The Dance Off

by Ally Blake

  Ryder shifted on his seat, and struggled to find an innocuous change of subject so that he might get himself back under some semblance of control.

  “Were you always a dancer?”

  “Since the moment I came out of my mamma’s womb,” she said. “Family business.”

  Ryder stretched out the hand he’d bruised on the roof of his father’s car and wondered at the kind of relationship where a child wanted to follow in a parent’s footsteps. He nudged his chin towards the oldest photograph on the mantel—the image of a rake-thin dancer in full ballet regalia, her delicate face twisted in some tragic countenance. “That’s her?”

  “That was her. Before I was born. I’ve seen old videos,” she qualified with a wry smile. “She danced like a whisper, soft, smooth, so quiet you’d never hear her land.”

  Nadia looked at the picture a little longer, blinked and sank her chin into her palm.

  “Were you ever a ballerina too?”

  She bolted upright at that, hand on her belly, mouth agape. “Good Lord, no! Do I look like a ballerina?”

  What she looked was downright fit and lush and good enough to eat.

  She let her stomach go, not that it went anywhere. “It takes a very particular kind of tenacity to make it in ballet, to have that level of control over your body. Over your whole life. Which is why Mum’s ballet career was over the moment she fell pregnant with me. As for me, I like food too much.”

  Nadia waggled her eyebrows as she took a gulp of her wine.

  Ryder quietly pieced together a relationship that might not have been so close after all. A mother and daughter living in the same city, yet not seemingly in touch. A mother who’d never revealed paternity. A mother who tangled the ending of her career and the birth of her daughter. And he shifted the conversation sideways.

  “So if not ballet, what’s your...speciality? Is that the right term?”

  Nadia’s mouth quirked and this time when she sank her chin onto her upturned palm the move was silken, slippery, sexy as hell. “I’m...well rounded.”

  “Learnt from Mum’s mistake, then.”

  Nadia’s laughter was scandalised. But she sank back into her chair with wicked wonder in her eyes. “I guess so. I’ve never been typecast, never been tied down to one style. I worked clubs in LA. A few stage shows in Dallas. My first solos were in a burlesque company off Broadway that was sold out for months.”

  Her gaze went to the mantel. Ryder’s followed. “Seems a long way from ballet.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. Especially considering Mum was working there at the time.”

  Ryder’s eyebrows nudged up his forehead. “Well, I’ll be.”

  While Nadia’s eyes remained glued to the photo. “She’d always worked in America, but she had to leave her ballet company when she was pregnant with me and she came back to Melbourne. To my grandmother—picture Mum but humourless and grim.”

  Glancing at the photograph of Nadia’s mother, Ryder thought it didn’t take much picturing at all.

  “Mum tried to stick it out once I was born. But when the dance calls...” Her fingers fluttered upwards in a move that seemed more of an impression than a natural movement of her own. “Then the life of a showgirl became too good to turn her back on. The hotel living. The rich men. The partying that reminded her she was still young, and helped her forget what she’d left behind...” Her eyes glazed for a second before she hauled herself back. “So I danced, and trained, worked my ass off and made it overseas. And then I got the call to work the burlesque club Mum had made her home. It was the first time we’d ever worked together, and I couldn’t have cared if I was dancing Bollywood if it meant I was spending time with her. As for actually dancing with her?” She let go a long slow whistle. “It was amazing. For a little while. I was my own mother’s protégé. We even had one act together, The Kent Sisters.”

  Ryder raised an eyebrow. But Nadia just grinned.

  “I know. Hilarious, right? But despite that it was everything I’d ever dreamed of being since I first stuck my hands in the air and did a twirl.”

  “Since you’re here, as is she, I take it things didn’t last.”

  Nadia’s gaze swung back to him as if coming from a long way away. She leant forward and cradled the glass of wine with both hands. “I got my first solo.”

  “Ah.”

  The wine was gone in a gulp. “And that was when she made it clear every job I’d ever been offered had only been after a phone call from her. That my name, her name, was the only reason I was anything at all.”

  Her mouth kicked into a wry smile, but Ryder caught the flash of hurt behind it. The disappointment. The disenchantment. He recognised the moment when you realised the parent you looked up to your whole life turned out to be, oh, so flawed.

  “Anyway,” she said, shaking out the funk that had settled over her, “after a particularly punishing day, I secretly auditioned for Sky High—at the last second using my grandmother’s maiden name—and lo and behold got a place. Within the week I’d moved to Vegas, to the first real job that I’d ever been sure I’d got on my own. Not only that, it changed my life. Like I’d been dancing in shoes a size too small all my life and never known it. I’d found my bliss.”

  She finished with a soft sigh, a wistful and faraway gaze in her eyes. Then she looked around, seemed to realise where she was—or more precisely where she wasn’t.

  Her laughter was glib as she said, “I’m sorry. What was the question again?”

  “I think you answered it.” And then some. “I have just one more question. About your mother actually.”

  A flash of warning licked behind her eyes.

  “She still pole dancing today?”

  Nadia’s laugh burst from her with such suddenness, such vivacious luxury, she near fell off her chair. “Ryder, if you knew her, you’d know how funny—I mean how far off the mark that was. A big Aussie mining magnate saw her on stage not long after I left New York, swept her off her pointy-toed feet and took her back home with him. She’s retired. This time I’m the one who came home in disgrace.”

  “Back up a step now, Miss Nadia. Now we’re getting to the good stuff. What did you do to disgrace yourself? Rob a bank? Sell state secrets? Arabesque when you were meant to...anti-arabesque?”

  Her lush mouth quirked into a sensuous smile, before her face scrunched up in what looked like embarrassment. This was turning out to be a day of revelations. “It’s nothing nearly so dramatic or exciting.”

  He waved a hand for her to go on.

  “I broke up with my boyfriend, quit my job, and fled.”

  And somehow the idea of a boyfriend, a man, being this close, closer, to her, ever, made Ryder’s hackles rise more than the thought of her making off with an armoured car. “Poor boyfriend.”

  Her cheeks pinked even as she smiled that sexy, exuberant smile of hers. “Missing out on all this? You bet poor boyfriend. But you know what? In all honesty?”

  His eyes roved over her, the beautiful bone structure, the sultry dark eyes, the sensual way she moved. “Hit me.”

  “I’ve spent the past year convinced I left because of a relationship that went embarrassingly south. But I’ve been dancing professionally without a break since I was sixteen. I wonder if it wasn’t really a blessing in disguise, if my body told me this was my chance to get away from it all for a while so that it could recuperate. If my ego saw the chance to eke out some time to just grow up.”

  She shrugged and sat back in her chair, her nose buried in the empty wineglass in her hand.

  While Ryder couldn’t quite feel his centre on the chair any more.

  Because somehow things had...shifted. As if in the daylight, in her unassuming little flat, the normality of it all, having an actual honest conversation, caught at him, raw and arresting. Here sat a be
autiful woman, slightly broken, but rich with substance and grit. And with his feet no longer pressing into the cracked old floor, there was nothing stopping him from perusing what his instincts had long since been screaming for him to do.

  “Nadia.”

  “Yes, Ryder.”

  “You look plenty grown up to me.”

  The faraway gaze came back into sharp focus and her mouth curled into a smile. “I can assure you I am. All the way grown up.”

  And in the way that mattered most to Ryder, she was. What you saw was what you got with Nadia Kent. And there’d never been any question that what he saw he wanted.

  “You missed some sauce,” he said, eyes honed in on her lush mouth.

  Her tongue flicked out to swipe the corner of her mouth. “Better?”

  Better than what? “Still there,” he lied, then lifted himself from his chair and leant over the table.

  Her eyes darkened. “Ryder Fitzgerald. Not two hours ago you promised to be a good boy.”

  “And inside the dance studio, I’m yours to do with as you please. But I never made any promises about my behaviour elsewhere. And you never asked me to.”

  With a flare in her eyes that told him all he needed to know, Nadia hopped onto her knees on her chair, and bent forward, met him halfway. “Care to help?”

  “Hell yeah,” he said, leaning the last inch to cover her mouth with his.

  He knew she’d be warm, knew she knew what she was doing; what he didn’t expect was the complete shock of pleasure that knocked against his insides like a pinball gone rogue.

  Her hand lifted to his cheek, her fingernails scraping his unshaven chin, and he had to grip the table edges to keep himself from taking them both down in a heap.

  She pulled away, leant her forehead against his a moment, then lifted her head to look into his eyes, her irises swallowed by the pupils. “All fixed?”

  He breathed in deep, out hard and said, “Not even close.”

  With that, she was on the table, crawling across the thing as it shook beneath her, the plates and cutlery bouncing to the floor with a crash. If she didn’t care, neither did he.

  He hauled her against him, light as a feather, sinewy and soft, every movement pure grace, pure sex. No sweet kisses, all voracious hunger.

  She tasted of lemon and honey and contradiction and heat. And her hands were all over him. Tearing at his clothes till he was naked from the waist up. Running through his hair. Scraping down his back till he growled from the pure deep pleasure of her touch.

  Fearless, she was, and with a mouth that drove him wild.

  Pulsing with a craving he could barely contain, he whipped her top over her head, her tight belly twitching beneath his palms, then her small breasts perfect in his mouth. So sweet, so firm, so sensual. The power in her warm, supple body was killing him.

  Mouths open, hungry, a hand at his neck, she dragged him down. As she arched into him her hands found his zip, freed him. She enclosed her palm around him and slid down the length till he had to brace his feet so hard into the floor he saw stars.

  She freed him only to wriggle out of her jeans, her body shuffling against him. His blood rushed so hard through his veins he felt as if his very cells were reconstructing, like some damn werewolf at the full moon. Man, he wanted her, with a ferocity he couldn’t remember ever feeling.

  “Got something for the big guy?” she asked.

  “Wallet,” he managed, “back pocket.”

  With a sure hand she found his wallet, taking a moment to caress his backside while she was there. The woman was wholly corrupting, whisking him to the very brink of desperation.

  Once she’d freed the square foil from within she tossed his wallet over her shoulder, flicked the condom packet between them, grinning, then tore the thing open with her teeth. Then, dark bottomless eyes on his, she sheathed him. Slowly. Torturously slowly. And thoroughly. Wow. Her fingers traced every inch, and then some.

  Her hands moved around his thighs, tugged at a few hairs, sending shards of pleasure and pain through every nerve, then her legs wrapped around him, tight and strong.

  He nudged her centre, her slick heat near sending him over the edge. Her eyes fluttered closed, her mouth sliding open on a sigh, her brow furrowing as if he wasn’t the only one teetering all too close to the edge of eruption. And then with a gifted flick of her hips she enveloped him, deep and tight and gorgeous.

  From there Ryder’s vision collapsed till it was the size of the table, everything else a red blur. His ears rang with nothing but the thud of his blood, with her gasping breaths. The scent of her, the feel of her, the sensual glory of her filling him from the inside and spilling out of him with a release so intense it near bled him dry.

  He came to from wherever he’d gone, and realised his arm actually shook as it kept him from collapsing on top of her. He opened his eyes and his heart shook right along with it. The woman was an exotic mess. Her pale skin pink and shimmering with sweat, strands of her dark hair having fallen from her bun and spilling over the tabletop, her mouth open dragging in breath, her eyes dark pools of desire.

  And he realised with mortification he’d been so far over the edge of need he had no idea if she’d been right there with him. “Did you...?”

  “Not yet.” And she clenched herself around him with a strength that made his head spin.

  She kicked a leg over his shoulder and rocked, her eyes clenching shut, her mouth open wide as she took in short sharp gasps of air. He had the feeling she knew exactly what she was doing, that she could have got there without any help from him at all.

  But that wasn’t going to happen. Not on his watch.

  Ryder swore and braced himself on two arms. He felt himself harden inside her, pressed deeper and smiled as her eyes flew open. Then, holding her leg in place, finding it flexible enough to handle the stretch, he slowly lowered himself to bury his face in her neck, drinking in the scent of her. Kissing his way down her neck, her fine collarbone. He traced her knee, ran his thumb down her inner thigh, found her centre right as his mouth found her breast.

  He plunged deeper and she cried out, gripping the table with one white-knuckled hand. The other scraping down his back hard enough to hurt.

  His tongue traced her nipple, desire knotting his insides. He swirled his tongue as he swirled his thumb, and felt her tremble, and fracture, and melt. Heat slid through him at her acquiescence, at her trust, wiping out all but instinct, pleasure, her.

  And when she stilled, when her body contracted around him, as her body trembled and rose and lifted and hovered once more on the verge of collapse he plunged as deep as he dared, his own second release coming from so deep inside he roared till the building shook.

  Spent, he collapsed on top of her, her hand sank into his hair, the other flopped over her eyes, and together they lay there until their breaths eased back to near normal.

  She moved first, and insanely he felt himself twitch inside her. Enough, he urged himself. Any more and the rubber would be irrelevant.

  He pulled himself free of her, and his body felt instantly bereft. How soon it was used to her shape, her scent, the feel of her wrapped tight around him. How soon it wanted all that and more. Not sure that his legs would carry him just yet, he perched on the edge of the table.

  Distractedly, he noted that the floor was a mess: broken plates, a fork end up into a crack in the wood, sauce oozing under the cupboard. But he didn’t have the energy to care.

  It hadn’t been sex as he’d known it—it had been survival of the fittest. And he wondered what it meant that they’d both lived to tell the tale.

  Nadia pulled herself to sitting and leant against his back, laying a string of warm kisses along his shoulder blade. “Wow.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Her laughter tripped over his sk
in, then she slid from her table, stepped over the mess, till she was standing, naked, in front of him. Lean hips, beautiful thighs, small breasts with the most perfect pink nipples, a belly he wanted to rub his cheek against.

  “Shower?” she asked. “Not much hot water I’m afraid, so we’d have to share.”

  A hair band between her teeth, she lifted her lean arms to retie her hair back into a chaotic bun and simply awaited his answer. Not an ounce of self-consciousness in the move. Just a woman who knew herself, liked herself, enjoyed the pleasure her body brought her.

  For a man who’d spent a lifetime striving, soaring, hitting every pinnacle he’d ever aimed towards yet never reaching that illusive plateau of fulfilment, her effortless self-satisfaction was soporific, sinking into his bones like a drug.

  “Coming?” she asked, a kick to her lush mouth.

  Ryder didn’t answer; his voice would have been little more than a hoarse croak as it was. Instead he lifted her up, threw her over his shoulder, her raucous laughter bouncing off the walls.

  Then with a kiss to her gorgeous backside Ryder said, “Point the way, woman.”

  She did, with a neatly pointed toe.

  SIX

  The Sunday sun shone upon the breezy St Kilda bistro. The chips were salty and hot, the drinks icy cold, and as Sam chatted away about how her wedding plans were coming along Nadia tried not to flinch every time Sam mentioned her brother’s name.

  It was less than twelve hours since the tryst in her apartment, and she could still feel Ryder in the ache of her muscles, smell him on her skin, see him every time she blinked her damn eyes.

  “I tried to keep it small, you know,” Sam continued. “But everything seems to be spinning further and further out of our control.”

  “It’s your wedding day, Sam,” said Nadia, shaking herself into the present. Though she wasn’t sure how she could help; as a kid the only time she’d imagined herself in a white dress was if it was a tutu. “Let that bossy streak of yours run wild!”

  “Yeah,” said Sam, rolling her fey grey eyes before they faded flat, and Nadia had a feeling she knew why.