“Dan!”
“Oh my God, will you guys stop?” If I cringe much harder I’m never going to be able to straighten my neck again. “Why are we even talking about this? Why can’t we just talk about the weather? Or how about how great I am at dancing? That sounds like it might be a relevant subject at a ballet after party, right?”
“Do you know anything about ballet, Tom?” asks Mom.
“Uh, almost as much as Milos knows about English Literature,” says Tom, looking distracted.
“The difference is he’s actually a good student,” I say, but Tom tugs my sleeve.
“I think your director is trying to catch your eye,” he says, inclining his head. I can see Madame nodding seriously in conversation, and as someone moves aside I spot a head of blonde hair. Levonian swivels her falcon head about, spots me and beckons.
“Did you hear Lucie McLean is here?” says Tom, and that’s all the encouragement my mother needs. She almost shoves me across the room.
“Get over there, or you’re no son of mine.”
“I’m going. Wish me luck. And be nice to Tom.”
I approach. Levonian is short, but Lucie McLean is tiny, a barely five-foot ballerina doll with bright, brown eyes and skin so perfect it hardly looks real.
“Here he is,” says Levonian. “Our turbulent Tybalt.”
I stick out my hand and babble a greeting, trying my best to stay cool but it doesn’t work. As soon as I open my mouth I’m gushing about how I can’t believe she’s here.
“It’s nice to be here,” she says. “Such a change of pace from Boston.” Her English accent does nothing to dispel the illusion of a fairy princess. “You are very charismatic, aren’t you? I couldn’t take my eyes off you when you were on stage. And your death…”
“Yeah, I worked through that one in my own way.”
“It was horrifying,” she says, and Levonian preens over her advice finding the mark.
“Thank you, I think.”
La Levonian murmurs an apology and recedes into the crowd, leaving me alone with Lucie, who takes advantage of a break in the conversation to snag a couple of drinks from a passing waiter. “So,” she says. “I hear you’re just as dramatic when you’re not on stage?”
“That’s me. The bad boy of ballet.”
“Yeah, I think Sergei Polunin already has that locked down.”
I’ve committed to fronting this out now, so I may as well go all the way. “Please. He just flounced out of a couple of productions. I got into some weird ex-boyfriend love triangle and nearly got flattened by a car.”
She laughs, and my knees almost stop shaking for the first time since we were introduced to each other. “Were you hurt?” she asks.
It’s not a simple question, but once again my mouth is running ahead of my brain and I hear myself say exactly the wrong thing. “I could probably stand to rest my knee, to tell you the truth.”
Lucie McLean nods. “Good.”
“Good?” Did I get the answer right all along?”
“You’re truthful,” she says. “I like that. You should always own up to injury, before it owns you.”
“I do. I will. Absolutely.” I’m nodding like a bobble head in the back of a car.
“That’s good to know, because I’d like to see a lot more of you.”
Oh my God. “Are you serious?”
“Technically you could stand to be tighter,” she says. “You looked to be struggling with a couple of the fouettes in the solo–”
“–that’s the knee, yeah. I’m usually smoother–”
“–but you can teach technique. What you can’t teach is what you have – star quality, the instincts to get under the skin of a role.”
I think I’m going to pass out. I can smell Tom’s cologne nearby and I can’t help wondering if I’m dreaming, the scent of him drifting under my nose as he rolls over in bed beside me. The whole world has that ecstatic oh-my-God-is-this-really-happening feeling that that I will now always and forever associate with the first times I got naked and freaky with Tom. Strange, exciting, and too good to be true.
“Would you be open to traveling?” Lucie McLean says, and I have no idea how I’m still standing. I reach out and grab Tom, who is hovering uncertainly at the edge of the conversation.
“Oh God, yes,” I say, dragging him towards me once again. “Totally. Actually my boyfriend is down with that, so it could be perfect. He’s from England, too.”
“Perfect?” says Tom, and winds an arm around my waist. Is this the first time I’ve introduced him to someone as my boyfriend? It must be; he’s lit up like a Christmas tree.
“This is Lucie McLean,” I say, and he takes her hand with a whole lot more chill than I could manage at a moment like this.
“Hi, I’m Tom. I’m–”
“–English,” she says. “Nice to meet a fellow fog-breather. So you two are an item?”
Tom squeezes my waist. “Very much so,” he says, giving me an adoring look.
“I was just telling Milos that there might be some traveling in his future.”
“That sounds like fun,” he says. “I’ve missed home, actually. A distance thing, more than anything else, I think. I miss being able to jump on the Eurostar and be in Paris in a couple of hours.”
“Tell me about it. Eight hour flights, and that’s just the east coast.”
Paris. London. Florence. How is it that he can make the whole world seem bigger and brighter just by being in it? I’m floating, bobbing in the wake of their conversation.
“…I know, I miss London. I never thought I’d say that…”
“…you hate it?”
“No, I love it, even the stupidly shaped buildings and the ridiculously priced everything, but I moved there from Dorchester when I was a student, and I think I was nearly thirty before I finally got over the culture shock. To go from Thomas Hardy country to London…”
“Oh, yeah. That’s got to be a change of pace.”
“Fewer sheep, for a start.”
Someone catches Lucie’s eye from across the room. She’s in demand. “Excuse me,” she says, turning back to me. “But let me get your number. I think we have a lot to talk about. And rest that knee.”
“I will,” I say, still not sure if I’m dreaming all of this. “I will, I promise. Thank you. Thank you so much.”
*
Tom blindfolds me in the back of the taxi home. Apparently this is a new part of ‘slow’ that I hadn’t heard about before.
“Mind the step,” he says, as I navigate the front door. “Don’t trip.”
“I can’t afford to hurt myself. You know that, right? You were there when Lucie McLean got my phone number.”
“It’s all right,” he says, and the door closes behind me. Tom turns me round, toward the bedroom. “I’ve got you. Trust me.”
“Is this some kind of kinky shit? Because I’m down for some of that.” Early on – before I even learned to suck his dick – I told him I liked it rough now and again, so he spanked me lightly and then ate my glowing, tingling ass until I came so hard it splattered under my chin. I feel my cock thicken in my pants at the memory. He was always such a generous, dirty-minded lover, and I can’t wait to get my hands on him. We’re in the bedroom doorway now. I can smell clean linen and something sweet, and the temptation to tear off the blindfold is almost overwhelming.
“Here we are,” says Tom, and uncovers my eyes.
The bedroom is full of flowers, vases of tulips everywhere. The lights are low and the bed is scattered with what look like silk petals and candy, only when I step closer I see that the red, candy-looking things are condoms, and foil packages of flavored lube. In the middle of the bed is a big black rubber dick and balls, with a gift ribbon tied around the bottom of the shaft. I can’t help it; I start laughing.
“Welcome home, darling,” he says, kissing the nape of my neck.
“Tom, what the fuck is that?”
“It’s a birthday present. Do you lik
e it? Note the way they’ve sculpted the balls to make a large, flared base.”
I don’t know whether I’m laughing or crying any more. It seems like a million years since I crashed into his office with a vibrator up my butt. We’ve been through so much since then. We’ve fought and fucked and fallen so far in love that I can hardly see straight. “There’s champagne in the fridge,” he says. “Want some?”
“No. I want you.”
Finally. I kiss him like I’m starved for it, and he grabs my ass, pulling me in. He’s already hard and I fumble under his shirt, scrabbling for his fly. The touch of his skin feels like a prize I’ve been waiting forever to win. I get him unbuttoned enough to delve into that welcome, sweaty warmth and find – where I would usually find hair – nothing but smooth skin. He’s shaved. I moan in pleasure and surprise, and he moans right back into my kiss. Oh God, he’s silky and hot and unbelievably hard and I want him in my mouth right now. No time to even undress. I kneel, yanking his pants down as I go. His gently curved dick is so damn beautiful, his hairless balls tight in my hand. As I swallow him, his hand on my head, he lets out a soft, sexy noise. It’s barely a catch in the back of his throat but it’s so rare for him to make a sound that it sends fresh rush of blood to my cock. I want more.
I reach across the bed for the lube. Tom stumbles and lands with his ass on the edge of the bed, and there’s a brief kicky scramble as I strip him from the waist down. “Oh God,” he says, his heel in the carpet, his belly already rising and falling with gasping breaths. His eyes dark and hot, his mouth already red from kisses. “Oh God, please.”
His thighs open like a door as I lean forward, slicking the lube behind his balls as I suck. He whimpers as I go in with a finger, and shudders when I add a second. “I love it when you moan,” I say, and he leans back on his palms, his ass on the very edge of the bed and me already on the edge of heaven. He feels like hot, wet velvet inside and I push deeper, searching for that spot that will make him throw back his head and howl. His breath catches in his throat and he falls back onto the bed with a yelp of pain that makes me quickly withdraw.
“Are you okay?”
Tom grimaces and fishes under the small of his back. “Yeah. Landed on the dick,” he says, holding up the dildo. “I’m fine.”
I laugh and he laughs, but there’s a bright, urgent look in his eyes, one that I recognize as the look he gets when he’s about to suggest something new and filthy. And he’s looking at that goddamned dildo.
“No,” I say, half-laughing, half-meaning it. The idea of opening him up that wide is dirty and wrong and irresistible.
“Yes,” says Tom, wriggling his butt closer to the edge of the bed. He puts a foot on my shoulder, kneading like a cat with his toes. I push my fingers back inside him and he grinds into my touch. We’re not even naked yet and he’s urging me to get weird with it. I love him so much.
I push in an extra finger and he groans and stretches. I think I know where this is going and I can hardly believe it’s happening; I can feel every throb of my pulse behind the seam of my pants. Tom removes the ribbon from the dildo, opens another package of lube and greases the thing up in front of me with the same lingering attention he uses on me. “Do it,” he says. “Do it and I’ll make as much noise as you want.”
“You’re nuts.” But I take it from him anyway. There’s no way that thing is going in.
Tom lifts his thighs higher and wider. His dick is leaking little spots of pre-come on the bottom of his shirt. I push the head gently against his ass, but he’s not in the mood for slow. Not tonight. He grinds down onto the dildo and in my surprise I push it forward. He opens up with a long, horny moan and I echo it, unable to believe what he just did. “You fucking slut,” I whisper. “Oh my God. You slut. You love this.”
I pull it back, fucking him very carefully with it as I lean over to kiss him. He kisses me sloppily and clumsily as I push inside once again he has to stop and open his mouth to cry out. I don’t think I can keep my dick in my pants much longer. I could come just watching him.
“Please, Milos,” he says, his breath ragged as he grinds beneath me. “Please fuck me. Fuck me until I scream.”
I’m doing this. There’s no way I’m not at this point. I slide out the dildo and grab a condom. Yank down my pants. This isn’t going to be slow, no matter what he wants. I have to close my eyes as I enter him; if I see the hungry look on his face then this is going to end ahead of schedule. Holy shit, he’s tight.
And he’s as good as his word. First couple of thrusts and he just moans, full-throated, deep, dirty and out of control. I open my eyes to see him sprawled out on the bed under me, feet in the air, arms outstretched. His mouth is open, his eyes are bright and he’s already got that flush he gets when we’re going hot and heavy. And he hasn’t even finished unbuttoning his shirt.
“You need to be a lot more naked,” I say, leaning over to undress him, only that drives me deeper and Tom cries out, arching his back, his cock nudging my belly through my shirt. We’re both wearing far too many clothes and I’m trying to strip and fuck him at the same time, and it’s not easy because he’s going for it, pounding his hips to meet my thrusts. This isn’t going to last. This is one of those wild rides to the finish, heads back, fists crumpling bed sheets, teeth clenched.
The lube has worn off my hand, so I spit in my palm and wrap it around his dick. He cries out again and I can see from the look in his eyes that he’s nearly there. “Jesus,” he gasps. “Oh God, I love you, I love you. I’m coming, baby. Look at me. Watch me come for you.”
I hold his gaze and the fierce intensity of it pulls me along with him. We’re coming in the same perfect, groaning, gasping, pounding moment, Tom howling his pleasure to the ceiling as his muscles wring me out one last time. I slump over him, dropping kisses and I love yous, surprised I even lasted this long. Oh my God. How does this keep getting better?
His breath slows and we soften, melting into one another. He’s flushed and glowing and all mine, his sweaty, half-buttoned shirt creasing between our thundering hearts. I can’t believe I just fucked him. His mouth is dry from gasping and I wet it with my tongue; he makes soft, sated noises in the back of his throat while we kiss. I love this. I want more noise, more dirty talk, because I always found his voice so incredibly sexy.
“Clothes,” I say, when I can breathe again. “You’re still wearing too many.”
Tom settles back on the bed, his thighs still open, showing me his softening cock with its new, porn-star close shave. There’s a look in his eye that says he’s still not done, and as he strips off his shirt I see why.
He got a tattoo.
“Holy shit, Tom. What did you do?”
“Something I could regret later,” he says. “Isn’t that what you said?”
It’s on the inside of his upper arm, black letters in a typewriter style font. These violent delights have violent ends. I reach out and touch it, just to make sure it’s real. The words sound familiar and it takes me a moment. “Is that from Westworld?”
Tom gives me a teacherish look, or as teacherish a look as he can manage when he’s naked, sweaty and sprawled out underneath me. “Romeo and Juliet,” he says. “You little philistine.”
“I’m not a philistine. I just deal with the non-verbal versions of things.” It’s real. He went ahead and did it. I run my fingers over the thick black letters. “What does it mean to you?”
“It’s a thing that Friar Lawrence says when performs the marriage service. ‘These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder.’ Basically he’s saying that hot love has a short fuse. It burns out fast, so you should take it slow – love moderately – so as not to get sick of the sight of one another from too much all at once.”
Slow. That explains it. I roll to the side and stretch out against him. His hand strokes down the length of my side and settles on my hip. “So you were worried,” I say. “That you’d get sick of the sight of me?”
His eyes are almost black in the low light. I won’t cry, even though I could, too easily as always. It’s still enough to knock the breath out of me, how much I love him. How much he loves me. When he blinks the lamplight catches on the gold tips of his eyelashes, which are long enough to cast shadows on his cheeks. I smooth the skin across his cheekbones, watching the old, faded freckles stand out as the blood rises to the surface once more. He doesn’t speak. Just looks back at me like he’s trying to gaze into me, figure me out.
This is still so weird. Wonderful, but weird. To think we were ever strangers to each other, just teacher and student.
“Trajectory error,” I say, stroking the silky line of his eyebrow with my thumb.
“Hmm?”
“What you said. Your breakup. Me being in your class. They were all trajectory errors. Hamartia or whatever you said it was called. We were always headed for a plane crash.”
He smiles and shakes his head. “No, Milos. That’s just…literature. Real life isn’t literature. Real life doesn’t obey rules to satisfy the readers or convention. Sometimes you just wind up in a plane crash with no warning. No witches on a blasted heath, no Ides of March to beware. No dramatic irony. No foreshadowing. We could have started from a far less complicated position, but still ended up somewhere worse than where we are today. You just never know.”
“Worse? Why do you say worse?”
“Because,” he says. “Can you think of any better place than where we are right now?”
These Violent Delights Page 20
