Level Hands: Bend or Break, Book 4

by Amy Jo Cousins

  And Denny did. Rafi remembered the one time Denny had seen him dance before. Rafi had dragged him to a street fair, ignoring Denny’s reluctance at the noise, the crowd of people who looked so different from him, the constant flow of words around him in languages that were not English. He’d gotten a thrill at the idea that he was showing this cute—so cute—young white boy something he’d never experienced before.

  Denny had balked at being led onto the impromptu dance floor in front of the stage, hovering on the edge of the dancers while Rafi dove right in. He’d danced first by himself, but had held out a hand to a woman after a minute, pulling her close when she laid her palm on top of his. They’d stepped and tangled knees and spun out at times, dancing together for a song before splitting apart in a natural separation that led him to other dancers in the crowd. The entire time, Rafi had felt Denny’s eyes on him from the outskirts, watching the couplings and uncouplings through song after song, his gaze drawn like a magnet to Rafi.

  He’d wondered if Denny knew how much longing was in that gaze.

  Rafi had never wanted to dance with another man so much. Hell, he’d never really even thought about dancing with a boy before then. Dancing was something he did with girls, even though he wasn’t interested in where the dancing might have led if he weren’t gay. But watching Denny watching him as he swayed and spun, Rafi had wished so hard to dance with Denny he’d wondered if he could make it happen.

  But when Rafi had circled back to Denny—a grin glowing on his face, the back of his neck sweating but cool because his long hair bounced in a rubber band on top of his head—and grabbed his hand, it had only taken two steps before Denny flinched. Maybe because he didn’t know the dance. Or he felt as if everyone in the crowd were watching him because he was white, because he was tall, because he was dancing with another man. Rafi didn’t know exactly why, but Denny tugged free of Rafi’s hands, retreating to the sidelines again.

  No one else was around now though. Maybe here, Rafi could wrap his arms around something he’d wanted since that street fair.

  You owe me, Carlisle. Give me something good to make up for the other shit. Let Denny dance with me. Rafi executed a complicated pattern of steps and turns, one hand resting flat against his stomach, the other in the air, as if asking a partner to come and lay a palm on his, and Denny took a step to the side, moving away.

  “You’ve been doing that for years,” Denny protested. The need to see again what his hand looked like, pale fingers laid across Rafi’s darker ones, kept Rafi committed, hand in the air.

  “Yup.” Rafi nodded, grinning, pitiless.

  “I can’t learn it in five minutes of watching you.”

  “Toddlers get it by watching.”

  “Nice. That makes me feel good. Thanks.” He studied the steps Rafi took, frowning and clenching his jaw. “Your feet move too fast. I can’t figure out the pattern.”

  Rafi circled around him, sometimes dancing closer, sometimes stepping back. The singer’s voice rose higher, a falsetto that swirled around them like rain. Denny spun in place, always facing Rafi, who smiled and shook his head. “Relax. You can do it.”

  “I don’t think this is something white guys can learn,” Denny said, probably because he knew it would get a rise out of Rafi.

  “Don’t make me smack you.” Rafi narrowed his eyes.

  “I’m just saying. Maybe this is a Dominican thing.” Denny’s grin said he knew he was pushing it.

  Rafi stopped dancing and stood with his hands on his hips, mock-scowling.

  “I can’t get over how different you look.” Denny ran a hand over his own hair and Rafi mimicked him reflexively, his own close-cropped hair still feeling strange under his hand. “I miss the puffball. And the braids.”

  “Me too,” Rafi admitted. He’d always had fun changing up his hair, making a statement with it. Making it clear to the world with his hairstyle that this was a man who didn’t mind attention, who wanted people to look at him, and fuck anyone who didn’t like what they saw. This close buzz felt like fitting in, an idea he didn’t necessarily like, but it had been one less thing to worry about before heading off into the unknown.

  Besides, maybe he’d grow his hair out again, something he hadn’t considered at all until Denny said he missed Rafi’s longer hair.

  You are such a goner.

  He ignored himself and concentrated on luring his reluctant dance partner.

  “Come on. Best dance partner I ever had was a white guy,” Rafi taunted. Which was true, although it had only been one night at a club Rafi had traveled all the way to the north side for. Gay bars were thin on the ground in Pilsen and twenty-first birthdays required bar outings.

  Denny squinted his eyes in return. “Yeah? Who was that?”

  Rafi grinned and moved closer to stand in front of him, looking down so Denny’s eyes followed his. “No comment. Pay attention. Start with your left foot. Side, together, side, tap. Then your right. You can do side, together, side, hip instead”—instead of tapping, Rafi bumped his hip to the side—“but the tap is probably easier for you.”

  “Oh, crap. Right. I’ll give it a go.” Denny took his first bachata dance step.

  Rafi kept up the drastically slowed-down demonstration moves, shifting back and forth in one spot.

  Denny wasn’t a terrible dancer. He actually looked kind of happy as he picked up speed. Rafi wondered why white people didn’t teach their kids to dance. It couldn’t be fun, knowing you looked like an idiot but not knowing how to get any better at it.

  “It is kind of nice, learning an actual step, you know? Instead of flailing around on the dance floor. I like that there are rules.” Denny’s eyes were locked on his own feet, except for occasional darting glances over at Rafi’s. When he wasn’t talking, he bit his lower lip. Rafi wanted to suck on that lip. He could practically hear the silent words that must be running through Denny’s head.

  Side, together, side, tap. Side, together, side—

  Denny tripped over his own toes and stumbled out of the rhythm.

  “Shit.” He shook his head, not meeting Rafi’s eyes, which meant that Rafi could stare at him as much as he liked. The golden hairs on Denny’s arm were visible in the setting sun. “I suck at this.”

  “No, you don’t,” he said, and then pulled his gaze off the thick muscles in Denny’s forearm as the man in question jerked his head up to glare at Rafi, who laughed and held his hands up. Yeah, not even Rafi could pull off a lie like that. “Okay, yes. You do. But you’ve only been dancing for about thirty seconds, guapo, so maybe cut yourself some slack? Here, like this.”

  Rafi stepped behind him, passing close enough to brush against Denny’s arm. Denny’s shiver was visible. The hairs on Rafi’s own arm stood on end, and a flutter of nerves started up in his stomach. Ignoring how easily that handsome had slipped out, he wrapped an arm around Denny’s waist and pulled him closer until Denny’s back was flush against Rafi’s front, and everything jumped into sudden focus. The wrinkled fabric of their T-shirts pressing together, the citrus smell of the locker room shampoo in Denny’s hair, the glitter of the lowering sun on the rippling river.

  “Put your hands on mine.” Another shiver. Denny lifted his left hand onto Rafi’s in midair and covered the hand pressed against his stomach with his right.

  Holy fuck. Rafi’s dick was now officially awake. The heat of Denny’s body radiated against his chest, making him aware of the cool river air surrounding them as they danced. He tried to hold on to that sensation of coolness as if it were an ice pack he could press against his crotch to make his dick go down.

  Dancing. You’re just dancing together.

  But this definitely felt like a lead-in to sex, which was an idea he’d totally be down with if he were dancing with any other guy in the frigging universe. He’d drawn a mental no-go line around Denny when Denny had been underage, and then had
resurrected that imaginary barrier to give himself some breathing room while he got a grip on how to navigate Carlisle on his own. His brain might be getting fuzzy about the reasoning behind the no-go rule, but he was pretty sure he could blame that on his dick, not any sudden, intellectual reassessment of the situation.

  He told himself he could keep his cool. They were only dancing. But the thick, slow pulse of want in his belly challenged that certainty.

  Challenged? Ha. Broke out its sword and cut certainty’s legs out from under it, more like.

  “Now feel the rhythm.” Jesus Christ. The words sounded dirty. He lowered his voice as he murmured in Denny’s ear, nudging his knee against the back of Denny’s strong thigh, encouraging him to take a step. “Left, together, left, tap.” He called the rhythm twice as slow as the quick pulse of the music’s beat, letting Denny keep up.

  Denny matched Rafi’s movements for a minute, and Rafi was glad he could dance without thinking about it, because all of his attention was being drawn inexorably to his dick, which was pretty fucking pleased with this slow, rocking rhythm.

  “I feel like an idiot,” Denny muttered, trying to move his hips in the motion communicated by Rafi’s palm on his belly. The palm Rafi kept imagining allowing to drift lower. He wondered if Denny could feel the press of Rafi’s dick against his ass. He was definitely noticeable, in an “impossible to ignore” way. Denny was still talking about feeling stupid. “Like…a girl.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “I’m just saying.” Denny twisted his head to look at Rafi, and his too-long hair brushed against Rafi’s face. Denny’s mouth was right there, inches away, and Rafi closed his eyes. Concentrating on the dance steps might be a good idea after all. He felt Denny’s breath when he spoke. “It’s distracting, dancing the girl part.”

  “There’s no ‘girl part’, idiota. There’s just two people, dancing.” He took a more aggressive step, turning them away from the sun, whose fading glow felt like a spotlight on his face. He didn’t know why he was clinging so stubbornly to the words when he knew exactly what Denny meant.

  “Yeah, and you’re the boy, leading me around like a…”

  “A dance partner?” Rafi repeated and let go of him. What the hell was he doing? He’d been happy to feel the two of them relaxing back into friendship lately. He didn’t need to be talking Denny into staying pressed against him just because Rafi craved the feel of the ridged muscles of Denny’s stomach under his hand, the back of Denny’s thighs brushing against his legs.

  “I’m sorry.” Denny fumbled the words out, dropping them on the concrete at Rafi’s feet. The current song, a fast electronic beat under a swaying guitar rhythm and a high tenor singer, faded away, leaving Rafi wishing the music still played. “Don’t stop. I’m just uptight.”

  Rafi was pretty sure uptight was code for turned on as fuck but not looking to be rejected. He couldn’t blame Denny, not with the hot and cold way Rafi was blowing tonight. And he knew, he knew he should take advantage of the moment to walk away. Head into the boathouse to turn off the music. Maybe suggest they grab something to eat. Food which could be ingested with the width of a table between them, hiding any lingering hard-ons from view.

  He should. He knew it. But he totally wasn’t going to.

  “Maybe you can relax.” Sliding his hands down, Rafi tangled his fingers with Denny’s and waggled them until some of the tenseness shook out.

  “I hate sucking at things,” Denny admitted, embarrassment pinking his cheeks. “And now I’m blushing, right? I hate that.”

  Rafi could have laughed at the irony of Denny saying that he hated being bad at things to him of all people. No one else is going to understand you like I do, Denny.

  “Who doesn’t? But if you’re afraid to suck”—trying to lighten the mood, Rafi wiggled his eyebrows at Denny until his suggestive expression elicited a reluctant laugh—“then you never get to try anything new. And that really would suck. So come on. Dance with me.”

  Denny’s eyes darkened. Maybe the playful blowjob reference had been a mistake. Man, his brain was really playing both sides of the fence. A stream of fuck it, fuck it, fuck it played nonstop in his head, and Rafi turned up the volume until it matched that of the music. Lifting their hands to waist height, he started the side, together, side, tap steps again as a new song, slower than the rest, spilled out of the speakers.

  But God, it was harder when Denny faced him. Denny got confused and kept moving in the wrong direction and then falling out of rhythm when he tried to correct himself. And Rafi…Rafi couldn’t hide the way he stared at Denny’s face. He dropped his gaze, because maybe he could stare at their feet himself, even if he didn’t need to, but got stuck halfway down by the bulge in Denny’s shorts.

  Dancing with Rafi was getting Denny hard too.

  Danger, danger! Proximity alerts exploded in his head. Rafi ignored every single one of them.

  “Wait. Let’s try this. I’ll be ‘the girl’.” Pretending it was about the dancing, and not about his burning need to feel that hardness against his ass, Rafi turned around in front of Denny and backed up until he’d pressed himself against Denny’s body. “Gimme your hands.”

  “Oh my God.” Rafi wondered if Denny even knew that he’d said the words out loud.

  Rafi could feel Denny’s erection through his shorts. He pushed back with his ass until Denny gasped behind him. Before Denny could finish sucking air, Rafi reached back and felt around until he had Denny’s hands in his and pulled them forward. With one arm wrapped around Rafi’s waist, the other holding his free hand, Denny froze, obviously trying not to move, to press, to exhale even.

  Like that was going to help. His entire front was stuck to Rafi’s back like they’d been Krazy Glued together. Rafi was pretty sure he could feel Denny’s heartbeat in six different places.

  One of them being his dick.

  “Feel what I’m doing.”

  Denny choked. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Does this feel like you’re dancing with a girl?” Rafi’s tongue was thick in his mouth. Dry. The cool, damp smell of the river was killing him. He needed water.

  Denny’s hips moved, the bend at the top of his thighs tucking right beneath Rafi’s ass because he was three inches taller than Denny. Denny cleared his throat. “No.”

  Rafi understood. Dancing with girls always reminded him how soft they were. Even the skinny ones had bones more delicate than Rafi and Denny, who, like all rowers, were made of muscle. Dancing always made Rafi feel like his body was made of sex and elastic, but there was no possible way for Denny to mistake him for anything other than a man.

  No, Rafi wouldn’t feel like a girl, even when dancing.

  The music shifted, slowing to a languid rhythm cradled between the low notes of an accordion that led them deeper into the dance. The sun had drifted beneath the horizon and the floodlights kicked on, pushing the limits of the dock area into shadows. If anyone came upon them now, they would look like lovers dancing against the dark.

  He wished they were.

  Denny opened the hand on Rafi’s stomach and pressed him closer, his cheek against Rafi’s skin. Exhilaration fired through Rafi like booze flooding his veins after three shots of tequila. He was drunk on dancing, on falling into the bachata like falling into bed as Denny matched his steps finally, without thought, without effort. He turned in Denny’s arms and held his hands tight, dancing now with him, together.

  The singer’s voice soared, slipping from Spanish to English and back again. A nudge on Denny’s right hand opened their dance space as Rafi pivoted. Denny fumbled the step for a second, but it didn’t matter. The rhythm held him steady, their hands gripping tightly to each other, dancing closer than they needed to.

  God, we should stop. Thoughts were tangled up in Rafi’s head, all his plans and good intentions tied up in knots of want and need and crave. Dancing
with girls was energy and fun and high spirits. Dancing with Denny was sex and darkness and the edge of a cliff.

  The words rose in his throat. “Denny—”

  “Shhh.” Denny shook his head, smiling. “I’m dancing.”

  Denny had been a boy the first time Rafi had looked at him and wondered what it would feel like to kiss him. A boy of seventeen years and eleven months, according to some arbitrary idea that boys turned magically into men on their eighteenth birthdays. Rafi had hung on to that idea to keep his own nineteen-year-old lust under control. Denny had been seventeen when he’d asked Rafi to kiss him, and Rafi had turned him down because Denny was too young, too innocent, too many things a brown boy from Chicago didn’t want to get tangled up in for the few weeks Denny had spent there.

  He knew it had stung, that rejection. Rafi had hoped the sting would kill Denny’s crush too. But he knew all along, right up until that moment when Denny turned to him at the harbor, that Denny still wanted him.

  He hadn’t realized how powerfully that moment had driven his decisions over the past two years until he felt the weight of it dissolve and slip away while he danced with Denny in a place where they both belonged. As equals. Where Denny was a little more equal, if anything, through knowing his way around and being more naturally at home, although Rafi was doing his best to force his way to acceptance.

  Bachata being what it was, though, someone still needed to steer, and Rafi controlled the dance.

  Denny noticed. He squeezed Rafi’s hands lightly. “I thought I’d be the one leading you here. Not dancing. I mean, at Carlisle.”

  All Rafi could do was repeat what he’d already explained. “I need to meet you on my own terms.”

  “I know.” Denny’s mouth quirked in a smile. “Rafi needs to be in control.”

  “No, I don’t. Not always.” And this time Denny was the one to roll his eyes. Because of course that wasn’t true. Even this dance had been another way for Rafi to assert some control. He hadn’t put on music Denny would be familiar with and encouraged him to goof off. No, Rafi had chosen the music he knew Denny wanted to dance to, but didn’t know how. To create a moment where he—older, more experienced—was again the one who led instead of following. It had been unconscious maybe, but that’s what it was. “Sorry. We can stop.” He moved to drop his arms and step away, but Denny’s grip on his hand tightened as he pulled them close together again.