Like No One Is Watching

by Jaime Samms

“I’ve got you.” Dusty held him up until Conrad got his feet back under himself and managed to lift his head.

  This time, he initiated the kiss, and Dusty received it, granting access. Wetness from the overhead spray and Conrad’s mouth engulfed him.

  Wrapped in each other’s arms, they waited out the last shocks of Conrad’s orgasm in close, entangled silence.

  Chapter 24

  CONRAD’S MIND was a little bit blown. Wrapped up in—around?—through?—Dusty, all he knew was the ache in his balls, the shivering silver lightning in his head, the warmth and the wet, and that words were alien things at the moment.

  He shivered at the memory of Dusty’s roughness with his delicate bits.

  “Con?”

  Oh. That was his name. His name spoken as only Dusty had ever spoken it, one short, concise syllable that might just as well have been mine.

  Conrad tightened his arms. His brain-to-lip connection was burned out. Maybe forever.

  “Con, okay. We have to dry off now. Time for the bed, Con.”

  Mine, mine, dry bed, mine.

  Conrad nodded and unhinged his limbs, joints rusty with fatigue and Dusty’s domination over his libido.

  “There you go.” Dusty set him off to one side so he could turn off the water and open the door of the shower. He went on about the cool air that slapped them and chased Conrad’s balls up tight to his body, but then the fuzzy thickness of terry cloth wrapped around him, and he regained enough sense to follow Dusty’s tug on his hand out of the bathroom and to the bed.

  Flopping onto his back, he gazed up as Dusty rubbed at him, getting most of the water off.

  “So that’s a thing, then,” Dusty said, a grin splitting his features.

  “What?”

  Cool fingers invaded between his legs, and he let his knees fall apart for Dusty’s exploration. He cupped Conrad’s balls, gentle now, and bent between his legs to anoint each one with a feather kiss.

  “That’s a thing,” he repeated, moving to lie down beside Conrad. “Your balls.”

  “Two things.”

  Dusty grinned. “Yes, Con. Two things you like me to play with.”

  Conrad shivered in delight and rolled on top of Dusty. He gazed down into hazel eyes bright with amusement and lust.

  “It’s a thing,” he finally agreed, working his muzzy head around the conversation at last. “Yes. A very good and bright thing. It melts my brain.”

  Dusty’s chuckle was rich and darkly promising. “So I see.”

  Conrad frowned again. “Yeah.”

  Dusty all but shoved him off, pushing up onto an elbow. “But a thing you didn’t know about yourself.”

  He was very good at asking questions that were not questions.

  “There might be lots of things I don’t know. I’ve had enough lovers, but….”

  Dusty lay back down and caressed his cheek. When Conrad continued to stare, he tilted his head slightly. “You’re a little out of it.”

  “It makes me wonder what else I’ve been missing. I knew I liked… well.” He dropped his head so his cheek rested on Dusty’s chest. His feet contacted the footboard of the bed, and Dusty’s rubbed, gentle and slow, against his shins.

  “Liked?” Dusty asked.

  “Strength,” Conrad whispered. “Not… force, exactly. But….”

  Dusty wound fingers through his hair and gripped. “That?”

  Conrad sighed. His entire body loosened and melted over Dusty’s. He closed his eyes. “Yeah. Please, that?”

  A press at his scalp made him look up, and he realized Dusty had kissed his hair. “Anytime, Con. Always. Now go to sleep.”

  “What about you?”

  Dusty wiggled to get some breathing room, but he didn’t quite dislodge Conrad. “I’m fine.”

  “But—”

  “Shh.” Another kiss to his hair stilled his protests. “Sleep.”

  It was like a spell. It dragged him under, and the last thing Conrad knew was that he was warm and safe and perfect.

  THE BED he woke in was huge, soft, and warm. The covers wrapped around him like a cocoon. He wiggled deeper and pushed his head into the pillow. A deep whiff of Dusty rose around him.

  His brain woke before his body was ready, instantly alert at the realization he’d fallen asleep on Dusty, not even reciprocating the incredible… hand job? Fingering? He didn’t even know what to call it. Sex without sex but with an orgasm that utterly melted his being? That seemed a little long-winded, even for him.

  “Heya.” The bed dipped, and Dusty’s scent wafted up again to mingle with the soft current of his voice. “You awake at last?”

  “Mmffph.” No. That wasn’t really a word at all.

  Dusty laughed. “Roll over here, lazybones.”

  God, he sounded so sweet, relaxed, and kind.

  Conrad rolled under his gentle prodding and found his face resting on Dusty’s thigh, one of Dusty’s legs wrapped up and over so his ankle rested in the small of Conrad’s back. Very casually possessive and comfortable. The scent that greeted him was intensely Dusty, musky and aroused and fuck! His mouth watered.

  “There you go, baby,” Dusty encouraged. Muscles flexed under and around Conrad’s head, and the warm, solid weight of an erection bobbed against his cheek.

  Oh yeah.

  He opened his mouth and was gently, inexorably, fed the length of Dusty’s morning erection. Rolling to his stomach, he curled and shuffled until he had a good angle to take him deep, then swallowed around the heat. He had a lot to say about what a way this was to wake up, but his mouth was rather too busy to voice any of it.

  Dusty caressed his hair, murmuring encouraging sounds and liquid praise, then huffing out soft pants of encouraging expletives until finally, he seemed at a loss for words completely.

  As it should be. Conrad applied more pressure and let his tongue work the underside of Dusty’s dick until the gentle touch in his hair became hard and controlling, and he stopped, letting Dusty fuck up into him until he was unceremoniously yanked away.

  Molten release splashed across his face and throat. Razor-sharp fire sizzled over his scalp where Dusty clutched at his hair. They were going to have to talk about swallowing, or he was going to end up with a bald spot.

  Stars swam before his eyes a moment, then the pressure was gone and Dusty was gulping air and stammering an apology.

  Conrad wiped at his face with the back of his hand and looked up. “It’s okay.” And it really was, because nothing was quite as satisfying as the dazed look on Dusty’s face as his lover’s come dried on his skin. Unless it was swallowing said come while Dusty disintegrated into this disheveled pile of happily flushed man.

  Even the sting of his scalp didn’t matter all that much when the reward was seeing Dusty so relaxed.

  He settled back, his cheek once more resting on Dusty’s thigh to wait while Dusty caught his breath and combed fingers through his hair.

  “I think I’d like to take you to breakfast. I know this little place close to the studio. They make every kind of omelet you can imagine and some I sort of think should never have been invented. But they have good coffee, and the regular waitress—her name is Andrea—she used to dance, but she decided she was better at drawing and painting. She’s pretty good. I like her stuff, really vibrant and alive. She says it’s all about….”

  Dusty’s fingers kept up their soft travel, and Conrad prattled on, no destination for the words, just liking the way Dusty’s soft, quiet bed soaked up his sound and the smell of their sex and the sunlight pouring in the frosted window running the length of the room’s upper wall.

  Epilogue

  ONCE MORE, Dusty ran a hand along the side of his head. The goo holding his hair in place was stiff now it was dry. Goose flesh pebbled his bare torso. His skin soaked up the charged air of backstage, and he glanced across the stage, ignoring the dancers on it, to make sure the hands were in place with the portable barre.

  They were.

  He drew in
a breath of blue-tinted light and makeup-scented air, held it. One wing upstage from where he stood, he could hear Conrad saying something soothing to Eliza.

  Dusty ran his damp palms down the thighs of his blue velvet tights. He wiggled, settling his assets as comfortably as they could be inside the dancer’s belt and rolled his head.

  Conrad’s voice stopped, and Eliza said something, her voice a bit shaky but determined.

  A warm hand came to rest on Dusty’s spine, just above the waist of his leggings.

  “Ready?” Conrad’s voice was a breath over his earlobe.

  Dusty closed his eyes. The darkness surged up and around him, coiling about his limbs, numbing him, stilling him with an icy grip.

  Conrad’s hand moved, alive with touch and energy as it glided up his sweat-slicked back. “You’ve got this.”

  Dusty flexed his left leg. It felt bare, naked, without the brace. He shifted, about to turn, but the lights blinked out, and the black expanse of rubber floor in front of him disappeared.

  Far downstage, the rapid patter of ballet shoes in the farthest upstage wings rose, rushed, and passed as a wave of little girls exited the stage. Across the divide, the near-silent slap of bare feet and clump of the barre told him his prop was in place.

  He lifted his chest, opened his mouth—nothing. No breath to inhale.

  Conrad’s lips covered his. Air puffed into his mouth and it curled through him, head to toe. The faint clomp of Eliza’s pointe shoes issued out across the floor.

  Conrad increased the pressure at this back, and Dusty tiptoed forward, hauling in a slight, inadequate breath.

  He was blind and helpless, the barre and Eliza too far out in the dark to find.

  A cool, steady hand found his. Eliza’s lipsticked lips touched his cheek, light, almost plastic-feeling with the makeup, and another warm breath found its way to his lungs. She placed his hand on the barre, and he felt her straight, confident presence behind him.

  Lifting his right arm, he placed his feet in first position. As the music tinkled forth and the lights came up, clean, real air wafted over him. He breathed it in. His body moved, finding the motion, the music, the light and cadence. His mind drifted to the place only dance could take it.

  Keep scrolling for an exclusive excerpt from

  Like You've Never Been Hurt

  Dance, Love, Live: Book Two

  Coming Soon to

  www.dreamspinnerpress.com

  Chapter 1

  ADAM STOOD in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirrors and studied himself critically. What was it about him that he couldn’t manage to lead a girl through one simple ballet routine? None of the choreography had been challenging, much less beyond his capabilities. Yet he hadn’t managed to make anything of the dance.

  He shouldn’t dwell on it. This was a new year, a new start. His own choreography, with a willing male partner, had been well received at the last year-end recital. Conrad had gone out of his way to express how impressed he had been by what he referred to as Adam’s “hidden talent” for choreography. They’d received plenty of compliments on the dance, too, and on their chemistry and connection. Maybe that was due to the copious amounts of sex they’d been having. Maybe not. But the summer had passed, his dance partner had moved on to a university degree involving maths and sciences, and Adam was still here, wondering if he was, in the end, meant to be a dancer at all.

  “I’m supposed to be here,” he muttered. “And if Danny didn’t think I was worth his time, that’s his loss.” He could ignore the stab of—whatever it was that made his gut twist. Danny had a life elsewhere, and Adam hadn’t wanted to follow him based on the strength of one summer’s worth of good sex and not much more.

  Moving with careful deliberation, he placed his hands on the barre, making certain not to put any of his weight there. He shifted his right foot, moving from first to second positon.

  He remembered his first ballet teacher’s long-ago chant for this. When he’d been knee-high and eager, the singsong—shoulders, hips, heels—had been useful to help a little kid remember where each body part should line up. But if he was going to make a name for himself, or even have a career, he had to do better. He widened his stance so his heels were out just past his hips and did a plié, studying every minute motion in the mirror.

  Knees over his toes. Tailbone curved down. Ribs held up. Shoulders back. Tummy in. Core engaged. He pushed his heels into the floor and lifted with the backs of his thighs, straightening his knees. Plié and stretch, plié and stretch. Over and over.

  This wasn’t hard. He stepped back from the barre, shook out his muscles, stretched the backs of his calves, and resumed the position, toes turned out a little more than before. More pliés, more careful attention to his body, then a slightly larger turnout. Another plié.

  His hip popped.

  “Fuck!” He shifted his weight to his good leg and straightened, ungraceful and sweating, to shake out the offending leg. His hip popped again and he cursed on the inhale.

  “Are you all right?” The deep, quiet voice sent a shudder from the suddenly upright hairs at the back of his neck, in a cascade of goose bumps, down his back to tingle through his balls. His fingers tightened involuntarily around the wood of the barre.

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  Adam flicked his gaze up to meet the steady amber gaze of the studio’s newest dance instructor, Peridot Nascimbeni. He’d arrived over the previous summer, along with his prodigiously talented eight-year-old daughter, who had an attitude that outstripped her ability by half. Not that she wasn’t good. She was. She was just better at making a big deal of herself.

  Peridot himself was a legend in Russian ballet, though one would never suspect he had the reputation he did from his demeanor. He was probably the most down-to-earth, soft-spoken instructor Adam had ever worked with.

  “I asked you a question, boy,” Peridot said, his voice still sliding through that low register, though now it held an edge that Adam couldn’t quite identify. “Are you hurt?”

  “I am not a boy,” Adam chose to answer, drawing himself back up, using all his training to get the last millimeter out of his height, which still only brought the top of his head to Peridot’s chin.

  “Then you should be able to answer a simple question, should you not? I saw you favor your right side. Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No.” Adam set his right foot on the floor properly and balanced out his weight. There was no pain. There never was. Not after the initial shock of the joint popping. It was just an oddity of how he fit together that gave him trouble every now and then when he widened his stance too far and without care. It was the main reason for his abysmal turnout that always had Conrad, the studio’s director, chiding him.

  “Are you properly warmed up for class?” Peridot asked. “I’d like you to demonstrate some of the more complicated footwork so these students can see what we are building toward.”

  “I’ll get ready,” he mumbled.

  He was halfway to his customary corner of the room when Peridot spoke again.

  “If you want to be treated like an adult, perhaps you shall begin acting like an adult, yes?”

  Adam felt like sticking out his tongue at the older man. He only scowled.

  “A professional adult warms up before he begins exercises he knows to be problematic, and he treats every opportunity to dance with the respect it deserves. You never know when the opportunity to do what we do will be taken from you.”

  To that, Adam had no response. The previous spring and summer’s drama with Director Conrad’s new boyfriend had been a wakeup call. Dusty was a former dancer who had been bashed to within an inch of his life when he was fifteen. The incident had left him with a permanent brain injury and a ruined knee. He was proof. It took one incident beyond a person’s control, a matter of minutes, and his promising career had been taken from him. The fact he could dance at all, ten years later, was a miracle. They would all see if the miracle held after the surg
ery he was to undergo in a few weeks to have that decade-old injury more thoroughly repaired.

  “Of course,” Adam said softly. No one made light of such possibilities after seeing Dusty’s struggle.

  “Adam.” Peridot’s voice had softened again.

  It stopped Adam in his tracks, making him turn with the compelling way it wended through his entire system. That voice was going to undo him. It made him shiver and want things he had told himself, over and over, he didn’t truly want. Couldn’t have. Would best forget all about. Because it would only lead to a fight with his father and a fruitless attempt to explain why he could just as easily want to be with another guy as any of the girls his parents had tried to fix him up with. It wouldn’t help him convince his father he should be allowed to pursue dance. It wouldn’t offer grandchildren. It wouldn’t let him focus on what was most important: proving he could be a success in his chosen field.

  That, above all, he had to prove.

  “Adam,” Peridot said again, no raised voice, no change in tenor. Just the same inexorable insistence that he would not be ignored.

  Adam sighed. “Yes?” He forced himself to meet Peridot’s gaze. Even across the room, those golden eyes were mesmerizing. This wasn’t a battle against his own will he was ever going to win.

  “I mean you no disrespect. I don’t belittle you. I speak out of concern.”

  “I know.” Peridot’s formal way of speaking grated on his nerves. The guy wasn’t so much older than Adam. Well. Okay, fifteen years or so might be considered an age gap. But he wasn’t from the Victorian age or anything. So why he couldn’t talk like a normal person only irked Adam more. Maybe because the formality of it, the politeness, the refined cant to his words, was just another thing to tingle against Adam’s skin, as if every word had invisible fingers with which to taunt him.

  “Do you?” Peridot asked. “Because some days, I think what I say is better heeded by the walls than by you.”