by L. P. Rose
When my lips melded against his, I had expected him to push me away in disgust, but he didn’t, he only fueled the fire by fisting my hair and deepening the kiss, then Max’s face became superimposed in my mind and I pushed Nikoli away as though his lips tasted like acid. I was a married woman. Now I was a confused married woman and guilt began to lay heavily in my heart, like a rock.
“Talk to me, Raine. I can’t stand this silence,” Nikoli said sternly. He pulled to a stop at the bottom of my road and killed the engine.
Ignoring him, I went to reach for the door handle. I heard the automatic locking system kick in as I pulled on the door lever causing me to turn sharply and glare at him. “Unlock the damned door,” I snapped. He grinned at me with his finger on the control panel embedded on his side of the car.
“No. Talk to me and then I’ll let you go.”
“Talk about what?” I turned my body in the seat to face him head on. “The kiss that shouldn’t have happened? I’ve said I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it,” I croaked, my voice came out thick with remorse.
“You’re sorry? Well I’m not sorry, Raine.”
“But I’m married, Nikoli. Do you not understand that?” I felt exasperated and dropped my head into my hands and stared at my lap.
His hand was on my back, rubbing in a circular motion. “You may be married, but you’re not happy. He doesn’t make you happy, Myshka, I can see that,” he said quietly.
“You don’t know anything, Nikoli. You’re just grasping at straws,” I said quietly as my fingers started to coil themselves in my hair.
“Do you love him?” He asked.
I didn’t reply. His hand grasped the back of my hair and gently pulled my head up. My scalp prickled with pain when my head reared back and he forced my face closer to his, but the pain wasn’t anything like when Max grabbed me by the hair, this pain felt different, and when his free hand grasped my neck and his thumb stroked against the skin, I realized why it felt different. It was turning me on, he was turning me on.
“Do. You. Love. Him?” He repeated slowly.
“He’s my husband. What sort of question is that?” I whispered.
“That wasn’t what I asked,” he rasped, his tongue slipped along his bottom lip slowly and my eyes obediently followed as though that was his intention. I raised my eyes and they locked with his. They were black and deep, like a bottomless well and I was suddenly drowning in them. The acceleration of my heartbeat had nothing to do with Max but everything to do with Nikoli.
I moved my head to the right slightly and diverted my eyes. I couldn’t hold his deeply heated gaze any longer. He used his thumb under my chin and pushed my head back to claim the gaze I was denying him. His lips were devoid of a smile, his jaw was clamped tight, his chest was rising and falling rapidly and all I could feel around us was the intensity of what we both knew was the start of the inferno to come.
“Nik-”
He swallowed the rest of his name in a deep, delicious kiss. His lips were soft yet demanding, his tongue weaved seductively in and out of my mouth adding a touch of sexual ecstasy to it, until with complete abandonment, I surrendered to him. His kiss was electric. My mind slipped into a frenzy of headache-inducing static when he began to move his hand slowly over my neck.
His head moved away and I whimpered like a puppy when I lost contact with him. I slowly opened my eyes and swallowed, trying to gasp a lung full of air. “Now answer the question, do you love him?” He whispered as he dragged his thumb backwards and forwards tantalizingly across my bottom lip.
“I’m not in love with him and haven’t been for a long time, if that’s what you mean,” I whispered back.
He licked his lips and smiled, “That’s all I need to know,” he replied. He moved away and pressed the button on the door, releasing the automatic lock, freeing me from the confines of his car. I couldn’t move, no less than ten minutes ago I couldn’t wait to put some distance between us, but now I just wanted that distance to fade away while I sat contemplating climbing onto his lap.
He leant back over and placed a chaste kiss on my cheek, “Myshka, you need to go. I’ll see you tomorrow for Latin, 1 p.m. and don’t be late!”
Suddenly my body and mind came out of pause mode and I blinked slowly several times, “Latin? Will it be like today?” I asked. I hoped he’d say no. Dancing like that today with him was one thing, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to it with Jared or anyone else for that matter.
He shook his head, “No way, Raine. That type of dancing is reserved only for me.” He smirked. I let out a rush of breath and half smiled as I nodded then reached for the lever on the door.
“I’d better go, I’ll see you tomorrow.” I said climbing from the car, I shut the door without waiting for his response.
As soon as the chilly air whipped around me, I was shocked back into my senses as I raced up the road towards the house. My breath hitched in the back of my throat and a searing pain of dread consumed me at the thought of rounding that corner and seeing Max’s car parked on the driveway. I let out the breath I was holding when I saw it empty and quickly rammed the key in to the door then slammed it behind me.
My back fell against it, I inhaled and exhaled rapidly as I tried to process what had happened over the course of the last four and a half hours.
I’d committed a sin, broken my marriage vows, I’d committed adultery. I was an adulterer. All these things should have been enough for me to hightail it to the nearest church and beg for forgiveness, but all my morals and principals had corroded over time and were now left warped. I’d had a taste of another’s man’s lips, the feel of another man’s hands all over my body, another man’s whisper in my ear and now I was all alone, left with wet underwear and the pulsating throb between my legs.
“I need a release,” I muttered. I broke away from the door and raced up the stairs to the bedroom, stripping myself of everything I was wearing. I could smell Nikoli all over me, in my hair, on my skin, on my clothes. I rammed my clothes in the bottom of the washing hamper and headed towards the walk-in wardrobe, grabbing at the bottom drawer, I sank to my knees and moved the pile of clothes I had systematically folded and placed a certain way to retrieve my vibrator. My hands moved across the smoothness of the wood but it wasn’t there.
“Shit!”
Frantically, I began to pull at the clothes in a desperate need to find it but when I pulled the last item from the drawer, it was completely empty. Max must have found it! Crap! Without bothering to fold the clothes back up, I rammed them back in, kicked it shut and headed towards the en-suite to switch on the shower. Grabbing a towel from the cupboard I walked back towards the enticing sound of the water hitting tiles, when I heard the screech of tyres pull up on the driveway. My smile instantly died when I heard the car door slam.
Max was home.
Vaguely aware I could still smell Nikoli’s cologne all over me, I ran to the shower, dropping the towel on the side of the sink and jumped underneath the hot water pulling the glass door closed behind me. My heart jumped into the back of my throat. It’s a good job I could multi-task. I squirted shampoo in my hair with one hand and lathered up the body wash with the other, petrified of what I’d face if I left even a slither of another’s man scent on me.
My legs had turned to jelly and my stomach was coiling into knots as I tried to work faster. I heard him call my name above the loud noise of the water. I felt like I was physically going to throw up any second now. I washed the shampoo from my hair and body, paying careful attention to the one place Nikoli had spent the most time touching, my neck, then turned off the shower. With a deep breath, I left the cubicle and wrapped the towel around me. When I walked out of the room Max swooped towards me and picked me up, forcing my legs around his waist.
“Max,” I grunted when he pushed my back against the wall. “What are you doing back so early?”
He leant forward and pressed his lips to mine, all I could think about was Nikoli’s lips and his ki
ss as I opened my mouth slightly and let him in. “The jury returned the verdict early, I won another case, baby.” He laughed and kissed the side of my neck. I froze. Not my neck. Playfully I pushed his head away and congratulated him as I tried to wriggle free of his grip. He stood me to my feet and let me go with a wide smile. When I side-stepped him, he yanked the towel free and I closed my eyes coming to a standstill. “I want to celebrate,” he whispered in my ear. Coming behind me, his hands settled on my breasts. He kissed along my bare shoulder and as I tried to stem the queasiness flowing through me, I was reminded of the dull throb between my legs. The throb Nikoli had left me with.
As I lay on the bed with Max using my body for his own pleasure, I committed my next sin, I imagined he was Nikoli. As the memories of us all over each in the club, the feel of his hand on my neck and the burn of his lips on mine, began to play on a loop in my mind, I came undone underneath Max, but it was Nikoli’s name I was silently screaming.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
“Do you plan to do some actual work today, Niki?” Petra asked from across the office as she filled out the latest batch of certificates.
My mind was elsewhere, mainly on Raine as I sat staring at the letter in front of me, trying to focus on the black ink against the white paper. I sighed and let it go from out of my hands. “Have you read this?” I asked raising my head to look at her, ignoring her earlier question.
“Of course, I have. I read everything that comes through here,” she replied with a shake of her head, then shifted her attention to look at me, “That look you have spread over your face had better be an indication that you’re seriously going to think about this and not a look of I have no interest.”
I folded my arms across my chest and raised my legs onto the desk, “It’s not happening.”
Her back stiffened and she began to tap her pen against her desk, letting her annoyance at me be known. “You’re letting Raine cloud your rational thinking, Niki,” she replied swiftly. “This is important for you! They want you to be a judge at the Russian Ballroom championships, how can you even say, it’s not happening?”
My lips reverberated against each other in boredom as I listened to Petra whittle on about this big opportunity, and the money involved, not to mention a reason to go back to Russia. I watched her eyebrows furrow, her head bob back and forth while her arms moved animatedly around her, and all I could see was our mother, she was so much like her especially when she was passionate in her argument. I snickered at the thought, causing her to launch the pen still in her hand, straight at me as she snapped at me in Russian, and then I knew she was truly pissed at me.
“I am paying attention,” I snapped back. My legs moved from the desk with a thud. I rose to my feet and planted my hands on her desk. “If this letter had come two weeks ago or even a week ago I’d have agreed to do it, but not now, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can there is no such word as can’t, you just don’t want to do it because of Raine,” she growled leaning over the desk and eyeballing me. As much as I loved to duel with Petra, I had no argument this time because she was right, I wasn’t going to Russia for six months and leaving Raine behind.
I looked away from her first and dropped my eyes to the cluttered desk she called neat and organized. My ears prickled at the sound of students filtering into the studio the other side of the door and my heart nearly missed a beat at the thought of seeing Raine again after yesterday.
“I’m telling you this, do not turn down a great opportunity for yourself because of her, she doesn’t belong to you! If you can’t be without her then I suggest you find a way to get her away from her husband’s clutches and take her with you!” She continued in a harsh, hushed whisper. She came around to my side of the desk and patted my shoulder. “Please, don’t make any rash decisions. You’ll regret it, Niki.”
Grabbing the clipboard from her desk, I cut her a cold, hard glare and left the office. The second I stepped out into the studio my eyes instantly found Raine’s and my troubles quickly evaporated into thin air when I caught the sparkle in her eyes and the smile grow on her lips, then my view was obstructed, when Mona’s face appeared directly in line with mine.
“Niki, I have a problem. I have a function to attend on Saturday night and have no plus one, are you free at all?” She asked. For a fleeting moment, I stood staring at her like she had just spoken a foreign language as my brain tried to comprehend what she had just asked me.
I cleared my throat and side stepped her, “I don’t think that’s appropriate, I’m your teacher and you’re my student,” I replied casually. It took all my strength not to sear my lips on Raine’s when I walked past her.
“We are all adults here, we ain’t in no high school now,” she complained as she followed behind me.
“Maybe so but my answer is no. Besides, I’m taken,” I replied as my eyes glanced towards Raine again. She was like a magnet, drawing me in deeper each time I was around her. I could tell I was going to have a hard time concentrating on today’s lesson. It hadn’t even started yet and I’d already mentally kissed her, peeled off all her clothes and claimed every inch of her body for myself.
“Oh. You are? Well, that’s too bad,” Mona sighed then skulked over towards Raine muttering something I couldn’t make out.
Petra clapped her hands calling for everyone’s attention, the loud chatter fizzled out as they all sat on the floor. “For the next six weeks, you’ll be learning the Paso Doble,” I began as my eyes swept across the room. “It is French for Two Step, because the steps are organized in patterns of two; left, right. I took Petra’s hand and we began to demonstrate the pattern to the class. “Steps are usually taken with the heel forward but leaving the back leg in place long enough to create a long, straight leg line.”
The door crashed open interrupting me from my flow and all heads swiveled towards the late comer, immediately it pissed me off. I couldn’t abide late-comers to dance especially when it meant I had to repeat myself and it disrupted my class.
I heard the sharp intake of female breaths and the echoing sounds of ovaries exploding around the room. “You are?” I snapped when all six foot of him stood smiling boyishly, his eyes feasting from one female to another, including on my Raine. She seemed oblivious to the man with dark soulful eyes, curly black hair, and tall athletic body, as she sat inspecting her sneakers.
“Late, obviously,” he laughed, dragging his hands through his shoulder length hair.
So, he’s a comedian as well as cocky?
I let go of Petra and walked closer towards him, “Are you here to learn to dance, or waste my time?” I asked with my hands hanging loosely on my hips.
“Latin, right?” He asked, mimicking my stance causing a bout of heated anger to flood through me. Attempting to keep some level of professionalism, I pursed my lips and nodded. “Excellent,” he said walking past me, brushing his shoulder into mine. My head turned and my eyes followed him. I watched the smarmy way he winked at Mona, Sophia and even Petra, then he annoyed me even further when he took up the floor next to Raine, “I’m Ruben by the way,” he called back to me.
I took an instant dislike to him. He’d been in my class barely three minutes and I was already fighting back the temptation to plant him straight onto his cocky ass.
“Welcome to the class, Ruben,” Petra said. She gave me a dark stare in warning when I turned around to face her. I took her hand and continued as if nothing had happened. “Okay, so the man emulates the role of the matador in the bullfight. He keeps his center forward, creating an optical illusion as he turns his body in different directions,” I explained, showing the class.
“And the woman in the dance,” Petra took over as she danced around me, “typically represents the cape, moving with graceful curves that emulate the flow of a cape around the man.”
The class broke out in applause when we finished our steps and as Petra ordered them into pairs, I caught Ruben hold his hand out towards Raine. I quickly searched for J
ared to pair her with but he wasn’t visible. Resentfully, I reigned in my dislike and growing jealousy towards Ruben and let him pair with Raine. With one eye on the rest of the class, my other never strayed far from her, watching like a hawk as he tried his hardest to strike up a conversation with her, but shy, timid Raine was in the room and it warmed my insides to see her act like he was invisible.
I waited for him to make his first mistake and give me an opportunity to swoop in and separate them. That came when I caught him move his hand from hold and brush it casually down her neck. I noticed her stiffen up and she began to move like a robot, slow and mechanically. I became the matador and he was now the bull when a blaze of red mist swam in front of my eyes and I made my way towards him.
“Are you okay?” I asked, forcefully breaking their hold, and pushing myself in front of her.
“Yes,” she whispered with a nod. “I need to speak with you and it can’t wait.” Dread wrapped around me like a blanket at her words. Her tone was sharp and curt and I wondered if she was regretting what happened between us yesterday. My fear was short-lived when I noticed her eyes scintillate with a mischievous glint. She arched an eyebrow and smirked as she waited for me to close my gaping mouth and respond.
“Wait in my office,” I gruffed out loudly in front of the class, trying to make it sound like her request would be an inconvenience to me, secretly I admired the fact she had the balls to be so brazen to demand time alone with me.
As I watched her walk away, I then turned towards Ruben, “Follow me,” I snapped, leading him out of the studio and in to the hallway. “If you’re here to learn dance then fucking learn, if you’re just here to hit on women and put your hands where you damned well please, then you and I are going to have a serious problem,” I snarled, grabbing him by his top and pinning him to the wall.
His hands automatically raised in mock surrender, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to touch her. She had something—”
“Save it! You’ve been warned. If I see you inappropriately touch any of the women in this class again, you’re out!” I let him go and marched back in to the room, straight towards the office.