by Emilia Finn
No. Because if it’s not fighting, it doesn’t count.
My family doesn’t mean any harm by their disinterest. If I don’t tell them, how could they possibly know? It’s not their fault that I remain silent on this aspect of my life, and then harbor resentment at the fact that they can’t read my mind and take a miraculous interest in the things that make me happy.
“Focus, Kincaid.” Sophia walks the studio in her tiny booty shorts – much like the ones I wear at the gym – plus leg warmers, a tank top that hangs off one shoulder, and ballet shoes, just like I do. Not the kind we can stand on pointe in, but the soft leather kind that are my favorite to move in.
We could almost pass as sisters, since we share similar dark hair and dark-eyed features. Add in the fact we turned up today wearing almost the same thing to work in front of the wall of mirrors, and we could almost pass as clones.
“I want you to do it again,” she coaches. “Arabesque, then fourth. Arabesque, then fourth. Show me, and get that leg up high.”
She trains me in much the same way that we train fighters. We show someone how to do something, how and where to move their legs, their arms, their shoulders. Then we step back and watch how much information they retained. Once they try, we step in and adjust each move until it’s perfect.
Soph does that too; she helps me hit a pose, demands I do it again on my own, and then adjusts every single muscle I possess until it’s perfect.
“Higher!” she snaps. “Come on, Lucy. You can literally kick a dude in the head, a six-foot dude, but you can’t get your arabesque higher?”
“It’s different.” With a grunt, I stand on one foot and work through the pain in my glutes. “Different muscles.”
“You have the flexibility.” She hits play on a remote and sends dance-club-type music through the studio, then she steps up behind me and grabs my foot. “Higher,” she growls, and shoves my leg higher. “Then when you get that down, do it on your toes.”
“You’re a fuckin’ tyrant.” I groan when she stretches my leg. “We don’t hurt fighters as much as you hurt me.”
She gives no mercy as she pushes my leg up. “I want to see this higher before next week. I’ve got straps in the storeroom. Take them home, set them up on your bedroom door, and stretch every single day until you can impress me.”
“Show me how high you can go,” I dare. “You’re asking me to do something that you can’t even do.”
“Get the fuck outta here.” She rolls her eyes, but she also drops my leg and turns. Straight onto her toes, she sends her right arm forward, her left arm back, and her foot lifts until it’s an inch or so higher than her head. “I know you’re deflecting, lazy ass. But if you need to see the master do it before you’ll pull your finger out of your ass and work harder, then I’ll show you.”
“Showoff,” I grumble. I turn to the bar lining the room, rest my hands on the timber, then lift my back leg until my glutes turn to fire. “Ever heard of humility? It’s a good personality trait to possess.”
“Nope.” Spinning out of her pose, she flashes a wicked grin, only to run and leap so fast that I almost miss the movement.
She’s a true professional, an award-winning, crowd-seducing, money-spinning dancer who provides me with the benchmark that I one day hope to come close to. I can’t compete with a dancer that’s been dancing since she could walk. I’ve been fighting just as long, and many wish they could be as good as me, but dancing and fighting, while they have some similarities, also have distinct differences.
To be successful at dance, Soph and I have to work hard on undoing some of the things I’ve spent my life learning. I have many moves other newbies don’t, but I also have restrictions, because my body has spent a lifetime learning one thing, and is now expected to let those lessons go so I can bend a different way.
“You’re showing off,” I grumble as I turn back to the bar and lift my leg again.
“Oh, shit, sorry.”
My heart pounds at that masculine voice speaking over the dance music. My leg is high in the air, my clothes are somewhat… revealing, and when I turn my head to peek over my shoulder, I work hard on swallowing my nerves and not giving away that I wish this man would make a fucking move at some point in this lifetime.
Mac’s eyes are normally light green. They tend to sparkle with an addictive mixture of trouble and playfulness, and whenever they do that, the double dimples beneath his thick bottom lip twinkle. That’s when you know someone’s going to get arrested or sent to the emergency room – those dimples.
But his eyes are dark now. Hooded. And stare at my crotch.
He stands thirty feet away, in the doorway, in jeans that look entirely too delicious on thick legs. He wears combat boots that make my heart stumble, and hair a little too long, but it somehow looks dangerous, roguish on his angular face. His brows have always been a little heavy, his stubble a day old.
Back when we met, his face was baby-bottom smooth and made him look younger than he really was. But ever since puberty hit, and hair started to grow from his jaw, I swear he leaves it a day old on purpose, like he thinks girls dream about how it would feel on their thighs when he’s doing naughty things with his mouth.
Or maybe that’s just me.
And he’s got such a marvelous pottymouth that promises filth and a good time.
“You need something, Blair?”
Sophia walks between us and breaks his stare for just a beat, but it’s like she was testing him, because a moment later, when she moves out of the way, his eyes literally make me feel warm, right where my pulse beats.
“Yo? Mac Blair, what do you want?” She stops in front of him and clicks her fingers. “You want a peep show, you gotta hand your credit card over first. I don’t stable free whores.”
Finally, his brain processes her words, and his brows pull close in irritability. “Not whores,” he grumbles with a gravelly voice. “Definitely not whores.”
“Aww. You’re so sweet.” She drops her fake smile and asks again, “What do you want?”
“Um…” His eyes slip over my face as I lower my leg and switch. “I was looking for Lucy. Was expecting her at the gym, but she never showed. Bishop said she was probably here.”
“What do you want with my dancer, Blair?”
She’s fucking with him, and torturing us both while she plays. It’s not really a secret that Mac and I are close. There have been betting pools for years that he and I would eventually date, and he’s never made a secret of the times he’s watched me. It’s not that he’s uninterested – I don’t think – and I’ve never not stared back. But somewhere between the wanting and the doing, things break down, and Mac tucks his tail, and runs away.
Sophia knows all of this, so she’s making him work for me right now. Making him use his words, and probably hoping to force a solution between us.
Either shit or get off the pot, I suppose.
“Mac?” she prods.
“Um…” He clears his throat. “Ice cream.” He slides hungry eyes away from my legs and meets my eyes. “You’re finally home,” he croaks out. “I texted, but you didn’t reply.”
“You texted me while I was asleep.” My tone implies easiness, though I feel anything but. “I didn’t get it till this morning.” Lies. I got it while I was lying in bed, all alone, and tempted to relieve the pounding beat of my heart that throbs much lower than my chest. “Then I was running late for Soph. I would have replied later.”
“But later is when we were supposed to meet up,” he argues. It’s not a loud argument, no raised voices or anger. It’s just a push back at what he considers unfair treatment. “We’re done at the gym, which means it’s ice cream time now.”
“Yeah, well, she’s kinda busy right now.” Soph snatches up her stereo remote, and switches on Camila Cabello’s “Havana” so the music roars through my blood just as loud as it comes through the speakers.
Music is like a siren’s call for me. I move to a classical composer’s
work, but I move more, faster, better, and with more fluidity, when the music is contemporary. I can’t help myself. I can’t help that I lower my leg, or that my hips move.
It’s just a little routine I do while I wait for the coffee to brew in the mornings, so it’s not like it’s indecent, but still, Mac’s eyes latch onto my hands as they slide along my body.
“But we do need a little help!” Alight with a fresh idea from hell, Soph grabs Mac’s hand and drags him into the room.
I back up with fast movements and oxygen catching in my throat, only to slam against the bar and stop when I have nowhere else to go.
Soph grabs my hand and yanks me forward and, because she’s an evil mastermind, aims so that my chest slam’s against Mac’s, and that sinful stubble on his jaw scratches against my forehead.
“Perfect height,” she muses with a barely concealed laugh on her voice.
She takes Mac’s hand, and places it securely on my hip so a couple fingers stop on the fabric of my booty shorts, and the rest of his fingers, half a palm, his thumb, rest against my ribs and make it so my throat goes painfully dry.
“Uh…” Mac’s eyes wheel around in terror. “Soph?”
“We have a partnered dance coming up soon, but Lucy’s partner is out today with a cold.”
From terror, to confusion, to pure unadulterated rage, Mac’s eyes snap to mine and remind me of a fire-breathing dragon. Hungry, angry, and unstoppable.
“You dance with a partner?”
His hands tighten when Soph shoves him closer and his legs straddle mine… or mine straddle his, I don’t know, but his thigh touches my pubic bone, and sends my heart racing at an uncontrollable staccato.
“Lucy? His voice is an angry rumble. “You dance like this,” he says the word like it’s dirty, “with another dude?”
“Sometimes.” I look up, away from where our hips meet, and defiantly meet his glare. “Few times a week.”
“Like this?” He pulls me closer so there’s zero doubt about what he means. We touch from knee, to hip, to stomach, all the way up to my chest pressing against his.
We’ve touched a million times before – it’s inevitable when training in my family’s gym – and though we’ve caught ourselves when we’re grappling, and the rolling around on the floor moments of our training last a little longer than they should, we’ve never truly stared into each other’s eyes like this and acknowledged the heat that sizzles in the air.
It might be a sexual heat. Or it might be the heat that precedes an explosion that kills us both.
But then Soph steps behind Mac, sandwiches him between us, and with her hands on his hips, she leads him so he can lead me.
My eyes drop to his throat when he swallows.
“Lucy? Answer me.”
I glance back up as our trio moves. I know there are three of us here, but Soph is like a non-entity. She keeps her lips shut and acts only as a guide.
“Yes, I have a dance partner.”
“He touches your ass?” He wriggles his fingers. “Like this?”
“You’re not touching my ass.”
Bravely, since I’m already too deep into whatever this is, I reach back and move his hand down so it cups where Rudy cups. Not because he wants to touch me sexually, but because there’s a lift in three… two…
“Lift,” Soph says. She rushes around Mac and guides his arm so I lift clear off the floor, and my knee presses to his chest.
My hands leave Mac’s shoulders, and instead find the sky while I look up and grin at the circling ceiling.
Soph leads us, spinning us slowly, and when I glance down to prepare for my dismount, Mac’s eyes lock onto mine and do things to my stomach.
Almost a whole decade of being his friend, from childhood through to now, we’ve known everything about each other. We’ve been together, geographically, almost every single day. I was the one who slept by his bedside when he had a heart transplant, and I was the one who walked him back into the boxing ring afterward, allowing him to finish his victory lap. I’ve been here every damn day for as long as we’ve known each other.
But do I tell him how I feel?
No. Never in the history of “Mac and Bean” have I had my ass in his strong hands, and my eyes staring into his.
“And lower her down,” Soph murmurs. She guides his arms, but she provides no strength as I come down and my body slides along his.
I stop briefly on the tips of my toes, stare into his eyes, then I continue down into the splits and slide my front leg between his.
Mac’s eyes widen for a moment, with shock, intrigue, sympathy for what he thinks hurts me, then he pulls me back up, grunting when I spin and Soph shoves him forward so his chest crashes against my back.
“Good,” she murmurs with an evil snigger. She walks around us while Mac’s hands find my hips and slide low enough to make my heart momentarily stop. “You’ve got good feet, Blair. And here I was thinking I’d have to be her man today.” She comes to Mac’s right – to our right – and guides his hand over my belly.
Rudy – my usual partner – has practiced this routine with me a hundred times already, but never once, not in all the times we’ve danced together, has his dick grown against my back, or his breath whispered in my ear.
I want Mac Blair more than I want my next breath, but stage fright is a real thing, so when his cock pulses against my back, my heart comes to a complete halt, my body tightens up, and sensing it – or perhaps he’s just sensing his own discomfort – Mac’s hands jump away from my skin like I’m made of electricity.
He backs up so fast that he knocks into Soph, and when I spin and my eyes inevitably lower to his crotch, he turns away and storms toward the exit. Through the door, into the hall, he shoves his way past Soph’s arriving husband, and slams into the bathroom without a single word.
“Shit…” Laughing, Soph snatches up the stereo remote and lowers the volume as Jay pauses at the door and cluelessly glances around. “I’m probably gonna go fuck my husband now. Good lord, woman.”
I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t do any damn thing but replay the way my body short-circuited when Mac’s dick touched my back.
“I don’t… I can’t…” I can’t speak. “Shit.”
“You’re twenty-one now, right?” Soph stops in front of me and leans a little lower, since she’s taller than me. “Lucy? You’re twenty-one?”
“In November,” I choke out. “Why?”
“Because when you turned eighteen, you became a legal, consenting adult. I’m not your mother, baby girl. So I’m gonna casually suggest you follow that man into the bathroom and take care of business.”
“What?” Finally, my brain snaps into focus. “Are you insane? I can’t do that!”
“Somebody has to.” She looks down her body, fixes the waistband of her shorts, and glances back up with a wicked grin. “I’ve never met two people more sexually repressed than you two. For fuck’s sake, it’s smothering and makes it hard for even innocent bystanders to breathe.”
“What you did was rotten and mean.”
“What I did was called a favor.” Soph turns when Jay takes his cue and walks across the room.
He’s handsome, he’s strong and badass, and when he tastes Soph’s sexual frustration in the air, he grabs her close and swallows her face in one long kiss.
“What did you do?” he asks when he lets her up for air. “Why’s Kincaid got the sour face?”
“She’s got the hots for Blair, I gave them the chance to fuck, but they only got partway through before Blair bailed. Now she’s a sad panda.”
Jay’s eyes, serious and sympathetic, come up to mine. “I hate when that happens. You’ll land that fish next time.”
“He’s not my fish! Dammit, Sophia. Don’t interfere with my shit.”
“Someone’s gotta,” she returns easily. “You guys are like a volcano, a dormant volcano that hit puberty ten years ago. You and Mac have been dancing this whole time, you just haven
’t thought of it that way yet. Your restraint is admirable, but eventually, that volcano is gonna blow. You’d better pray you’re between the sheets with him when that happens, rather than here dancing with Rudy, or at the club with the wrong guy’s hands on your hips. You only get one shot at this first-time stuff, and you’re walking a razor wire of fucking it all up beyond repair.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong.” I turn with a huff and walk across the studio, sliding my ballet slippers off as I move. When I reach the rest of my stuff, I shove them into my bag with more attitude than I intend, and go to work sliding my feet into flip flops. “I’m minding my own business…” I meet her eyes. “Unlike you.”
“And I’m gonna get laid tonight, by the man who loves me. He’s probably gonna do naughty things to my body–”
“Yeah, I am,” Jay’s voice rumbles low in the back of his throat.
“And then I’ll come. Like a volcano,” she adds and meets my eyes. “Unlike you.”
“Can’t miss something you’ve never had,” I murmur under my breath. I snatch the water bottle from my bag, and take one long swig from it before tossing it back in, and slinging the bag’s strap over my shoulder. “I’m done for today.”
“I’m bringing Rudy back tomorrow,” Soph says. “Then I’m gonna ask Checkmate to send me a security specialist right around the time you and him are dancing.”
Jay grins. “We could probably spare Blair. Everyone else is busy.”
“You guys are pains in my ass.”
“If you play your cards right, maybe Mac can be that for you instead.”
“Sophia!” My stomach lurches, and my bag swings around as I spin. “Jesus Christ, are you done? I’m still…” A child, my mind wants me to say.
At some point in the last couple years, I graduated from child to adult, but everyone, including me, seems to have missed the memo. In my mind, I’m still a child that needs protection from that kind of talk.