found his wallet, taking a moment to caress his backside while she was there. The woman was wholly corrupting, whisking him to the very brink of desperation.

Once she’d freed the square foil from within she tossed his wallet over her shoulder, flicked the condom packet between them, grinning, then tore the thing open with her teeth. Then, dark bottomless eyes on his, she sheathed him. Slowly. Torturously slowly. And thoroughly.
Wow
. Her fingers traced every inch, and then some.

Her hands moved around his thighs, tugged at a few hairs, sending shards of pleasure and pain through every nerve, then her legs wrapped around him, tight and strong.

He nudged her centre, her slick heat near sending him over the edge. Her eyes fluttered closed, her mouth sliding open on a sigh, her brow furrowing as if he wasn’t the only one teetering all too close to the edge of eruption. And then with a gifted flick of her hips she enveloped him, deep and tight and gorgeous.

From there Ryder’s vision collapsed till it was the size of the table, everything else a red blur. His ears rang with nothing but the thud of his blood, with her gasping breaths. The scent of her, the feel of her, the sensual glory of her filling him from the inside and spilling out of him with a release so intense it near bled him dry.

He came to from wherever he’d gone, and realised his arm actually shook as it kept him from collapsing on top of her. He opened his eyes and his heart shook right along with it. The woman was an exotic mess. Her pale skin pink and shimmering with sweat, strands of her dark hair having fallen from her bun and spilling over the tabletop, her mouth open dragging in breath, her eyes dark pools of desire.

And he realised with mortification he’d been so far over the edge of need he had no idea if she’d been right there with him. “Did you...?”

“Not yet.” And she clenched herself around him with a strength that made his head spin.

She kicked a leg over his shoulder and rocked, her eyes clenching shut, her mouth open wide as she took in short sharp gasps of air. He had the feeling she knew exactly what she was doing, that she could have got there without any help from him at all.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Not on his watch.

Ryder swore and braced himself on two arms. He felt himself harden inside her, pressed deeper and smiled as her eyes flew open. Then, holding her leg in place, finding it flexible enough to handle the stretch, he slowly lowered himself to bury his face in her neck, drinking in the scent of her. Kissing his way down her neck, her fine collarbone. He traced her knee, ran his thumb down her inner thigh, found her centre right as his mouth found her breast.

He plunged deeper and she cried out, gripping the table with one white-knuckled hand. The other scraping down his back hard enough to hurt.

His tongue traced her nipple, desire knotting his insides. He swirled his tongue as he swirled his thumb, and felt her tremble, and fracture, and melt. Heat slid through him at her acquiescence, at her trust, wiping out all but instinct, pleasure, her.

And when she stilled, when her body contracted around him, as her body trembled and rose and lifted and hovered once more on the verge of collapse he plunged as deep as he dared, his own second release coming from so deep inside he roared till the building shook.

Spent, he collapsed on top of her, her hand sank into his hair, the other flopped over her eyes, and together they lay there until their breaths eased back to near normal.

She moved first, and insanely he felt himself twitch inside her.
Enough,
he urged himself. Any more and the rubber would be irrelevant.

He pulled himself free of her, and his body felt instantly bereft. How soon it was used to her shape, her scent, the feel of her wrapped tight around him. How soon it wanted all that and more. Not sure that his legs would carry him just yet, he perched on the edge of the table.

Distractedly, he noted that the floor was a mess: broken plates, a fork end up into a crack in the wood, sauce oozing under the cupboard. But he didn’t have the energy to care.

It hadn’t been sex as he’d known it—it had been survival of the fittest. And he wondered what it meant that they’d both lived to tell the tale.

Nadia pulled herself to sitting and leant against his back, laying a string of warm kisses along his shoulder blade. “Wow.”

“You’re welcome.”

Her laughter tripped over his skin, then she slid from her table, stepped over the mess, till she was standing, naked, in front of him. Lean hips, beautiful thighs, small breasts with the most perfect pink nipples, a belly he wanted to rub his cheek against.

“Shower?” she asked. “Not much hot water I’m afraid, so we’d have to share.”

A hair band between her teeth, she lifted her lean arms to retie her hair back into a chaotic bun and simply awaited his answer. Not an ounce of self-consciousness in the move. Just a woman who knew herself, liked herself, enjoyed the pleasure her body brought her.

For a man who’d spent a lifetime striving, soaring, hitting every pinnacle he’d ever aimed towards yet never reaching that illusive plateau of fulfilment, her effortless self-satisfaction was soporific, sinking into his bones like a drug.

“Coming?” she asked, a kick to her lush mouth.

Ryder didn’t answer; his voice would have been little more than a hoarse croak as it was. Instead he lifted her up, threw her over his shoulder, her raucous laughter bouncing off the walls.

Then with a kiss to her gorgeous backside Ryder said, “Point the way, woman.”

She did, with a neatly pointed toe.

SIX

The Sunday sun
shone upon the breezy St Kilda bistro. The chips were salty and hot, the drinks icy cold, and as Sam chatted away about how her wedding plans were coming along Nadia tried not to flinch every time Sam mentioned her brother’s name.

It was less than twelve hours since the tryst in her apartment, and she could still feel Ryder in the ache of her muscles, smell him on her skin, see him every time she blinked her damn eyes.

“I tried to keep it small, you know,” Sam continued. “But everything seems to be spinning further and further out of our control.”

“It’s your wedding day, Sam,” said Nadia, shaking herself into the present. Though she wasn’t sure how she could help; as a kid the only time she’d imagined herself in a white dress was if it was a tutu. “Let that bossy streak of yours run wild!”

“Yeah,” said Sam, rolling her fey grey eyes before they faded flat, and Nadia had a feeling she knew why.

Nadia nudged Sam’s foot with a toe. “Ryder filled me in some on what happened the other night. With your father.”

“He did?” Sam managed to look both relieved and like a puppy remembering it had been kicked.

“Are you okay?”

“Most of the time. Nothing the right pills and some darned expensive therapy don’t keep in check.” When Nadia merely stared back, Sam put both hands over hers. “Honestly, I’m fine. The other night was horrible. Just really mean and ugly. But it only made me sure that I’ve done the right thing in cutting him off. Which, of course, my more astute brother did millennia ago. And speaking of Ryder.
He
talked about Dad? Using actual words? That’s... I’m... Wow.”

Nadia shifted on her seat. “Ryder didn’t tell you we’d talked?”

Another eye roll. “Of course not. The man treats me like I’m made of glass. Though I get why. I do. What with his mum dying when he was so young, and our dad being...well, our dad, Ryder holds on crazy tight to the things that matter to him.”

Sam curled her hands back into her lap and sighed.

“Don’t tell Ryder this, but the only reason I’m going with a big white wedding is to give him the chance to give me away. I’d be happy to marry my guy right here, right now. But Ryder’s so unwavering in his effort to do right by me I thought nothing less than an official ceremony would give him permission to really let me go.”

Nadia nodded, even while she was only listening with half an ear. A warning bell had begun to buzz pretty insistently about a minute back when Sam had said
Ryder holds on crazy tight to the things that matter to him.

It wasn’t as if
she
mattered to him, not in the way Sam meant. Even if it was natural for a proprietary feeling to come into play when you’d been naked with someone, when that someone had taken you to heaven and back on your kitchen table, in your shower, and slow, tender, deep, trembling, and weak up against the front door, they’d never talked about the chance of an extended run. Or even going for a second act. In fact once their clothes had come off they’d barely talked at all.

“So you and my brother...”

Nadia found Sam watching her, chin on her upturned palm, grin spread across her face. “Excuse me?”

“You were looking all dreamy and far away just now. I know that look. I see that look on Ben’s face each and every day.”

Nadia brought her now lukewarm beer to her mouth while she tried desperately to fashion a response.

“At least I hope it’s my brother you’re looking so moony about, considering the last time I saw the two of you, you had your tongues entwined.”

When Nadia near
choked
on her drink, she put it down carefully then sank her head into her hands, before sliding said hands through her shaggy hair. “What makes you think that was anything but a momentary lapse of reason?”

“I know my brother, Nadia. He’s the human version of the skyscrapers he builds—big, strong, invulnerable. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him so struck he can’t hide it and you, my sweet, did the striking.”

At that her palms began to sweat, her blood rang in her ears, and she wondered if this was what one of Sam’s panic attacks felt like. “Sammy Sam, I don’t meant to burst your bubble, but there is
no
your brother and me. Not in the way you mean.” She paused, knowing what she was about to say would complicate the simplest friendship of her life. “Melbourne was always a time-out for me, Sam. But that time’s run out. In the next few weeks the reps from the new Sky High show are flying out to Australia to see a small contingent of Australian dancers who’ve been asked to audition by invitation only. I’m one of those dancers.”

Sam’s face fell, for a second seeming to literally slip down over her bones. “Does Ryder know?”

Nadia swallowed
.
“I never would have agreed to take on your wedding party account if I wasn’t sure I’d be here until all your lessons are done.”

Sam’s next look was older than her twenty-four years. “That’s what’s my brother would call being deliberately obtuse.”

Nadia breathed out hard and fast. Then threw out her hands in surrender. “No, I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it to him. Or to any of my other students, for that matter.”

She sent Sam a pointed glance, which Sam returned in good measure. And rightly so. Nadia hadn’t spent a good many hours the evening before naked with any of her
other students
.

So why
had
she with Ryder? What made him so different from the dozen or so clients who’d made advances? Because there had been more. Plenty.

Ryder was beautiful to look at, sure, and unbelievably sexy in a prowling panther kind of way. But she was also fast gathering that he was ambitious and wry, complicated and intense, and while she’d gambled with more than her share of luck over the years he wasn’t big on second chances. Maybe that was it—he had the right amount of emotional baggage to draw her to him, like moths to the same flame.

Sam held up a hand at Nadia, halting her mid-thought, before hailing a waiter, ordering more beer, then saying, “I’m going to say one more thing and then that’s it, lips zipped shut. And that is Ryder would rather pull out his toenails with tweezers than talk about our father, though he will any time he knows I need to, which is only part of why he’s a great guy. Any woman would be lucky to have him in their life. And no matter what’s at the end of the road, for this moment in time, Nadia, that woman could be you.”

Nadia slid the red paper serviette from around her unused knife and breathed in deep, hoping Sam couldn’t see how shaky her breath was. Because in the quiet dark hours of night, she’d gone in circles thinking pretty much the same thing: that here and now didn’t have to have anything to do with the near future.

But it did. It always did. She knew better than anyone that past and future were so tightly knotted and profoundly intertwined, if one didn’t tread lightly they could strangle you.

“For as long as I can remember all I wanted to do was dance. Then a year ago I had it all—a job I loved, in a city filled with life and excitement and opportunity. And I threw it all away because—”
Because of a guy
, she’d been about to say. But no. She’d come to admit that had only been an excuse. Then why? Because she’d needed to take a breath? Because it had given her the perfect excuse to go running home to Mum? A little bit of all that. But also, “Because I didn’t know what I had till it was gone. I’ve realised since then that life doesn’t just happen, you choose it. And I choose dance. I’ll always choose dance.”

“Dancing means that much?”

“I wouldn’t know who I was without it.”

The waiter returned, condensation dripping down the brown glass of their beer bottles. When Nadia took the drink from his hand she realised she’d torn the red serviette to pieces.

“Man, I envy your passion.” Sam stared at the red mess, before bringing the drink to her mouth. “And enough said. As for the other, apart from the fact that you’ve just broken my heart a little bit, now we’ll have a couch to crash on if we ever get to Vegas, right?”

“For as long as you want.”

With that, Sam let out a big sigh then closed her eyes to the rare bout of dry sunshine. Relieved at having told Sam her plans, Nadia tried to do the same. But now that she’d told Sam, now she’d brought that world into this, it somehow made it real. Like in the stars real. And anticipation flowed through her veins like liquid ice till the tips of her fingers tingled as they did when she worked the ropes too long.

As this time she understood the gravity of the opportunity.

Her year away from professional dance had helped her grow up, and it had started the moment she’d knocked on her mother’s Toorak door, scoring nothing but a raised eyebrow.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise; it was exactly her family’s particular brand of solace. Twist an ankle?
Suck it up.
Bomb an audition?
Get over it.
And it certainly shouldn’t have hurt so much. Rejection was as much a part of being a dancer as warming up. Still, it had felt like a punch right to her centre, and things had started becoming very clear.

What she wanted more than anything was to dance.

What she
needed
was to do so as far from her mother as humanly possible.

Necessity and desire burned within her and the reality check had just added fuel to the fire. Within the next six weeks she’d have the chance to have it all.

One wrong step and it could all go up in smoke.

* * *

Ryder pushed open the door to the dance studio, letting himself in.

After the day he’d had he was glad to be anywhere but on site. Accustomed to the politics of such a substantial and significant project, that day the trivialities had grated to the point he’d felt one problem away from abandoning the whole damn thing.

By contrast the studio was blissfully quiet. The lights dim. Slivers of cool moonlight shone through the bare windows painting patches of white on the scuffed wooden floor. He cast only a perfunctory glance at the beautiful beams above, as he was in pursuit of a different kind of therapy altogether.

It had been three days since that afternoon of delight in Nadia’s battered little apartment. Three long days since he’d left her at her door with a long kiss, her face soft with release. Then he’d gone home. Gone to work. And pretended it had been a perfectly normal encounter.

Unfortunately, pretending hadn’t made it so.

Normal for him meant no promises, no surprises, taking extreme care to leave no wreckage in his wake. Nadia turned him upside down and inside out until, even while he had no idea what he’d be walking into, or which version of the woman he’d encounter, he’d looked forward to Tuesday night more than anything else that week.

He dumped his gear on the moth-eaten old chair, and looked around. So where the hell was she? The eerie silence built inside him as he walked the wall of windows, anticipation and unrest mixing until his senses keened with every creak of an old floorboard, every shift of dust motes on the sultry air.

“Howdy,” Nadia’s voice twanged behind him.

Ryder spun on his heels to find her standing by the big old curtains; tiny curls that had escaped from her hair band framing her face, dark eyes a smudge, lush lips hooked into a smile. Her face and neck were dewy from exercise, the rest of her encased in a long-sleeved, cross-over-type top, a short black skirt, fishnet tights, and spiked high heels.

“Nadia,” he managed.

Her eyes flickered reproachfully over his suit. “How was work, Ace?”

“Incessant.” He’d spent the day battling unions and clients and staff and contractors and suppliers rather than doing any of the hands-on designing that his job was meant to be about. At least he’d thought so once upon a time. “Yours?”

“Hard, actually.” She rolled her shoulders and stretched out a hamstring to bring that home. “Care to see what I’ve been up to?”

The unsettling inside out and upside down feeling came swarming back, yet he found himself saying, “You bet.”

Without another word she whipped back the curtains at the corner of the room revealing...

“Holy mother of...” Ryder said, his feet propelling him forward as his eyes darted from runs of black ropes dripping from the beams above, over wafting swathes of red silk doing the same, to a sparkling silver hula hoop dangling six feet off the floor.

His eyes ran all the way up the heavy-duty wire wrapped about and bolted to the beams above. Architecturally inventive as he was, he was pretty sure he’d never look at a beam the same way again.

“You look a little freaked, my friend.”

Ryder flicked a glance to Nadia to find her watching him, her arms folded over her chest. Defensive. And comprehension began to trickle down his spine. So this was how she was going to play it after their afternoon together. His little dance teacher was throwing down the gauntlet.

Schooling his features into the very definition of impassive, Ryder offered up a half-smile. “Dare I ask what it’s all for?”

Nadia cocked a hip, all insouciance and grace. It was a heady combination. Especially since he now knew the curve of that hip, knew the taste of that dewy skin, the skill of that lush mouth, the light that shone from those guarded eyes when she was laid bare.

“How about I show you instead?” With that she unhooked her skirt, and nudged off her shoes, leaving her in the long-sleeved top, black bikini bottoms and fishnets. Holy hell.

With practised ease she slid fingerless leather gloves over her palms, snapping studs behind her wrists with an audible click that he felt right in his groin. A small voice inside his head told him to
Run!
A louder voice told him to stay the hell where he was, as he might just have found paradise.

With a few quick stretches, she breathed in, then out, ran the soles of her feet over a towel on the floor, stretched out her fingers, steadied her breath. Then she positioned herself beneath the ropes, taking care as she curled them about her wrists, tugging to—he hoped—check the tension. Then, with a quick glance over her shoulder, she said, “Ready?”