In the Zone (Portland Storm 5)

by Catherine Gayle

  Luckily for me, the room started to fill in before Colesy could pry any more, and Brie was calling for our attention. She already had all of mine, anyway. She had on those same chunky glasses she’d been wearing that night, but her hair was pulled back in a ponytail away from her face, revealing her long neck. She was in a long skirt made from some sort of soft, T-shirtlike material—similar to what she’d worn that night to the hotel—plus a baggy sweatshirt that had to be two sizes too big. Even though she was doing everything possible—at least in terms of how she dressed—to hide her figure, I doubted I’d be able to take my eyes off her the whole time we were here.

  I knew what curves she was hiding underneath all that fabric. I’d held them in my hands, licked them, sucked them…reveled in them. I knew the toned muscle beneath the curves, too. If she was a dancer that explained so much about her body, things that had left me insanely curious for months. And it made me even more furious with her ex for all he’d done to her. Her health issues had probably forced her to stop dancing, pushed her into teaching instead. And he’d told her she was fat and left her for someone skinnier, at the same time she was losing her livelihood? I might be jumping to conclusions, but still…those conclusions were begging to be reached.

  I hadn’t been able to get her off my mind in the months since that night. I hadn’t even been in her presence for five minutes today, and I was already trying to sort out how I could get her alone for two minutes at the end of this class so I could get her number.

  If she was living here, in Portland, I wanted to get to know her. I wanted to help her find her confidence again, doing more than I could ever have accomplished in a single night.

  I wanted to kiss her again. And more. I wanted a fucking hell of a lot more.

  “Let’s everyone pair off, please, so we can get started,” she said over the general din in the room. “Gentleman, select a partner and spread out. Be sure you have plenty of space on all sides.”

  Colesy took one step out toward the middle of the studio, and three of the women rushed toward him. Based on the way they were looking at him, all googly-eyed, I was fairly certain it was because he was pretty to look at and not necessarily because of his expert dancing skills that they were trying to run each other over to partner with him. Of course, he might yet surprise me and have a few moves. Anything was possible. Too bad for those women he was far more likely to be interested in one of the other guys in the room for anything beyond a dance partner. He took one of the ladies by the hand, and the other two practically ran over each other again in an effort to be the first to get in front of me, only further confirming my earlier assumption.

  I held out a hand to one of them, a blonde, and she smirked at the brunette she’d been racing. Then we took our positions.

  “I’m Jenni,” she said breathlessly.

  I barely spared her a glance. I couldn’t seem to rip my gaze away from Brie since she was here, in the flesh, and I’d never expected to lay eyes on her again. “Keith,” I finally replied.

  Standing in the center of the room, Brie clapped her hands for our attention. “We’re going to be working on the waltz again today,” she said once we’d quieted down. “Why don’t we start off with just a basic box step so we can refresh our memories, all right? And since we have a few people who are new to the class, let’s have a couple demonstrate what the box step is. Cole and Alexis?”

  Colesy and his partner took up a hold and waited for Brie to count them off to the music being piped in.

  “Keep going until I ask you to stop, please. All right, and one, two, three, one, ready, go,” she said. “Gentlemen, watch Cole’s feet, and ladies, watch Alexis’s. Note the way their weight shifts from foot to foot. When you move forward, use a heel lead. Moving backward, your toe should hit the floor first. You see how it’s a rocking motion, going from foot to foot?” After a couple of times through the box, Brie stepped up behind Colesy, adjusted his hold a bit, and whispered something in his ear.

  As soon as she did that, he straightened his posture and seemed to bring his hips up under his shoulders better. Yeah, if he had to think about things like that, these classes would definitely help his core strength. Maybe Bergy was onto something with telling him to take dance. Who would have thought it?

  “All right. Any questions?” Brie asked while she moved behind Alexis and made similar adjustments to her posture and hold.

  A few murmurs spread throughout the room, but no one spoke up and asked anything.

  “Okay, you two can stop then. Everyone get into closed hold with your partners. We’re all going to try it together before we move on to something more complicated.”

  Even though I’d watched Garrett dance for years, I’d never done it myself. Still, I knew enough to have a pretty basic idea of how to get into hold. I put my left hand up for Jenni to take and settled my right hand on her shoulder blade. Then I let my gaze travel around the room again.

  There were the perfect number of men and women in today’s class—something that Colesy had told me not to expect. He’d said there were always more women than men, that sometimes the women had to pair up together, with one of them leading the other. Not today, though. There wasn’t a single person in the room without a partner except Brie, and she was the one I kept staring at. I couldn’t help but wish I were dancing with her. I wanted to get my hands on her again, even if it was in a waltz hold and not at all the way I’d held her before.

  “You need to lift your arm up,” Jenni hissed at me, bringing my attention back to her. I looked at her curiously, and she rolled her eyes. “So mine can rest on top of yours.” She flapped the arm in question.

  I lifted my elbow into what I thought was the appropriate position, at least according to what I remembered from watching Garrett, and turned my attention back to Brie.

  “Everyone ready? Gentlemen, you’ll be stepping forward with your left foot—remember your heel lead—and ladies will be stepping back with your right foot, toe hitting the ground first. On my count. One, two, three, one, ready, go.”

  I took a step and immediately trampled Jennie’s toes.

  “Ouch!” she shouted at me.

  “Why didn’t you move?”

  “I was waiting for you to lead me, to give me an indication of how I should move.”

  Brie had fucking counted us off and outlined who was supposed to move in what way. What more indication did she need?

  “All right,” Brie called out, staring with a bothered expression at me and Jenni. “Everyone hold up for a minute.”

  The other couples came to a stop, and everyone joined her in staring at us.

  “Do we have a problem over here?” Brie asked.

  “Only if you consider this big oaf bulldozing my toes a problem,” Jenni muttered.

  Brie met my eyes, and I wished she would never look away. “So tell me, Keith. Have you ever taken dance before?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Never.” I wanted to hear her say my name again. My name, not Jacob. I’d heard her call me that plenty of times the one night we’d spent together.

  “Then, Jenni, you’re going to have to help him out. He doesn’t know how to lead.” Brie crossed over to the pair of us, and she put the flat of her palm on my lower abdomen—close enough to certain other parts of my anatomy that I had to fight back a groan. She patted her hand over that spot. “This is your core. This is where you move from, not your feet. You start here, and the rest of your body follows. Feet, arms, torso—they all have to wait. It all begins here. Once you start moving from your core, your hands will give Jenni a slight nudge, and she’ll follow. Just don’t start it with your feet or you’ll step on her, and don’t start with your hands and arms or you’ll knock her off-balance and she’ll fall over. Got it?”

  The only thing I got out of all of that was the sensation of having her hands on me again, but I nodded. I could do this. If Colesy could fucking do this, then I could do it, too. “Got it,” I replied.

  Her eyes
flashed up to meet mine again for the briefest of moments, and then she backed away. I immediately felt the loss of her hand on my abs.

  “Okay, let’s try it again,” she said to the whole class, lifting her voice so it would travel through the studio. “One, two, three, one, ready, go.”

  This time, I tried to move from my core first, as she’d told me. It didn’t feel too awkward, actually. In hockey, we need a strong core for everything we do—skating, hitting, shot blocking, shooting. I supposed, if I took the time to think about it, we tended to move with our core first a lot. I’d never thought about it in those terms before. When I stepped forward, I felt Jenni moving backward in sync with my motion.

  I stepped to my right, and she followed. Then feet together, then back, then left, then feet together again, and repeat.

  We kept doing this box step, and with each reiteration of the motions, it got a little easier and less uncomfortable. I wouldn’t say that it was starting to feel comfortable, though. I was still the newest of newbies in this class, and it showed in the way my feet were clomping across the floor. I definitely didn’t have the easy dancing gait, the one Brie called a heel lead, and the idea of rocking from one foot to the other went straight over my head.

  Brie was moving through the couples, correcting an arm placement here and straightening a head there. When she finally came back to us, my entire body tensed as she moved behind me. I’d seen her do this with most of the other couples, but that didn’t come close to preparing me for the heat of her hovering behind me, or for the strong but gentle touch of her hands as she adjusted my frame and straightened my spine. She stayed behind me dancing along with us, kind of like that scene in Dirty Dancing when the female dance instructor danced behind Jennifer Grey, all three of the characters moving perfectly in time with one another. I supposed that made me Jennifer Grey in this situation.

  Only we weren’t perfectly together because my head wouldn’t stay focused on the task at hand. I couldn’t help it. All I could think about was where Brie was touching me, and where I wanted her to be touching me.

  Sure enough, I stomped on Jenni’s toes again. It was even the same foot. And I was a big guy, so I knew that had to hurt her.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” she shouted at me, dropping her hands and backing away. “I’ve had enough.”

  She spun around and headed for the wall where we’d all left our gym bags and other shit.

  “You don’t have to leave,” Brie called after her. “We can switch partners.”

  “I’m going to go put ice on my toes,” Jenni replied. She grabbed her bag and headed through the door, letting it slam shut behind her.

  “Sorry,” I said to Brie once it was clear Jenni was well and truly gone.

  She looked around the studio at the other pairs, but there wasn’t anyone else she could put with me. She took a breath and straightened her back, reaching up to take my hands. “Let’s keep going, guys,” she said to the class. “Everyone get back into a closed hold.”

  Tentatively, I took one of her hands in mine, placing the other on her shoulder blade. She settled her arm over mine, her hand gripping my deltoid since she was too short to comfortably reach my shoulder.

  “Here we go. And one, two, three, one, ready, go.”

  It took every ounce of restraint I possessed not to drop my hand down to her waist and pull her closer to me. Now that I had her in my arms again, I never wanted to let her go.

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing in Portland?” Keith asked.

  Why in God’s name did he have to look good enough to eat while he asked me that? “One, two, three, close the box,” I called out in a singsong voice to the room at large in lieu of answering him. There wasn’t any way I could have prepared myself for running into him today, and I still had to teach this class while I was trying to figure out how to feel, what to say, what to do.

  The last thing in the world I wanted was to end up dancing with him, because that meant we had to touch. Everywhere he touched me, my body filled with electricity, and it ruined my ability to think. My body was betraying me, and all I could think about was all the ways he’d touched me once before.

  Keith let his hand drop to the midpoint of my back, right around my bra-line, when it should have been on my shoulder blade. I grabbed him by the elbow and jerked it back into position, glaring at him as I did.

  He smiled in return, one of those knee-weakening, heart-stopping sorts of smiles he’d given me so many times the night we met, and I wanted to forget about the fact that I had a class to teach. He made me want to curl into him, to run off so we could continue where we’d left off.

  But that was a different time and a different place. It was a different me. That was Allison and Jacob, two people who had existed only in that hotel room. In the real world, Brie Hayden had nothing to do with a man like Keith Burns.

  Or at least I shouldn’t have anything to do with a man like him. I’d only end up getting my heart smashed in the end, and I’d already had enough of that for one lifetime. I didn’t need to invite more heartache. It would be way more sensible to meet some average guy, someone who looked like someone like me would belong with.

  “You’re not going to answer me?” he asked. “We have a good forty minutes or more left in this class. That’s a long time for you to be in my arms without saying a word.” He leaned his head closer to my ear, thoroughly ignoring his frame. “I can think of a lot of things we could do in forty minutes, you know. In fact, if memory serves, I made you come three times in about that same amount of time the last we saw each other. And you talked then. A lot.”

  He wasn’t exaggerating about that. The whole time we’d spent together, he’d kept asking me what I liked, what I wanted, how something he did felt—and I’d answered him and then some. I couldn’t remember a time I’d been more vocal in bed.

  I made the mistake of looking up into his eyes. Then I feared I’d never be able to look away again.

  “What are you doing in Portland?” he asked me again.

  “Teaching dance,” I hedged.

  “Why here?”

  “Because it’s not Providence. Because they wanted me.”

  “I wanted you, too. You left without a word.”

  “That was the plan going in. One night. Just sex.”

  “Amazing sex.”

  “But just sex.”

  “Have you been with anyone since?”

  I felt myself tensing in his arms. “That’s none of your business.”

  “No, you’re right. It’s not.” He dropped his hand down again, lower this time. He settled it over one of my many bulges, and I had to fight not to flinch away from him. “So you live here now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What a coincidence. So do I.”

  “Not in Canada…”

  “I was playing by your rules, Brie. Half-truths. I head home to Nova Scotia in the off-season, but I play here. I live here.”

  His hand fell farther, until it was on my waist and he was drawing me into him. I had to put an end to that. I dropped my frame and took a step back.

  “All right, that’s enough of the basic box. Let’s add an under-arm turn. Who remembers how to dance that figure?”

  Cole and Alexis volunteered to be my example couple again, and I led them through it while explaining both parts several times so everyone else could have their memory refreshed or catch up if it was all new to them.

  “Is everyone ready to give it a try?” I asked once I was relatively certain they should have had time to commit the steps to memory.

  “I’m ready to have you back in my arms,” Keith murmured as he moved in closer to me, which only left me flustered.

  “Gentlemen,” I said, eyeing Keith warily, “take your partners in closed hold and I’ll count us in.” I waited for him to get situated with a proper frame. Once he did, I put one hand in his, the other on his deltoid. He tried to drop his hand lower than it belonged, so I resituated it and scowled my displeasure. “One, two
, three, one, ready, go.”

  He pulled me in closer than was appropriate and neglected to release my hand so I could do the turn underneath his arm. This was going downhill—fast. I couldn’t allow it to continue.

  I separated myself from him and left him standing where he was, crossing over to where Cole and Alexis were dancing. “I’m sorry, Alexis, but can I ask you to please partner with Keith? He’s getting the hang of it now, and I think you’d do well with him with your height.” Not to mention that it would keep him from touching me inappropriately during the class, and I could demonstrate the various moves with Cole. He was one of my better students in this session, and he picked up on things quickly. And he didn’t try to touch me in ways that he shouldn’t touch me.

  Alexis scurried across to join Keith, who gave me a look I couldn’t interpret. I chose to ignore him as well as I could, allowing Cole to take me into a hold.

  “Do I need to apologize for bringing him?” Cole asked me as we moved through the steps. “I don’t have a clue what’s gotten into him. If I’d had any idea…”

  “No.” I shook my head as if I needed to emphasize my answer, which only made it seem as though I was trying too hard to convince myself of it. I smiled for Cole’s sake. “Don’t worry about it. I can handle Keith Burns.”

  Only I wasn’t positive that I could.

  BY THE TIME the class was over, I wasn’t sure what to make of Keith. He had a natural skill as a dancer, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that his skill came about from his athletic background. I mean, Cole was an athlete, too, but he hadn’t started out with the sort of ability that Keith had shown today. Yet Keith had sworn he’d never danced before.

  That wasn’t the truly baffling part, though.

  This man wouldn’t stop staring at me throughout the entire session. He spent the whole time dancing with Alexis, who was a hot little package. There were half a dozen other women in the room, all of them better looking than me. But he’d only had eyes for me.