by Cynthia Dane
He was young, and a beautiful woman was offering to make love with him. Even at his most rational it would be difficult to say no to that.
Not that it was ever easy to say no to Olivia. That first time they did it in the practice studio was completely spur of the moment. Sure, Rick had been attracted to her, but he was attracted to almost every woman he danced with – to some extent. What he didn’t count on was wanting to do it again and again with Olivia, whom he barely knew outside of dancing and sushi joints. They didn’t talk much about their personal lives, and when they did, it was mostly Rick telling her stories about his childhood, his mother, and what it was like busking on the streets with an acoustic guitar until Thomas showed up one day and offered to make him a star.
So why was he so enthralled with her? She wasn’t the prettiest woman he had ever dated, not that such a thing mattered, but she was still attractive. Really sexy when she seduced Rick – not that it was difficult. She challenged him on the dance floor without trying to make an example out of him. Her no-nonsense attitude and dedication to her dreams was refreshing after encountering multiple women who were aimless and only in the game for the guys. Let’s not forget how good she is in bed. It didn’t have anything to do with tricks or skill, although she was not lacking in those areas. Or at least Rick didn’t know what he could suggest or teach her if he really wanted. Instead, it was the way she unleashed her passion when they became one. Not once had Olivia ever held back or pretended to like something to please him. She either loved it already or gently told him no. She wouldn’t back down. She wouldn’t be taken for a ride. There was something not only refreshing about that, but downright fantastic.
Rick flipped Olivia onto the bed, a gray, drizzly London evening overlooking their tryst in the cozy room. No time to look and brood over that, however, when there was a randy woman purring beneath him. “I like it when you take control,” she said, her fingers brushing against Rick’s cheek before they kissed toward oblivion. Ain’t it nice that she doesn’t even care about my fame? In the beginning it was hilarious that Olivia had barely known who he was, let alone what the titles of his songs were. Now he knew why. Olivia was so involved in her own world that she didn’t have time for what was trendy. The only reason she auditioned to be in his video was to challenge herself and further her career.
“Why is it women like it when guys do that?” he asked, somewhere between the blood rushing to his cock and warning bells going off in his brain. “Maybe we like to be controlled sometimes too.” Not that he was going to stop what he was doing – namely, pulling Olivia’s blouse up and getting ready to bury his face in her chest.
“You want me to give you some shit about alpha males and animal magnetism or whatever?’ Olivia laughed. “Honestly, I just like you slamming your hips between my legs.”
“Awesome. That was my plan.”
Olivia didn’t interrupt their lovemaking after that. Like Rick, she flung herself headfirst into the feelings they gave one another. Whatever those feelings were. Rick wondered if Olivia even understood what was happening between them. Before, he was anxious that Olivia would break it off with him once the tour was over. I’ve been never anxious about a girl breaking it off before. That was before he was beguiled by Olivia Owens.
Now he worried that he would be the one breaking her heart.
Olivia whimpered against his lips. He loved that. He loved it when she showed off her vulnerability, both as a woman and as a professional. People couldn’t grow until they became vulnerable. Olivia liked to play the hardass, but at the end of the day she was as vulnerable as anyone else. The fact that she showed it almost only to Rick? Well, it made him feel special.
Making Olivia feel special in turn was a goal of his that day. It gave him something to work toward, especially since his brain was full of other crap he couldn’t fight off otherwise. And what had Olivia said she liked in bed? When he took control and something about his hips and her legs? I can do that. I’d do it all day if I could.
Giving Olivia exactly what she wanted had the desired effect. She gasped in delight, her body opening up to his and shuddering until he thought she would die. It did inflate his ego a bit. Especially when she whispered how good it felt. The feeling is mutual. Rick was a man. He didn’t care about the shit the media and society told him he supposedly cared about, especially when it came to those intense moments of sex. But Olivia had no inhibitions once they got down to it, and that was reflected in the way her body responded to him, inside and out.
When he was with her, he could forget about his life for a few minutes. Sure, memories and thoughts came and went even in the height of his passion, but for the most part it was all about the here and now, where Olivia clung to him and he in turn thrust into her, reveling in the sweet sounds of her throat and the way her fingers dug into his shoulders and scalp. He could push her into the depths of the bed and she wouldn’t say a thing. She loved it. He knew, because if Olivia didn’t love something, she would make sure he damn well knew. Rick much preferred that to a woman who couldn’t voice her desires in the bedroom. Few were pretty enough to deal with that.
Like most, his favorite part was toward the end, when they were so in tune with one another that the earth could swallow them whole and neither of them would notice. Those precious moments before either of them climaxed, his face burrowed between her neck and the pillow, her legs one minute squeezing his waist and the next spread so wide that he couldn’t help but push farther into her, where she screamed in ecstasy and sometimes even praised his skills. Nothing better than an ego stroke as he climaxed and completely forgot everything else happening in the world.
Olivia didn’t want to talk afterward. She rarely did. If they did have chats, they were usually instigated by Rick, who didn’t care for the silence and was always looking for ways to find out more about this woman who had captivated him. Why do I have to be captivated by anyone? Such a nuisance. Especially when he knew how futile this relationship was in the end.
Rick wasn’t usually so pessimistic or defeatist. That was probably why he insisted on clinging to Olivia for as long as she allowed, his heart thumping and his brain telling him he was a fool. A fool who was falling in love, and there was nothing he could do to stop it – let alone overcome the inevitable pain that was to come.
7
Olivia wasn’t an idiot. She was exhausted from performing while jetlagged, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew there was something up with Rick, and it wasn’t just certain appendages when they were in the same vicinity.
She believed him at first when he said he was grumpy because of his physical state. “Plus,” he said on the plane from London to Berlin, “the label is pressuring me to come up with songs to make demos of already. Once we get back to America it’s to the recording booth for me.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Olivia naively asked. “It means they have a lot of faith in you. Your tour has done fantastically, even if they’re not promoting your fourth single.” He had told her all about that mini-drama after one of their liaisons.
“I’m tired. It would be nice to get a week or two off to recharge.”
Likely. Rick didn’t like being idle. “A week off” meant partying and renting studios under assumed names so he could do what he wanted. “A week off” meant a vacation from the suits telling him what to do. Rick seemed to love everything about his career but the business end of things. He was absolutely that type. Let other people deal with that while he sang and danced like he wanted. Too bad this business doesn’t work that way. He was still young and inexperienced enough that he had to jump every time the label told him to. If that meant jumping into a recording booth, then so be it.
Olivia let it slide while they were in Europe. She was too distracted by the sights of Britain and Germany to care about how moody Rick was. He’s still a tiger in the sack. Since she wasn’t a heartless wench who only cared about his wallet and cock, she did remain concerned that he wasn’t feeling so hot.
Things only got worse in Madrid, their final stop in Europe. The concert there wasn’t canceled even with lackluster ticket sales, so when they got on stage and saw everyone moved to the front of the venue, Rick said, “I’ll be glad when this is over.”
He wasn’t on his best game that night. His lifts only went up halfway and he almost dropped Olivia twice. The next day, the local newspaper gave him a scathing review. Then they were off to Japan.
The whole crew was both excited and dreading Japan. Nothing to do with the country, but the fact that the last two concerts were in Tokyo. The whole thing was bittersweet. On one hand, it meant the end of their journey together across the world. On the other, they were tired and ready to see their families and rest again. The subsequent shows for those past weeks had taken their toll on everyone, including Olivia, who was joining Rick in icing various muscles after every show.
However, the one thing she wasn’t dreading was what their relationship would be like when they got back to America. I’ve made the decision to stick this out a while longer. Rick had proven himself to be a good lover and a good person. She would be stupid to not take a chance on dating him on a regular and even somewhat serious basis. Sure, she had no idea what it would be like if they went public, since she had never been in the spotlight like that before, but she would cross that bridge when they got to it. She tried to not let the fact she was pretty much in love – if she believed that’s what it was – cloud her judgment. One step at a time.
First, Tokyo.
None of the talents had been to East Asia before, let alone Japan’s illustrious capital. There was one guy who studied some Japanese in college, but for the most part he was as ignorant as everyone else. Well, the most knowledgeable one in the group – aside from the assigned interpreters – was surprisingly Thomas. The moment they stepped off the plane he was bowing, making requests, and telling people what their food had in it. “Where the flying hell did you learn Japanese?” Rick asked in their van. “How many languages do you speak?”
Thomas checked messages on his phone while their local driver seamlessly blended in with highway traffic. “More than you, that’s for sure.”
“You speak Russian too? How about Farsi?”
“Now you’re being a dick, Rick.”
“Sorry I only know two languages. You know, one more than the average American.”
“Let’s be real,” another male dancer interjected from the back row of the van, “that’s two more than most Americans. Or at least the ones back where I’m from. I don’t know what language those people speak, but I’m pretty sure it’s not documented by any anthropologist or whoever does that stuff.”
“The man speaks English, Portuguese, and Japanese. What else can he speak? Parlez-vous français?”
“Knock it off. Don’t make me turn this van around.”
“You’re not even driving!”
Olivia rolled her eyes and tried to take in the sights of Japan, but the concrete highway walls blocked out everything but the overcast sky. They all sound like his children. She had gathered over the months that Rick saw Thomas as a sort of father figure. How often does stuff like this happen? Probably too often for Thomas’s already thick blood.
Japan felt more foreign than any of the other countries so far. Olivia didn’t know if it was the food, the Chinese characters everywhere, or the closed off nature of the people, but it was such a culture shock from Latin America and Europe that she often froze up in restaurants, shops, and even on the street when she was trying to walk a mere three blocks to the concert venue. The sheer swarms of people flooding Tokyo could give anyone claustrophobia, but it was even worse being with a celebrity. Rick was one of the best selling foreign artists in Japan that year. Although the fans who waited for him at various places were polite, orderly, and courteous, they were still in massive numbers and a public safety threat. The paparazzi were also as ruthless here as they were anywhere else, so Olivia and Rick had to keep their affair to the hotel.
Not that Rick seemed too interested in that. The first night there Olivia went up to his room to find him staring at something on his phone. He wouldn’t tell her what it was, but it made him sour enough to forego sex that night under the guise of resting up for back to back concerts.
Since the final night of the whole tour was happening that week, the crew went out for a party put on by the label in a rented restaurant, where alcohol flowed and food from all over the world was served. Nobody could find a decent Latin American dish in Japan, so they made do with steaks, sushi, grilled vegetables, and enough rice to end world hunger. Olivia sat across from Rick at the table, the conversation so loud that she had to ask people to repeat themselves multiple times.
“I said you were really great on the tour!” shouted one of the female dancers, who currently had a piece of asparagus stuck in her teeth. “If Clara couldn’t make it, then you were more than enough to take her place!”
Olivia glanced across the table and caught Rick’s eye. He smirked, his attentions going back to José, who was half-drunk and rambling about his ex-girlfriend the prima ballerina who refused to eat his home cooking because, “Ew, carbs. Ew, cheese.”
It was the most fun Rick had allowed himself to have since they left Spain. Hell, Germany. Olivia told herself he was tired, maybe melancholy about his first world tour coming to an end, but there seemed to be something else lingering beneath the surface that was Rick Rodriguez. Olivia wished he trusted her enough to tell her what it was.
Both shows in Tokyo were sold out, and the crowds, while humorous in the way they unified their chants and glow stick waving, showed the amount of energy everyone was used to seeing. The girls in the front row especially screamed a lot every time Rick came by them. Even when Olivia had her solo routine center stage they screamed and waved their banners.
“WE HEART OLIVIA” one sign said. Olivia nearly lost her footing and fell onto the girls screaming her name. “Oribia! Oribia!” they shouted, their voices louder than the thumping beats in Olivia’s earpiece. When she next went on standby backstage she had someone say to her, “Since when do you have fans? How do they even know who you are?”
Indeed, how had that happened?
“I guess it’s because of the video and the fact you’ve been on tour so long now,” Rick said as they waited for their transportation after the show. “Clara would probably have signs in Latin America if she came along. You’re a good dancer, and people remember you.” He shrugged, as if that were not unusual. “Hey, it’s good for your career. Maybe the label will even sign you as a permanent dancer on staff.”
Permanent dancer? On staff? That meant Olivia would have first choice for certain music videos and performances. If she played her cards right, she could make good money as a dancer for a few years. If she took the right classes, she could become a choreographer like José when she was too old to dance regularly or otherwise too injured or over it. Olivia didn’t often think beyond “I want to be a full-time dancer” but that possibility was too real to ignore. Her mother would be proud of her for thinking ahead.
Their last night on tour – and the night before they returned to America – Olivia went to Rick’s room for a quick romp. Surprisingly, he almost turned her away. “I don’t feel spectacular,” he said, his bags packed and his stubble thicker than usual. “Might be coming down with something.”
Olivia didn’t want to go. Partly because she knew when they got back to America things would change between them. They wouldn’t see each other as often… if at all. Olivia didn’t want to bring that up. She would rather make the most of the here and now.
In that night’s case, it meant curling up in bed with Rick, clothes on but no farther apart than usual. She wrapped her arm around his torso and fell asleep with her cheek on his chest, wishing she could savor this moment a bit longer. Just as she seemed to fall asleep, however, Thomas shook her shoulder and told her to get out before anyone else saw her in there. Within five hours they wer
e on a plane to California. The tour was officially over.
8
Rick stood on the edge of the property, the hot Californian summer sun beating onto his head as he shielded his eyes and peered through the empty window.
“I thought you said you own this place,” Olivia said behind him. “Why are you acting like you’re going to break in?”
Rick put his hands down and pulled the key from his pocket. “Making sure everything is as it should be before going in.”
“You scared of squatters?”
“Hardly.”
The old key went into the older lock, the satisfying click that said it was opened reverberating in the stale air. Rick opened the door to his mother’s old dance studio and braced himself for dust and stuffy heat.
He hadn’t been here in nearly half a year. He didn’t like coming very often. Sometimes he thought about selling the abandoned studio, preserved in time from when his mother died, but that felt like an insult to her memory. If he had the money to maintain and pay taxes on it, then why wouldn’t he? A developer would take this property and do what everyone else did to the neighborhood. Gentrify and get rid of the last bit of culture remaining in a neighborhood that once belonged to a vibrant but now forgotten Hispanic community.
“So you grew up here, huh?” Olivia said, stepping into the studio and surveying what it had to offer. “Homey.”
“We lived in an apartment a few blocks from here, but I spent most of my childhood in here, so yes, you could say I grew up here.” Rick closed the door behind him and proceeded to open a few of the windows to let fresh air in. Or as fresh as the air could get around there. “I should probably do something with it. I’ve thought about renting it out, but I don’t really trust anyone to treat it with respect. Meanwhile, I don’t have time to start my own studio right now.”