by K. M. Scott
At quarter to seven, I made my way down to Ryder’s room. He opened his bedroom door just a crack and looked out suspiciously at me.
“What?”
My ego dinged from his curtness, I said, “My father asked me to check on you.”
“Oh yeah? Why?”
I pushed against the door and saw he was already dressed in a dark grey suit and dark blue dress shirt. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s afraid you’re going to come to the party buck naked, Ryder. Can I come in, please?”
He made me stand outside his door for another few moments before relenting and letting me in. Quickly closing the door, he stalked by me toward the bathroom, nearly knocking me over.
“What’s this whole thing about anyway tonight?” he asked as he began to fumble with the ends of the grey and blue tie my father had gotten him.
I leaned against the doorway and watched as he struggled with what was supposed to be a Windsor knot. “My father likes to give parties sometimes. Janelle and I are trotted out like show horses for his friends, who are invariably impressed that we are poised and demure and not flinging our own feces at one another.”
Ryder looked up from his tortured mishandling of his tie and stared at me in the bathroom mirror. A small smile crept onto his face. “I get the feeling that you don’t like this kind of thing either.”
“I don’t mind it, to be honest, but sometimes my father’s friends are a little grabby for my taste.”
Narrowing his eyes, Ryder frowned and made a grunting noise. “Sounds like a nice crowd.”
“And tonight you get to join the show horse crew. Do you feel special yet?”
He shook his head and returned to attempting the knot again. I watched him in the mirror for another minute before I stepped forward and tapped him on his good shoulder.
“Here, let me help.”
Stepping around him, I took hold of the two ends of the tie and proceeded to work my magic on it. He stared down at me as my fingers deftly slid over the silk to create a perfect Windsor knot.
When I finished, I patted it down against his body and smiled up at him. “There. All set.”
Instead of inspecting the fine job I’d done, he seemed more interested in looking down at my legs. Instantly self-conscious, I said, “Yeah, you’re welcome, Ryder. Happy to help.”
That got his attention, and he looked up at me. “Why is it you get to be barefoot and I have to wear these ridiculous shoes?”
“I have to wear them too. Don’t feel bad. I just didn’t bring them with me.”
“Oh. That was a shitty thing to say. I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
Suddenly, how close we were standing to one another became apparent, and I slid out from between him and the vanity. His gaze followed me, though, and he said, “You look nice. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in anything but shorts.”
Turning toward the mirror, I checked myself out. The black silk dress I’d chosen looked more like a nightgown than a dress with its spaghetti straps and the way it draped over my body, but I didn’t care. I hadn’t been given enough lead time to get anything new to wear, so it would have to do.
I looked back at him and couldn’t help but be impressed with how he looked too. Used to seeing him in shorts and t-shirts, I liked how he wore a suit. It made him look even more muscular than usual, and even though the tattoos on the backs of his hands poked out from underneath his white dress shirt, at first glance he could be mistaken for any one of the men who’d be at my father’s get-together tonight.
Ryder tugged at the bottom of his suit coat sleeves as he caught me looking at those tattoos. “I don’t know why your father wants me dressed up in this stupid thing. I look ridiculous.”
His discomfort bothered me. I’d spent my life attending parties in my home, but for him, this clearly made him uneasy, likely because while my father liked to refer to him as his son, he wasn’t that at all. I still didn’t know why he’d brought Ryder to the house and wasn’t sure I’d ever know, but I understood how it felt to feel out of place.
Turning toward him again, I took hold of his hands and brought them down to his sides. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be great. Remember, you’re a show horse. No one wants to hear the show horses speak. We just need to prance around a bit and look nice. You’ve got that down pat, so you’ll be fine.”
My compliment fell on deaf ears, though, and Ryder’s face twisted into a look of pain. “Prance around? What does that mean?”
“Well, other than standing for way too long listening to people you don’t care about talk about subjects you care even less about, it means you might have to dance. My father loves dancing, oddly enough since he never dances, so he always has it at his parties. The weird thing is that they usually don’t include too many females other than me and Janelle, so you’ll probably get stuck dancing with one of us. I guess it could be worse. My father’s friends are mostly old guys who’ve spent too many years in Washington, so a lot of their wives are old too. Be thankful you don’t have to dance with some sixty-year-old woman.”
None of what I said made him feel any better. “I don’t dance. Ever. So your father is going to have to find something else for this show horse to do.”
I knew my father. He’d make Ryder dance, likely just to see if he could. But was that the problem? Couldn’t he dance?
He stood looking miserable and fiddling with his tie as he mumbled, “First I have to wear this and then dance? No way.”
“Ryder, do you know how to dance?”
His fingers stilled on his tie, and then he simply marched past me out into his bedroom. So that was the problem. He didn’t know how to dance. But I could help him with that. Years of dance classes and my father’s parties had made me the resident expert.
I followed him out into his room and found him sitting on his bed wearing a deep frown. I stopped in front of him and held out my hands. Looking up at me, he asked, “What is that for?”
“I’ll show you how to dance.”
He shook his head as his frown deepened. “I don’t need you to show me. I’m not going to be dancing.”
I grabbed hold of his hands and tugged him up onto his feet. “Trust me, you’re going to, so you might as well at least have an idea of what to do.”
He winced in pain as I realized I’d forgotten about his shoulder injury. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“It’s okay. I’m good.”
Positioning his right hand on my lower back, I gingerly took hold of his left hand in mine and placed my left hand on his sore shoulder. He towered over me by more than half a foot, so I had to crane my neck to look up when we were this close.
Ryder stood stiffly, his palm barely touching my back like he didn’t want to get too near me. We’d spent nearly every night for two weeks sitting on his bed together practically on top of one another, but now that we stood there as I prepared to teach him how to dance, he acted like I was a leper.
“Okay, normally the man leads, but since I’m teaching you, we’ll have to switch roles. You won’t have to do any fancy steps like the waltz or anything. Just move your feet like I do. Watch.”
He looked down at my bare feet as I began to step right and then left and then right again. Not exactly my best moves, but he just needed to know how to move without looking like a robot or Frankenstein.
“Now you try.”
A look of terror crossed his face, and after a moment of hesitation, he moved his left foot enough to step hard onto the top of my foot, making me cry out in pain. Instantly, he backed away as I hobbled toward the bed, trying to keep back the tears from how much my foot hurt.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Serena.”
The regret at what he’d done came through loud and clear in his voice, and I looked up to see him staring down at me in horror. He had enough to deal with tonight with my father putting him on display. He didn’t need to think he’d done anything wrong in his first attempt at dancing too. So I took a de
ep breath and stood up to try again, even though the top of my foot throbbed like a toothache.
Taking his left hand in mine once again, I forced a smile and said, “Okay, put your hand on my lower back like before and we’ll try this again, okay?”
This time he put his hand against my body almost possessively, like he needed to protect me, and we slowly moved our feet, doing little more than shuffling them back and forth as he stared down at the floor watching to make sure he didn’t hurt me again and I forced myself not to look so he wouldn’t think I didn’t have faith in him.
I slid my hand up near his neck and gently touched where his hair hit near his collar, marveling at how soft it felt against my fingertips. “Ryder, you need to look at the person you’re dancing with.”
He stopped moving his feet and looked up at me. “I don’t want to look at Janelle, to be honest, and I’m worried I’m going to step on your foot again. Either way, I think I’ll keep my eyes on the floor.”
“You can’t. It’s part of dancing. But how about this? When I’m wearing shoes, even if you do step on my feet, it won’t really hurt. And as far as Janelle goes, she usually drinks too much at these parties and spends all night talking to people, so you might get to escape dancing at all with her.”
A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Good. Then I’ll just dance with you.”
“Or some sixty-year-old woman who will probably want to grab your ass. Here’s to hoping none of the guests bring their wives like usual.”
My teasing made his smile fade away. “Any chance your father has a thing for underage drinking?”
“Oh, definitely. Feel free to have whatever you want. As far as my father’s concerned, that whole drinking age thing doesn’t apply here at the house.”
Ryder took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “Good.”
After two hours of doing our best show horse act, Janelle flopped down into a chair at the far end of the enormous dining room where my father had his parties and began to chat up two men I believed might have been congressmen who had just begun to come out to the house within the past year. Ryder and I stood off to the side as my father and a small group of men talked about a bill in the House of Representatives involving some tax that would affect his mining interests.
Looking down the room toward where Janelle sat, Ryder whispered in my ear, “I think she’s drunk. She hasn’t been nasty to me in nearly a half hour.”
I smiled and elbowed him in the side. “My sister is far nicer when there’s alcohol involved. Maybe we should keep her drunk all the time.”
“Good idea.”
From behind us, I heard my father say something about his adopted son and turned to see him put his hand on Ryder’s shoulder. So far he’d escaped any serious discussion with anyone in the room, but I had a sense that had come to an end, unfortunately.
“Serena, why don’t you go sit with your sister for a few minutes while Ryder joins me and the other men?”
I saw by the pained look on Ryder’s face that was the last thing he wanted, so quickly I suggested, “I was hoping you’d put some music on, Daddy. I’m sure he’d love to dance with me, and I know how much you love when we dance.”
It wasn’t fair, but between dancing with me or being stuck as a captive audience with my father and his friends, surely dancing had to be the better option. At that moment as Ryder appeared to be disgusted by both choices, I sensed it might not be until later that he’d thank me.
My father took the bait and happily announced the time for dancing had come. Taking Ryder’s hand, I led him over to a small area near where Janelle sat and whispered in his ear, “I hope you don’t hate me too much.”
He didn’t answer, but the look on his face told me he might hate me a little at that moment. The music began to play, some instrumental slow enough that actual dancing could occur, and I smiled up at him as he pressed his hand to the small of my back and took my right hand in his.
“Remember, look at me. I promise it won’t be bad.”
Before we could take even a step, I heard Janelle loudly announce, “Daddy, I don’t think Serena should get to dance with our brother. She’s definitely the better dancer, so she should dance with anyone else who wants to. I’ll dance with Ryder since I bet the two of us are pretty bad at it anyway.”
Horrified, I turned around to see her hurrying toward us and then saw my father nodding in agreement as some man with steel grey hair stepped forward to take me away from Ryder. In a flash, I’d been replaced in his arms by my sister and thrust into some old guy’s arms. I looked over at Ryder and saw the same look of horror as when he’d stepped on my foot a few hours earlier, but even worse was how quickly Janelle moved him away toward her chair, leaving me alone with my father’s friend.
For five minutes, I spent my time moving my partner’s hand up from my ass over and over and prayed for the music to stop so I could escape. Whenever I tried to look at Ryder to see if he was okay, the man spun me around so my back was toward him. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he and Janelle were working together to ensure my misery.
All the while my father smiled and swayed to the music like nothing was wrong. When the piece ended, I wriggled out of the old man’s hold to see Janelle and Ryder practically hanging on one another. He didn’t seem bothered at all that he’d had to dance with her.
I hurriedly made an excuse to leave the room to go downstairs to the wine cellar and ran out before my emotions got the better of me. Janelle didn’t even like Ryder, so why would she want to dance with him?
Alone and surrounded by my father’s wine collection, I tried to convince myself that she hadn’t done it on purpose, but no other answer made sense. What did it matter anyway? Even though Ryder and I spent night after night talking, whatever I felt for him wasn’t reciprocated.
The sound of footsteps made me turn toward the stairs, and I saw Ryder coming down to join me. I took a deep breath and plastered a smile on my face so he wouldn’t see my true feelings at what I’d seen him do.
“Why are you down here?” he asked as he walked to where I stood near the wall of wine bottles.
Pretending to look for a particular vintage, I pulled out a few bottles and acted like I was checking the labels. “Nothing. Just grabbing some more wine. A few of my father’s friends love their wine.”
“Yeah, they seem to love anything they can get drunk on.”
I yanked one last wine bottle out of its home, and without even looking at the label, turned to leave. “They do like to have a good time. I better get back up there. I’m sure there’s someone else who needs my dancing ability to get through this party.”
Ryder gently grabbed my arm to stop me, and I looked up to see something strange in his eyes. Was he worried? About what I’d seen him do with Janelle?
“Serena, that guy had his hands all over you. Maybe you shouldn’t dance anymore tonight.”
“So you noticed that while you and Janelle were busy doing your own thing, huh?” I asked, unable to hide my feelings of jealousy.
For a moment, Ryder looked confused, but then he smiled. “I’m not sure what I’d call her kind of dancing. It’s more like drunken falling into people. Well, that and a little palming my dick, oddly enough. She’s way friendlier when she’s in the bag.”
Furious at my sister and him for enjoying it, I yanked my arm from his hold. “Well, don’t let me keep you from having someone grab your dick, Ryder. Have a good night. I’ll see you around.”
I didn’t get two steps away from him before he grabbed me again and pulled me close against his body. Staring down at me, he placed his hand on my lower back like I’d taught him for dancing and held me to him.
Looking up into his intense green eyes as they practically glared down at me, I said, “Let me go. I have to get back with this wine.”
“No. Not until you dance with me.”
“I don’t want to dance with you. Let me go,” I said, looking away from him as
my emotions swirled around inside me in a mix of desire, anger, and hurt.
“Yes, you do,” he said defiantly as he roughly moved my head so I had to face him.
“Stop this! I don’t want to dance with you. Go find Janelle. She obviously wants to dance with you and a whole lot more.”
Ryder pressed his hand harder into my lower back so the bottle pushed against our bodies. Reaching down, he took it out of my hold and placed it on a nearby table. Now nothing stood between us.
I pressed my palms against his chest, but it was no use. He was too strong and so much bigger than me.
His fingers slid over my shoulder as his other hand held me to him and he said, “You come to my room every night. You lay in my bed with me every night and fall asleep with your head on my shoulder. Don’t tell me you don’t want to dance with me, Serena.”
Hurt coursed through me. Why did he say those things like my visits to him every night were an imposition?
“Fine. I won’t come to see you anymore. Maybe Janelle can come down to see you every night. She won’t ask as many questions about things you don’t want to talk about, so you’ll probably like it better.”
His fingers slipped under the strap of my dress, and then he slowly let them drift down to just above my breast, all the while never breaking his gaze focused on my eyes. His touch thrilled me, and beneath the silk my nipples hardened to excited peaks that pressed against the fabric and showed him his effect on me.
As my body betrayed the reality of how I felt, it became harder to lie to him. I did want to dance with him, and just watching him with Janelle had made me more jealous than I’d ever been before in my life.
“I don’t want Janelle to come see me. I want you to. You didn’t come for the past two nights and I missed you.”
His voice, low and seductive, hit me deep inside. “I figured I’d leave you alone for a few nights so you wouldn’t get tired of hanging out.”
“I get tired of a lot of things, but never being with you.”
My emotions began to whirl around like spinning tops. “Why are you telling me this? Did Janelle say something to you? Did she put you up to this?”