I hoped Ashleigh would find someone else to love while I was away, I really did.
But no, I didn’t.
Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted. I was still frantically lying to myself.
Chapter Nineteen: No Boundaries
The knock came on a stormy, rainy Monday. It was twelve noon on the dot and that’s how I knew, after three weeks of waiting, that Liam Wilder was at my door.
I was still in my pajamas, reading in bed like I always did on rainy days. I put down my book and sat up very straight. Three weeks, and I’d suffered through every fucking day of it, exchanging anxious texts with Mem and fending off Rubio’s probing questions about “Liam’s deal.” I knew Liam had been traveling, but I hadn’t known he was back.
He knocked again and I vaulted out of bed and threw the door open. He looked the same, towering and sexy and handsome, but also different. More vulnerable beneath his good looks. He was in jeans and a white button-down top that lent him an aspect of purity. There were dark circles under his eyes.
“Hi, Liam,” I said. There were a million other things I wanted to say—I’ve missed you. How are you? Will you fall in love with me, please?—but he already looked on the verge of fleeing. “Do you want to come in?” I asked instead.
“Yeah,” he said, letting out a breath. He moved past me into my place, the same way he had the first time he came here. “Are you busy? Do you have a minute?”
“I’ve missed you,” I blurted out. I closed the door and leaned back against it, as if I had the power to stop him if he wanted to go. “Great sense of symmetry you have.” I glanced at the clock. “It’s noon on Monday.”
“I’m here for a session,” he said with a tight smile. “No, not really. I just got back in town this morning. I’ve been in Holland.”
“I know.”
“We’re opening an office there.”
“I know. Mem told me.”
He paced the length of my apartment and back, like a wild, trapped thing. He turned toward the bed and then away from it, running his fingers through his hair. He turned back to look at it again. “That looks nice. Pretty. I never saw it here once it was set up. I never came over here. I was too…afraid.” He shook his head and spread his arms. “I told you I might hurt you. Right from the start, I warned you.”
“Ruby did too,” I murmured. “I thought you were worth the risk.”
His eyes shot up at that word. Risk. I’d struck a nerve—and he was all nerves. I frowned and crossed to him. “You’re making all of this too complicated, Liam. You really are.”
He retreated, moving behind my bed. He was so tall he could lean his head against the branches. “I know I’m making it too complicated,” he said. “I know I had no right to be angry at you for looking into my past. I shouldn’t have said the things I said. I came here to apologize.”
I watched him, trying to read his expression. Was it going to be a goodbye apology, or was he going to let me love him despite the fear and guilt he carried around? I knew he loved me. I knew it when I opened the door. I could see it now in his tense shoulders and his tortured gaze.
“So, I’m sorry,” he said, gripping the branches like the bars of a cage. “I’m sorry for everything I did. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with my own issues. And I realize now…”
He stopped and took a deep breath. “You realize now…?” I prompted when he didn’t speak.
“I realize now that I need you, and I want you, but…”
I felt soaring hope, and joy, but there was a but. “But what?”
“I can’t promise…”
Oh God, he was killing me. “You can’t promise what?” I asked, climbing onto the bed and walking over to him so we were face-to-face.
“I can’t promise anything.” His eyes went very wide. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I can’t promise jacked-up shit isn’t going to happen, or that we’ll be happy every day of our lives. I can’t promise everything will be okay.”
I took his face in my hands. “I don’t care.”
“You should care,” he said sharply. “I’m scared as hell. But Mem has all his sayings, you know. And he’s always said to me that love solves everything. He’s said it for years now, but I never believed it.”
“I believe it. You proved it to me before I even knew you were doing it, before I could admit I was falling in love with you. But I’m in love with you now and there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s the way it is and the way it’s going to stay.”
I could hear his palms squeaking over the metal as he gripped the branches harder. If he wasn’t careful he was going to yank one right off. “But are you in love with the old me?” he asked. “The one who put on the act, who pretended he had his shit together?”
I stroked his cheeks, stifling a smile. “You’ve never had your shit together. You never fooled me. Well, not for very long.”
He let go of the bed and grabbed my hands. “But what—what if I can’t get it together?”
“You need to let go of these fears,” I said, leaning my head to his. “You’re so strong and patient. So caring. If anyone deserves to be loved, it’s you. So now…” I brushed my lips across his in a whisper. “Now it’s your turn to be brave.”
*** *** ***
I let out a long, slow breath, right against her mouth. I wanted to disappear inside her where I could be sheltered and safe. I wanted to let go of my fears but they’d dogged me for so long. They felt comfortable and normal. They mitigated all risk.
“Ashleigh…” I shied away from her. I felt like I was standing on some precipice or some threshold I was afraid to step through, but she was on the other side and I needed her. She held me as I fought with myself, held me with complete trust…and no fear.
I’m all up inside your boundaries now, aren’t I?
Yes, Ashleigh. You really are.
Her arms tightened around me as she pressed her cheek to mine. I breathed in the scent of her blackberry hair and felt the pulse beat strong and steady at the base of her neck. And somehow, as I listened to her breathe and thought about our time together, and how much she’d changed when she was brave enough to try, I realized that maybe I could change too. That maybe I had to change to survive. Hope bled into me and some dormant part of me shuddered to life, some deadened, hardened thing that I supposed was my capacity to love. I was terrified to love this woman but it didn’t matter.
I already loved her.
It was already done and accomplished, tied up in a neat bow just like her toe shoes. Denying it, evading it didn’t make it any less true.
She kissed me, so, so tenderly, her lips feathering across mine, and then she kissed me harder, urging me to respond. I cupped her face and pressed my mouth to hers, drinking in the sweet, remembered scent of her. After holding her away from me so long I was ravenous to get closer. I pushed her back onto the mattress, stroking fingers over her soft, silky pajamas, over familiar curves and planes. I let go of control and fear and something else swept in to take their place. Surrender. Capitulation.
Peace.
My arms locked around her waist and we kissed with the intensity of lovers parted for a hundred years. A thousand years. It seemed like an eternity that I’d denied what I felt for this woman. “Are you sure?” I asked, pushing back her hair. “Are you sure you want me?”
“I want you like crazy.” She leaned to me, nibbled at my lip and then bit it hard. “Just love me, okay?”
Oh, I could love her. I had to love her, because not loving her had almost destroyed me. I couldn’t get enough of her now and I think she felt the same way, since she was wrestling to hold onto me. I slid my fingers under her waistband while her hands scrabbled at my shirt buttons. We undressed each other in a frenzied tangle of limbs and clothes, but then I felt her tense and I forced myself to slow down. I didn’t want to scare her, not in this moment. I gentled my movements and stroked her face. “I’m sorry for hurting you, baby. For pushing you away. I’m sorry. I
was afraid. I was…” My throat closed up. The words were a little hard to say. “I was dead inside.”
“No more apologies,” she said, pressing her fingers against my lips. “I just want to be with you. I need you. We need each other.”
I caught her hands in mine and trapped them over her head. “Open for me,” I coaxed in a low voice. “Show me.” I pressed her thighs apart with my knees and reached down to guide my cock into her tight wetness. “I love you,” I said as I moved into her. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
She kissed me while I babbled out all the pent up words in my heart, and then we set about making love without any walls between us. No boundaries. Half the time I held her down and half the time I let her go only for the joy of pinning her down again. Every place she touched me hummed with pleasure, with completion. The bond between us had never been severed, only twisted and stretched until both of us were doubled over in pain.
No more pain, though, not for either of us. I whispered promises to her as we moved together. To love, to trust. To never be away from her again. When I felt her go wild beneath me, gasping in her release, I gathered her in my arms and emptied myself inside her. Not just my billowing, clenching orgasm, but the fears and memories that haunted me. Over time, we could make new memories to replace the bad ones.
As long as she forgave me for being such an asshole to her. I was pretty sure she would. She was kissing me again.
*** *** ***
I spent the next few weeks starting over with Ashleigh. I brought her flowers, took her out to long, romantic dinners, and spent hours in her Sleeping Beauty bed. I texted and called when we had to be apart, and I told her all the time that I loved her. In other words, I acted like a total obsessive sap, but she didn’t seem to mind.
There were difficult days too, when I withdrew because it was the most familiar course of action. There were times I said things I didn’t mean, and did things to push her away, but she didn’t accept that anymore. We’d have a rip-roaring fight and work things out. We developed a system of boundaries and consent that worked all the time, for both of us. And yes, we did BDSM scenes, very hot ones, but we also put it aside sometimes and got lost in the physical sensations of sex.
There was a lot of sex.
It wasn’t like before though, when I used sex to anesthetize myself. Now I used it to feel closer to her. Ashleigh worried about the women who still came on to me, but I wasn’t tempted by them, not in the least. I didn’t miss the one-night stands and bed-hopping, because that had all been driven by desperation. I never wanted to go back to feeling like that again.
In time, she learned to stop worrying about the party friends, in the same way I learned to stop worrying about Rubio. Did I think Rubio wanted Ashleigh? Yes, I knew he did. His entire ballet had been inspired by her. Did I think he would admit it, now that he realized how much Ashleigh loved me? Even Ruby wasn’t a big enough asshole to do that.
Perhaps the best outcome was that Mem finally stopped calling me Ishi and started calling me Liam. He stopped calling Ashleigh Little Ishi too. We had a home and family now—each other. All my life, I’d spent so much energy trying to remain detached, trying to make myself into this model of a person who was powerful and untouchable. My heart, especially, I had wanted to keep out of reach, safely locked away in my chest.
Ashleigh had my heart now.
I held her one night in her bed, after some grasping, groaning sex, resting beside her with my nose nestled in her sleek black hair. “You smell like roses,” I whispered.
“Pink roses?”
I glanced over at the framed rose on the wall, the one she kept as a reminder for us both. “Every rose in the world,” I murmured. “Everything.”
She turned her head until her cheek pressed mine. “You’re so romantic.”
“Maybe. Yes. And horny.”
She squirmed as I lifted her hands and told her to grab the branches of the headboard. I reveled in her soft, plaintive moan as I set about molesting all my favorite parts of her. Her delicate shoulders, her shapely breasts, her hips and waist. “Why did you really get me this bed, Liam?” she asked as I stroked between her thighs.
“To fuck you in it.”
She gave a wild peal of laughter, looking up at the twisting branches. “I mean, did you buy it because it looked like the bed in Sleeping Beauty? Did you think to yourself, Oh, I’m Mr. Moneybags and I’m just gonna buy this girl a crazy freaking bed so I can blow her mind? Was it that kind of thing?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.” I tickled her just to hear her laugh again. “And because I thought you deserved a safe place to sleep.”
She grabbed me, squirming away from my teasing fingers. I tsked and returned her hands to their place on the headboard. “Be a good girl. Let me do what I like to you.”
“I don’t like tickling.” She shimmied away again as I went for a sensitive spot on her thighs. This time when I grabbed her hands I held them.
“I’ve been thinking we should move this bed into my house,” I said. “Along with all your other stuff. And you, if you’re willing.”
She stopped struggling and gazed at me, her beautiful face lighting in a smile. “Really?”
“Really. I want to be with you all the time. If you’re ready, I’m ready to make the commitment.” I glanced across the room, at her messy blanket structure. “You can bring your fort too, if you want. Mem might steal it, though.” I caught her fit of giggles in my mouth. “What?” I said, pulling away from her. “He’d probably use it for some of his meditation shit.” I reveled in her laughter, fighting my own smile, but I was dead serious. I wanted her to move in with me because I wanted to sleep beside her every night.
“You’re sure?” she said, sobering. “You want me at your house? All the time?”
“I want it to be our house. We can put a fort in every room. Blankets everywhere, whatever. Just come be with me.”
She gave me a shy, sweet smile. “Now that I have you, I don’t need the fort anymore, but I’ll definitely bring the bed.”
“And the leotards and tights clipped over the shower rod. Bring those too, because I love having to bat those out of the way every time I want to take a shower.”
“Of course, yes. They’re coming.”
“Okay, good.”
She laughed again and nestled right against me. “I love that you accept me as I am.”
“Amen,” I said out loud, or maybe to myself. Ashleigh was the answer to a prayer I hadn’t even known how to put together. She was all up in my boundaries, and it was a wonderful thing.
Epilogue: Waking Kiss
My costume for Waking Kiss was a lovely, flowy gray-blue confection, the same gray-blue as Liam’s guest room. The same gray-blue of my eyes, he pointed out when he saw it.
I didn’t stay in the guest room anymore, though. I stayed in Liam’s bedroom in Liam’s house. In Liam’s play room, whenever we had the time to play. He even bought a Pacman machine for me, being Mr. Moneybags and all. We were planning a wedding in the summer, after the company tour, something small and fun with my dance friends and Liam’s family, and Rubio as best man, of course.
But that was later, this was now. Premiere night. There were several new choreographed pieces besides Waking Kiss, but I thought Rubio’s was the best. I might have been a little biased.
“Stop pacing,” Liam said as we hung out in Ruby’s dressing room beforehand. “You’re both going to be great.”
The room was full of pale pink roses. Wall to wall, which was nice, because they’d become my favorite color of rose. My carrel in the corps dressing room overflowed with them also. Liam never made small gestures, but then he was a big-hearted man.
I pushed down nerves and did some stretches using Liam as a brace. Rubio went up in one of his signature handstands, his sleek matching gray-blue costume glittering under the vanity lights.
“How does the world look from down there, brother?” Liam asked after thirty seconds or so.
/> “Upside down.” Ruby flipped back to his feet. “Now right side up again.”
It was nice of Liam to keep us talking, to try to help us relax, but until this first performance was under our belts we were both going to be a bundle of anxiety. That’s the way it was when partners made an official stage debut. Although this wasn’t the first time we’d danced onstage together…
“You sure you got the right pointe shoes?” Ruby asked me. “Nice and quiet?”
I made a face at him. “I’m sure. Have I had noisy shoes even one time since that night I danced Sleeping Beauty with you?”
“If you did, I’d tell Liam to punish you. So be careful, girl,” he said, wagging a finger at me.
I shuddered. Punishments were no laughing matter when it came to Liam. Fortunately I didn’t earn them too often in our power exchange games.
Yves stuck his head in the door. “I’m heading back out to the seats,” he said. “Merde to you both.”
We waved to the director and then Rubio crossed the room to take me in his arms. “Muitos abraços,” he said. “Many hugs, and merde, and all of that. Thank you for dancing with me. I am very excited for this.”
I hugged him back, not worrying that Liam was watching. We’d worked through all those issues in the weeks following our ill-fated threesome. Me and Rubio were strictly friends, partners, while me and Liam were something much deeper. Two damaged people who were healing one another. Two lovers forever connected by unbreakable bonds.
“I’m glad now I didn’t ask Heather,” Ruby said against my ear. “So glad. You are the very best dancer here. You helped me reach this day, Ash-lee.”
“You did it all,” I insisted.
“You did it too.”
“Don’t make me cry,” I said as he pressed his cheek to mine. “It’ll mess up my makeup.”
A moment later, the three of us walked out to the backstage area, since me and Ruby’s ballet was right after the intermission. I hopped up and down on my toes and shook out my hands. I was nervous but I had something to prove to myself, and to Liam, and to Rubio and Yves and my fellow dancers. I had to prove that I didn’t want to be invisible anymore, that I didn’t need to hide from malevolent demons under the bed.
Waking Kiss Page 24
