by Nikki Sloane
“The way you moved and transitioned, it was so unexpected.” She stared at me, her eyes intense, but excited. “I adored it. The concept and the execution. Was it your idea to stage him in the center?” When I nodded, she added, “Smart. You used him to your advantage. I don’t think I would have had such the positive reaction I did if he’d been off to the side.”
Hugh glanced down to the other end of the panel. “Michael, what did you think?”
He might as well have asked Michael how he liked them apples, because his expression was that smug.
Michael gave a soft smile. “I will be honest, I don’t remember you auditioning for me before. But, after today, I absolutely will. You danced with such passion, and your leg work was outstanding. Bravo.” He turned his attention to Hugh. “To answer your question, I thought this was something truly special.”
“Well, then,” Hugh said, “should we go ahead and—”
Rita grabbed his arm. “Hugh, just wait a minute. I want to know more about this cellist.”
“Like, if he’s dating anyone,” Shonda teased.
I laughed, pressed my hand to my heart, and lifted an eyebrow. “Sorry. He’s taken.”
“Oh, girl . . .” Rita grinned wickedly. “I figured. He couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“Of course, he couldn’t,” Hugh said. “She’s got legs for decades.” He shuffled the papers on the table in front of him. “That’s enough out of you, Rita. Stop holding up this girl when she’s got to come here and get her ticket to New York.”
The crowd cheered.
My eyes welled with tears and my legs threatened to give out, but somehow, I made my way down the stairs and up the steps onto the judges’ platform. The ticket was a fake airplane one, the airline listed as Dance Dreams, and it was surreal to hold it in my hand. I blubbered out ‘thank you’ at least a dozen times to the judges as I accepted both the ticket and a few additional compliments spoken only to me.
Grant was waiting at the bottom of the steps. I wiped under my eyes with my thumb and reached out to help him with the folding chair. Oh, shit, I’d left him on stage with it and his cello.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I . . .” My voice wavered with emotion.
He laughed like I was being silly. “No, I’ve got it.” Seeing me with unshed tears in my eyes had a powerful effect on him. “Congratulations, Tara. You did it.”
“No, we did. I couldn’t have done this without you.” I didn’t care that we were standing beside the judges and in front of an enormous audience, or that his hands were full and he couldn’t stop me. I lifted on my toes and put my mouth on his, sinking all that I had into the kiss.
“Get a room,” Rita teased lightheartedly.
I wanted to tell her she’d better believe that was going to happen, but instead I finished the kiss, clutching my ticket in one hand, and the most important person in my life in the other.
-29-
Grant
It was nearly eight o’clock by the time we left the Auditorium Theatre. Tara had disappeared into a room with the legal department to go over paperwork, and while she was gone, I texted Ruby to tell her the good news. My girlfriend would be a contestant on the selection show of Dance Dreams, and if she danced well enough there, a choreographer would pick her from the other sixty hopefuls to join their team.
We were physically tired but also wired during the cab ride back to my place, and as she burrowed in under my arm, she texted her friends the news, starting with Elena.
“Are you going to tell your sisters? Your parents?” I asked.
“Not tonight.” She shrugged. “I don’t think they’ll get it, and I don’t want the buzzkill.”
I understood. I didn’t want anything to ruin this night for her either.
She tapped out a new message, and from the way she held her phone out where I could easily see, it felt like she wanted me to read it.
Tara: Good news, bad news.
Tara: Got my ticket to New York, yay! But Grant and I broke some rules.
Regan: CONGRATS! We’re so excited for you!
Regan: Which rules did you break?
Tara: Not the big one. He went down on me and used his fingers.
After she sent it, she stiffened, like the thought had just occurred to her. Her voice was nervous. “Uh, is it okay I said what we did? I don’t keep secrets from them.”
Just me, I guess.
I wanted to scowl at the thought. It wasn’t fucking fair, because I was keeping secrets from her too. Not just that I knew she worked at the club, or the first night we’d met, but how I was fairly certain I was in love with her. Her slip-up earlier today still buzzed in my ears. I wanted her to say it again, and this time, not retract it seconds later.
“Yeah, it’s all right,” I said. “Honesty is important.”
She made a face like she was going to be ill, but was distracted as a new message popped up.
Regan: I’m disappointed you couldn’t obey, but respect you telling us.
Regan: Your punishment is he spanks you hard enough I can make out the fingers. We expect a picture shortly.
It was strange to take orders from someone else, but not . . . unpleasant. Her demand made me hot. Perhaps I would be less receptive to the idea if I wasn’t so intrigued to follow it. The concept of taking Tara over my knee and then sending the picture proof to her doms was sexy.
Tara’s eyes glittered with desire in the dark of the back seat. “Do you want to do that?”
She was asking me if I was comfortable with this. Spanking her. Following the command. The word was thick with lust. “Yes.”
I put my cello case down in the corner and dropped my bag in my room, then focused my attention on her. Tara stood patiently in my living room, waiting. I was her de facto Dominant and she was my submissive, and when I sat in the wooden chair I used for practice, she moved to stand by my side. I liked how she was so attentive. Always attune to what I was thinking.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
I gave her a skeptical look. “Are you?”
She’d changed before we left the theatre, slipping into glossy black leggings, a gray t-shirt, and a maroon biker jacket. As usual, she was a total smoke show. She’d shed her boots and jacket when we’d come into my apartment, and now she wiggled down the top of her pants until they were below her ass.
I stared at her nakedness and began to grow hard. Did it make her uncomfortable to lie over my lap, my swelling erection digging into her stomach? She said nothing. Instead, she put her arms behind her back and grasped her elbows with the opposite hand.
The pose punched a sound of satisfaction from me. I caressed a palm over the smooth globe of her ass and enjoyed her gentle sigh. “This doesn’t feel like punishment,” I whispered.
She sounded amused. “Probably because you haven’t done it yet.”
I took in a preparing breath and reared my hand back. I wasn’t sure if I was asking her a second time, or myself. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t want to hurt her, but I also wanted to obey the rules, and figured she could handle it. She worked for years at a BDSM club, after all. I brought my hand down, and the sharp slap was followed by her gasp.
I was nervous until she turned over her shoulder and looked at me with a surprised grin. “You went for it. I thought you might not do it hard enough.”
“I was supposed to leave a mark, yeah?” When she shifted, it felt good and uncomfortable on my cock at the same time. “Give me your phone.”
She did, and I took the shot then passed it back to her. A smile teased her lips as she viewed the image. There was a perfectly pink handprint across her pale skin. “Nice work.”
“Anytime,” I said. And I meant it. I wasn’t experienced in this area, but like everything new, I was curious and excited to learn.
She rose off me, sent the image, and Regan’s reply came as Tara pulled up her pants.
&nbs
p; Regan: I’ll give you one on the other side tonight. So you have a matching set.
She typed back a response, and since she didn’t have pockets, she nestled her phone in her bra. “I’m hungry, but also sleepy, and I can’t decide which I want first. Dinner, or a nap.”
“I wasn’t tired until you said the word nap, and now it’s all I can think about.”
We shuffled along into my dark bedroom, put our phones on the nightstands, and collapsed on the unmade bed. We were still in our clothes, but neither cared as we snuggled together under the covers. She fit so perfectly in my arms and in my bed. Did she feel the same? Was I enough for her?
“What are they like?” It was stupid to ask now since we’d meet them in a few hours, but I was curious about how she saw them.
“Silas and Regan?” She laced our fingers together. “They’re an interesting pair. She’s an accountant, and he’s an artist. Practical meets creative. Actually, he’s the one who did my tattoo.”
For a moment, I hated him. He’d literally put his mark on her, and it was permanent.
But his artwork was also undeniably beautiful, and if he hadn’t . . . I never would have recognized her.
“It’s very pretty. Does it have meaning?”
“Yeah. When I was six years old, I wanted to wear this crazy leotard to my first day of ballet class. It was pink and purple and had this pattern on it, the one that’s my tattoo. My mother told me I had to wear black, so I’d match the other girls, but I didn’t care. I thought it was pretty, and I didn’t want to look like everyone else.”
She curled in closer, putting her leg in between mine.
“We fought all week about it, until my mom finally told me if I wasn’t going to wear the approved attire, I couldn’t go.” It was dark enough I couldn’t make out her expression, but I could hear the smile in her voice. “I wore the leotard I wanted to, and the black one over it.”
I chuckled, and her story made me appreciated the tattoo even more. A sign of her defiance, her desire to be unique. “You can cover it up, Tara, but don’t worry. There’s no one else like you.”
Lying together in the warmth of my bed, it didn’t take long for us to drift to sleep.
When I woke, the bed was empty. My bedroom door was open, and light streamed in from the kitchen. A timer beeped and was shut off, followed by the sound of my oven door opening.
Was she cooking? I glanced at my phone. Was she cooking . . . at eleven-thirty at night? I climbed out of bed and went to see what was going on, only to have the smell of pizza slam into me. My stomach growled.
Tara set the cooked pizza on top of the oven, grabbed the glass of wine she’d poured for herself, and glanced at me. “Oh, hi. I was just about to wake you.”
“Pizza again?” I asked. She’d found my stash in the freezer, judging by the label and plastic wrap sitting on top of the trash can.
“I thought you said you could eat it for every meal.”
“I can. I’m just surprised you’re all right with eating it again.”
“I’m hungry, and this was fast. We’re supposed to head over to Regan’s soon.”
She poured a glass of wine for me, and we ate quickly. My excitement mixed with my unease about not telling her the truth, and as we finished, I couldn’t help but think she felt the same way.
We took an Uber and arrived a little after midnight, which added to the atmosphere of the evening. As if what we were doing wasn’t suitable for normal hours. Silas was on a deadline for a project, and his most creative time was at night, I’d been told. We hadn’t known how long the audition was going to run either, so had scheduled our late-night get-together very late.
After we were buzzed into the apartment building, I followed Tara up the steps, carrying a bottle of red wine. My hold on it might have been too strong. I was tight with anticipation, like a string on my cello that had been keyed too tight and could snap at any moment. My pulse leaped as she turned and knocked on an apartment door. What if I didn’t like them? What if our personalities didn’t match, or they only listened to country music? Anxious questions spun through my mind, but it was too late.
The door swung open.
Despite everything else, my first thought was I needed to know if Silas was any good at sports, because he was built for the front row of rugby, and we needed fresh blood on the Lions.
He took up most of the doorway, and when he saw me by Tara’s side, he immediately began to size me up. I did the same. There were tattoos sprawled across his meaty forearms, and the ink disappeared beneath the sleeves of his shirt. I wasn’t attracted to men, but I was open enough to begrudgingly admit he was good looking.
Maybe better looking than I was, and the primal male instinct of competition didn’t like that. As his blue eyes scanned me, they shuttered. It looked a hell of a lot like he was thinking the same thing about me.
“Silas,” Tara said, “this is Grant.”
“Hey, man.” He extended a hand, which I took, and the handshake was aggressive from both sides.
“Nice to meet you,” I said.
When he released his grip, he stepped back and gestured to the apartment. “Come on in.”
The place was nice and open concept. The artwork on the walls—no doubt his—was eye-catching. Full of patterns. The couple had obviously set the mood. The lighting was soft, a few candles flickered, and the music that tinkered from the kitchen sounded like Sigur Rós.
But something was missing.
“Where’s Regan?” Tara asked.
“She should be here any minute. She left the club a while ago.” He motioned toward the bottle of wine in my hand. “Want me to take that?”
I didn’t move. Tara had said Regan was an accountant. That she’d met them at a wedding. I tried to keep dread from my voice. “Club?”
“Oh.” Tara’s expression was vacant, masking her thoughts. “Regan . . . uh, she sells wine at the club too.”
Silas looked confused on multiple fronts. I still hadn’t handed over the bottle that was clearly a gift, and he also didn’t like Tara’s statement. “She doesn’t sell,” he gave her a pointed look, “she just negotiates.”
“Right.” She looked stricken but tried to play it off, and grabbed the bottle from me, passing it to Silas. “This is for you.”
“Thanks.”
As he deposited it in the kitchen, hairs tingled on the back of my neck, and I turned my head to alleviate the strange sensation. It must have been my subconscious trying to warn me, because my gaze caught a bright swath of red. It was a framed photograph of Silas, resting on a bookshelf.
His arm was around the redhead from the blindfold club.
My heart jerked to a stop.
I had to get Tara out of here before Regan came home and recognized me. Bloody fucking hell. Why hadn’t I just told her the truth? Why didn’t she trust me enough to tell me, so I could have come clean? Panic swamped my head.
I must have looked terrible, because Tara grabbed my hand, her face full of concern. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said. “I’m sorry, but we need to leave.”
I’d let her believe whatever she wanted right now. That I was deathly ill. That I was having massive second thoughts about meeting them. Anything would work, as long as I could get her out of this apartment and into the back of a cab, where I could explain the whole thing on my terms. Like I should have fucking done from the start.
Her concern escalated. “Of course.” Her focus left me only for a moment to speak to Silas. “I’m sorry, we—”
The front door swung open behind us, and I was doomed.
“Sorry I’m late,” Regan sounded short of breath, as if she’d hurried up the steps. “The train was delayed for some stupid reason.”
“They have to leave,” Silas said.
Tara didn’t know the reason, but she covered for me regardless. “Grant’s not feeling well.”
The competitor in me wan
ted to turn and face Regan head-to-head. She was going to take away my chance to tell Tara everything, and I selfishly wanted to keep it in my possession. But I couldn’t see any way out of the mess I’d created, so I simply stood there as she strode over to Silas and stepped into view.
She looked like I’d remembered her. Professional, yet sexy, wearing a black, tailored suit over a corset and her vibrant red hair up in a high ponytail. I must have looked the same to her, or at least similar enough, because she went ramrod straight and dark storms filled her eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
-30-
Grant
Tara’s gasp was sharp, slicing deep. “You know each other?”
“Yeah,” Regan’s eyes narrowed to slits as she focused on me. “Julius told you to stay the fuck away from the club.”
This time, there was no sound at all from Tara, and it was somehow worse. She dropped my hand like it was an anchor she couldn’t be attached to and stepped back. The way she looked at me . . . it was bloody awful. Her expression was surprise and hurt and distrust, all mixed together.
She stared at me like I was a stranger.
Her attention darted to Regan for a moment, and she whispered it as if she didn’t want to know the answer. “He’s a member?”
“No—” I started.
Regan cut me off. “He tried to become one.”
Tara pressed her fingers to her lips, possibly to hold in the sound of shock she wanted to make. “You knew?” Her eyes were oceans of hurt and betrayal. “When?”
The only thing I could control at this point was my ability to tell the truth. “From the beginning.”
It was impossible to organize my thoughts and find the right words, and before I could, her shock began to morph to anger. Her glare was so heavy it was hard to stand beneath it, but she directed the question at Regan. “You said he tried to become a member. What happened?”
“He lied about who he was. He’d come to the club to get a story, but I pulled him out of your room and Julius threw him out.”
I’d wished it could have been said differently, but I couldn’t argue with the truth. I was wishing for a lot of things right now. Mostly that I could go back in time, do it right, and wouldn’t have to watch Tara’s face as even more dismay washed through it.
