Two to Tango (Erotic Romance)

by Strong, Mimi

  Instead of answering, he tucked the bill into his front pocket, then extended his arm, gesturing down the hallway, away from the ballroom. “Let’s walk and talk. How would you like a tour of the facilities? A private tour? Perhaps you can help me with a problem I have.”

  I looked over at the door to the ballroom. I really should have gone back in, to talk to my students’ mothers and explain to them why they shouldn’t switch their daughters out of my classes. First of all, I had just as much accreditation as any so-called world-class teacher, and what I lacked in experience, I made up for in dedication.

  I’d studied under many types of teachers, and the ones who were truly passionate about teaching were always the ones who turned out the best students.

  Secondly, for every Level A student I lost, it would mean no more dancing for a Level C student. For some of those kids, it would mean losing the only stable thing in their life, along with their hope.

  I took two steps toward the door and stopped.

  Even though I wore a designer dress and shoes, I was still Skylar Evans, the girl who wore old, scuffed shoes and bought half-price cold cuts at closing time. The women in there knew who I was, and my begging would only remind me of why they needed to get their daughters into programs that cost more—programs that offered prestige.

  “What’s wrong?” the groundskeeper asked. “Are you having second thoughts about what you came here to do?”

  I threw back my shoulders and threw off his rude remarks, then I started walking toward the exit.

  I could hear him following me, so I growled, “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, but I came here for the Open House, the same as everyone else. I don’t appreciate your tone, and I’m going to report you to your superiors for harassment.”

  He stopped following me.

  I glanced back, surprised my threats had worked so well, and saw him slip back into the ballroom.

  A moment later, I heard a door open and close, and he came running up to me just as I reached the exit.

  “You might need these,” he said, jingling a set of keys in one hand. The keychain had a fuzzy pink teddy bear attached to it. I snatched for it, but he pulled it up high, over his head. He was tall, and so even with my heels on, I couldn’t quite reach the keychain. I still tried, and as I flailed at the keys with outstretched hands, my body came into contact with the front of his body.

  The sudden realization that we were touching, and that my lips were inches from his, caused me to stagger back in surprise.

  I wasn’t used to wearing such high heels, though, so I stumbled, falling backward in a panic.

  He caught me with one muscular, steady arm behind my waist. His other arm had my red jacket draped over it, retrieved from my chair in the ballroom.

  “Those shoes of yours are dangerous in more ways than one,” he murmured, his face close to mine. He had the most beautiful eyes, halfway between green and brown. Hazel.

  His dark eyelashes fluttered as he looked down his handsome nose, at my lips.

  He was going to kiss me.

  The mentally unhinged yet adorable groundskeeper was going to kiss me. With his lips. On my lips.

  HIC!

  The spell was broken. He dropped his arm and stepped back from me. “Your hiccups have returned.” His hazel eyes twinkled with mirth.

  “I told you they would.”

  “You must have had too much to drink. I’ll have two of our staff drive you home. I insist. One will drive your vehicle, so you don’t have to worry about someone stealing your, um, Toyota Tercel.”

  “I’m not drunk.” I rolled my eyes, which threw off my balance at the worst possible moment, causing me to stumble again on the stiletto heels. To top it off, I hiccuped again.

  “Your safe delivery home is an issue of liability,” he said seriously.

  “These aren’t from the champagne,” I said between hiccups. “I get them when I’m nervous.”

  “Do I make you nervous?”

  “Yes. From the minute I met you, you’ve been interrogating me.” I pointed in the direction of the ballroom. “I’m not like them. I’m not the enemy. I’m a good person. I try to be good.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “There’s definitely more to you than meets the eye. My problem might be more serious than I thought.”

  “What problem?”

  He looked around, but we were alone in the lobby.

  “Have you swam in the saltwater pool yet?” he asked brightly.

  “I’m not a member here.”

  “Not yet, you aren’t. Come with me.”

  Smiling, he nodded his head for me to follow him.

  “People know I’m here,” I said. “So you’d better not be luring me down to the furnace room to chain me up.”

  “Of course not. The furnace room is next to the electrical room, and our electrician is always down there tinkering with something. He’d hear you yelling within a day or two.”

  I grabbed the long, red jacket off his arm. “I should go home. Thanks for fetching this.”

  “I’m not the Big Bad Wolf,” he said, the cocky grin back on his face.

  I pulled on the jacket quickly. “And contrary to my outfit, I’m not Little Red Riding Hood. I can take care of myself just fine.”

  “You have a flat tire.”

  I pulled open the glass door. “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. On the driver’s side, front tire.”

  “That tire had a slow leak, but I sprayed some of that patch stuff in it last week.” I stepped out the door and walked quickly toward my car.

  He called out from the doorway, “I can change it if you have a spare!”

  “My hero!” I yelled back sarcastically.

  When I reached my car, my heart sunk. The spray can of patching compound sat on the passenger-side seat, unopened. I’d bought the can the previous week, but hadn’t gotten around to fixing the tire, and now the tire was deflated, the rim resting on the pavement.

  Worse still, the car didn’t have a spare. It hadn’t come into my life with one, and whenever I got extra money, there were a million things more appealing to spend money on than a spare tire.

  I kicked the flat tire. “You couldn’t have held out one more day?”

  After berating the tire a bit longer, I looked back at the entrance. The guy was still standing there. Was he responsible for the flat tire? He’d been awfully interested in me and my car from the moment we’d arrived.

  Well, if he wanted to be my hero and pump up my flat tire, or find a tire to lend me, who was I to refuse? He was a working guy, who spent his days with his hands in the dirt, so he wouldn’t look down on me as charity.

  I walked back up to the door, which he held open.

  “My tire is flat,” I said, nodding meekly. “I’m a damsel in distress after all.”

  “I’ve already called our after-hours member services,” he said, pointing out into the darkness, at a side door opening. Two men in uniforms stepped out and headed toward the parking lot, toolboxes in hand.

  “But I’m not a member.”

  “Not yet,” he said softly. “Don’t worry. We do things like this all the time for our members, and our future members. We’re like a family. Welcoming.”

  “Not all families are the welcoming kind.”

  He winced. “I suppose not. What’s your family like?”

  “Small. And agile. Like a bird, flitting from branch to branch in a snowy forest.”

  He looked past me, into the darkness and the parking lot beyond. “They’ll be a while yet. How about I show you the pool? It’s closed for the night, which is my favorite time of day to visit. You can see the moon through the skylights.”

  He started walking, and I followed him. I wanted to see the pool, but I also wanted to keep this handsome stranger, whose name I didn’t know, talking. His voice was pleasing when he wasn’t interrogating me.

  I let him drift a few paces ahead of me, so I could enjoy the view of his butt a
nd legs. The lower part of him was just as enjoyable to my eyes as the upper part.

  When he turned his head back and caught me staring at his hamstrings, I quickly asked, “What’s your family like?”

  He walked several paces before answering. On his feet, he wore a pair of work boots—the kind with steel toes under the leather. They should have made a much louder noise against the gleaming tile floors. He wasn’t a small man, yet his steps made little sound. He walked with more care than the typical heavy-footed workman. Could he be a member of that elusive tribe? The Heterosexual Male Dancer Tribe?

  “My family is also small,” he answered. “We’re not like birds, though. You’ve stumped me on the animal thing. I don’t know what we are in terms of a type of species, because we’re each so different. I guess we’re an assortment of animals, adrift on the ocean in a lifeboat, each one wondering who will devour the others first.”

  “Sounds like holiday dinners at your house are full of excitement.”

  “We’re not dull.”

  We reached a door, which he used a key to open. A pool lay beyond. A beautiful pool.

  I walked into the pool room ahead of him, breathing the moist air deeply.

  “What do you smell?” he asked, closing the door behind us.

  “The ocean.”

  Before us stretched out a pool nearly as large as the one at the community center where I worked. This pool, however, didn’t give off the smell of a bleach-soaked load of dirty laundry.

  “That smell is so fresh,” I said.

  “No chlorine.”

  I looked up at the skylights, at the sliver of moon visible in the midnight blue sky.

  “Beautiful,” I whispered.

  I turned to see him gazing at me, looking for the second time that night like he might kiss me.

  “Make a wish,” he said.

  No wishes came to mind, except the desire to tell the truth.

  “I’m not rich,” I said. “I’m not even middle class. That Toyota Tercel out there isn’t entirely mine. I can’t even afford dry cleaning for this dress I’m wearing, let alone membership at The Cedars.”

  He stepped closer, his hazel eyes still bright, sparkling with the light of the moon reflecting off the shimmering pool. Without taking his eyes off me, he leaned over and pressed a panel on the wall, bringing up the interior lights, then taking them back down to a soft glow.

  “What about now?” he asked. “With a few lights on, you can see what you’re getting with your membership.”

  “You must be on commission,” I said softly.

  “I’ll do anything for a future member. When you get back to your car, you’ll find that in addition to having your tire fixed, your vehicle will have been thoroughly washed, waxed, and vacuumed.”

  “You were so worried about me sneaking in here and stealing all your fancy cheese, and now you’re being so nice to me. Why?”

  “Because you can’t trust first impressions.” He nodded toward the pool. “Would you like to go for a swim?”

  “Sure.”

  He started unbuttoning his gray workman’s shirt.

  Was I imagining things, or was the cute guy taking off his clothes in front of me? He kept going, to the last button, and shrugged off the shirt, letting it fall to the tile floor. I didn’t even know his name.

  “Well?” He nodded for me to remove my dress.

  “Um. I said sure, meaning someday. Not this minute.” I looked around for signs of other people, but there were no exterior windows, and we were alone.

  Shirtless, his beautiful muscles casting dark shadows on his chest and abdomen, he took a step toward me.

  Instinctively, I raised my arms to waltz position and took his right hand in mine.

  He seemed surprised, but placed his free hand on the small of my back.

  “You’re a dancer,” he said. “That explains the legs.”

  “We don’t have any music.”

  “Can’t you hear my heart? It’s been drumming so loudly since the minute your body touched mine, when I was holding your keys over my head.”

  I shook my head. “If that’s how nervous I make you, then you’d better not kiss me. You might die.”

  “What’s the first step of the waltz?”

  “Left foot forward.”

  He shifted his weight and moved the foot. I deftly stepped back on my right.

  He held still, awaiting the next movement. If he didn’t know the waltz, he definitely wasn’t a dancer, but I still was.

  “Sweep your right foot forward, then right, tracing an L-shape in the air.”

  “I’m wearing steel-toed boots. I don’t want to kick you, so hang on.” Without letting go of my hand or waist, he kicked the boots off his feet and shuffled them out of our way.

  We started the dance again from the beginning, with me teaching him the basic steps. We still had no music, but that didn’t stop us from waltzing all the way around the perimeter of the swimming pool.

  When we reached the spot we’d started at, he stopped dancing and let go of my hand. Both of his hands moved up my back, over my jacket, then combed through my hair.

  Gazing at me, he said, “Why did you come here tonight?”

  “I got locked out of my apartment. I snapped my key off in the lock, and I heard there was free food here.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No,” I lied. The truth, that I wanted to talk people out of getting a membership at the club, seemed petty and ridiculous now, like the desires of an envious person.

  His hands cradled the back of my head, and he kissed me.

  As his lips crushed down on mine, I melted against his body, seeking the warmth of the hot, bare skin of his chest. My hands ran up and down his sides, and then his back, as our lips parted and merged.

  I let out a cry of pleasure as his tongue reached in for mine.

  As we kissed, he helped me out of my jacket, and then unzipped the dress at the back, letting it fall to the floor.

  Standing in my underwear, plain black cotton bra and panties, the humid pool air caressed my bare skin.

  I reached between us, unfastening the button on his pants. It had been far too long since I’d felt a man, and waiting one more second, let alone for three or four dates like a good girl should, didn’t hold any appeal. Why should other girls be the only ones with hot sex stories? I could be the wild girl, the adventurous one, just this once. It wouldn’t change who I was, to have one great story.

  He kissed me deeply, and his tongue felt so good in my mouth. I unzipped his pants and reached in to grab him.

  A good-sized cock nearly jumped into my hand, moving freely under the thin cotton of boxer shorts.

  I kicked off my high heels, then dropped quickly to my knees. With quick hands, I released him from the boxer shorts and swept his clothes straight down to the floor.

  He had great legs, with handsome knees and sturdy quads, just as I’d expected. Neatly-trimmed hair swirled in dark curls around his balls. I sighed with relief that he didn’t shave his balls. I hadn’t been with very many guys, but I knew I preferred the kind who didn’t shave their balls.

  I grabbed him in my fist and licked around the head before taking him in my mouth.

  He groaned and pulled back an inch, but not all the way out. He was so hard, I worried about chipping a tooth if he made any sudden movements. I sucked and bobbed up and down, already imagining the hot story I might tell one or two friends.

  “Wait,” he said.

  I popped him out of my mouth and looked up. “I can go slower.”

  He reached down to his clothes and pulled up his boxer shorts, then stepped out of the rumpled pants on the floor so he didn’t trip over them.

  I remained on my knees, wondering what I’d done wrong. Sure, I’d been awkward, but wasn’t sex always awkward? Wasn’t that part of the appeal? Sex wasn’t like a dance, with set moves and structure.

  He took a seat next to me on the tiles.

  “I’m Charl
ie,” he said.

  That was it? He just wanted an introduction?

  “I’m Skye with an e,” I replied, offering my hand to shake.

  He shook my hand. “Did you hear me? I said I’m Charlie. Me. Charlie.”

  I pointed my thumb to my chest. “You, Charlie. Me, Skye.”

  “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “I could tell you that I don’t ever do stuff like this, but would you believe me?”

  “Probably,” he said softly. “If you told me anything, I’d want to believe you.” He reached up to my face and tucked some hair behind my ear. “Why did it have to be you?”

  “Charlie,” I said, studying his face. “That’s a good name. It suits you. And we probably should be on a first-name basis if we’re going to go swimming in this pool together, in the moonlight.”

  He kept staring at me, as though utterly confused. Did the man not know how gorgeous he was? Why did he seem so flummoxed that I might want to spend time with him, both of us in our underwear, or maybe naked?

  “Skye, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “We should go for a swim, though, since we’re already here.”

  “Wanna see me do a cannonball?”

  His expression went from confusion to delight. “Yes.”

  My bare feet soundless on the tiles, I circled around to the deep end in my underwear, walked out onto the diving board, clamped my fingers over my nostrils, and took a short run followed by an epic cannonball.

  When I surfaced, Charlie was already coming around to the diving board for his own cannonball. He landed right next to me, and as soon as he’d wiped the water from his eyes, he pulled me into him for another kiss.

  You wouldn’t think doing a cannonball would be so sexy, but as our nearly-naked bodies connected in the water, I tried to devour him whole.

  His tongue and mine had ferocious chemistry for each other. We both continued treading water while kissing, until we found ourselves in danger of slipping under.

  Charlie pulled away and asked, “Are you drowning?”

  Yes, Charlie, I’m drowning in lust. Inappropriate lust for a guy whose cock I had in my mouth even before we were on a first-name basis.

  “Kinda,” I said, my lips just barely above the surface of the water. We’d been kissing a while, and unlike in dancing, the cool water made me unable to feel the heat of my muscles reaching their limit.