by Shayla Black
It was impossible not to fall under his spell.
A new ribbon of desire tied her stomach in knots as he trailed hot kisses across her cheek, down toward her neck. He exhaled against her neck, close to her ear, stirring sensitive skin. She shivered as his lips caressed her, branded her. He swept a fingertip down the arch of her throat and nipped at her lobe.
“Necesito tocarle, su cara, su piel. Su corazón.”
Shanna had no idea what his words meant, but they melted her. In that moment, whatever he wanted, she wanted, too.
“Tell me…”
He didn’t right away. Instead, he swept his mouth over hers again. The tangle of breaths, lips, tongues became a deliberate kiss of endless hunger. Eloquent, shockingly sexual as the fingers of his free hand sifted into her hair, curling possessively around the strands. Sizzlingly intimate as he tore his mouth from hers to stare, penetrating her with eyes like burning coals in the pitch of night. Ensnared, Shanna could not look away.
“I said that I need to touch you, your face, your skin. Your heart.”
Something both shocked and joyous burst inside her. She gasped, and Alejandro swallowed the sound with another drugging kiss.
With every brush of his lips, every glide of his hot palm, every male moan poured into her mouth he ripped past her barriers until she opened completely to him—parting her lips wider to accept more of his possession, clutching one hard shoulder with her free hand to keep him near, spreading her thighs to invite him inside. She sighed when his narrow hips fit right into the curve of her body as if he’d been made to fill her.
“Yes.” She arched under him, unable to hold anything back.
He nestled his free hand under the curve in her back, keeping her breasts and the damp heat of her skin right against him.
“Yo le tocaré toda la noche. Cada parte de tú sabrás el se siente de mí.”
“Ali…please.”
The way he touched her, as if he had not another thought in his head except pleasing her… She burned inside her skin, yet she knew only he could save her. He would shatter her into a million pieces first, then remake her into a new woman. A warning bell went off in some distant part of her mind, but his fingers gripped her hips, fitting her directly against the hard column of his erection. He wound down her body and brushed soft lips against the side of her breast.
“I will touch you all night long,” he translated. “Every part of you will know the feel of me.”
She had no doubt Alejandro would keep that promise.
He suckled her nipples over and over, lavishing attention on her until they stood red, swollen, so sensitive that nothing more than his breath on her induced a shiver. All the while, his fingers free from the cuff whispered across her skin. Her back, her thighs, her buttocks. Even her knees, calves, and toes. Alejandro put that hand on every inch of available skin, finally drawing her leg up high on his hip so he could toy with the sensitive underside of her knee.
Gently, he rode her clit with his erection. Not pushing or grinding. Not bruising. Instead, a soft nudge of delicious pressure in a hypnotic rhythm, one that took her higher and higher.
The seed of pleasure under her clit sprouted and bloomed. Shanna panted, trying to resist the searing pleasure for just another moment. She dug the fingers not bound by the cuff into the hard flesh of his back, pressing down his body, far down, until she gripped his ass in her hand.
Moonlight spilled past the open blinds, swirling in on the evening breeze as he whispered, “La piel estas rosácea, mi amor. Eres maduro y listo, sí?”
“Tell me, Ali!” She moaned. “Please…”
“Your skin is rosy, my love. You are ripe and ready, yes?”
“Yes. Yes, now!”
He pressed against her again, nudging her clit with his cock. The cream of her arousal spread all over his flesh, and the next time he rocked against her, the bead of nerves he teased leaped at the slick pressure. Blood rushed south, pooled between her legs, gathering need, pleasure, and anticipation right where it impacted her most. She clawed, cried in his arms.
“Who is here, Shanna? Who is in this room?”
“Us. Just us.”
“Apenas tú y mí. Ninguna audiencia. Ninguna cámaras. Nosotros.” He breathed as he gathered the crooks of her knees into his arms. “Just you and me. No audience, no cameras. Us.”
The way it always should be. The thought ran through Shanna’s mind unchecked, unchallenged, unstoppable as Alejandro paused, probed, then on a long glide, he penetrated her.
His hard flesh filled her sex, sank deep, deeper, then deeper still. Making love face to face…totally different than being dominated by him for an audience. The slick rasp of his engorged shaft raked against her sensitive walls. A jolt of pleasure coiled, tightened, intensifying, growing faster than she could assimilate.
“So tight, my love,” he murmured as he drew back and brought their cuffed hands up to her breast. Her palm cupped her flesh as his thumb caressed her nipple. It was as if they were seeing to her pleasure together, and it drove Shanna mad with delirious need.
All the while, the slow steady pleasure of his thrusts made her into a wild woman. She writhed, lifted her hips, arched—anything to reach more of him, lure him deeper still into her.
Alejandro went willingly, every lingering slide of his erection inside her lifting her arousal higher. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Heat suffused her body. She could barely breathe. And she didn’t care.
For the first time in years—maybe in her life—she didn’t just feel; she was wholly alive, driven by something more than a statue of faux gold molded like dancers she wanted to someday sit on her mantle. She lived for now. She lived to feel the man growling words in a language she didn’t understand but adored as he strained to fulfill every promise of pleasure boiling in her body.
Alejandro gripped the hand joined to his by the cuff and laced their fingers together. He squeezed her hand tight as their breaths merged, their cries mingled. “Come for me.”
The request from his mouth became a demand from his body as he thrust straight into her core again.
Shanna splintered into a million pieces, blinded by the brilliant pleasure bursting inside her. In the next moment, he followed her into the white-hot rush of shattering pleasure. Oh, god. He was all over her, everywhere…inside her. Shanna doubted she could wash his possession away with a mere shower. It seemed unlikely that time and distance would completely free her from him.
She feared she’d given a piece of herself to Alejandro she’d likely never get back: her heart.
Sated and exhausted, Shanna pulled up in the driveway of the house she’d been raised in. She and all of her siblings had moved out years ago. Dad had stayed in the rambling house alone. Why, she didn’t know. The place was haunted by the ghost of her mother, a woman she vaguely remembered smiling and dancing around the kitchen.
She should have gone home first. Showered, changed, had a cup of coffee before coming here. If she had stayed in Ali’s bed, he would have offered her all that and more. Instead, she’d pleaded the need to use the bathroom and persuaded him to unlock the cuffs joining them. She’d waited a few minutes, until she was sure he’d drifted back to sleep, then dressed in one of his shirts and a pair of long sweatpants, then sneaked out. Not that it mattered. Ali was with her, in her, in a way that had nothing to do with the fact they’d had unprotected sex and everything to do with the fact she cared far more about him than she should.
The chilly California air of the early morning hadn’t helped to sort out her head. She was in love with a man who would never mean to stand in the way of her dance dreams, but how could Alejandro not, as consuming as he was? She’d barely driven two miles from Sneak Peek, and she’d begun to feel the withdrawal of his warmth, his acceptance and tenderness.
Dangerous. She was the Bitch of the Ballroom because she’d adhered to strict discipline and a ruthless dedication to perfection. She intended to win that long-coveted trophy, damn it. When
the music was high and the lights down low, the judges didn’t care what was deep in her heart. She’d do well to remember that.
Still, those moments in Ali’s arms… For the first time in years, maybe ever, she’d felt adored, and not because of what she might achieve or what competition she might win. She didn’t have anything to prove in that moment. Alejandro cared about her. He proved that in amazing, pleasure-drenched ways every time he touched her.
Now, she clutched a bag of bagels and cream cheese, along with a portable carafe of coffee she’d purchased at a bakery, and let herself into the house.
Shanna followed the smell of burned toast with a poignant smile.
She sauntered into the kitchen and looked at her father, older now, gray at the temples, his reading glasses askew, but still vital and well built for pushing sixty.
“Bagels?” she offered.
Her dad plucked charred bread from the toaster with his fingertips, then dropped it on the counter with a curse.
Then he skewered her with a stare. “Sure. As soon as you explain why you’re wearing men’s clothes, are rosy with whisker burn, and smell like sex.”
Certainly nothing off about his eyesight.
“I do things beyond work and practice at the dance studio.”
He sent her a pointed stare over the top of his glasses. “I never noticed it until today. You’ve always been very single-minded about winning.”
“I still am. What happened last night won’t happen again.” She passed him the bag of bagels, hoping it would distract him.
He ignored the gesture and arched a sharp brow, as if he disapproved. But Shanna couldn’t shake the impression that he was suppressing a smile.
“I suspected it would happen someday. Maybe it’s the female way. Who is he?”
Shanna frowned. “What do you mean, ‘the female way?’”
He shrugged. “Women follow their hearts, which usually lead them to some man or another, who may or may not respect their desire to keep pursuing their goals.”
Exactly. No doubt, he’d have complete disrespect if she ultimately made that choice. Her brothers, too.
“Which is precisely why Alejandro and I are…done.”
“Alejandro? Do I know him?”
Shanna shook her head. “Argentinean. He owns a nightclub. We met at the benefit for the Catholic orphans charity last weekend.”
God, it was weird to be discussing her love life with her father in the kitchen of her childhood home at seven in the morning. She needed coffee for this.
“Hmm.” Her father hesitated. “What does he think of your dancing?”
“I assume he’s okay with it. Not that it matters.” Shanna sipped the caffeine-laden brew and let it sink into her hazy brain.
He reached for the carafe of coffee and poured a steaming mug. “A hindrance, is he? Resenting your practices?”
“No.” Not unless she was avoiding him.
“Latin men are notoriously jealous. He can’t handle your time with Kristoff and the way your partner has to touch you?”
Shanna had to laugh. “No, he knows way too much about Kristoff to be jealous.”
“So you’re just worried he’d be a general distraction?”
“He would. The other night, I was headed for a sensible dinner and an early evening to bed. Big day of practice the next morning, which is vital with the competition coming up. He came by and just assumed I’d go out for ice cream with him.”
“Ice cream. That’s a huge problem.” Her father sipped his coffee, seemingly deep in thought.
Somehow, Shanna got the impression he was laughing silently at her.
“It is! I can’t afford to blow off sleep and eat a gallon of ice cream to satisfy some romantic notion of his. And then he tells me personal stuff, about his childhood and friendships. He blurts out his views that commitment is absolute and infidelity is inexcusable. Why tell me? The whole incident is taking up my thoughts that should be directed to the competition, which is tomorrow. And last night, he kept me up half the night…”
Realizing she’d nearly spilled the details of her sex life, Shanna flushed, then continued with a safer topic. “The man is just consuming. Him just being steals my attention and leads my thoughts astray. Every trick I’ve used in the past to ward off would-be Romeos doesn’t work with him. He just doesn’t give up and won’t go away.”
“And you’re so tempted to let him into your life that it frightens you.” It wasn’t a question. He seemed to know that’s exactly how she felt.
“How…?” She grappled to find the right words. “You know?”
“Your mother had a life before we married. Did you know she was a prima ballerina?”
A prima ballerina? No clue. “I knew she flitted around the kitchen and she was graceful…”
But her mother had died years ago. In some ways, her mother was as great a mystery to her as she would be if Shanna had never met her.
“American Ballet Theater. She was set to star in the season’s Giselle. To this day, I’ll never know what she saw in a cocky weightlifter coming fresh off a gold medal high. I had to have been a complete ass. But she claimed to love me. God knows the sun rose and set on that woman, as far as I was concerned.”
Shanna frowned, sensing that she would not like what came next.
“You married her and—”
“Encouraged her to stop dancing. Made sure I got her pregnant with your brother so she had to stay beside me. I was a hugely selfish bastard where her time and energy were concerned. If I could take it back somehow and let her take her rightful place on stage…”
Mouth gaping open, Shanna stared at her father. This was the man who had driven her for years. Nothing she’d ever done was ever good enough. Second place was first loser. Quitting was the professional equivalent of a noose.
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.” He sighed heavily and sat on one of the little wooden chairs they’d had forever. “I pushed you and pushed you. I don’t think I realized until just now that I did it because I wanted to make up for what I did to your mother. She never said that she regretted her decision. But I’d catch her every so often holding her toe shoes with a wistful look on her face. I suspect she always wondered what could have been. I didn’t want you wondering, too.”
Shanna gaped, shock ricocheting through her. Her father had intentionally killed her mother’s dance dream? And regretted it like hell. For years, he’d driven Shanna, fueled her ambition. As a child, she’d wanted to follow one of her brothers into their sports, but he’d specifically signed her up for dance class after dance class. Now she knew why. But…
“You sound as if you’re encouraging me to continue with Alejandro. Why change your mind now?”
He stirred his cooling coffee. “In retrospect, I don’t think your mother really regretted her decision to leave dance and marry. After she was gone, I realized how short her life had been cut and that I’d prevented her from fulfilling her dream. I regretted standing in her way. I beat myself up a lot over it. But you know, most of my memories are of her smiling. Your mother used to have this one little grin when she was particularly happy. A little lopsided, with a dimple in her left cheek and a twinkle in her eye. When I think about that smile now, I know she was at peace with her life.” Her father paused, looked up at her. “Until this morning, I’d never seen that smile on you. But there was a moment when you got out of your car. I was watching through the window. I saw that smile on your face. I’m guessing Alejandro put it there.”
He had. When she pushed aside her tumult about tomorrow’s competition, happiness sneaked in, again and again. The thought that, after last night, she might never see Alejandro again, gouged her with deep shards of pain. And it shouldn’t. Their relationship had been short. Intense, yes, but nothing to build a lifetime on?
Why did she feel like she was selling them short?
“He sounds like the kind of guy who wouldn’t demand you give up your dream,” her fath
er said. “If he can make you happy and give you the freedom to pursue what you want professionally, why aren’t you grabbing onto him with both hands?”
Yeah, why not? “With him as a distraction, I may never win.”
“Would you rather lose a competition or the man you love?”
“It’s not that simple, Dad. If I…divide my time, I won’t be as dedicated. If I never become a champion, you won’t think I’m weak?”
“Would it really matter if I did?”
Shanna paused. Thought. Alejandro’s love or her dad’s approval? No choice. “It would bother me if you weren’t proud, but I’m an adult.” She drew in a deep breath as her realization became an admission. “I should be doing what makes me happy.”
“Yes, and you need a man’s love more than Daddy’s blessing.”
She nodded. “Jason, Ash, and Kyle would make fun of me if I chose to be with Alejandro.”
Her dad rolled his eyes. “They’d make fun of you no matter what you did. They’re convinced that’s their prerogative as big brothers.”
In spite of the weirdness of the conversation, Shanna laughed. “You think?”
The smile faded as something occurred to her. “I’m not sure matters with Alejandro will be as simple as me expressing my feelings. Let’s say I’ve played very hard to get. He may not be talking to me after I, um…sneaked out on him this morning.”
“Why don’t you send him tickets to tomorrow’s competition? I bet he shows. I want to meet the man who managed to see beyond your Bitch of the Ballroom act.”
“You’re coming tomorrow?”
He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Whether you’re crowned champion of the ballroom or of Alejandro’s heart, I’m proud no matter what.”
9
Waiting in the darkened corner of the ballroom’s dance floor, Shanna drew in a deep breath, smoothed her hair, straightened her sleeve, shifted her weight. And scanned the crowd—again.