by Kitty French
She wasn’t sure who held the upper hand. It ought to be her, and yet with every passing second of his passivity, Abel somehow seemed to gain ground.
Making a snap decision, Genie kicked the heat up from sultry private dancer to erotic sex kitten. She slid her fingers down inside the front of her g-string. Abel looked down, unable to resist tracking the movement of her hands, and then, at last, agonisingly slowly, he looked up and met her eyes.
If she’d ever felt sexier in her life, Genie couldn’t remember when. His eyes smouldered, daring her to take it further, even though he still didn’t move a single goddamn muscle.
Abel could barely breathe. She moved with the grace of a ballet dancer, and she had the lush curves of a vintage Hollywood starlet. She had him utterly enthralled, under her spell, and then when she slid her fingers inside that tiny g-string, his hands physically hurt from resisting the urge to take over the job for her. I will not touch her. I will not touch her. I will not touch her. If he told himself enough times he’d believe it. Dragging his gaze up the length of her sparkling, corset-clad body, he made his crucial tactical mistake; he looked into her eyes.
Her excitement mirrored his and pushed it up tenfold. Watching her mouth, her pink lips parted slightly as she touched herself. I will not kiss her. I will not kiss her. I will not kiss her. But he wanted to, and he hated himself more than ever for letting the thoughts bleed into his consciousness. I want to fuck her. I want to fuck her. I fucking want her.
And then she pushed his resolve frighteningly close to breaking point. She shimmied that g-string down her legs and dropped it in his lap.
Genie couldn’t believe she’d done it, and in the same breath she’d known all along that she was going to. Turning away from him as she danced, she bent from the waist and smoothed her hands up the length of her leg from ankle to hip, arching backward as she straightened so her hair brushed over his lap. She pirouetted on her heels to face him as she stood, and moved her hands between her slightly parted legs. Jesus, it was sexy being almost naked and dancing for him like this. His cock clearly hadn’t received the memo from his brain about not enjoying her performance; he was rock solid inside his jeans and they both knew it. She was desperate to move in and free him, but that wasn’t the game. Abel had to be the one to break.
Moving behind his chair, she placed her hand on the back of it, a fingertip away from touching him. Putting her other hand between her legs, she dipped until her mouth was close to his ear.
‘I’m touching myself and imagining that it’s you,’ she whispered. Abel closed his eyes, his expression almost painful. He was so, so close to cracking. Genie moved around him, naked from the waist down, and with a lithe arch of her leg, she straddled herself over his thighs.
She was beside him, behind him, all around him, touching herself and wanting him, and Abel could feel her dragging his resolve out of his body with her bare hands. He’d never battled harder to keep control of himself, and at the point when she swung her creamy, perfect thigh over his and straddled him, she finally smashed his resolve with a sledgehammer blow. He was barely aware of the animal noise that left his body, and he wasn’t in control of his hands when they reached for her and dragged her down hard onto his lap.
The moment he touched her, Genie’s body caught fire. She was gasping for him, loving the rough, raw way he smashed his mouth down onto hers, the almost painful pressure of his jeans between her legs. He wasn’t gentle, and she didn’t want him to be.
‘Is this what you want from me, Beauty?’ he said, his words thick in his throat. ‘Is it?’
His chest heaved under hers, and she all but ripped his shirt from his body to get her hands on him. He shook it off and in one easy movement he stood with her in his arms and backed her up against the lamp. His body shone in the lights, glittered from touching her, and his dark eyes were full of danger as he set her on her feet and trapped her in place with his hips. She’d never seen him like this, so out of control, all of that simmering anger and frustration coming out in his taut movements. He slid a hand between her legs and kissed her hard, his other hand clamping her jaw.
He’d asked her a few seconds back if this was what she wanted. She’d never wanted anything more. He pulled his head up, breathing harshly.
‘Get this fucking thing off,’ he demanded hoarsely, and a second later he had grasped the top of her corset and yanked it open from top to bottom, leaving her nude. He bent his head and kissed her breasts, hungry, and she buried her hands in his hair and pulled his mouth back up to hers.
‘Better?’ she whispered, knowing from his moan that it was. His hands were on her breasts, his knee between hers. ‘I like being stripped by you.’ The dynamic of their sex was hard to fathom; he was physically in charge, and yet she sensed she still had control. ‘I want you, Abel,’ she told him, moved his hand between her legs, gasped when he pushed two fingers inside her without preamble. It didn’t hurt; she was drenched. ‘I want you to fuck me right here over the lamp.’
Thunder rolled loud outside the theatre as he slammed his fingers into her, and her eyes flew open as he held her body in place with his and opened his eyes. The expression there was so difficult to read. He was turned on, she knew that much, but there was a darkness there, a torment that she didn’t understand. He watched her face intently as he slid his fingers out and then all the way back inside her again, making her cry out and arch her back. Genie couldn’t breathe with the need to get him naked and on top of her.
‘Please, Abel…’ she whispered, dragging her teeth over his bottom lip. ‘Lift me up and fuck me on top of the lamp.’
She’d won. There was no doubt about it. Abel touched her everywhere, couldn’t get enough of her perfect, gleaming showgirl body in his hands. He mouthed her nipples, rubbed her clit, and when she begged him to, he hoisted her up over that fucking lamp and crawled right on up there with her. He wasn’t strong enough, she’d beaten him. Crouching over her splayed, goddess body, he unbuttoned his jeans and shoved them off, as frantic as she was to fuck. She spread her legs wider when he was naked and then locked herself around him, claiming her prize. Every inch of her trembling body glittered, she was all sweet curves and filthy heat and wet sex, and as he settled his cock between her legs and thrust himself home, she raked her nails hard enough down his back to draw blood. Animal marks. Victorious.
Genie opened her eyes as Abel’s cock filled her body, his heavy weight pressing her against the coolness of the lamp. His hands fisted in her hair, and she’d never forget the look on his face as he looked down at her, the battle between absolute pleasure and absolute anguish clear. He was breathing hard, his chest heaving, and she tipped her hips up, holding him inside her all the way to his base.
‘It’s good,’ she whispered, needing him to know, smoothing his hair back from his sweat damped brow. He didn’t move, his eyes still searching her face, frowning, desperate almost.
Come back, Abel. Don’t lose your nerve now.
She moved her hands down the slopes and angles of his back, gentle on him now rather than sharp, feeling the marks she’d left on his skin. ‘It’s so very good,’ she repeated, frightened for him, and then she lifted her head and kissed him long and deep, bringing him back from wherever he’d gone. Rocking him inside her, she held his face in one hand and moved the other over the smooth hardness of his ass. She murmured his name as his hips began to move over hers, slow, satisfying thrusts, agonisingly good pressure over her clitoris.
Abel propped himself up on his elbows, stroking his fingertips down her face, reverential.
‘I couldn’t do it, Beauty,’ he said, screwing into her slowly, and the crack in his voice split a crack through Genie’s heart. ‘I couldn’t stop. You’re too strong. Too fucking beautiful.’
She breathed deeply and wrapped him close, moving with him, nowhere close to understanding him, yet in another way feeling she knew him better than he knew himself.
‘I don’t want you to stop,’ she said, an
d gasped into his mouth when he reached between them to stroke his fingers over her clit. The tenderness of the man unbuttoned her until every inch of her ached for him, for the way he kissed her endlessly as he drew the hard, shuddering orgasm out of her body.
Genie cradled his head in her hands, and she felt his tears on her eyelashes even as his hips spasmed into hers, jerking, spilling, finishing what she’d started.
Abel could feel her hands soothing him, her mouth gentle over his temple, even though she didn’t know where his emotion had come from. In truth, he didn’t understand it either, and the confused mess of lust and hate and love and revulsion inside his head made him recoil from Genie, crawling away to drag his rain damp jeans back on, retreating like a wounded lion.
She sat up, bewildered and beautiful, her body still flushed from their sex, and seconds later she had followed him down onto the stage.
‘Abel…’ she said beseechingly, her hand warm on his arm. He jerked away from her, dashing his arm over his eyes as he reached for his shirt, but she took it from his hands.
‘No. You’re not doing this. You’re not going to throw your clothes on and walk away again.’
‘Give me my goddamn shirt, Genie,’ he ground out, his fists clenching on his thighs. He needed to get away from her. She shook her head, and then, infuriatingly, slid the shirt around her own body and fastened a couple of buttons.
‘Not until you talk to me.’
He faced her down. ‘Keep the shirt. It was expensive. Consider it payment.’
Tears filled her eyes and her mouth trembled as she fought to keep herself in check.
‘You bastard,’ she said. ‘What we just did…’ she looked back towards the lamp, and then at him again. ‘What we just did deserves more respect than that, Abel. I don’t care what you say, or what you think any more.’ Her eyes flashed, clear and honest. ‘But what just happened there wasn’t wrong and you damn well know it.’
He laughed harshly. ‘What just happened there? Do you really want to know what just happened there, showgirl?’ He moved away from her because he could feel rage tightening his chest. He settled for grabbing hold of the chair, gripping the back so hard that his knuckles popped white against his tanned hands.
‘You made me sit on this… fucking… chair…’ he banged it down hard on the stage to punctuate his sentence, drawing pleasure from the way she flinched. ‘And you flaunted your fucking body in my face until you got what you fucking… well… wanted…’
She stood her ground, glaring at him as he slammed the chair down again. ‘You wanted it just as much.’
He held onto the chairback with one hand, scrubbing the other over his jaw and closing his eyes.
‘I’m not proud of it,’ he said, so quietly that he thought she probably wouldn’t hear him over the rain drumming loudly on the roof.
‘Well you should be,’ she said, stepping closer, her face softening. ‘No one’s ever made me feel the way you just did.’
‘Then you’ve obviously been fucking the wrong men,’ he answered, hating the idea of her with anyone else. ‘It wasn’t good, or special. It was a fuck, and now it’s over and I need a shower.’
Her face told him his words hurt, and he didn’t have the vocabulary or the composure to make her understand him in a less painful way. She’d never understand. How could she? How could he tell her of the huge ball of shame and fear that had lived inside him since he’d been a six-year-old kid?
‘You need a shower,’ she repeated his words back at him, her eyes turning stormy. ‘Why, to wash me off your skin?’
To wash her off, and to wash the whole sorry, rancid day off; the encounter with his mother, the truth about his father, the grief for his grandmother.
‘What do you want from me, Genie? Lies about how it meant something? Do you expect me to buy you roses and hold your coat while you spend your evenings entertaining as many men as you can fit into your shitty little theatre? Because it’s never going to happen.’
He didn’t add that he’d already spent too many years of his life waiting for the attention of a woman who’d spent her evenings entertaining as many men as she could muster.
‘Don’t mock me,’ she said, squaring her shoulders.
‘Then stop fucking with me,’ he shot back. ‘Stop trying to prove your fucking point at every chance you get. Stop shoving it down my throat. You win, okay? You. Fucking. Win. You made me do the one thing I swore I wouldn’t. What more do you want from me?’
‘The one thing?’ she said, glaring at him. ‘What one thing?’
His blood pounded unnaturally fast around his body. Rationally, he knew Genie wasn’t a whore. But emotionally, right down deep inside the darkest part of him, he couldn’t keep the distinction clear. She blurred the lines, dancing between showgirl and stripper and hooker, leaving him utterly disorientated, feeling like a kid again. She held the power, down here at least, and he didn’t know how to get it back. Besides attacking her with insults and belittling the overwhelming sex they’d just had. He heard his own voice, knew he sounded desperate, unhinged, making no sense. With an effort, he tried to pull himself back.
‘Stop it, Genie.’
She heard his quiet warning, and she laughed aloud. ‘Stop what?’ She threw her hands out to the sides. ‘Stop calling you out for lying about what happened here tonight?’
‘I’m asking you nicely,’ he said, his hands a vice around the chair. ‘Go to bed. Please go to bed.’
‘You don’t get to screw me over my lamp and then dismiss me from my own stage, Abel Kingdom,’ she declared, braver than she should have been.
‘And you don’t get to tell me what to do,’ he said, his head swimming with images of her spread out for him on the lamp, and then spread out for everyone else to look at tomorrow. He didn’t see the stage costume she wore for everyone else. He saw only her naked curves and her wild red waves, his fantasy tonight and someone else’s tomorrow. He saw red, fury, frustration, and he couldn’t hold it back any longer.
Lifting the chair above his head, he swung it down hard over the lamp, smashing both the back of the chair and the lid of the glittering prop. Rhinestones scattered the stage, and beside him Genie shouted at him to stop.
Let her shout.
Let her scream.
The blood pounding in his head and the rolling thunder outside drowned her out anyway. He looked at the broken chair in his hands for a second and then brought it down again hard over the back of the lamp, watching as a huge crack opened up down the side of it.
She was yelling, screaming his name, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. The rage burned bright in his chest, and he threw what was left of the chair to the floor and set about wrenching the lamp apart with his bare hands. He was bleeding and still he tore at it, stamped on it with his bare feet, deaf to the sound of her voice and the storm crashing around outside, on and on until all that was left on the bare stage boards was an unrecognisable pile of gilt and crystal encrusted fragments.
Abel stilled, finally done, on his knees, his face wet with sweat and angry tears when he covered it with his blood-streaked hands.
She was still there when he looked up, damp cheeked with her arms wrapped around herself, vulnerable in his too big shirt. Her wide, shocked eyes locked with his, stripping him down to the bare metal. She saw him. Saw everything there was to see laid bare in front of her; the badness, the unlovable boy, the inadequate man. She saw inside him, and still she crossed the stage and knelt amongst the carnage to hold him.
Over the theatre a white bolt of lightning lit up the night sky, and neither of them saw the storm-damaged rafters fall until a split second before the debris tumbled down towards the stage, too late for anything to be done except for Abel to hurl his body over Genie’s in a belated, instinctive gesture of protection.
Chapter Sixteen
Genie sat on a front row seat and stared at the same ugly debris again several days later, still barely able to comprehend what had happened. She sh
ouldn’t even have been in there. The fire service and building safety inspectors had taken one look at the damage and declared the place unsafe.
The fact that the theatre was a listed building vastly complicated any prospect of repair. And then there was the cost. The roof had already been in need of serious work, and after the storm damage, it now needed replacing entirely. Hundreds of thousands of pounds she didn’t have, and never would have now, thanks to the storm. She’d just come off the phone with Ada, who’d regretfully informed her that given their tight filming schedules, Dalton productions had no choice but to withdraw their offer to use the theatre as a movie set and look for somewhere else.
That was that then. No money. No roof. No theatre. No home. No job.
And then in amongst all of that misery, she’d lost Abel Kingdom too.
‘Genie?’
She turned at the sound of her uncle’s voice, and gave him a small, sad smile as he made his way down the central aisle and came to sit beside her.
‘I knew I’d find you here,’ he said. ‘But sitting staring at it isn’t going to help.’
She nodded, her eyes on the stage. ‘For a while there I really did think I was going to do it,’ she said, reflecting on what might have been. She’d told her uncle everything about Dalton Productions after the storm, and was only glad she hadn’t told him before so that he didn’t have to feel as gutted as she was.
‘I know,G. I’m proud of you for even trying.’ He patted her jean-clad knee and sighed heavily. ‘Sometimes I think things happen for a reason. Maybe this is the old girl’s way of telling us it’s time to move on.’
