by Ally Blake
“Keys?” he demanded.
“Back pocket.”
His hand slid over her butt cheek until he found the necessary. Then, while she held on tight, laughing raggedly, breathlessly, by that stage, Ryder made his way to the door that led to her apartment and struggled manfully to unlock the thing, practically tearing the bars from their hinges as he let them inside.
And then Nadia’s laughter disappeared as—compared to the bright shimmery light outside—they hit relative darkness. The naked globe at the top of the skinny stairs swept shadows across their faces, and the sounds of their intermingled breaths echoed off the old wallpapered walls.
Yet, even then there was no denying the hunger in Ryder’s gaze.
Or the sudden dazzling wish in her heart that somehow it didn’t have to end.
Nadia closed her eyes tight against the daze and kissed him. Out of sight of the rain and sky, away from prying eyes, just the two of them in the private contained space, the intensity of the kiss heightened. Deepened. Bringing with it an ache from where the wish had been born.
Nadia wriggled from Ryder’s arms, and proceeded to tear her clothes from her body. Her frustration only built when it turned out the rain had stuck the cotton to her like glue.
“Oh, come on!” she cried out when her bra strap got caught on the strap of her top and held her like a straightjacket.
Ryder lifted her bodily till she was a stair above. Then, face level with hers, he placed his big hands on her bare waist. Her muscles leapt at the skin-on-skin contact. His thumbs circled the edge of her ribs, his dark eyes following. She couldn’t have been more glad that his eyes were anywhere but on hers, as there was no way she could hide the foolish feelings rushing about inside her, and no way she wanted him to see.
Fingers spanning her ribs, he rolled the layers of wet cotton up her body, over her breasts, and away. Her relieved sigh swept up the stairs, but was soon cut short as Ryder found her bare breast and took it in his mouth. His hot tongue swirled about the cool peak and her vision turned black.
With a groan that rocked the walls he arched her back as he took her other breast in his mouth. She trembled so much with the pleasure of it all she was very much afraid she might cry. She emptied her lungs on a long juddering breath and gave herself over to it. To him. To the absorption of his touch. The sexy shadowy darkness of the stairwell intensifying every shift, every sound, every slide of skin on skin.
When he lowered her to the stairs, she braced herself on her elbows. He tore her jeans down her thighs, taking her ballet flats with them, leaving her butt naked, while he was still fully clothed.
Before she even had a chance to rectify that, Ryder fell to his knees, pressed hers apart and took her in his mouth, his tongue, his hot lips, his not so steady breath driving her to an absolute craze until everything inside her spun out of control, and all she was, all she felt, was wave after wave of hot pleasure as it swept into a great aching that scooped her hollow. And just when she was sure she couldn’t take it any more, the world stilled, lifted, swelled and splintered into a million points of light.
Body like rubber, mind complete pulp, her name came to her, the sound rolling over her skin like a caress, drawing her back to the present to find Ryder poised over her, his dark eyes burning into hers.
“Nadia,” he said. That one word making her feel so much. Too much.
Closing her eyes against all it meant, she slid a hand behind his neck and pulled him to her. Vanishing into his kiss, his touch, his latent heat. This man who’d thought of her, waited for her, worried about her, and hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her long enough to make it up one tiny flight of stairs...
She slid a leg along his to find his pants were gone. And with a smile she arched away from the stairs, wrapped her legs about the man and took him. Deep, hard. Her turn to cry out his name as he once again swept away every effort to keep him at emotional arm’s length and once again sent her world crashing about her.
As they came back to earth Nadia held Ryder’s head in the crook of her arm, breathing in when he breathed in, and staring at the paint peeling off the ceiling a half a floor above. As only now lying in the quiet with the big man’s breaths easing over her skin, making her feel as if she were pure energy, barely bound, she knew where the “new raw emotion” the producers had raved about had come from. How she’d been able to “leave herself vulnerable” for the first time in her professional career.
But bar a malevolent miracle, or her ex having more influence than he deserved, she was going to Vegas. And soon. Her initial contract would be for six months, with an option to extend it out to two years if the show was a success. And it would be a success. Sky High was a phenomenon that showed no signs of waning.
And yet for a second, she let herself wonder...what if? What if she didn’t get the job? What if they actually had a chance to take this thing for a spin and see where it might lead?
But a second was all it lasted. After Sam’s wedding there would be no more dance lessons to keep them together. And the decision to remain so after that had been made before they’d even met. Because Ryder had been nothing but honest about his limitations as he saw them. About how his father’s indiscriminate behaviour had burned him to the thought of for ever. And even while Sam claimed he held on tight to the things that mattered to him, despite the spark, despite the reverence in his touch and unquenched hunger in his eyes, despite the way he saw into the deep dark heart of her like nobody else she’d ever met, he’d never asked anything of her.
Not because she didn’t matter; she just didn’t matter enough.
And she’d been there, taken whatever scraps she was fed in the hopes of being loved. But something had shifted inside her these past few weeks. And she’d never choose to let herself not matter again.
Ryder lifted himself with a groan, his voice drugged, slow, deep. “Can you walk?”
“I’ve been known to.”
They peeled themselves off the stairs, straightening as much clothing as possible.
She held out her hand, and after a moment Ryder took it, curling his big warm hand around hers before taking the stairs two at a time to lead the way. And when her heart thumped against her ribs at the feel of him, the sight of him, the knowledge that one day she’d wake up and know she’d never see him again, a little piece of her heart broke away from the whole.
And never, not once, for any other reason, did she wish harder that the Sky High gig would be through, and soon.
NINE
Ryder didn’t realise that he and Nadia had cruised into a kind of routine until the night it came to a halt.
The unions were threatening a city-wide walkout right when his latest project was at a crucial stage, and it had taken his team every ounce of charm to keep the worksite actually working when tension ran high enough to bring the whole thing crashing down on all their heads. But even as he’d headed back to his quiet apartment for a shower before he had to head to class, all he’d wanted to do was go to her.
Even considering the seismic scene on the stairs leading to her apartment, the thing he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind was the volatile feeling that had erupted inside him when after few impossible days apart he’d seen her appear out of the mist, dancing in the rain.
He pressed the door open; the thought of catching her swinging from some dangerous contraption had him already harder than a beam.
He slowed when he saw she was already with someone—a skinny brunette he knew all too well. “Sam?”
“Hey, bro!” said Sam, a foot up on the barre, pretending to stretch like a knobbly-kneed ballerina.
“Hey, Ryder,” Nadia called out, her back to him as she fiddled with the stereo.
Brow tightening, Ryder dumped his bag on the pink lounge. “What is she doing here?”
“Rehearsing,�
� Nadia said, flicking him a glance that was far too perfunctory for his liking. “On the big day you’ll be dancing with her, not me. So we thought the time had come for you to practise together.”
Ryder would have bet his right elbow there was far more Nadia in that decision than “we”.
Sam ambled over to him, bumping him with a hip as she passed to grab a drink. “What she’s too kind to say is I want to make sure you’re not going to make a complete fool of yourself before I sign off on this thing.”
Momentarily distracted by Sam’s outfit—hot-pink leg warmers and an obscene green G-string leotard over shiny silver tights; she looked as if she’d stepped straight out of an eighties aerobics video—when he looked to Nadia there was gloom in her gaze. Though compared to his sister a disco ball would have seemed sinister.
Nadia clapped loudly, snapping him into reality. “Warm up!”
And Ryder gave himself a mental shake. Having a joint rehearsal was completely fair. And after an hour of the closest thing to living hell—dancing with his G-string-clad little sister—he’d have earned himself a trip to heaven.
Nadia took them through a few twists and bends and loosening exercises, then asked them to drop into a standing forward bend. He and Sam groaned and barely got their fingertips to their knees, while Nadia folded gracefully in half, the tips of her dark waves brushing the dusty floor.
“I’ve never been able to do that,” Sam groaned.
Ryder squeezed his eyes shut when the thought that slipped into his mind was, Poor Ben.
“Practice, my sweet,” said Nadia, not an ounce of strain in her voice as she lifted herself up straight. “After about the age of three being bendy only comes with practice.”
Bendy, twisty, tricky, intoxicating, Ryder thought, catching Nadia’s gaze before it slid past him and away. Okay, that time he knew he wasn’t projecting. Definite shadows therein. And while that darkness did wicked things to his composure as it always did, he had to fight the urge to grab her by her bendy elbow and drag her to a quiet corner and ask her what the hell was going on.
Oblivious to the undercurrents, Sam groaned again as she pulled herself upright. “You’ve really been dancing since you were three?”
“Yep,” said Nadia.
“So I’m a tad past it, then,” said Sam. “Becoming a pro-dancer, that is.”
Nadia laughed. “You’ve got a sudden hankering to go from standing ovations one day to in-your-face rejections the next?”
“I’d never looked at it that way. Harsh. How do you do it?”
“It’s not so bad. I’m lucky I went in with my eyes wide open.”
“Why’s that?” Sam was bouncing from foot to foot by that stage, rolling her shoulders as if she were about to enter a prize fight, not practise a modified sway.
But Ryder only saw it from the corner of his eye as his focus was absorbed by Nadia, who looked as if she’d been jabbed with a cattle prod. And Ryder realised with a slow dawning that she must never have talked about this side of her life with Sam. Yet she had with him. The alpha wolf in him roared to life.
“Mum was a dancer,” Nadia finally answered, staring at the remote as if it held the answer to life, the universe and everything. “And should therefore probably have been my cautionary tale. Alas, I caught the bug and that was the end for me.”
With the alpha roar hampering his thought processes, Ryder slowly caught up. Something had definitely happened. In the hours since he’d seen her last, something had knocked her back into the darkness. Something that had made her bring Sam along as a shield. Ryder took a step her way, but whether by accident or design Sam bounced smack bang in front of him.
“Well, you’re in the right city for it now,” said Sam. “Melbourne is one of the most culturally rich cities in the world. There must be more work for a talent like you than you can bat away with a stick!”
Which was the moment Ryder realised he’d been the only oblivious one in the room.
His urge was now to drag Sam into a corner to ask her to explain herself. But Nadia’s gaze had already zeroed in on his sister; his sensitive sister who didn’t cope well with change, but who was also struggling with self-determination. Was that why she was doing her all to get him and Nadia together? Nadia who was in turn using Sam as a blockade.
And as the two women in his life stared one another down, hearts on their sleeves, his feet turned to lead. As for the first time in memory he didn’t know what to do.
Nadia didn’t have the same problem. She walked over to Sam, took her by the hips and spun her to face the windows; using one as a mirror, she pressed Sam’s shoulders back and lifted her arms into a dance hold. “I’m going to miss you like crazy too, Sammy Sam. But I can’t stay here. Even if I don’t get the Sky High job, there’ll be another. And it will be somewhere else other than here.”
“Why?” Sam asked, tears springing into her eyes.
Nadia leant her chin on Sam’s shoulder. “Because while this has been lovely, and wonderful, and curative, it’s time for me to get back to my real life.”
Sam’s mouth twisted as she looked at Nadia’s eyes in the reflection. Then Nadia gave her a squeezing hug from behind and said, “Okay?”
Which unbelievably made Sam laugh and say, “Okay.”
While all Ryder could think was, She’s leaving. She’s really leaving. And she’s started saying goodbye.
* * *
Nadia sat perched on the edge of the pink velvet chaise and simply breathed.
It had taken a good half-hour before things finally settled into the groove she’d been desperate for when she’d called Sam that afternoon and all but begged her to come. A conversation she’d had about fifteen minutes after getting off the phone with her mum.
Determination giving her wings, she’d called to tell her mother about the awesome audition. She’d couched it in wanting Claudia to know she might be leaving the country soon, in case she, you know, actually cared. When that had made little discernible impression on the woman Nadia had turned into a babbling idiot—they loved me, they really loved me! And it had only gone downhill from there.
Nadia dropped her head into her hands and groaned under her breath. She was a lost-effing-cause. She could dance without her mother’s acceptance; Ryder had been right about that. But it seemed she still couldn’t live without it.
Sky High or no Sky High, the only way she could see to cut herself off from the passive-aggressive abuse for good was to go away, far away, and this time to stay.
And no matter how appealing, how enticing the possibilities that had barreled through her after Ryder had come to her after the audition, all the glowing what-ifs in the world couldn’t stand up to that one great truth.
Laughter spilled from the centre of the room, cutting through the dulcet sound of Norah Jones. Nadia followed the sound to where Sam was in Ryder’s arms, their dark heads tilted towards one another. They laughed softly as they danced, Sam instructing, Ryder telling her to shut the hell up and let him lead, eyes mostly on one another’s feet.
Not a subtle bone in that girl’s body, Nadia thought, her heart giving a little squeeze. Sweet though, what she’d been trying to do. Bittersweet. As for her brother...
Nadia’s breath lodged in her throat as Ryder’s eyes found hers, and not for the first time. As he moved confidently through the steps, he couldn’t seem to keep from looking her way. Every glance forcing her to add a new brick to the wall she was rebuilding around her heart. Because he’d taken a piece of it the other day, turning up after her audition as he had.
But she couldn’t hope to really make the very most of this next phase of her life clinging to the previous. She knew better than anyone.
The song ended and Ryder twirled Sam out to the end of one hand before twirling her back again, Sam’s adorable laughter filling the studio till i
t tinkled off the windows. One of the bricks around her heart crumbled and fell.
When Ryder wrapped his arms around his little sister and dropped a kiss atop her head, it took everything Nadia had not to crumble completely at the tenderness of it all. The adoration. Intimate, private, true. It was like a foreign language to Nadia, and yet in that moment she felt a funny flicker of comprehension. As if she just needed to tilt herself on the right angle and she’d understand it all.
And then, when Ryder’s gaze once more landed on hers, and he smiled just for her, like a flash bomb blooming from the centre of her heart and all the way out to her extremities, she understood all too well. She did everything in her power to contain the ominous surge, employing every formidable muscle, every bullet-proof nerve, every form of self-protection she had in her potent arsenal.
They didn’t make a dent. The light of her tender feelings for Ryder filled her till it all but lifted her from the chair.
Her heart continued to beat. Her lungs continued to breathe. Yet she knew everything had changed. Only with the familiar dull ache of her messy conversation with her mother still riding her, and with no example of what the hell to do about these wholly new feelings flinging about inside her, all she could do was rewrap herself in the scattered remains of her fortitude, and hold on tight.
Her throat felt raw when she called out, “That’s a wrap, kids.”
“But we have ten more minutes!” said Sam, the adrenalin of the dance still pouring through her.
“I do believe Miss Nadia intends for us to quit while we’re all ahead.”
Nadia flinched as Ryder’s deep sonorous voice slid inside her as if he had some kind of inside track. Some door only he knew how to open. She wished she could just shut it down, but she hadn’t a clue where the opening was.
“That’s right, kid!” she said, standing and wrapping an arm about Sam’s shoulders. “You done good. So scat.”
With a sigh, and a twirl, Sam gathered her things, gave Nadia a kiss on the cheek, informed them Ben had been waiting in the car below the whole time, then disappeared out the door, leaving Nadia alone with Ryder after all.
