A Dance too Far

by H L Day

  * * * *

  I stared as the name Max flashed up on the screen of my phone. It was the phone that I'd claimed was broken, and had been subsequently replaced by Mikhail. It would take Dmitry at least a few weeks to realize I was still using it, and by that time I'd have come up with some sort of story to cover it. I made no move to answer the call. It was hard to fathom any reason why Max would be calling unless he felt like he was owed some sort of explanation. If that was the case, then there was nothing I could say that was going to make him feel better. The mistake had been made when I'd invited him inside my dressing room. I'd compounded it with my weakness in picking up the phone and inviting him to my hotel room. I couldn't rewind and take back either of those mistakes. For either of us. The phone fell silent while I continued to stare at it. I waited for a few more seconds to see if he would leave a message. He didn't.

  I lounged back on the bed and closed my eyes, allowing myself the luxury of remembering the way Max's body had felt against mine, inside mine. My cock gave a twitch, the first of the night despite the number of hands and pairs of eyes that had lingered there. I slid my hand down, doing no more than massaging while I contemplated whether jerking off to the memory of a man I'd fucked twice—but wouldn't or couldn't fuck again—was a good idea.

  The phone buzzed. I glanced over. Max again. He was certainly persistent. Against my better judgment, I brought the phone to my ear, connecting the call but not saying anything.

  "Are you alone?"

  The voice in my ear was slightly slurred. No prizes for guessing where Max had spent the rest of the night. By the lack of background noise, I assumed he'd now returned home. "What answer do you want me to give to that?"

  "The truth, Valentin. The truth. If you even know what that is. Stop playing games with me for once and answer the damn question."

  Anger I could have coped with. But he sounded more confused than anything. Confused and sad. It made me feel things I didn't want to feel, like guilt and regret. "Da, I am alone."

  "Are you at the hotel? Or still at the party?" He said the word party as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth. It probably did. I could only imagine what Dmitry's parties looked like to an outsider. I'd been forced to attend them for the last nine years, and I still found them largely unpalatable.

  "I'm at the hotel." There was a long silence. I could hear him breathing, but he didn't speak. Maybe he had nothing left to say. "Listen, Max, it's late. Say whatever it is you called to say. Get whatever it is you need to off your chest. Or... hang up."

  My demand finally seemed to bring out the anger I'd been expecting since the start of the conversation. "You're an absolute bastard!"

  I ignored the sting of the words. "Probably true."

  "You had the nerve to throw money at me for sex, when all the time... you... you're the one who..."

  My fingers tightened around the phone. "Be careful what you say there, Max. You might just hurt my feelings if you're not careful." I made the words sound light, belying the underlying truth to them.

  "So, you're not even going to deny it?"

  I had two options. The first was to let Max believe that everything he'd seen today was true, that all his assumptions were correct. That would be the sensible thing to do. It would ensure he stayed away from me for the duration of the show, and more importantly, it would keep him safe. The second option was to defend myself. I didn't have to tell him the whole truth, just enough that he'd know that there were two sides to every story.

  I opened my mouth, fully intending to lie and say I was a prostitute. I could claim that Max owed me money. That would guarantee him hanging up. But something about the fact he'd bothered to call made me hesitate. He'd seen me with two men tonight, both old enough to be my father, neither of them attractive enough that anyone could ever believe they were genuine relationships. Yet Max was still willing to listen to an alternative explanation. What was it about this man? I kept showing him my absolute worst, and he kept searching for the best. Did that make him stupid? Did it make him an optimist? Or did it mean that somewhere underneath all the layers I'd concocted, he saw the real Valentin? Because no one else ever had.

  I laid my head back against the pillow. "Sometimes situations are not black and white, Max. Sometimes there are shades of gray."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  What did it mean? Nothing. Apart from the fact that I couldn't quite bring myself to look as bad as I needed to, in front of a man I was beginning to realize I actually liked.

  "Do you know what I think is going on here?"

  I sat up again, intrigued by what he was about to say. "Go on. I'm not saying that I will confirm whether you are right, though."

  "I think Dmitry is controlling you..." I winced. Pretty close. It would seem that Max was more than just a pretty face. "I don't think you have a choice—"

  "Everyone has a choice! I'm not a victim, Max. I've never been a victim. It's just that with some choices you pay a higher price than others. That's all. I made my choice seven years ago. I could have walked away at eighteen"—I wasn't going to mention that my arm had been twisted, that walking away would have sounded the death knell for any chance of a dance career—"but I didn't. Now, I live with those choices. And they're my choices. No one elses. Mine."

  "Did you have sex with those men, tonight?"

  I didn't manage to disguise my sharp intake of breath. I hadn't expected him to be so direct, and I also hadn't expected him to have enough insight to ask the question. "Define sex."

  Max's sigh reverberated down the phone line. "For fuck's sake! Is there any point? You're probably going to lie to me anyway."

  A wave of sadness hit. Max didn't seem to know what to believe. "I won't lie. But you have to ask the right questions."

  "Did any of them fuck you?"

  "Njet. No."

  "Did you fuck any of them?"

  "Njet."

  "But you gave them blow jobs?"

  "No." I could almost feel Max's confusion. "And no, they didn't give me one either, before you ask."

  "I don't understand."

  I swallowed, surprising myself with what I was prepared to admit tonight. "The important thing is the illusion. The important thing is what everyone thought was happening, not what actually did. I told you, Max. I'm not a victim." Seconds ticked by without a response from him. "You need to stay away from me."

  "Yeah, I got that message loud and clear from Dmitry tonight." There was a sound, as if he was shifting the phone from one hand to another. "I don't want to though."

  I smiled, glad he couldn't see me, the admission doing something strange to the rock I had in place of a heart. "But you will? You'll do the sensible thing for both of us. You won't make this any more difficult than it is already?"

  "I guess so."

  Then we were both silent. I could have gone to sleep, listening to the sound of his breathing. "Max?"

  "Yeah?"

  "I have to go." Then I hung up and turned off my phone. I wouldn't switch that phone on again.

  Chapter Seven

  Max

  It took a while to register that the auditorium had long since fallen silent. Since the incident culminating in the audience with Dmitry, I'd taken great pains to ensure that I left on time and always while there were still people around. Unfortunately, a few technical hitches with the equipment had warranted the need to stay behind to run a full systems check. If an engineer needed to be called in, then I'd much rather do it sooner than later, especially with rehearsals ending and the show itself starting in a few days. So far though, there didn't appear to be anything major, just a few settings that needed tweaking which was well within my capabilities to sort without external help.

  A knock sounded at the open door, and I turned to find a smiling Glenn. He waved at me despite the fact we were only a foot apart. "I was on my way out, and I saw the light. I wasn't sure if you were still here or someone had left it on."

  "I'm still here." I probably
didn't need to state the obvious, but he seemed determined to make conversation, and it was the best I had. "I'm leaving soon. I just had a couple of things I needed to do first."

  He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. "I'm on my way to a party. Wanna come?"

  "A party?" My words sounded hollow. Images of the last party I attended came to mind. Only in place of the boys I'd seen, there was a young, innocent Glenn being groped by perverted old men. "One of Dmitry's?"

  He frowned. "Dmitry? Why would he invite me to a party? He doesn't even know I exist. I said hello to him once, and he looked straight through me. I'm apparently not good enough to speak to the likes of him."

  I relaxed, surprised by how relieved I felt. It seemed like somewhere along the line, Glenn and I had gotten to the point of being friends. "Good! Keep it that way. If he ever does invite you anywhere, say no. Okay?"

  His frown grew deeper. "Okay." He shifted slightly. "So, do you wanna come or not?" A flush appeared on his cheekbones. "Oh, and I'm not inviting you to try and get off with you, if that's what you're worried about." He looked away, his cheeks going even redder. "I probably shouldn't admit this, but I had a bit of a thing for you when you first started working here." He waved a hand. "I think it's the whole dark and brooding thing you've got going on."

  He paused, and I felt like I had to fill the gap with something. "Did you? I hadn't noticed." It seemed nicer to lie rather than state that he'd made it plainly obvious. The only way it could have been any clearer was if he'd come up and announced it to my face.

  He shrugged as if he wasn't quite buying my story. "Anyway, you don't have to worry... I'm past that now. Everyone can see you've only got eyes for one man around here, and it's certainly not me."

  My head shot up, my heart starting to pound. "What do you mean?"

  Glenn grinned. "When he dances, you get this dreamy look on your face. I don't blame you. He is hot." His face twisted as if something had left a bad taste in his mouth. "So arrogant though."

  "He's not really. He's—" I stopped, realizing I'd fallen right into Glenn's trap by jumping straight to Valentin's defense. I shook my head, trying to cover my tracks as best I could. "Not that I know him."

  "Most of the dancers are going to the party, so he'll probably be there as well." Glenn winked. "Just in case that changes your mind. The party's at Jason's house. It's only a few streets away, so I was planning on walking. It'd be nice to have someone to talk to on the way, and I thought you might want to socialize with us for a change."

  I'd barely listened to the majority of what he'd said, my brain refusing to gravitate beyond the fact that Valentin might be at the party. Would he? But then, even if he was, I wasn't going to receive an enthusiastic welcome from him. I'd agreed to stay away from him. Only I hadn't expected it to be so damn difficult. He was underneath my skin. I'd told him what he wanted to hear, but I hadn't really meant it. Not for one minute. The fact he'd been honest on the phone—or I assumed he had—had only made me want him more. He was the only person I'd had sex with for the last few weeks, and the only person I wanted to. It was suddenly hard to picture myself going back to one-night stands. I didn't know what that meant. I was trying not to think about it.

  Realizing Glenn was still waiting for an answer, I affected a casual shrug. "I'm not doing anything else tonight, so I suppose there's no harm in checking out the party. You know, seeing as it's so close." I flicked off the lights in the booth and gave the equipment one last cursory scan to check I hadn't left anything on that could cause a fire hazard. "Lead the way."

  Glenn barely stopped talking all the way there. Now that he'd given up on trying to impress me, it seemed as if he was no longer tongue-tied. I found out more about him than I'd ever wanted to, including the occupations of his parents and the fact he had a cat called Harry. It therefore came as a great relief when we finally stood in front of an intercom, waiting for someone to respond and let us in. Three flights of stairs later and we were knocking on the door of an apartment. The door swung open, and a guy I recognized from the theater but had never said two words to appeared in the doorway.

  He stood back, seemingly not bothered that Glenn had turned up with an uninvited guest. I followed them both into the living room. Unless there were more people scattered around the apartment, the party guests seemed to consist of seven people, not including Jason, Glenn, and myself, who brought the total to ten. The only thing I was interested in though as I scanned the room was whether one of those seven was Valentin. My heart leaped as I spotted him. He stood in the corner of the room on his own, with no sign of the bodyguards, who were normally less than two steps away. Our gazes clashed, a huge smile crossing my face, even as his remained inscrutable.

  He levered himself away from the wall and headed in our direction, swiping a bottle of beer from the table on the way. He was wearing ripped jeans and a thin sleeveless T-shirt. Weirdly, it was the first time I'd seen him dressed in anything other than ballet tights. His feet were still bare though, and he was still fully made up, his customary blue eyeshadow matching the blue of the shirt.

  I watched him walk toward me, enjoying the way he moved, all grace and poise. He halted in front of me, his withering glance encompassing Jason and Glenn until they took the hint and moved away. At that point, his scrutiny moved onto me. "Don't smile at me, Max."

  My smile grew wider. "I can't help it. Something about you makes me smile."

  He shook his head, just the tiniest movement as if he could barely spare the effort it took. "I thought we’d agreed that you were going to stay away from me."

  I shrugged. "I came to a party that you happen to be at. It's not like I'm stalking you."

  He turned to scan the room, and I followed his gaze. Nobody was remotely interested in what we were doing or saying, so if that's what he was worried about, he had no need. The room was heavy with smoke. It seemed as if Valentin wasn't the only dancer with a nicotine habit. His head was still turned away, and I wanted his attention back on me. "Where're Mikhail and Igor? I don't see them anywhere."

  "I gave them the slip."

  I laughed at the phrasing. "The slip. That's a weird way of putting it. They're your bodyguards. They're not..." The words died in my throat as another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. "Except they're not, are they? They follow you around to keep an eye on you and report back to Dmitry." He didn't answer, but the truth was there in his eyes and in the fact that he didn't bother to deny it. He held the beer bottle out, and I took it from him. "You tell me that I have an alcohol problem, and then you offer me beer. That seems a bit of a contradiction."

  Hazel eyes lingered on my face. There was something about having Valentin Bychkov's full attention that felt like nothing else in the world. Everyone else had ceased to exist. There was only the two of us. He lifted his chin, and I waited for the put-down that was on the way. I was beginning to work out his tells: the haughty expression that came before he unleashed words designed to make people stay away from him. "I said you had an alcohol problem. I didn't say I cared about it. Drink yourself to death if you want." He was already moving away before I could respond.

  I took a seat on an otherwise empty sofa, my eyes still fixed on Valentin as he retreated to the same corner. He lit a cigarette and steadfastly refused to look my way. A couple of weeks ago, I would have taken it for the snub it was meant to be, but I was beginning to see through it. All of it. It was an act, and if he hadn't wanted me to realize that, he should never have made the mistake of being honest about his actions at Dmitry's party. He'd given himself away, proved that he was far cleverer than even I—or Dmitry—could ever have imagined. I wondered if he regretted it. Whether he wished that he could take those precious pearls of honesty back. Instead, he was going to pretend that it had never happened, obliterate that moment of weakness from his memory banks, and assume I'd fall in line.

  A vaguely familiar dancer came through the door from what I assumed had to be the kitchen. Valentin reached
out, tapping him on the elbow and motioning for him to come closer. He leaned in, speaking directly into his ear. I frowned when the dancer's head immediately turned to the side, his gaze finding mine as I watched the pair. No prizes for guessing what the topic of conversation was. The question was why. What was Valentin up to? What was he saying about me?

  I didn't have to wait too long to find out. The dancer nodded as if agreeing to something Valentin had suggested. With a small smile on his face, he came and joined me on the sofa. I still hadn't taken my eyes away from Valentin, intent on trying to work out what was going on behind that stony facade. Only when it would have been incredibly rude not to, did I manage to drag my gaze away and pay attention to my new sofa mate instead. He was dark-haired with huge gray eyes, reminding me somewhat of a pixie. I remembered him now. He was an understudy to one of the principal dancers, which explained why I hadn't seen him enough to have recognized him straight away. I had no idea what his name was though or even what letter it began with. "Hi."

  He moved closer, his thigh touching mine. "Privetik."

  I nodded, assuming that had to be Russian for hello. "Do you speak English?"

  He shook his head, shuffling even closer, his hand settling on my thigh, and a smile playing on his lips. I glanced over at Valentin, the reason he'd sent him over to me suddenly clicking into place. Hazel eyes studied me, his face purposefully blank. And then a hand on my cheek was turning my head away from Valentin and toward him at the same time as his other hand slid inside my shirt. Russian pixie lips met mine, his tongue immediately seeking entrance. He clambered onto my lap and straddled me, all without breaking contact. Worried he'd overbalance in his overexuberance, my hands moved to grasp his hips. He moved sinuously against me, his already stiffening cock rubbing against my abdomen. I kissed him back. It seemed rude not to. But I felt nothing. I was going through the motions while my brain struggled to work out what Valentin was getting out of it. Did he like to watch? Was that it? If so, he should have just said so. It wasn't as if I'd never had a threesome before.