Deal-Breaker

by Siri Caldwell

  Something she shouldn’t be thinking about now, even if that was nearly impossible with the way Rae was clinging to her, dangling her shoes and purse from one hand and fitting the curves of their chests together like jigsaw puzzle pieces with only one solution. Good thing Rae couldn’t read her mind or she’d think twice about getting so comfortable. The position wasn’t necessarily sexual, but to Jori’s imagination, it absolutely was.

  She started onto the stairs and staggered under the load, almost sending them both tumbling to the ground. God, that was embarrassing. Rae didn’t look heavy. Must be true what people at the gym said about muscle weighing more.

  “Wait. This’ll make it easier.” Rae shifted position and hung on tight, swinging her legs and landing with them wrapped around Jori’s waist.

  Like that wasn’t sexual.

  Jori grunted from the impact and fought to keep her balance on the narrow step. Rae’s lithe, sweet strength felt really, really good. Too good. No woman had ever braced her inner thighs around her without kissing her first and being at least partially unclothed, and Jori’s body was flooding her with hormones to prepare her in case Rae decided to follow suit.

  Rae wasn’t going to do any of that, though, so Jori continued up the stairs, one careful step at a time. And Rae was right‌—‌her weight was better anchored, making her easier to carry. Not easier enough, though, because whatever advantage Jori had gained in weight distribution she was rapidly losing in strength thanks to the desire that pulsed through her with ratcheting intensity each time Rae shifted in her arms. With each jostling step, Jori had to pretend she couldn’t feel Rae’s heat burning through their clothing, because otherwise she would weaken too much before she reached the top, and she couldn’t risk that. Dropping her was not an option.

  “You’re doing great,” Rae said softly, her voice much too intimate.

  Not helping, sunshine.

  Because not having her in her arms was starting to feel like it, too, was not an option.

  Chapter Eleven

  Two days later, afternoon sun filtered through the trees outside the yoga barn’s huge windows as Jori sashayed across the hardwood floor, hugging one of the long wooden benches that belonged along the wall and spinning it around, practicing what she’d learned in dance class while she waited for Rae to show up. Chairs, fallen logs, small children who happened to be related to her and wouldn’t complain‌—‌she was hoisting everything she could find, preparing for her next chance to carry Rae up a handy flight of stairs.

  A flash of movement in the open doorway made her turn, and there was Rae, leaning against the doorframe, her crutches nowhere in sight. She looked like a dancer. Her walnut‌-‌brown top could pass for a camisole but was likely a leotard, her beige dance skirt hung long on one side and short on the other to reveal more leg than the average cellulite‌-‌fearing woman would want to reveal, and just in case that wasn’t dancerly enough, she completed her outfit with dangerous‌-‌looking heels that couldn’t possibly be good for her and that Jori wished she didn’t find sexy because the whole concept of heels was just so wrong. She figured if Rae was leaning against the wall it was because she was bracing herself against the pain of putting weight on her leg, but then her arm slid higher up the doorframe, her upper back shifted subtly, and what had at first glance appeared to be a resting position had morphed into a come‌-‌on.

  Jori snorted. What was this, National Stick Out Your Chest Month? Because this was exactly what Kaoli Morgenroth had been doing at the pool watching Rae, waiting for her to notice her. Kaoli Look‌-‌Up‌-‌My‌-‌Skirt Morgenroth. Rae’s damn girlfriend. Why did women do crazy shit like date unavailable women? Or, if Melanie was right, pretend to date unavailable women? Love triangles weren’t healthy, although the possibility did make her blood pulse a little faster. Because when she thought of Rae, she knew exactly why someone would be tempted to ignore good sense.

  “That doesn’t work on women,” Jori said, setting the bench down. Had Rae seen her dance with it? Or did she think she was just rearranging the furniture? Crap. She wasn’t going to let herself get embarrassed until she knew she had a reason to be. She was strength‌-‌training, damn it, not fantasizing.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. Draping yourself against the wall.”

  “Draping?” Rae pretended to look affronted. Right. Like she didn’t know what her body was doing. “I’d call it leaning.”

  “Men love that sort of thing,” Jori said. “Women don’t. We don’t notice.”

  Rae moved with a graceful ripple, drawing attention to her body while managing to make it look natural and unintentional. “It sounds like you noticed.”

  “Okay, I noticed. But I wasn’t turned on.” She didn’t want to be turned on, not by a straight woman’s trick. Not by a straight woman’s trick performed by a lesbian, either. How many times had she seen a woman stick her chest out in a man’s direction and felt nauseated? Men were simple‌-‌minded, visual creatures. Women needed more. “It’s too blatant.”

  “Too blatant, huh?” Rae shifted against the doorframe again and arched her back into an exaggerated pose that no mere mortal ought to be able to achieve. She shimmied as she returned to a more normal position, graceful and effortless, putting her dancer’s training to good use.

  Jori watched, fascinated in spite of herself. Oh, who was she kidding? All those straight women who made her want to gag? She was just jealous they weren’t interested in her.

  “Look at you, all flustered and uncomfortable.” Rae let her head drop back until it rested on the wood. “Relax. I’m not flirting with you.”

  “Why the hell not?” Jori said.

  Rae laughed, brushing it off like it was a joke.

  Which she expected, really, since Rae had a girlfriend. And thought Jori was straight.

  “When I start flirting with you, you’ll know.”

  When she started, not if.

  She didn’t mean it, though. Jori was reading way too much into it. Because Rae had a girlfriend. Rae had a girlfriend. Rae had a…‌

  “When is that going to be?” Jori challenged her.

  “Hmm.” Rae touched the doorframe and ran her hand up and down the molding with daydreamy slowness.

  Jori figured she should probably be offended that Rae was jerking her chain, but instead she laughed. “Is that the next step up after the wiggle?”

  “What, this?” Rae rubbed the front of her body against the doorframe. “Inappropriate touching of the woodwork?”

  If it were anyone else, she might have felt like she should look away, but Rae was having so much fun it made it all feel…‌not innocent, exactly, but not something that needed to be taken seriously. Not something that would require her to sternly remind herself that Rae was already spoken for.

  “I don’t know if I’d pick up on that,” Jori said. “It might be too subtle.”

  “In that case, I may have to go straight to nudity.”

  “Too late.” Didn’t she remember? Jori certainly did. Ever since that day in the locker room, her mind had been stuck on an instant replay of Rae exposing her bare sculpted waist as she dressed. Each time she thought about it she was hit once again by a shot of need that squeezed something deep inside and made it hard to think about anything else.

  “Right. I forgot that didn’t work.” Rae stopped rubbing against the doorframe. “Why didn’t that work?”

  “Because if I see one more guy salivate over a woman for no other reason than she’s half‌-‌naked and gorgeous, I’ll scream. Maybe that’s all it takes to make a man foam at the mouth with lust, but‌—‌” Jori listened to herself spout yet another one of her theories. She didn’t know where she came up with this stuff, but she seemed to have an endless supply.

  “But…‌?”

  “But not me.” She’d seen Rae with nearly nothing on, and yeah, she had a nice body, but the mere sight of it hadn’t made her fall crazy in lust
with her.

  Her breathing kicked up a notch, remembering.

  Must be all that ranting, making her breath get all messed up.

  Jori gulped for air and continued. “If I thought I was in love with every naked woman I saw, I’d either have to quit using the locker room or clear my schedule, because I’d be a very busy lady.”

  “You wish.”

  “I don’t wish.”

  Rae contemplated the wall and lifted one knee in a balletic pose. “Of course you don’t. You’re straight.”

  Not this again. “The truth is‌—‌”

  “Yes?” Rae slid her knee up the doorway as high as was safe in that skirt. Higher, actually.

  She complained that her injured leg was still atrophied, but the difference between the two was growing less and less noticeable every day. Not that she was staring. Much. Even recovering from injury, Rae looked amazing, and it was becoming more and more difficult to react to her moves like they were nothing more than silliness.

  Skirts were not her thing. Heels? No way. Yet skirts and heels on Rae? Somehow that was different. And that disturbed her. It wasn’t like her to let a woman turn her head so much that she didn’t recognize her own opinions anymore.

  “For women, visual appeal isn’t enough,” Jori said.

  “You’re making kind of a big generalization, aren’t you? Maybe some women are more visual but they learn to hide it.”

  “Okay, so in general, nudity isn’t enough to make a woman crazed. In general, men get hit by physical attraction first and then emotional attraction grows from there. We’re the opposite,” Jori said. “At least I am,” she added, so Rae couldn’t accuse her of stereotyping. “First I fall in love with a person for their personality. Then their body becomes interesting.”

  God, she was such a hypocrite. She ogles‌—‌admires, she corrected herself‌—‌Rae’s butt‌—‌skirt, damn it‌—‌and then claims women aren’t visual.

  “How civilized of you.”

  Jori frowned as she replayed what she’d said: First I fall in love with a person for their personality. Then their body becomes interesting. She found Rae’s body interesting. Her eyes didn’t skim past her without noticing, like with all the other naked female bodies she saw in the locker room every day. That meant…‌oh no. That meant she was already attracted to her and well on her way toward…‌

  When did this start? Well, she knew when it started. It started the first time she saw her, a small determined guest in the deep end of the pool, squeezed into two flotation belts so she wouldn’t sink, pushing herself to the point of exhaustion. All she’d been able to see was the tops of her shoulders and her head and her adorable stubby ponytail. It had been enough.

  Rae finally took mercy on her and put distance between her and that doorframe, making her way across the floor with a slow, rocking gait that suggested she didn’t quite want to bend her knee, despite what she’d just done to the woodwork. That slight hesitation in her stride as her heels clicked on the wood floor did something to Jori’s gut. But then it got worse, because soon Rae was standing in front of her, closer than would normally have been comfortable if her nervous system hadn’t decided the boundaries of her personal space no longer existed.

  Rae held her arms out in invitation‌—‌not to embrace, but to dance‌—‌and somehow it was too much.

  When Jori didn’t respond, Rae dropped her arms to her side. “You really are straight, aren’t you?”

  “What? Why?” Jori gave a startled twitch and almost laughed out loud at the disconnect between her own line of thought and Rae’s. What could she possibly have said that made Rae come to that ridiculous conclusion?

  “You’ve obviously spent a lot of time thinking about what’s wrong with men.”

  “Shouldn’t that make me not straight?”

  “Not necessarily. I mean, for me, I prefer to spend my time thinking about women. Why should I care what men think of the opposite sex? I leave it to the straight women of the world to figure out what makes men tick.”

  “Good point.”

  Rae held out her arms again. Jori shook herself out of her decidedly not straight train of thought and reached for her. Rae positioned Jori in a standard dance hold, one arm curved around her shoulder, their free hands clasped. No tango legs, thank God. But just touching her, standing in each other’s space, was unnerving. And wonderful. And this time they were alone…‌ Jori jerked her gaze down at her arms and memorized the correct pose.

  “So you’re not going to explain?”

  Jori shook her head. They were in each other’s arms‌—‌sort of‌—‌and that made it hard to focus. Talking and dancing at the same time was turning out to be surprisingly tricky. Or maybe the real problem was that it was hard to do much of anything when the only thing that mattered was the caring, supportive pressure of Rae’s hand on her shoulder blade and the fact that she was standing close enough to kiss her.

  But she had to reply. “I don’t believe in labels. I believe in being willing to love no matter what form love takes.” There were a lot of things she was less than honest about, but this wasn’t one of them. She never lied about the important stuff.

  Rae pressed her lips together the way people did when they disapproved of you but weren’t going to say so, at least not to your face. “Just say it: bi.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “One syllable.”

  “Still not that simple.”

  Rae looked amused that she wasn’t going to win this one. She tightened her hold and stepped forward with the music, prompting Jori to step back. “I’ll dance the lead and you dance the follow, straight girl.”

  Dancing with her was heaven, and arguing with her was…‌well, she’d never thought arguing about her sexuality could be so much fun. “Haven’t you ever heard that it’s all a continu‌—‌”

  “Do not say it’s all a continuum.” Rae’s grip on her hand and her shoulder blade was firm and unyielding. “I am so far at the end of the continuum, I’m not even on the continuum. I am so far at the end I’ve fallen off, and when people say it’s all a continuum it’s like they’re telling me I belong on it, and I don’t.”

  “And that means I can’t be different?”

  “As long as you’re not dating me, sure.” Rae gave her a warning smile.

  Or was that a teasing smile? Before Jori could decide, Rae was moving again and leading her into a rapid sequence of dance steps.

  Jori tried not to trip. Oh joy. But this was what she wanted, right? She wanted to be alone in a room with her, holding hands, standing close, breathing the scent of chlorine that seemed to be a permanent part of her, joined in a shared rhythm.

  “Teach me something that’ll make me look like a better dancer than Axel.”

  Rae adjusted her hold, sliding her hand from Jori’s shoulder blade to her waist like she was trying to decide which was better. She gripped her waist, making her choice. Her touch burned through Jori’s tank top.

  “Is that why you’re being so nice about helping me? To learn stuff you can dance with him?”

  Why, no. No, it wasn’t.

  Rae continued, oblivious. “I told you ballroom isn’t my thing, right? That means this isn’t going to be real ballroom dance. I’m making shit up. Do you want me to get someone else?”

  “Of course not.” Even if this wasn’t technically real ballroom, whatever that meant, it wasn’t like anyone could tell the difference. Rae was a professional dancer, right? Surely anything she taught her would be good. Not that Jori was going to learn anything useful, anyway, when instead of watching Rae’s feet she was noticing that her leotard was so old and worn that its elastic had weakened, and that although it still hugged her body, the stitched edging at the neckline clung less fiercely than it should, revealing a hint of the tops of her breasts. Rae wasn’t wearing a bra. Because she didn’t need to. Some women might feel self‌-‌conscious about that, but not Rae, sticking her chest out like she had something
to stick out. She owned it, and that made her sexier than anyone who met society’s ridiculous standards. How amazing would it feel to touch her delicate skin, slide over the gentle swell of exposed temptation, and slip under the edge of that neckline with just her fingertips, aching to reach farther down? It was making her crazy to clasp her hand in a dance hold, to touch her and yet not touch her the way she wanted to.

  “I’m just going to be creative,” Rae said, blithely unaware of the direction of Jori’s thoughts. “I told Ka‌—‌” She cut herself short. “I told my friend,” she corrected. “But she doesn’t care that what I teach her won’t be a real foxtrot or whatever, so I have free rein.”

  “Kaoli Morgenroth. I know. I overheard her asking you to do it.”

  “Oh.” Rae took an awkward step back on her injured leg and wobbled dangerously. “Did you hear the part about‌—‌” She let go of her and covered her mouth. “What else did you hear?”

  It wasn’t hard to figure out what Rae was worried about. “You mean the part about her getting married?”

  Rae gripped her shoulder. “You won’t tell the tabloids, will you? She’ll think I’m the one who leaked it.”

  “I wouldn’t even know who to call.”

  Her fingers dug into her deltoids. “She’s fired people for less.”

  “I won’t gab.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Rae sighed with relief. “Thank you. I really, really, really‌—‌”

  “‌—‌appreciate it?” Jori said, before Rae got carried away and started offering sexual favors. Yeah, right. That was Jori’s approach, not Rae’s. It was always a joke, of course. But it wouldn’t be as funny coming out of Rae’s mouth.