by Lynn Turner
“Ooof!” Her eyes looked enormous, and her hair was a frizzy mess trying to escape her bun.
“That’s the most inelegant thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
She gave his chest a shove.
Stroking her back, he quirked a brow. “I thought you were shy?”
“I thought you were intrigued?”
“I am.”
Her shiver didn’t go unnoticed. “I am shy, but I’m not a corpse.”
“I don’t think that,” he said stiffly.
“Don’t you?”
“I think I’m too old, and too your boss, to tell you any of the thoughts I’ve been having lately.”
Her breath hitched, and she stared back at him with unmistakable need in her eyes. His awareness of her skyrocketed, and all he could think about was the feel of her soft body pressed to his, and her even softer lips parted millimeters from his own. Moving her hands between them and over the planes of his chest, she tentatively shaped his arms and shoulders. A class let out down the hall, the commotion snatching them from the moment, cooling their warm embrace to a sweaty hug the instant they hurriedly pulled away.
He wrinkled his nose. “You stink.”
“There he is.” She was noticeably breathless. “The charming little connard.”
Letting go a full-belly laugh, he studied her. Her skin glowed from exertion, and maybe something else, his ego hoped. “You think I’m an ass? Never would have guessed.”
“Oh, I’ve thought worse—even said it, behind your back.”
He grinned. “Go home. Shower. We’re not done yet.”
She cocked her head.
“While ‘better’ from Alex is a rave review, I know what your best looks like, and I won’t be satisfied until you give it to me.”
“I don’t…think I understand.”
“Dress for a night out.” He patted her rump lightly, not in a remotely sexual way, and she went to the corner to collect her things. “I’ll pick you up at nine-thirty.”
“Pick me up?”
“You’re not meeting me anywhere alone at night, petite.”
“Ah, chivalrous connard.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
*
“It’s three in the morning, Mina. This better be good.”
“We hugged again.”
Sophie groaned. “Well, I try not to kink shame, but you’re stepping dangerously close to sexual deviant territory.”
Mina held her phone to her face with her shoulder, slipping on her heels. “His hugs are nice. He squeezes just right. I feel it in my toes.”
“Are you…swooning? Wow, now I’m feeling torn about the hugging thing. J’ne sais pas…Next time, maybe try it naked.”
“Sophie!”
“Je dis ça, je dis rien.”
Mina scoffed. “You never just say anything. Anyway, we’re going out—” She pulled the phone away so that Sophie’s squeal wouldn’t rupture her eardrum.
“What, like right now?”
“In a few minutes. It’s not a date.”
“It’s after nine. That’s practically a booty call.”
“I’m serious! It’s for work.”
“So, he wants to throw you around after hours, too.”
“Sophie.”
“Not my thing, personally. Being thrown terrifies me, and you volunteered for it.”
“I did not volunteer. I’m being paid. En fait, I’m hanging up now.”
“I hope you’re wearing pretty panties. The new ones!”
“Salut.”
*
Zack almost tripped off the curb outside Mina’s apartment building when she walked outside. Her fancy black dress had one shoulder and sleeve and wrapped around her slender neck like a choker. Her long legs were bare to mid-thigh, her slim feet arched high in strappy red heels with flames licking up the tops of her feet to her ankles.
“Hi.” She said it like a woman who knew she looked good, peering at him with her big, smoky eyes.
He couldn’t stop staring at her feet. They looked as buttery soft as the rest of her, and he had the strangest urge to take her oddly-proportioned toes into his mouth for a taste. “Jesus, petite. I said, ‘dress for a night out.’” He scanned her body again. “That outfit screams ‘fuck me with my shoes on.’”
That little gasp was growing on him.
“Pardon.” She accepted his arm. “Must have been lost in translation. You like my shoes?”
“I’ll have to brush up on my conversational French. I love those shoes. Never take them off.”
“I’ll consider it. They make my feet look pretty.”
“Suddenly, I have a foot fetish.”
“I think there’s a compliment in there somewhere, so…merci.”
Before he could think better of it, he brushed her loose waves over her shoulder and pressed a kiss to the creamy brown skin there, then led them toward the subway. “You’re stunning. Too stunning for where we’re going.”
“And where is that?”
“Someplace too mercifully dark to see your sexy feet.”
The warehouse in Brooklyn housed three massive dance floors crammed with hundreds of sweating bodies. The bouncers took one look at them and let them skip the line. Walking through the doors, Mina was hit with thick, sultry heat. It was dark. Very dark, but for flashes of strobe lights alighting on wall-to-wall bodies. They moved like they were in a trance, the bass thumping so hard, it shook the building and seemed to beat from within their ribs. Clutching at Zack’s arm, another nocturnal animal bumped into her, his eyes practically rolling to the back of his head in pure ecstasy.
She tugged Zack’s arm until his ear bent to her lips. “Are these people on drugs?”
His body shook with laughter. “Better than drugs, petite. This atmosphere is like a high. You forget about how you look or what you’re doing. The music goes right through you and you just move.”
She wasn’t sure how they were able to move—the floor was sticky. Watching a trio of dancers doing something that looked illegal, she tried not to think about the biological hazards stuck to the bottom of her Italian leather shoes.
She squinted against the purple and blue light. “This place should come with an epilepsy warning!”
A flash of purple lit his face, highlighting his freshly shaven jawline, the sensual curve of his lips, and she completely lost her train of thought. Her eyes trailed his body slowly, progressing a little more each time a strobe lit him up again. He looked sexy and dangerous in this light, like a demigod in all black.
“It’s great, isn’t it?” sexy demigod’s lips asked.
Her mouth suddenly went dry. “Not the word I’d use. I think I need a drink.”
“Uh-uh, no alcohol. This is homework. No cheating.”
“But I’m French!”
“Nothing I can do about that.” He shrugged his shoulder against her retaliatory slap and led them through the sea of bodies.
Stopping somewhere in the middle, where writhing bodies pressed against them on all sides, he brought his hands to her hips and pulled her to him. Instinctively, her arms went around his shoulders, holding onto him, she convinced herself, for fear of slipping into the human sea. Besides, it was the only way she could hear.
“Zack…”
“No mirrors, petite.” He gave her an encouraging squeeze. “No one’s looking at you but me.”
Then he looked at her.
Bon Dieu, did he look at her.
He studied her body like a map of the cosmos was hidden beneath her skin.
There was nothing lustful in his eyes, only wonder—a desire to be completely attuned with her and the way she moved. It was sensual by nature, in the way it made her feel stripped down to her being—her very existence—and only he could see. It made her feel sexy and fearless…and safe.
Staring into the shadows of his face, she lifted her arms above her head to do as they would. The bassline came at her from every direction, throbbing through her veins,
exiting from the points of her fingers and toes. The darkness made her bold, and a new energy rose inside her. The atmosphere became heady, making her more drunk on it with every breath, until she moved her entire body like a boneless addict chasing the next beat.
For a full phrase, he continued to watch her, and there was something in his expression, in the intensity of his eyes, that made her lightheaded: she was the Mina he’d been waiting for, the one he’d seen in Paris beneath the façade of the makeup, the fancy dress and the grand chandeliers of the Palais Garnier…the one who had cried on his shoulder and come apart in his arms. Comfortable in her own skin.
Winding her body, she slinked her arms like reeds in a slow breeze, meeting his eyes with every flash of light. He rubbed his cheek along hers, following her movement with his hands, feeling every muscle beneath thin fabric and sensitized skin. He stroked her stomach with his palm, and she sucked it in hard.
“Sorry, petite…” He kissed her cheek, then seemed to indulge himself a moment, running his hands along her hips until they settled on her waist. “That’s not what this is, what we came here for.”
She melted at the sincerity in his voice, in the warmth of his touch. “What did we come here for?”
His grin spread against her cheek. “Trust falls.”
Chapter Nine
The eve of the Tony Awards
Mina stood stage left waiting for her cue. Pressure. That’s what she felt watching the other dancers take flight across the stage. Acerbic, precise and athletic, they were an acute reminder of how much she’d been coddled. Three weeks of one-on-one rehearsal to learn technique, and these veritable gladiators executed it like they could do it in their sleep.
Closing her eyes, she waited for his voice: the dreamy, soothing tenor that always reminded her to never tell a lie. Her heart grew heavy at an alarming rate, like the Hulk inside her chest, trying to pound its way from its cage. She doubled over, trying to catch her breath.
Oh mon Dieu.
His voice wasn’t coming. She hadn’t heard it all week. Not once. She had been so caught up in the dance, learning her lines and lyrics, the excitement and nerves…and Zack. It was hard to breathe. She couldn’t hear. Her heart was so loud. Her eyes stung, and her skin was clammy.
She’d erased him.
Étienne was gone.
“Mina?” someone called to her from far away. “Mina!”
Mina jumped at someone’s hands on her shoulders. Not so far away, then. She recognized that face. An expressive face with thick black lashes and a cupid’s bow to die for. The face had a name…What was her name?… Kyoko! The gymnastic dancer with springs for legs and a switchblade for a mouth. Mina liked her.
“Quick!” Kyoko yelled to someone backstage. “Help me get her to the dressing room. I think she’s having a panic attack.”
Kyoko and someone else—someone strong from the easy way she was half walked, half dragged—assisted her to the dressing room and into a chair. The room was like a cluttered walk-in closet, covered in costumes and boxes of costumes, shoes and hats and wigs. The vanity was a mess of makeup and cream, false lashes and hair products, and the lights were blinding. She shut her eyes, vaguely aware that her other savior had left the room.
“That’s it, honey. Breathe,” Kyoko said in her raspy tone. “You look like you could use a drink.”
Mina managed a weak smile, finally getting her breathing under control. “If it’s stronger than wine, I’m not allowed. Mrs. Perez says no hard liquor or caffeine.”
“Good, cuz I got water, and water.” Grinning, Kyoko handed Mina a bottled water. When she seemed satisfied Mina was drinking enough, she leaned her hip against the vanity. “Perez used to get on me, too. Said I needed to be less Betty Boop, more Pearl Bailey—no room in the theater for pipsqueaks.”
Mina’s laugh tore from her like a cough, scratching the back of her throat. “Betty Boop? You?” She couldn’t imagine Kyoko with a high-pitched voice. She was so…sultry.
“Yup, I sounded like one of the Chipmunks before Perez put some bass in my voice. We’re dancers first. Not even singers come with perfect pitch.”
“I—merci.” Mina’s smile was tight, but genuine. “But I can’t help feeling embarrassed. It’s different for me. I was imported for this role. People expect…perfection.”
Kyoko lifted a feathered headdress from the vanity, crowning herself with it. “My first solo role, I puked all over the place—one of the other dancers slipped in it, had to dance in that smelly costume for two hours. She won’t talk to me to this day, the bitch.”
“Why didn’t she change?”
“Budget only covered one costume. They wiped her down and changed her tights, but it was a bust: They needed a hose. Anyway, you learned the routine in four hours. I’ve never seen a prima bank those moves so fast. You got nothing to worry about.”
“I have so much to worry about—lines, lyrics, steps. I’m afraid I’ll forget something. Or move wrong.”
“You might,” Kyoko said flatly. “But you’re an actor. You fake it like a porn star and the audience won’t know any better.”
A male dancer popped his head in. “There she is. They’re looking for her. She missed her cue.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious. She’ll be out in a minute.”
“No need to be rude.” Coming all the way into the room, he looked Mina up and down. “They called five so Coen can yell some more.”
Mina winced. “This is my fault. I should get out there.”
“In a minute,” Kyoko said. “Make sure you’re okay.”
“How are you, Kyoko?” He still ogled Mina.
“Still gay, Sebastian.”
“Bonjour.” He reached for Mina’s hand. “Sebastian, since Kyoko insists on being rude.”
Kyoko scoffed. “She speaks English, numbnuts.”
“So, Mina…” He ignored Kyoko. “Are you finding your way around okay? If you want, I can show you—”
“Lemme save you a headache, honey,” Kyoko cut in. “Are you single?”
“Yes,” Mina said.
“Are you looking?”
“For what?”
“For a nice, soft penis to warm your cu-”
A voice cleared in the doorway, sounding commanding even without forming actual words. “I’ll take it from here.” Zack waited for Kyoko and Sebastian to clear the room.
Kyoko squeezed Mina’s shoulder on her way out, and Mina gave her what she hoped was a more convincing smile in return.
“You okay?” Zack closed the door behind him. “Word travels fast in here.”
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t believe you.” Moving to stand in front of her, he took her hands and pulled her up. “C’mere.”
She hesitated. In an effort to try and be more professional, they hadn’t touched each other in days, apart from choreographed holds and lifts, and hugs still felt so…personal. Intimate.
“It’s not like that, petite.” He seemed to read her mind. “I just want to see where your head is.”
Closing her eyes, she let him wrap her in his arms. In seconds, the warmth and familiarity of his body, the security of his strong arms, helped to calm her ruffled nerves. The tension left her muscles, and she let him support her, allowing her arms to circle his waist for just a minute as they listened to the bustle outside the door.
“I usually work well under pressure,” she murmured into his chest. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“This is different. We’ve all been there, transitioning from dance to musical theater. We’re happy to work with you, you know that.”
“I do know that.” Straightening, she pulled his arms from around her with some reluctance. “That’s the problem. I feel like I’m being…indulged. I—they won’t respect me if I don’t prove myself, if you—if you go easy on me.”
“When have I done that?”
“Enfin, I messed up my line—twice—and you were nice to me. You yell at everyone else—”
“I do not yell.”
“You yell.”
He rubbed his temples. “It’s down to the wire. We’re all feeling a little pressure. You’ve had less time to memorize the script, and I don’t want you to feel singled out.”
“I know…but as the lead, I should be. I need to—”
“Earn their respect.”
“Oui.”
“And you’re sure you’re okay?” He nudged her chin up with his finger, seeking the truth in her eyes.
She nodded.
“Then you got it, petite.” Pulling her to him again, he kissed her forehead, then moved to open the door.
“Wait!”
He cocked that left brow at her. It was so sexy, it wiped the English language from her memory.
“Dis-moi…” she started to say, then his sexy left brow met his less-sexy right, and she tried again. “Tell me to never be dishonest.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Please.” She imagined how she must look to him: sad, desperate - maybe a little insane. But thankfully, he took mercy instead of questioning her further.
“Never be dishonest. Now get your ass back out there.”
*
They ran through the number again, and this time Zack watched Mina use her jitters to power her performance. When the accompanist cued her for the song, she poured herself into it, metamorphosing into Camille, the Lady in Red. The opening number for the Tonys was seven minutes long, and she was only on for two minutes in the first half, playing the innocent country girl who escaped an abusive father with nothing but the ratty clothes on her back, to start a new life in the city.
The other dancers and the chorus line were Parisians young and old, the stage the bustling streets of Paris. Armed with nothing but beauty and determination, Camille’s sweet, lusty voice filled the theater. Her fellow courtesans flourished behind her, beckoning noble souls to come, for a price, to taste and see what they had to offer.
“From your diaphragm, Mina,” called Mrs. Perez. “Really belt it out.”
“Use the stage, Mina,” yelled Zack. “You’re not doing hard choreo during the chorus, so interact with the audience more, really move around.”