by Enid Wilson
“Hello everybody! Just ignore Charles. He has grown up to be quite silly. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the format of our highly successful show as it enters into its fifth season. We take celebrities who have had no formal dance training and pair them up with professional dancers. Over the course of ten weeks, the celebrity has to learn ballroom, Latin and several other forms of dance. Each week, during our live broadcast, one couple is voted off, based on a combination of the scores they received from the judges and the votes they received from the viewing audience. If the scores are tied for two couples, the one with more audience votes wins.”
“Tonight is our final competition of the season. In Week Eight, there were only two couples left. Our first gentleman is William Darcy, a very good friend of mine. The world-famous artificial-heart inventor pairs up with waltz champion Ann de Bourgh. The money raised from your votes for him goes to the Heart Foundation.” Caroline said, “And George Wickham, our home-grown Bollywood heartthrob, unfortunately pairs up with British rumba champion Eliza Bennet.”
“Why ‘unfortunately’?” Charles asked. “Elizabeth is beautiful, talented and hot!”
“Which is unfortunate for all of our female viewers at home,” Caroline explained, “since Miss Eliza has put her hands all over George’s body for so many weeks. The viewers, I’m sure, would like to trade places with her. And George’s charity is ‘No More Bullies.’”
“Darcy has a lot of female fans out there, too,” Charles stated, rallying for his friend. “Although the judges have said that he learned and executed the techniques of every dance very well, they do agree that he has been too uptight, not showing any emotion when he dances with Ann. As a result, he hasn’t been receiving very good scores from the judges. Week after week, I’ve expected him to be voted off, but my handsome friend must have thousands of female fans voting for him, because he’s still here tonight in the final.”
“As for George and Miss Eliza, they have been leading every week,” Caroline noted with a dazzling smile for the camera. “His dancing techniques are not as precise as Darcy’s, but George is more entertaining and charming on the dance floor, and he matches well with Miss Eliza.”
Charles held up a cautioning finger. “But our ‘devil’ judge, Frederick Wentworth, said on Week Seven that he sensed that George’s ‘sincerity’ might well be fake, and he believed that there was tension between the partners. And he gave them a very low score of five.”
“That sent the gossip magazines and talk shows into a frenzy,” Caroline added smugly. “Everyone heard, at the beginning of the series, that Bollywood George seemed to be very taken with Miss Eliza. He has been seen visiting her home in Meryton, taking her to nightclubs and, in fact, leaving her place on a few early mornings in ‘not so tidy’ attire. In fact, I recall a headline from a gossip magazine during Week Five that claimed that Miss Eliza was caught buying a home pregnancy test kit. It read, ‘Small-Town Hoofer Preggers by Bollywood Bad Boy!’”
“Caroline, I’m sure that was pure gossip!”
“Was it?” Caroline held up a colorful tabloid magazine.
“Here’s a headline from Week Seven, when Miss Eliza was said to have come out of a local clinic with tears in her eyes. ‘Dumped Dancer Seeks Abortion.’”
Outraged by Caroline’s deviations from the script, Charles deftly changed the subject. “Then both couples should thank our producer, Jimmy Forester, who has introduced a fateturning twist. We announced two weeks ago that the remaining couples would switch partners for the final two weeks of the competition. Darcy is now paired up with Elizabeth, and Ann with George. Let’s roll the camera and see our new couples in training.”
In the first film clip, a hot and flushed Elizabeth, who had apparently just finished a training session, was interviewed by Caroline. The latter was dressed impeccably in an orange princess dress accentuated with a multicolour silk scarf and a two-storey hairdo.
“How lucky, Miss Eliza! You got to pair up with William and even stay as a guest at Pemberley, his impressive country estate, for two weeks. How did a small-town girl like you fare? I image his ballroom is bigger than your entire house. I hope you didn’t get lost in the corridors.”
“There are a lot of lovely trees, flowers, birds and small animals on the grounds here. I love being able to lose myself in Nature when I finish a day’s training.”
“Miss Eliza, we saw your shocked reactions when we announced the switch of dance partners. Was it because William was heard saying you only had a ‘tolerable figure’ and that your mother was ‘coarse and mercenary'?” Caroline asked, her tone snide.
“Oh, did Darcy say that? Remind me to introduce him to my uncle. You could say that he is even more ‘coarse and mercenary’ than my mom, since he is in the gold mining industry,” Elizabeth replied, and grinned.
She then added in a serious but sweet tone, “I’ve been training with George for eight weeks. Naturally, I wanted to complete the competition with him and win the trophy. I was just shocked with a swap so late into the series. I’m a professional, though, and I'm sure I could teach even a skeleton to dance well.” Gossip magazines often laughed at Caroline, saying that she walked and danced like a skeleton dipped in orange paint because she was so thin, behaved so arrogantly and wore orange clothing all the time.
“Oh, you wanted to win the trophy with George? How touching! Then the off-camera rumors must be true. Are you pregnant?”
“You seem awfully interested in home pregnancy kits, Caroline…” Elizabeth winked while Caroline’s face turned deadly red. “As for me, I only went to the pharmacy to buy high blood pressure pills for my mom. Perhaps you need some? You look quite red now. Maybe you have high blood pressure, too.”
The footage stopped there, and the studio audience broke into a fit of laughter.
Charles couldn’t help but laugh, too. Then he continued, “The gossips did absolute wonders for our ratings. Last week, we did a recap of our couples’ journey to the Finals, to allow our newly formed couples two weeks of bonding time, and over 5 million viewers tuned in to watch.”
“Here is some further footage from that two weeks of intense training,” a red-faced Caroline said, when cued by the production team. She would kill Jimmy after the show. She had specifically asked him to cut out that “high blood pressure” footage.
Now, on camera, Pemberley’s ballroom appeared, where a casually dressed Darcy met up with Elizabeth. He looked serious and pensive.
“Miss Bennet. How do you do, today?”
“Hi, Darcy. Why so formal? I’ve seen you frequently over the past eight weeks. Even if you won’t call me ‘honey,’ like George does, I’m sure you can do better than ‘Miss Bennet,’” Elizabeth replied teasingly.
She had also known Darcy socially for the last few weeks, as her sister Jane was dating his good friend and host, Charles. She had also learned about how he had mistreated George, regarding an inheritance from Darcy’s dad. George also said that Darcy was a playboy with a number of kept women. As a result of that, along with his remarks about her figure and her mom, she found him arrogant and conceited, and enjoyed taunting him, every opportunity she had.
“They may be filming us secretly now,” Darcy said.
“Why should you be afraid to get comfy with me in front of the camera? We have to dance a rumba together during the Finals. You know that the rumba is a sensual dance. It should be like making love with me in front of the camera, so you'd better get used to it.”
“I’m not very good at this – at being comfortable with women,” he said, and blushed.
“Really? Just imagine that I'm your lover number 18.”
“What?”
“Just something George said… That you had gotten comfy with quite a number of women.”
Darcy’s eyes shone with anger. He said coldly, “George is vulgar and a bad influence, Miss Bennet. I hope you haven't paid too much attention to what he’s said, and that you haven’t slept with him, as the gossip magazin
e claimed. I would also hope…”
Elizabeth grew angry, too, and suddenly pressed her body into a surprised Darcy. She wrapped her arms around him, positioned her hands on his butt and smacked him with force. “Okay, Mr. Gossip, let’s concentrate on our job. Here is Lesson One on how to touch your partner, rumba style,” she said archly.
The footage stopped and Caroline cried out, “Scandalous! No wonder some gossip magazines claimed that Miss Eliza was a …”
“Wow, Caroline,” Charles interrupted hastily, “do you think our sly producer has any more secret footage to show us before the dances begin?”
The light in the studio dimmed, and the announcer said, “Dancing the rumba certainly is like making love! So let’s see if William Darcy really can make love with a stranger…in a sensual rumba.”
Standing in the centre of the darkened studio, Darcy trembled when Elizabeth wrapped her arms around his back and pressed every inch of her body to his. The music began, and she smoothed her hands down his back as she swayed her body down at the same time, leaving absolutely no space between them.
He felt like he was being electrocuted. The sensation of having her hot breasts drawing a zig-zag path from his chest to his belly, and down to his thighs was beyond words. He hoped he wouldn’t have an erection in front of millions of TV audiences. He told himself to remember the routine…but all he could remember was the previous night.
What had happened last night?
When he’d first met Elizabeth at the launch of the season, he hadn’t paid much attention to her. She wasn’t an eye-catching blond like her sister Jane…but he couldn’t help noticing that she danced with passion, even partnered with a low-life like Wickham. After her dance routines, Elizabeth’s eyes would shine and glisten. A lovely crimson colour would blossom under her creamy skin. Her breasts would seem about to burst through her tight top, as if begging for a squeeze. Her butt and thighs were tightly toned, ripe for fondling. And, best of all, she would smile and laugh with joy, as if she had just successfully completed the world’s most difficult challenge.
Darcy had wanted to write her off as a loser who only wasted her life partying away, but then he began to encounter her frequently at social functions with Charles and Jane. He soon learned that she was, in fact, a dance teacher and a nurse.
She was witty, intelligent and independent. In fact, she was altogether different from the fake women who frequented the ‘old money’ circle. She didn’t need plastic surgery or high fashion to enhance her beauty. She didn’t need a rich man to satisfy her shopping or spending needs. He particularly admired her sincerity and her loyalty to Jane, their family and her friends.
He felt it was rotten luck that she had gotten herself entangled with Wickham. Darcy was strongly attracted to her, and she was off limits to him, not least because he didn’t want to be Wickham’s successor, thereby giving Wickham a chance to gloat.
In the two weeks since switching partners, Darcy had been in big TROUBLE. He had the hots for Elizabeth, and it didn’t help that she was staying at Pemberley, with her room only a few doors from his.
He could feel her soft curves, and inhale her fragrant lavender scent and spicy hot breaths during rehearsals. Scene after scene of sexual fantasy flashed through his mind, and he was in a constant state of arousal, day and night. That was why he had chosen to wear loose trousers all the time, excusing his awkward walking to all the dancing practice. He had been like a zombie, with no thoughts except those about her hot body.
Darcy, extremely embarrassed, was sure that Elizabeth knew about it, because she had to touch his body during the dance. Since he was seriously distracted by his sexual fantasies, he didn’t learn the routines and techniques as quickly as he had with Ann. That frustrated Elizabeth a lot, and she increased their hours of training from six to sometimes as many as ten hours a day.
The long sessions and constant nagging from Elizabeth finally got to Darcy. After training from 8 am to 4 pm non-stop the day before, Elizabeth was still not happy with his performance and wanted to extend the training till 7.30 pm, right before dinner. But he couldn’t bear the tension of holding her body for another second. He refused, stomped his foot, stalked out of the grand ballroom and shut himself up in the library.
Elizabeth decided to let him cool down. Around 7 pm, however, she was determined to talk to him again and to persuade him to put in two more hours of training after dinner.
She knocked on the library door with an ‘I’m the teacher, and so you had better behave’ expression on her face.
After several knocks, he still hadn’t responded. She was getting pretty worked up, and she banged even more loudly on the door.
Bang! Bang!
Her fist was raised in preparation for banging on the door the third time, and so she was unprepared when it opened and she suddenly came face-to-face with a muscular bare chest. She couldn’t hold back her hand.
Bang!
She left a red mark on Darcy’s naked torso.
“What the hell?” He felt the pain and growled.
Embarrassed, Elizabeth wanted to apologize but, hearing his growl, she couldn’t resist defending herself. Slipping past him and kicking the library door shut to prevent others from hearing their argument, she yelled back, “You brought that on yourself! You left the training like a spoilt child and then refused to open the door when I knocked nicely.”
His eyes widened. He couldn’t believe she was blaming him when she was the one who had smacked him.
“I was asleep, you crazy woman! I didn’t hear your knock, at first. And I didn’t leave the training like a spoilt child. I left after 8 full hours.” Raising his hand to his left chest, he massaged the flesh where her fist had landed, then turned slowly and walked to the couch at the far right-hand side of the room.
It was Elizabeth’s turn to widen her eyes. She had seen many bare-chested men on beaches before, but his shoulders were broad and muscular. His chest was smooth except for some hair near his belly button, tapering down to disappear into the waistband of his black –
— underpants! He's only wearing underpants! Elizabeth thought, panicked. Words tumbled out of her mouth. “You’re the crazy one! You’ve danced with me for two weeks with your erection pressed against me the whole time. Luckily, the TV crew was only there for one day to shoot our training. And now you open your door to me in your underpants. Are you a pervert?”
Darcy froze in his path towards the couch and wheeled to look at her. She was standing there, legs apart, hands on hips, her lips opened as her face turned red. His sleepy head cleared abruptly, for Elizabeth’s pose looked somehow familiar to him. Pictures raced through his mind, and he suddenly made the connection. Yes, from my Internet research about how to tell whether a woman is interested, this surely is an aroused woman! He became aroused immediately, happy that Elizabeth had the hots for him, too.
“There you go again!” Elizabeth took a step forward to scream right into his face. “Can’t you get one of your women to keep your little Willie down, at least for a few minutes? We have a dance competition to win tomorrow. I don’t want my reputation ruined by your animal insti…”
He had had enough of her accusations. He pulled her by the waist, closing the gap between their bodies. Then he mashed his lips against hers to silence her. He poured all his weeks of admiration, lust and frustration into the kiss, biting her lips and thrusting his tongue into her mouth.
At the same time, his hands were busy branding her body. First, her tight butt needed fondling. The thin cotton of her dress was no barrier. Secondly, he ran his hands down her thighs, feeling their strength and smoothness. Then he freed one hand to cup her breast. It was pert, the perfect size for his big palm. When the contact caused her nipple to harden, he couldn’t help but pinch it, while his other hand pushed aside her G-string so that he could slide his fingers in to trace her secret lips.
Elizabeth’s hands came to wrap around his neck. Good, she likes it – no resistance. He slippe
d one finger into her entrance. It was tight, and she threw back her head, giving a loud moan.
Feeling her legs begin to buckle, he picked Elizabeth up and placed her on the large couch, which he had had custom-made to fit his six-foot frame. To his satisfaction, there was plenty of room on it for the two of them.
Elizabeth was in a haze. She didn’t understand why she wasn’t protesting. She didn’t like him at all. He was a known womaniser! But he was also handsome and intelligent, nothing at all like George, who talked non-stop about his famous and exciting career. He didn’t talk much, most of the time, but when he did, he expressed the most fascinating and fresh ideas about medical issues and the care of patients. His hands and tongue were like magic bands! Maybe two weeks of non-stop sensual dancing and living together had muddled her head, too.
Thinking back to the Is she interested in you? research, He followed its advice and pushed down the spaghetti straps of her cotton dress, baring her wonderful breasts. Thrilled by the sight, he suckled and squeezed her nipples.
Elizabeth felt a hot flush race through her body and moisten her G-string.
Continuing with his experiment, he pushed the skirt of her dress up to her waist and hastily pulled off her G-string. He devoted one hand to the continued worship of her breasts while he moved down to enable his lips to settle on the curls at the apex of her thighs. He breathed in her scent, and found that it was heavenly and utterly unique.
When he parted her thighs more widely and lowered his head to trace his tongue along her entrance, Elizabeth felt torched by fire. She arched her back, offering herself.
His hand left her breasts and moved down to part her secret lips. He thrust his tongue in and out, tasting her.
It was too much for her. Within a few scant minutes, she screamed in ecstasy and came.