Neil looked up and saw her. “Fantastic!” he shouted sarcastically. His acting wasn’t any better than Clarissa’s.
***
As soon as the elevator doors closed, things changed. I could feel it in the air...words unspoken and looks we didn’t dare give each other. By the time we arrived at the workshop, I couldn’t bear it any longer. We had to talk about what had happened, had to—
The doors opened and I just stopped and blinked. I stood there for so long that Darrell had to put his arm out to stop the doors closing again.
Where I’d danced before, where there’d been a big, open space, there was a stage.
Not some six foot, temporary platform for giving a speech. This filled the area from front to back and must have been fifty feet wide. Its top was three feet clear of the floor and its surface was smooth, polished wood.
I thought for a moment that it must have been a trick, that he’d stopped the elevator at a different floor or something. But this was definitely the room we’d been in the day before. And the smell of sawdust and wood polish hung in the air.
“How—” I began, “How could you possibly have....”
“Is it okay? You said a sprung floor was better.”
I climbed up onto it and tried an experimental jump, then a proper grand jeté. There was just the right amount of give in the wood. It had been made by someone who knew what they were doing.
“It’s great. But how...?”
He shrugged. “I called some people, straight after you left yesterday.”
“They built this in an evening?”
“Oh, no. They worked through the night.”
I blanched. The idea that someone would spend that much money, go to that much effort, for me...I took a staggering step backward.
He climbed up on the stage. “Natasha?”
I put out my hands. I only meant it as a gesture, to slow things down, but he took a step towards me at just that moment and suddenly my palms were against his chest. He had another of those faded t-shirts on and I could feel his warmth through the soft fabric. I drew in my breath.
If this was some seduction ploy, it didn’t feel like it. Even when things went like this, when I could feel the blood rushing in my ears and hear my heart hammering in my chest. It didn’t feel like it was coming from him or me. It felt like we were riding on a wave, swept along with it and barely managing to cling on.
“What is this?” I managed. “I mean...do you really want to see me dance? Or is this—”
“I built you a stage.”
I stared into those beautifully clear eyes. I swore he wasn’t hiding anything. “And is this really...” I sighed. “Is this really helping you? I mean...I can’t see how I can inspire you to do...”—I cast my eyes at the workbenches, the computer screens, the shape under its sheet—“whatever it is that you do.”
He stared at me for another second and then jumped down off the stage. Turning, he offered me his hand and when I felt how warm it was, when I saw my own slender hand captured in his, my stomach did a little flip-flop.
He led me over to the office area. There was a steaming mug of coffee on his desk and more in the pot. Sheets of paper covered in complex notation were scattered everywhere, and a small mountain of screwed up paper had buried what I assumed was a waste paper basket. He’d said the people he’d hired had worked through the night to build the stage. Had he been here all night, too?
He pointed to the whiteboards.
At first, I thought it was just scribbles, random lines with smudges underneath some of them. Then I looked more closely and the smudges resolved into equations. He’d written crazy small just to fit it all on—even with three whiteboards side by side. And then, finally, as I stared at it, as some of the detail dropped away and I began to see the shape of it, I thought I recognized it.
“Is that...?”
“It’s you,” he told me, and his voice was almost a whisper, as if he was scared that if he spoke too loudly, he’d destroy the fragile magic of it.
He’d captured—in some abstract form I could barely glimpse—the movements I’d made yesterday. The rotation of each pirouette, the arc through the air of each jeté.
I frowned. “But you didn’t take notes.” I looked around. “Is there a camera?”
He looked at the floor for a second, as if embarrassed. “I memorized it.”
As he walked me back to the stage, I kept glancing at him, my mind whirling. This man, who Clarissa had declared a bit off, was a full-on genius in the purest sense of the word. I felt that little twist of hope inside me crushed. What on earth would someone like that see in me?
I remembered something, then. During the big argument between Neil and Clarissa, Neil had said Darrell hadn’t graduated. Why not? With his mind, he could have aced any exam they’d thrown at him. It didn’t seem like something I could ask him, though...at least, not yet.
I realized I had no idea what was going to happen, and maybe that’s why I was almost lightheaded with anticipation.
I stepped onto the stage and looked down at him. It was strange, being taller than him for once, and I drank in every little detail. The thick, soft hair on the top of his head that I still hadn’t run my fingers through. The way he managed to look so young, looking up at me with those big eyes, and yet so powerful, the muscles of his arms stretching the sleeves of his t-shirt.
I swallowed. I meant to say, We should talk about the kiss, but what came out was “What would you like me to dance?”
He hesitated, as if he, too, wanted to say something different. But what he said was, “Something with lots of aerial work, if you can.”
This is crazy! We can’t just ignore it! But I nodded and started to get changed. And immediately, it was different. Yesterday, I’d been unsure if he liked me. Today I knew he did, and he knew I knew.
I started to peel off my sweater...and stopped halfway, with it just beneath my br**sts. I’d locked eyes with him, and my heart was suddenly thumping. I have a leotard on, I have a leotard on.
I pulled it the rest of the way off. His eyes didn’t leave me once.
I kicked off my sneakers and unfastened my jeans. My legs emerged from the denim, soft whispers of nylon against the cloth. I saw him swallow.
I had to sit to put on my pointe shoes. As he stood there watching me, eyes eating up my every move, I was aware of how quiet it was. Just the two of us, in that huge underground room with no traffic noise, no birdsong, no nothing. Just the sound of our breathing and the creak of silk and leather as I wound and tied.
He passed me the phone again and I found the music I wanted. I should have been thinking about the steps—it was tougher choreography than last time—but I kept thinking about his lips, and the way his hands had felt on my face. Why didn’t he want to talk about it? Had it all been a mistake, or did he just not know where to take this next?
The music started.
The dance began with a pas de chat, a quick little jump before I got to the big stuff. I flowed through the next few steps, then pushed off into the first of a series of grand jetés that took me most of the way across the stage—exactly the kind of aerial work he’d asked for. A pirouette and a piqué and I was moving directly towards him, relishing the glorious moment of weightlessness as I soared in another grand jeté, and another and another. On the final one, I landed only a foot clear of the edge of the stage. I’d have to be careful, when it came time to repeat that section.
A glissade took me back to the center of the stage and then a simple pirouette let me move into a fouetté, my leg whipping out to the side to power my turn. I heard a tiny intake of breath from him, as if I’d done something important. I turned again, again, trying to find a spot on the wall to focus on so I wouldn’t get dizzy, but it was difficult in such an unfamiliar environment. The adrenaline was pumping now, the simple pleasure of dancing and the feel of his eyes on me combining to make me heady and careless. I came out of the final fouetté and launched into the first of three grand jetés that would take me towards him.
One, and I soared like a bird, one leg forward and one back, the rush of air delicious over my heated limbs.
Two, and something was wrong, but I couldn’t see what it was. My feet were already preparing for the brief kiss of the stage, my muscles ready to push me back up for the final jump.
Three, and as soon as I took off I saw the danger, but it was too late to stop.
I was going to miss the stage. I was going to land not at stage level, but three feet further down. And instead of landing on springy wood, my legs were going to smash and shatter against cold concrete.
I let out a silent scream—
His hands caught me around the waist. My momentum swung me down, my feet sweeping an inch from the floor. He bent with me, then swung me back up and this time hooked an arm under my knees. And then I was in his arms, both of us panting.
The fear soaked through me—that aftershock of realizing how close you came. He held me as the chill passed. And then the feeling of his arms, strong under my knees and back, started to warm me again. I felt so...safe. Like he could hold me there forever, if I needed it.
I looked up into his eyes.
His lips came down on mine. A gossamer touch at first, then firm and hungry, my own mouth responding just as needfully. He sank down, until he was kneeling on the floor with me draped across his knees. I reached up and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him down further so that we were lying on the floor, him on top. The concrete should have been freezing through my leotard. It wasn’t. It felt like we were warming the whole area around us.
His hand was on my hip and I gasped not so much from the touch as the idea that he was touching me. He slid it up my side, tracing my waist through the smooth black Lycra. Up to my chest, to the side of my breast. My whole body tensed, wanting him to, but he held back. He smoothed over my bare shoulder and I writhed under him and then we were kissing again, both of us breathing in slow, shuddering gasps. Like before, it felt like we weren’t in control. It felt like this was just happening and all we could do was watch.
He broke the kiss, my lips throbbing and damp. His hand was on my stomach, now, his warmth spreading through the tight material and waking a dark, animal craving inside me. He started to slide it higher, the whole time keeping his eyes on mine, checking it was okay.
I stared straight back at him.
Up, over my core. Up, his fingertips tracing along my ribs. The very edge of his hand brushed the underside of my breast and I parted my lips a little wider, but I didn’t tell him to stop. And then he was right on it, his palm smoothing over the softness of it, and I wanted to grind my h*ps and arch into him because it felt so goddamn good.
He squeezed, so, so gently, and I caught my breath, hot spirals radiating outwards through my body.
“Clarissa is upstairs,” I panted.
He stared down at me and then nodded and released my breast. His hand found mine and he stood, pulling me up with him.
“What is this?” I asked him again, and this time my eyes told him I wasn’t going to let him escape without a proper answer.