The Thorndyke Trilogy 2: Dancing at Midnight (21 page)

“I’m not sure I can do this. I can’t go on.”

“Sure you can. Go to your special place and dance your heart out. They are going to love you, baby. Just be yourself.”

The woman on the other side of Betty was Sharon, but she’d hardly spoken, just shot Kristen a series of venomous glances. Kristen had taken what Sharon considered her spot, but as far as Kristen could see, Sharon was filling a space on the show and she should be grateful for the chance. She’d seen Sharon dance. She wasn’t overly impressed. Oh, Sharon was good; everybody dancing in the club was good, but not everyone was exceptional.

Sharon had already done one dance this evening with her regular partner. Other performers had come and gone backstage, and since it was little bigger than the bathroom in Nathan’s apartment, it was hard to miss their giggles and stares. Most were friendly enough, but Kristen sensed an undercurrent of resentment. Probably because Kristen was sleeping with the boss.
Unexceptional
. She’d heard herself described that way a few times.

Maybe that described Kristen best. She had an unexceptional style, an unexceptional body. She didn’t have much in the way of breasts, although Nathan hadn’t complained. She had to showcase them for anyone to take notice. No way did she have the abundance of Betty or the voluptuous curves Sharon could display. Those women could stand on a stage and jiggle, and they’d make a living. Not here, though. Here they had to demonstrate skill and expertise, enough to maintain the club’s status as a dance and burlesque nightclub.

Betty got to her feet and dropped a friendly kiss on top of Kristen’s head. “You go, girl.”

Her costume and makeup done, Kristen got to her feet and left the ladies’ dressing room, following Betty.

The stage was small. To one side was an area where people danced when there were no featured acts onstage. The dancers gave teasing parodies of pole dancing, a demo of disco dancing or old burlesque numbers, taking gloves off with the teeth and everything. Nathan even had one of those huge champagne glasses in storage, although he had decided not to use it this season.
“Old hat,”
he’d told her when she’d teased him about it once.

Nathan Beaumont, her lover.

She tried the sentence out in her head. Maybe it would give her some reassurance. No such luck. It just made her more nervous, knowing he was watching her. Would he sit at a table nearest the stage and stare at her or prop up to the bar and watch her from there? She wouldn’t look for him. Seeing disapproval or criticism in his eyes, she could take that, but not the heat they were allowing to grow between them. That was too much to take in public, especially when she’d be all but naked.

Shit
. She moaned low in her throat and settled by the side of the stage, out of sight, where she could watch Betty.

Betty was a great artist. She started in the Dying Swan pose of the poster, holding her stance with only a slight wobble, the bright light behind her throwing her figure into silhouette. The groan and the claps when the lights went up and revealed her were soon dispelled when she started to dance.

She danced well. Only well, but here when she started to strip, it was enough. She easily revealed the earthy sexuality that took her out of the ordinary—a skill not approved of in classical dance. Some choreographers were beginning to allow it, an acknowledgment that sex was important in the seemingly fantasy world of ballet, but not all. And Betty was too old to be in the new avant-garde.

Here, she fit. She belonged in this place, telling the story of the swan but with a sexual twist. She evoked the emotions effortlessly, her movements graceful enough to please all but the fussiest ballet critics. After their first disappointment at not seeing the star of the show, the audience settled down.

Betty removed her satin top with unselfconscious abandon, her breasts bouncing as she went into a
ballonné
. She followed it with a plié, both movements requiring her to open her legs and flash the tiny strip of white satin between her legs.

The audience murmured as the dance became more daring, the men trying not to lean over to get a better view of her pussy.

At the end, Betty ripped the thong from her body just as the lights came down. Was she wearing anything underneath? Was that a glimpse of ripe bare flesh or another undergarment?

She left them guessing. She also left the stage.

Kristen felt Steve come up behind her and murmur in her ear. “Ready, darling?”

She nodded as Steve took her hand and led her out. They took their positions in the darkness. Bile rose in Kristen’s throat, and she swallowed it down. Steve had his hands positioned in the classic waltz pose.

As the music started, the waltz from
Der Rosenkavalier
, she recalled her steps and pretended she was in the big room at Nathan’s apartment with the furniture pushed back. Anywhere but here, with people watching, expecting so much.

She got through it, turned when she needed to, smiled when she needed. The strip part wasn’t as bad as she expected, except a spike of something that felt like anger peaked in her mind. He was watching her, and he didn’t like it. Strange, because he hadn’t objected in rehearsals, and didn’t he tell her he enjoyed watching?

When Steve ripped her bra away for the final flourish and smoothed his hands up from her waist to draw her close and kiss her for the blackout, she felt no anger from Nathan. Nothing. Perhaps he’d been called away on business. After all, what did it matter if he wasn’t watching?

The audience clapped. They didn’t cheer, but she got some applause that lasted a reasonable amount of time.

Bitterly disappointed at her reception, Kristen went offstage to change for the Argentine tango. She’d wanted more, and she knew she deserved more than polite applause.

Steve threw her robe over her shoulders and gave her a hug. “You were brilliant.”

“Thanks.”

No, she wasn’t. She was good, competent, adequate, and she’d let herself and Nathan down.

He didn’t appear, which she was glad of. She just wanted to get through this and then try again, although opening night was her chance, her one chance to make it work. To make a splash. Otherwise she’d have to find a critic to come another night, if she could improve her performance.

She couldn’t even make it here. Was it nerves? She’d done much better at the run-through.

For the Argentine tango, she was in red. The dress fitted closely, with few spangles but lots of slashes. After all, this form of the dance, the original tango, if Nathan was right, was created in the sleazy dance halls of Rio, where gauchos would come for an evening’s entertainment. The women were hired, little better than prostitutes, the men rough.

When he’d told her that, she could almost feel sweat trickling down the groove of her spine and smell cattle and cheap cologne on the man. In her mind, she put Nathan in the role of the gaucho.

Now all she could smell was fear, and it was hers.

She had to snap out of this, or she’d never get the sensuality down. She’d rehearsed each little turn, each facial expression until she could do it in her sleep. But that wouldn’t be enough, not for this crowd. They weren’t happy with a woman who just took her clothes off. They wanted artistry. They were expecting more.

The woman who helped with the preparation the dancers couldn’t do for themselves dragged her hair back, pulling it into a severe, twisted knot, and fastened it with a long chopstick. She had nowhere to hide, no sultry glances from behind her hair.

She walked out once more into the darkness and found the chair set out for her. She sat, arranged her skirt, what there was of it, and placed herself into the first pose. Steve touched her shoulder as he walked past, turned around. He stood over her, his hand outstretched, as if asking her to dance. Then he’d jerk her into his arms.

The music began, the wail of the accordion hitting the first notes, and she froze. She couldn’t remember any of the steps. Not one. They were all gone, her mind a blank. The music sounded foreign, not something she’d rehearsed for a week to.

She was so dead.

The lights went up, and she let Steve pull her up, but it was more like dragging a sack of potatoes than a sexy surrender. Steve’s eyes widened fractionally as he caught her panic, but he was a practiced dancer. She had to trust him to see her through. A lump so large that she could hardly breathe formed in her throat. She forced a breath in, but as she did so, someone ripped her away from Steve.

Nathan.

He was standing behind her in his usual black shirt and pants, nothing special, but his savage expression ensured nobody would be looking anywhere but at his face. It was stark, his fine cheekbones delineated, his eyes glittering with passion.

Immediately as always, she responded to having his body plastered against hers, and her pussy softened for him.

He stared down at her. “Do you want to stop this dance?”

He’d felt her panic and come to her. As she recognized his response, she melted and her terror dissipated. Of course she could do this. “No.”

“Let me guide you, and then we’ll go back into the steps.”

Already the dance had gone on a bar longer than necessary, but starting it again would destroy the tension rippling over the club. She could trust him.

He slid into her mind, showed her what he wanted her to do, and she did it. When he turned her, Steve stood behind them, foot tapping, arms folded, and as Nathan whirled her into the dance, he went into a flamenco pose of defiance.

Two men as rivals for her in the dance. That worked. On the next beat, she pulled away from Nathan and went to Steve, who opened his arms to receive her, and they dipped into the rehearsed pose, her leg up, her arm outstretched.

Nathan dragged her back. If Steve hadn’t released her, he’d have yanked her arm out of its socket, but as it was, she landed against him, her back to his chest. She lowered herself, and he spread his hands over her breasts. Kristen shuddered and turned her natural reaction into a theatrical one, exaggerating it.

At that point, she began to enjoy herself. She and Steve had some practiced poses, and Nathan knew them all because he’d invented them.

They couldn’t turn this into a perfect dance by critical standards, but they could put on a show and use the set pieces.

Nathan spun her into him, and this time, he tugged the skirt away, leaving only a few ragged edges. It was designed to look as if he’d torn it off for real. The gasps of the audience were audible above the music. The lighting guy had given up on following them with spots, flooding the stage with muted light, but that was good, like the sleazy dance halls that were the origin of the dance.

Her partner sank down onto the wooden chair, taking her with him. He arched his back, and she straddled him, pressing down as he pushed up. His erection bulged blatantly beneath the pants. This time when Steve came back for her, Nathan kept his attention on her and lifted his hand, palm out, and pushed him away. Steve turned his back and left, a lover spurned.

Now the dance turned even more intense. Nathan slid his hand around the back of her neck, bringing her close for a kiss, but their mouths didn’t touch. Instead, she leaped up, spun around, and jerked up her chin in denial. He looped his arm around her waist and hauled her against him, pressing a hand against her throat and tipping her head back for him to bend to bite her.

He really bit her. Then he spoke to her.
“This is what I wanted. I don’t always dance according to the rules.”
He nipped down her throat.

“I thought your rule was to never dance with your lovers.”

“I just changed it.”

So she was still his lover. And his dance partner.

He spun her away from him, his teeth bared, eyes fierce, and she dipped onto one knee, her other leg stretched behind her. In response, he mirrored her pose and looped his knee just inside hers. She breathed deeply, panted, knowing the light would catch the way her breasts heaved.

At this point, he should have torn off her dress, leaving her bare breasted and in black satin panties, cut impossibly high. Together with the dangerous red flamenco shoes, they were all she had to finish the dance with.

He did not.

Slowly they rose, facing each other. Kristen gathered the rags of her skirt and did a flamenco move, bringing her heels together to rap on the floor in defiance.

But he followed her, a predatory cat stalking his mate. Totally lost in the dance, she half turned, then back again. This time he came behind her and slipped his hands around her waist, one down over her abdomen, the other high, over one breast. He lowered his head, his forehead touching her shoulder. He was hers. Triumphantly, she lifted her arms high, and they held the pose for a second.

That was when he removed her dress. The fastenings tore away. Before the audience could get a good look at her breasts, he covered them with his hands, lifting them slightly so they mounded over the top of his fingers.
“Can you keep in the spirit of the dance and follow me?”

“Yes.”
Heat coursed through her when he moved his hands, stimulating her nipples.

Dropping her head back against his shoulder, she let him caress her, and then he twisted her, and she spun, putting her back to the audience. He touched her, smiled at her in a heartbreaking way, and tore his shirt off.

Unlike her costume, his shirt wasn’t meant to come off that way. He made it work, adding a touch of dragon strength to his movement. When a button stuck on his cuff, out of sight of the audience he extended a claw and sliced it off. Now they were both bare from the waist up.

A feminine groan arose from the audience. Nathan was a fine specimen, really fine.

He pulled the chopstick from Kristen’s hair, and it fell over her shoulders, a gleaming black cascade.

Their dance grew more intimate. They moved as one, their steps in sync, him forward, her back, then in reverse, neither in control as they simulated the act of love in dance. He rolled his groin against her pussy. If it wasn’t obvious that he had an erection already, he made it clear a moment later.