Dancing Lessons (18 page)

But he did reach out to stroke a fingertip over the image of him. Young Rafael’s expression was very serious. His body was a wet dream.

“I don’t look like that anymore,” Rafael said, as though Chico were expecting him to still be twenty.

Chico shot him a knowing glance, which made Rafael sigh. He pulled Chico’s hand from the picture and held it again. More than anything else he could have done, that made Chico smile.

“Yes, I was popular,” Rafael admitted. “A bit of a slut all around, but we all were. Long days together, why not? That sort of thing. I never hurt anyone, though. You should know that. I’m still friends with everyone I’ve slept with. Well….” He frowned thoughtfully in a way Chico didn’t believe for a second. “There was this one who was really more of a hate-fuck—” He shut up when Chico clapped a hand over his mouth and kept walking.

Rafael had to follow, since he still had Chico’s other hand.

“The shoes from my mother’s last professional performance,” Rafael explained from behind Chico’s palm when they reached a shadowbox containing a very worn pair of red toe shoes. Chico took his hand away to let him speak. “This poster is of Elisabet as Juliet in
Romeo and Juliet
. She has one of a poster from my run in
The Sleeping Beauty
, and I hate it. They chose a weird photo.” As though nothing at all was strange about Chico silently exploring his living room with Rafael in tow, Rafael filled him in on everything they passed by. “That’s my couch. Nice and close, if you’re interested.” He leered in an over-the-top way at Chico until Chico’s skin was hot, but he let himself be tugged toward the fireplace and the mantle, which held, of all things, a baseball signed by someone whose name Chico didn’t recognize. “And that’s from my dad.”

Chico’s surprise must have been obvious because Rafael gave him a rueful grin. “My mother will make it sound like my father is the one who is too serious, too focused on ballet—and he is, don’t get me wrong. My father breathes ballet in a way that not even my mother does. But he’s a big believer in other influences. When I was little, he took me and my brother and my sisters to a professional baseball game and told us to look around. He knew nothing about sports, mind you, but he wanted us to see if
we
might like it. Why he picked baseball, I have no idea. Anyway, after the game we each got a signed ball, and I kept mine. Found it after I moved out on my own up here. I like to be reminded there is more to the world than dance.”

“Your mom said your dad was the one most angry with you for quitting professional ballet.” Chico tilted his head up in question.

“Did she? Did she tell you that when she met my dad, she insisted she wasn’t ever going to regard any man as more important to her than dancing? She insisted that right up until they got married.” Rafael had the most evil look on his face. “My father has her wrapped around his finger. He’s almost too powerful.”

“I like your mother.” Chico defended her for absolutely no reason, and went hot again as Rafael studied him. He ducked his head and left the living room for the kitchen, with Rafael close behind.

In a fruit bowl in the middle of the counter sat a somewhat shriveled yellow onion. Chico blinked at it in astonishment.

Rafael finally, finally, tugged his hand away.

He cleared his throat, loudly, and began to talk faster. “You fed me. I should offer to feed you. But I should probably explain that I’m not really a cook. I
mean
to cook. I like to cook. I try to cook. Once every few weeks I convince myself I will make the time and buy food and prepare it right, but then I get busy and distracted and that never happens. All I think I have in the house are English muffins, apples, and peanut butter. I might have microwave popcorn. You want an apple? Or I could order a pizza. I sometimes bribe the kids who work there to drive it out here.”

Chico stared at him in outright astonishment, then felt a huge, terrible smile form on his face. “Silly Raf.” He darted out his tongue to wet his lips when Rafael turned around and looked hurt. “Did you buy that onion so you could talk to me?” Chico didn’t wait for an answer. “Do you think I care that you don’t cook? I served you grape jelly, the most childish of all the jellies.”

“I like grape jelly.” Rafael nearly pouted. “I didn’t mind. Better a dinner of herbs, or however the quote goes.”

The ache behind Chico’s ribs, the one that hadn’t left him since the ballet, showed no signs of going away now. He stared at Rafael for long enough that he could see Rafael wanted to say something. Then he shook his head.

“I’m not hungry,” Chico told him seriously. “Show me your stars.”

HE WASN’T
nervous. His legs were wobbly on the stairs, but Rafael put a hand to the small of his back and led him up to his bedroom. Chico walked past Rafael’s bed without doing more than noting it was made, which surprised him, and that it was covered in layers of warm, multicolored blankets. “I get cold at night, and my mornings are easier if I’m warm,” Rafael explained, after clearing his throat. He opened the door to his balcony and gestured for Chico to precede him.

He’d left the bedroom lights off, but Chico’s eyes adjusted after a few moments. They were the same stars above him that he saw every night, but Chico put his head back to stare at them as though he’d never seen them before.

After a while, he sighed.

“Do you want to sit down?” Rafael offered immediately, waving to the two large wooden chairs behind them. This was the man who had flirted to make him blush. Whatever Chico had expected when that man finally got Chico in his bedroom, it wasn’t hushed, nervous questions.

Chico sat, then frowned when Rafael did the same. A small table was between them. Chico thought about it and decided he didn’t like that, so he got up again and resettled himself in Rafael’s lap. Rafael exclaimed quietly in surprise, but wrapped his arms around Chico and let him curl up against him. He found one of Chico’s sleeves and pulled on it to expose his hand and his wrist. Then he tugged the sleeve back until it covered Chico’s fingers.

Chico would have stared at him if the light would have given him any detail.

“The ballet really stayed with you, didn’t it?” Rafael was keeping his hands above the sweatshirt and his words were soft and careful. Possibly, Chico had thrown him for a loop by cuddling him like this. Chico could not make himself care.

“Yes,” he said simply, and wriggled closer. Rafael gasped a little and spread his legs to give Chico more room.

“Did I tell you the kids all loved what you did?” Rafael added, perhaps more breathlessly than he had been before Chico had squirmed against him.

“Yes.” Chico paused to glance at the silhouette of Rafael’s face. “But I didn’t do much. And the poor inventor, I skipped him entirely.”

“No, it worked that way. He’s overlooked by everyone at first.” Rafael’s hand stroking down his back almost made up for Chico’s mistake.

“I’ll do better next time,” Chico offered, then swallowed. “That is, if you’d like me to keep helping. If not with that”—the graduation performance was once a year, and next year was a long time away—“then maybe with one of the other recitals. If that’s all right.”

Rafael took his time answering. “That’s all right.” His voice was huskier, like he couldn’t quite control everything.

Chico let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and rested his chin at Rafael’s shoulder.

“That talk we were supposed to have,” Chico began, after a beat. “When….” He could do this. “When your boyfriend of three years cheats on you and leaves you for someone else… that is… I mean…. It’s not even the cheating as much as… after years of being undermined by someone who should have supported me. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I would like to trust you. With me. I already”—he lowered his voice—“I already want you and like you, and when you dance with me, you make me feel like I could be great at it, you know? But I’m scared. Which you know. I mean, you already know, because I spilled my problems all over you many times. But. Shit. You know what I mean. I’m working on things.”

“Hmm.” Rafael murmured thoughtfully. It was the first time he’d ever sounded like his dad that Chico had noticed. “Everything takes practice,” he decreed at last, not seeming terribly put out to hear that Chico didn’t trust him completely yet.

God, he was so different from John. Chico was even allowed to tease him.

“That is such a dancer thing to say,” Chico grumbled, but sweetly, and shifted to get more comfortable.

“Anything that will get you back in my arms.” Rafael responded in the flirty tone Chico was familiar with, if not used to. He put his warm face into Rafael’s neck before turning to sneak a peek at the stars.

He really hoped this was the right decision. It felt like it, like something brave Davi would approve of. All he knew was that it scared him too much to be called settling.

Rafael probably had his head back. He probably had his eyes closed as well, unless he was looking at the stars and thinking exactly what Chico was thinking.

Chico took a deep breath. “Rafael?”

“Yeah?” Rafael’s arm muscles tightened, but his voice was even.

Chico tilted his head up to whisper. “Are you tired?”

“A little.” Rafael moved as if he was trying to get a good look at Chico and couldn’t. Good. For once he couldn’t judge Chico’s mood before Chico could. “I’m still kind of wound up. It’s why we take a day before the performance. I don’t want people crashing from the first high during the actual ballet.”

All that was very interesting, but not exactly what Chico was driving at. “So you’re off tomorrow?” he pressed.

Rafael inclined his head. “Yes.”

Chico took another breath and then put his mouth to Rafael’s skin. “So am I.” He frowned for Rafael’s stillness, and for the rest of what he had to say. “I should also tell you that despite the cheating boyfriend, I was negative on my last two tests.” He cleared his throat. “If you were interested in that information.”

“I thought you wanted to wait—” Rafael started in a rasping, dry voice, then grabbed at Chico before he could finish his sentence. “Yes,” he declared firmly. “Yes, I am interested in that information.”

“Oh good,” Chico agreed stupidly, and surged up to kiss him.

THE VANILLA-SCENTED
sweatshirt was somewhere out on Rafael’s balcony. Chico’s shirt was pooled on Rafael’s bedroom floor. Chico had been trying to remember words since he’d emerged from Rafael’s bathroom, nervous and scrubbed up and minus his pants. The problem with that was Rafael’s mouth and his hands. God, his hands.

“The thing is….” Chico was wound so tight he could hear it in every strained word. Lips beneath his ear didn’t help any more than Rafael climbing over him onto the bed. Unlike Chico, Rafael had stripped off his clothes in seconds and hadn’t seemed to miss them. Then again, he didn’t need them.

“Yeah?” Rafael lifted his head to look Chico in the eye, which wasn’t fair. Chico stared at him in a state of blank arousal, then turned his head so Rafael would kiss the skin on the other side of his neck. Rafael was very obliging. He settled over Chico on his knees, kissing his throat and smoothing his hands over Chico’s ribs.

That was how they’d ended up here. Chico had opened the bathroom door feeling tiny and skinny with the lights on, until Rafael had tugged him toward the bed and kissed his mouth and asked if he was sure and swept the palms of his hands across Chico’s skin. He’d done that under the stars too, and in the studio’s sewing room. A little thing, but huge, somehow, to Chico and his pounding heart.

“I used to look better than this.” Chico closed his eyes and panted at the ceiling, letting Rafael’s mouth trail down to his chest and then up to his shoulder and then to his mouth again. Rafael’s hands followed the same path, except when Chico rolled his hips up to meet them. Then those hands would skim down to Chico’s thighs or his ass. Only for a moment every time, and it was driving Chico crazy.

“Huh?” Rafael licked at Chico’s lips, already stinging and full from the thousand kisses outside beneath the night sky. The stars were beautiful but Rafael hadn’t once glanced at them.

Chico forgot whatever else he’d been going to say. “You can’t keep your hands off me,” he announced instead, way too shocked to be cool about it. He raised his arms and wrapped them around Rafael’s gloriously naked back. He pushed his palms against the muscles Rafael both took for granted and worked hard for, and knew his face was hot and flushed.

“Not if I don’t have to.” Rafael spared a moment for whatever Chico was trying to tell him, but his attention was obviously elsewhere. Chico opened his eyes wide and smiled, although Rafael couldn’t see it. Rafael held himself up on his arms, putting his biceps to work as he dragged his mouth down Chico’s chest.

Chico slid his legs open, bending one knee to the bed in case he was being too subtle. Rafael had thoughtfully set lube and a condom on the bed while he’d been waiting for Chico. The least he could do was use them.

Rafael had hair over his eyes when he glanced up. His mouth was red. His gaze seemed caught on Chico’s face. He eased up, very slowly, and held himself over Chico with no indication of strain. Chico just touched him, not even envious at the display of strength. He petted his jaw and his shoulders and the shivery, hot muscles of his arms. Then he stroked his back and his sides, all the way down to his ass.

He swallowed as he squeezed it to pull them close together. He was so hard that Rafael didn’t need to ask if he was sure.

Or not. “You sure?” Rafael rolled his body against Chico’s, sliding their cocks together, and still asked that.

“Sure?” Chico was dying. He gasped for breath and stared at Rafael with wide eyes, unable to think of a way to explain how hungry for this he was. “Since the first waltz,” he panted at last, and he didn’t take much more than a quick second to inhale before he was kissed hard, his head pushed into Rafael’s pillows, Rafael’s hands pulling his hips up.

He was vaguely aware he’d asked for slow, out on the balcony. He shook his head when Rafael reached for the lubricant—more waiting would be torment—and breathed harder when Rafael nodded and grasped him by his thighs instead. He was being repositioned and thought, almost hysterically, that he was never going to be able to take any of Rafael’s dancing classes without a seriously inappropriate reaction. He snorted a little at the thought and cracked a smile when Rafael glanced curiously at him as he rolled the condom on and then grabbed the lube.