Lead and Follow (25 page)

Tricks that ended with Lizzie sitting on the ground, clutching her leg, sobbing.

He could keep her safer at Devant. When his gaze dropped, it went right to the faintly pink line at the side of her knee. Her scar. He’d already failed her enough.

“And?” she prompted. Her fingers tangled in a bit of wayward beadwork. When her hips shook, the beads would emphasize the movement and make her look even more amazing. “Maybe just one more year. We’ll take one more championship. You know we could.”

“Certainly we could.” He finally turned to look at her. She’d fluffed and feathered her hair. Her eyes were ringed with dark, dramatic shadow, absolutely amping up her desirability. “What the hell would we do with another championship? And why? Because four is a more magical number than three?”

“Because we
can
. Because how many other four-time world championship ballroom dancers have there been? The best of the best, Dima.”

He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. At least for this demonstration he hadn’t needed to resume the fake-tanning thing. He’d been so awfully sick of that. “Let’s not do this.”

“Do what? Have an honest discussion?”

He wrapped his fingers around her jaw and tipped up her chin. “Honest discussion,” he echoed, incredulous. “This is not honesty unless we include the fact that you were riding my cock not three days ago.”

Her hands flinched toward her body. “I wasn’t talking about that.”

“Weren’t you? Because what I’m hearing—what I’m always hearing—is that you’d like to go back to the way things used to be.” He sighed, letting go of her smooth skin. He contained himself on his side of the car and looked out the window. “God, we can’t do this now.”

“No.” Her sigh filled the car. “I’m starting to fear we never will.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

On Dima’s arm was the safest way to enter any dance arena, especially when faced with so many people who knew her parents. A prima ballerina from the age of twenty-two, Georgina Maynes was more than just a dancer. She was an icon who still fielded questions as to why Lizzie had chosen something else over “real” dancing. For some, world championships wouldn’t change the fact that Lizzie had never performed with a company, let alone as the lead.

To her credit, her mother possessed a fantastically waspish tongue and cut any doubters down to size. She had always been supportive of Lizzie’s decisions. When Dima’s mother and father had started the spiraling nosedive that eventually led them to Boca Raton, alcoholism and obscurity, he had not been left alone. Lizzie’s parents had taken him in as a son of their own.

None of that eased her nerves. This would be her first public dance since her injury. Everyone there would know it.

Sometimes, when her confidence before a competition was at a low ebb, she held Dima’s hand. He would smile down at her—a so-soft smile that told her everything she needed to know. That he was right there. That the choices she’d made in her life were not only valid, but worth celebrating. That she would never feel like a disappointment because he would lend her strength.

She didn’t dare look at him. The stifling tension in the hired car had been like acid to dissolve her outer shell. Plans she wasn’t used to making seemed less certain when he gave her nothing but… No,
nothing
. Even blankness might be a small step closer to genuine emotion.

The Lionel Woodruff School of Dance occupied the entire second floor of a multi-use high rise in Battery Park, the monthly rent for which probably outstripped Lizzie’s annual take-home. Up the elevator, out into the corridor, which was as sunny as the rest of the studio. Mirrors and one-way glass where there weren’t windows. The bright midday light was strong enough to start a headache along her forehead.

Hot fear churned in her gut. She’d let this go too long. She would lose Dima, maybe even lose dancing. Facing the world without either would be a nightmare made true.

They came to stand before two golden pine doors—the entrance to the main studio room.

“Dima, Lizzie, so good to see you again,” said the school’s headmistress, Janet Peel. Sixty-something, excruciatingly thin and with a neck that seemed to go on forever, she had been a prima donna in her own right before taking up guidance of the school. “How’s the knee?”

“Good as new.” The smile was forced, naturally, but she was nearly in full performance mode. It wouldn’t be difficult for much longer. “When are we on? Enough time to warm up?”

Janet consulted a clipboard and checked them off the list. “About twenty-five minutes. There’s an afro-jazz troupe in there right now, then a pair of Lindy Hoppers.”

Lizzie nodded and followed Dima to wait in the hallway with another half dozen dancers, all stretching, all wearing different styles of costumes. The foundation’s annual event showcased dancers of radically varied styles, from classical ballet to krump. Donations funded a trust that helped underprivileged kids in Manhattan find a home in the world of dance.

She clutched Dima’s arm a little tighter, probably giving away more than she wanted to. He flicked her a warning look.

A deep, sturdy, pissed-off part of her bubbled up. No tears this time. Not even close. Those had been burned out of her after days of hard work with Remy. All that remained was the resilience that had made her a champion. He was not going to pull his moody shit in front of an audience, and certainly not one that was so influential in their community.

Back painfully straight, she met his gaze. She could give herself to him forever, if they got this damn thing right.

“You say you don’t want to hurt me,” she said, voice businesslike.

A flinch. His brows narrowed, just a little quizzical.

“Isn’t that what you’ve always said?”

“Lizzie…”

“
Otvechaj
, Dmitri.”

Answer me. Damn you.

His curt nod followed a slow inhale, as if he’d needed to consider his reply. A shiver of hurt slid down to her stomach, but she kept it hidden. No way could she be dressed in that outfit and not own the moment.

“Good. Then don’t show any of this to those people in there.”

“This?”

“Us. This crap we can’t talk about.”

“And if I do?”

“You’ll get your wish from down in the car. We won’t need to talk about anything because there won’t be anything left to discuss.”

She let go of his arm and looked through the window with a stunning view of the bay. Standing in that much sunshine, she should’ve been warm. Hell, she should be warming up altogether.

Fifteen minutes later, after stretching muscles thick with tension that had nothing to do with her injury, Lizzie heard their names called. Out of habit alone, she found Dima with her eyes. He was dressed in a pair of snugly fitted trousers that molded to every lean, toned inch of his thighs and ass. A cummerbund hugged his flat stomach. The heavily beaded red, black and gold chaquetilla accentuated his shoulders. Sleeveless and open, it left his chest and arms bare.

Out of the need to hold her own, she lifted her chin and didn’t look away. If what they had was well and truly broken, she’d know it soon enough. They couldn’t hide anything from one another when they performed.

She held out her hand.

He took it.

They were on. It was the first time in six months that they would dance in public.

God, it was like a life sentence.

Although Dima would lead throughout the dance, Lizzie, as always, was the first into the studio—their makeshift stage. Arrive with attitude, their coach had said for years. Arrive already performing. That meant she walked ahead and gathered up the stares, the coos, the clapping. Dima stalked behind her, a dark force at her back.

Dressed in red spangles from head to toe—quite literally, as her hair adornments and shoes exactly matched the gown—she knew how she must look to those two-hundred-odd bigwigs. All sex and attitude. Good. There was a certain comfort in being able to face those lions in full regalia. Roughly twenty tiny square inches of beaded armor on top, with a weighted skirt down the backs of her thighs to swing and twirl.

With a quick scan of the airy, high-ceiling studio, Lizzie spotted all the bigwigs out in force. Because it was only a little past noon, they dressed in elegant suits and luncheon dresses. A few of what must be the school’s best students, all teen girls except for two young men who looked like dead ringers for Dima’s Russian bone structure, sat together. Sweat still lined their smooth brows, meaning their performance had already taken place.

Lionel Woodruff’s partner, a thin and exact black man in his mid-fifties, sat on a chair at center left that may as well have been a dais. A former soloist with the American Ballet Company, he was the public face of his late lover’s legacy—a picture of dignity, grace and loss. Reporters and two television cameras ringed him and his collection of close associates.

Great. Maybe Declan would have the implosion of Maynes and Turgenev on film for his collection.

The music started, to herald the beginning of their famous paso doble, the one for which they’d earned perfect marks in Berlin to clinch their first world title. A lifetime ago.

That same music took control. In this dance, Dima was the matador and she was the cape. For the next two minutes, if at no other time, everything would be as it should.

From across roughly ten feet, they stared one another down. Slowly, they walked with exaggerated steps to meet in the middle. Dima’s eyes blazed. He was in character, sure, but it was
real
. His passion and intensity. She’d been feeling waves of it for weeks, even as he tried his damnedest to hold it back. Now it pulsed from him in shimmering currents that sparked her inner desires. Fight back. Win. This was a dance of competition, and she would not be defeated.

Their first touch was…shocking. As if they had never touched before, not as partners or as lovers. Their bodies connecting. Hers woke up with a start, screaming for more. His skin. His fingers, although he held them taut and straight in proper form—not caressing so much as guiding. They clasped hands and broke eye contact for the first time, as if inviting the assembly to join in their conflict. Balanced just so, they extended their feet in a matched
développé
that tested their strength and flexibility.

Showing off.

Damn, they did it well.

Spinning Lizzie out of that position of control, he unleashed pure fire. So in command, so incredibly masculine, he led her body with practiced finesse. She became cloth, twirling and spinning at his merest direction. All the while his movements remained dramatic and larger than life. When she was free of his hold, Lizzie dipped into a low backbend, while Dima performed a graceful
rond de jambe
kick across her torso. Such velocity and control. She started in on a series of flamenco steps. His split leap ate half the distance across the floor, then matched her flamenco as he worked back to meet her.

Her lungs seared with heat. They could combust right there, right at that moment, doing what they loved, together, and she’d be happy.

Their hands touched again. Sweat. Dark eyes. Flared nostrils. He was more like an angered bull than a matador, as if their dance could finally bust through what bricks he’d stacked around deeper emotions. Arms locked, she backed away and away from his high, advancing steps. Lizzie escaped his pursuit, only to be caught by the wrist and coiled around his body like a cape. They came together in a controlled collision of pelvis to pelvis. She grasped his out-thrust hips. His hands reached overhead before bowing possessively low. The whole time, their foreheads pressed together, mouths open, breathing one another’s fire.

The rigid strength of his frame was all the tension she required to gather momentum for the upcoming lift. But Dima overcompensated, just as she’d seen him do with Jeanne in the practice video. Instead of perching gracefully on his shoulders before sliding back down like a slither of silk, she nearly toppled. Panic gripped her heart and gave it a yank. Dima grunted only loud enough for Lizzie to hear. A swift readjustment of his hands kept her from falling, but the lift couldn’t be saved. She curved down and through his legs in a classic snake twist.

Totally improvised. She wondered briefly who might be able to tell.

Yet there was no time to think, not while performing. Instinct and trust and long years of partnering were all they had. Those precious things brought them safely back to choreographed steps.

Along the floor, she made a plank of her body. Back arched, legs straight, arms stretched far overhead. Dima caught her by the back of the neck with one hand. With the strength of his arms and powerful core muscles, he lifted her to forty-five degrees and held her suspended while he maintained a deep lunge.

Face to face.

Although she’d never thought to kiss him at that moment, she was tired of wasting such opportunities.

Just a brush of lip to lip.

The unexpected contact was enough to widen his eyes and enough for Lizzie to grab one more salty taste of what she missed.

Anyone who disapproved in the middle of such a staid event could take a hike.

The dance wasn’t over, and neither of them would think of missing the next count. Dima kicked a leg over and around in a full spin. He returned her to standing. She seductively arched her back as she twisted away. Dima pounced in a deep lunge and grabbed her waist. Chest out. Posture dominating. As if he had won this fight.