by Emilia Finn
“The macarena?”
Now I’m just asking to be tortured. She presses her hands to her shoulders in an X, rolls her hips, and stares straight into my fucking eyes while she does it. “Next?”
“No.” I brush past her, and shove a hand into my pants with superspeed to rearrange my cock while she’s busy laughing at my expense. “Show me your dance. Can I get some paddles with scores on them? I’d really like to tear your routine apart the way Smalls does when Ben is sparring.”
Giggling, she catches up to me and leads the way to the same studio I saw her in last time. She brought nothing with her – no dance shoes, no leotard, and definitely no tutu – but that phone, it’s like it’s all she needs, because she walks straight to a stereo system and plugs it in like this room’s existence is purely for her use.
“No paddles.” Her eyes remain on her phone as she scrolls songs. “And you also get no show. Either you dance with me, or we leave and head to Dixie’s.”
My mood shifts and drops. “But I don’t wanna dance, I don’t know how. Plus, my leg makes it hard to do much.”
She rolls her eyes. “If you can fight, you can dance, and I know you can fight, so…” She lifts a pointed brow, even though her gaze remains on her phone. “Dancing and fighting are pretty similar, actually.”
She settles on an Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber collaboration, sets her phone down, and turns to me with hips that are already swaying. “It doesn’t have to be serious. And no one has to see it. Just consider this…” She walks forward and presses a finger to that bottom fucking lip that I wanna bite, as though it helps her think. “Like a dance party. You ever do that with your mom?” Her hips roll as she moves closer. If we were wearing bells, they’d be jingling. “Don’t tell me you and your mom never turned the stereo up some days and danced away your sillies.”
“I mean…” Why the fuck does it feel like I’m going to blush? “Maybe. Sometimes.”
“I knew you would have. Your mom seems like someone that just needs to dance sometimes. And you?” She takes my hand, lifts it high above us, and spins so fast that she becomes a blur. Standing on her toes, she spins once, twice, three times and checks my face on every single rotation. Already breathing a little heavier when she stops, she grins and slides her fingers between mine so we’re interlaced in ways I’m not sure I’m ready for. “You were the crazy kid with way too much energy. If she didn’t make you dance around the house, she would have had to find more bail money.”
Without warning, she shoots away as far as our joined hands can go, then rushes back until her chest slams against mine, and her legs straddle mine. She’s a fucking seductress, the forbidden fruit, and she rides my leg like it turns her on.
“Step back now.”
“Huh?”
“Now.” She pushes me back with a fast shove, only to race around behind me. She presses her chest to my back, wraps her arms around my hips, and moves us in ways that I wish we could do… alone… naked. “Like this,” she pants, “but on the next turn, you’ll be at the back.”
Lord help me.
“Um…”
“Press your butt back a little. Almost sit against me.”
Fucking kill me.
“Okay.”
My voice squeaks, and though I expect her to maintain her ‘no teasing’ rule, she laughs. She fucking laughs and slides her hand over my stomach. She goes so low that I worry I’m going to be found out, but she stops at my belt buckle, grabs on with a strong hand, and spins me around so my face somehow – against my will, I swear – ends up in her hair.
Mahogany strands shower over my face as her hands come up under my arms and cup my shoulder blades. She smells like heaven. Like the filthiest, fattiest, most sinful dessert a starving man is told he can’t have. She smells like something I wanna taste, but then she pulls back and spins away again.
“How’s your leg holding up?”
“Fine.” What leg? Do I even own legs? “Not sore.”
“Is it…” She runs her hands up through her hair, messing it so she looks like she’s been doing naughty things. “Stiff?”
“Hmm?” I look down at my cock, then back up to her eyes. “What?”
“Your leg.” She flashes a wolfish grin and stands in what I swear is a fight stance. Left leg forward, right leg back, booty fucking shorts that fry my brain. “Ready? We’re doing that thing again, but this time, you’re in the back.”
“I forget…” I swallow to lubricate my dry throat. “I forget the moves.”
“I got you.” She turns away, bends forward just a little, almost like she’s looking for the sprawl and takedown. But we’re not on the mats at the gym. And we’re definitely not surrounded by her watchful family.
All I can do is tilt my head to the side and study the hem of her shorts, so when she peeks over her shoulder and catches me bending to get a better view, she pulls that thick bottom lip between her teeth and shakes her head.
I could swear, swear on my momma’s life, that she mumbles something that’ll piss me off. But then she pulls out of her pose, circles around, slides her hand over the front of my belt, just low enough to stop my heart, then she moves around and plasters her ass right onto my hardened cock.
Lucy Kincaid. Lucy Kincaid. Lucy Kincaid.
She’s Lucy Kincaid, and her ass is sitting on my cock, but instead of letting its firmness freak her out, she merely grinds down and acts like her actions are purely innocent.
“Lucy…” I step back before I talk myself into tearing the flimsy black fabric off her body and doing to her the things I’ve been doing in my head for years. “This isn’t… this is…” I draw in a heady breath, and let it out again on a whistle. “I need to piss.” I turn away and drop her hand, and though she stumbles, I don’t turn back to help her.
Just like last time, I leave the studio, storm along the hallway, pass a quietly cackling Sophia, and push into the bathrooms.
Because I’m gonna touch my cock and think of the woman I left back there.
Because maybe she doesn’t understand the difference between dancing and fucking on a dancefloor, and I swear, if this is how she dances with that duet partner, I’m gonna tear his dick off and feed it back to him.
I step into the stall and slam the door shut, and even before the wall stops rattling, I tear my jeans open and fist my cock like I might die if I don’t.
It’s Lucy-fucking-Kincaid, and either she’s lost her mind, or she needs an education on what’s appropriate when in a dance studio.
“What the fuck is Sophia teaching her?”
What starts as an angry growl turns to a desperate whimper when I stroke my cock and think of Lucy’s booty shorts. I think of her ass in my lap. Then I think of what would happen if, putting aside right and wrong, I simply asked her to take those shorts off and come to me.
I could slide into her. Gently, because I’ll be damned if she’s promiscuous and already primed from other men. I don’t ask, she never tells, but I swear to never overthink it. I refuse to think about what she does while she’s away at college. I refuse to think of her with another man. Instead, I imagine her standing against my chest, her back pressing against my heart, I think of sliding a hand into her panties to finally, finally discover what she has for me, the other hand, sliding up between the valley between her tits to stop and rest around her throat.
My imagination makes it so I can almost believe my hand is her body. I close my eyes because the imagery of a bathroom is all wrong, and instead I summon a vision of her dancing. Her rolling hips will always work in our favor in bed. Her flexibility, her strength, which means though I have to be gentle with my cock, my hands and my body on hers don’t. She’s been fighting her whole damn life, so I never have to be careful about bruising her.
My hips jut forward when I think of her in my bed. When I think of her hair in my face while I slam inside her. When my balls draw up and my release shoots onto the toilet seat, I throw my head back and desperately cling to
the vision I have of her in my mind, and not the stark white walls of a dance studio bathroom.
“Fuck,” I growl when the electricity she puts in my blood recedes. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
My lungs clamor for air, but it’s not the kind of clamor where I think I’m going to have a panic attack. It’s the old-fashioned kind, where I’ve whacked off for the millionth time using the same girl for inspiration. The same girl, the same hair, the same ass. Every fucking time, she’s right here with me.
But she’s not, I have to admit. She’s out there, dancing like an angel – a filthy angel – and perhaps she’s been taught and groomed to dance in ways she really shouldn’t for anyone but the man she marries.
Me! my brain screams. That man is supposed to be me.
But it’s not. It can’t be. Because the universe likes to fuck with me.
Finally catching my breath, I fix my jeans and clean my mess from the toilet seat. Pushing out of the stall, I barely contain my girly shriek when Jay Bishop stands by the door and grins the grin of an entertained man.
“Fuck off.” I stomp to the sink and wash my hands. “You’re a freak for standing there. And your wife is on my shit-list. What the fuck is she teaching Lucy?”
“Well, if I know my wife the way I think I do, I suspect she’s teaching her how to send a man clinically insane. It’s her specialty, after all.”
“She’s teaching her students how to dance for dollar bills! Bet your ass I’m telling Lucy my thoughts on this place. I’ll make sure she never comes back.”
“No.” He chuckles. “Nuh-uh.” Stepping into the room, he shakes his head as I dry my hands. “Not dollar bills, son. She’s worth fiddies, at least. Soph,” he clarifies. “She doesn’t accept singles, and I suspect she teaches her girls the same. Demand your worth and all that.”
“She’s setting up a stable for night dancers, and she’s calling it a ballet school.”
Leaning back against the wall, he studies his shoes and continues to shake his head. “I’m here every single day. I like to watch my girl work, and I assure you, she ain’t teaching them how to shake their asses. So maybe, just maybe, if your girl is shaking hers, it’s because she wants your fuckin’ attention. And instead of taking what’s yours, you come to the bathroom and rub one out on your own? Sack up, Blair. Eventually she’s gonna get bored with you.” Finally, he lifts his gaze and locks onto mine. “You gonna be cool when she asks you to be the best man at her wedding?”
“Fuck you.” I push past my thug superior and the arsenal of weapons strapped to his body.
Moving into the hall, I head back toward the studio I escaped, feeling none of the mellow a dude is supposed to feel after coming, only to stop on a dime when I find her dancing to Jay-Z while Soph acts as partner.
There’s no ass-shaking, no filth, nothing of what I was witness to just ten minutes ago. Now it’s gangster rap, but elegance and long legs. Long arms, perfect form, and Lucy practically floating through the air like she’s a free bird.
“She’s worth fifties, too.” Jay stops beside me with a chuckle. “She’s a fucking beauty queen.”
“Eyes to yourself,” I growl in almost silence.
Rolling his bottom lip between his thumb and finger, he tilts his head the way I do, and watches them move together. “I’ve come to a point in my life where, when I look at women dancing, I can see the dance, and not the woman – unless it’s my woman,” he adds with a dirty snicker. “I can see their feet, their arms, their posture, and whether they’re smiling or not when moving. I can see what makes them happy, and what helps them breathe.”
He elbows my arm when I do nothing but grunt in reply. “She ain’t leaving here,” he says plainly. “You could never talk her out of dancing, not when she dances like that, not when she smiles the way she does.”
“I didn’t say I’d stop her from dancing,” I grumble when the song comes to a lower volume. “I just said I’d blacklist Soph. Get her in someplace else.”
“Mmhm.” He nods when the song comes to an end and the women slow. “If you say so. Aren’t you working tonight?”
“Mm.”
He laughs. “She talk you into coming here?”
“Nope. Worse.” I sigh. “I talked her into coming here. I fucking drove her here.”
“And in the end, you had to touch your own dick.”
He pushes away from the doorway when Soph turns to us with a grin. He grabs her up in a hug that’s gonna end better than what I just got, spins her around, and drags her off to a cave like a fucking… legend.
Panting breath and heaving chest, Lucy stops by the stereo and unplugs her cell, then with her head dropped low, she makes her way toward me with drooping shoulders and a face covered with her hair.
She stops so her toes touch my boots, and refuses to lift her gaze, so I slide a finger under her chin and pull her up to reveal sparkling eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Mad?” I shake my head. “I’m never mad at you.”
“You ran away.” Her voice cracks. “We were dancing, then when it gets to a part where you’ve gotta… ya know… hold me, you ran away. You looked really mad.”
“I had to pee.” Lies. “I’m sorry I messed up your lesson. I have to head out and get some rest soon, since I’m working tonight, but now that you’ve had your dance, do you wanna get the ice cream I promised? We could get a booth at Dixie’s, eat something overpriced and delicious, then I can drop you back at the gym.”
She shakes her head. Rejection, just like that. “No, it’s okay. Just take me back to the gym please. I have some stuff I need to do.”
Lucy
World’s Worst Kept Secret
I race up to my room as soon as my family and I get home from the gym around six. Protein bar in my left hand, phone in my right, I ignore the texts from Smalls asking if I wanna hang out, and instead drop onto my bed with a frustrated huff.
I worked out at the gym, then dance, then the gym a second time today, which means my body is in a major caloric deficit that I swear is eating at my bones. The protein bar is thick, the expensive kind that makes my jaw ache as I chew, but I work through it as fast as I can to get some food into my belly, and all the while, I sit on my bed and stare at my phone and the twelve – count them, twelve! – missed calls.
My hands shake with rage. With disbelief that this is my life. My brain spins and swirls and tries to come up with a way out of my shitty situation, but there’s nothing. There’s no way.
My caller won the bet we made last year, I lost, he named his terms, and if I can’t keep my own word, then who the hell am I?
My cell begins vibrating again. Annoying, frustrating, and so fucking infuriating. But I know that if I ignore it any longer, he’s going to come here and make trouble. More trouble.
Swiping to answer, I swallow the protein in my mouth and bring my phone up to my ear. “Hello?”
“Mm…” A single syllable, that one single sound is all it takes to make my blood roar with anger. “About time you answered. I was getting ready to send a search party.”
“I was at my gym,” I growl past gritted teeth. “I was working out, so you need to sit down and be patient.”
“Good thing you were working out. You know you need to look good for this to work.”
“You’re an asshole,” I hiss. When the floor creaks outside my door, I freeze and wait in case someone is coming in here.
Jamie’s bedroom door beside mine groans open, then closed, and the noises on the floor stop.
“This is almost all done.”
“But it’s not yet,” my caller chuckles. “Ten-thousand-dollar bet. Ten big ones. You’ve made me eight.”
“I can get you two grand out of my bank,” I snap.
It’s an argument we’ve had a dozen times this year, but just like every other time, he laughs and taunts me.
“I don’t want ten from a bank, Little Dancer. I want ten earned. I want to see you wo
rk for it. I don’t want trust fund money.”
“Money is money, you ass! Who fucking cares where it comes from?”
“I care,” he bites out. “And you made the bet. Perhaps next time, you’ll be a little less arrogant with that little betting book of yours. You think everything is a sure thing, huh? You think you know everything.”
“Obviously not,” I growl. “It’s nearly all over. Then you can fuck off and leave me alone.”
“Like I said,” his tone is too cheerful, too arrogant. “The better you look, the faster it’ll be earned. So good thinking with the training today. Get some rest, Little Dancer. You’re on at nine.”
I mash my thumb against my cell screen to hang up, and when I lay back with a huff, it takes a minute for my brain to process the fact I didn’t negotiate a time switch.
I can’t do it tonight, because Mac will be there. He’ll see. And if he sees, we’re all dead.
I try calling again. I try twice, and a third time when the call continues to ring out.
“Fucking…” The pressure builds in my head. “Gah! Prick!”
Music pulses through Rhino’s Club. Bass thumps against my chest, and the heat from all of the bodies sends my internal thermostat rising until I worry I’m going to have a panic attack much the same as Mac when he’s fighting and can’t catch his breath.
It doesn’t happen when we’re dancing. It doesn’t happen the days we get to run. And it doesn’t happen when we’re cruising around in his car, or running around the lake like it doesn’t matter that he continues to reject me. It’s like an association thing, I’m certain of it. Fighting is Mac’s trigger, my family’s gym is his trigger, so in there, he loses his shit, and his brain tricks him into thinking that he can’t breathe.
That’s how it feels for me right now as I sit on a stool in a back room of the dark club and let the girls work around me.
I don’t normally ask them for help. In fact, the women who so graciously help me tonight are women I’ve stayed away from every time I’ve come here. Like I think I’m other, like I think I’m special and too good to slum with the dancing girls.