SEALed with a Ring

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  "JJ does not mind audience," Illarion answered for her. "She likes. Soon she is ready to compete. A little experience, she takes first place."

  Ballroom dance was now an Olympic-recognized sport, and competitions were a huge moneymaker for studios like Illarion's. JJ enjoyed competition. Measuring herself against other dancers tempted her. Although money wasn't a problem, JJ had so far resisted Illarion's encouragements. As it was, she stole time for lessons. How she would carve out more, she didn't know.

  Expecting polite interest in her hobby, she was sur prised to see David's brown eyes warm with approval and something that looked like pride. "First place, huh? She has winning instincts, all right."

  "You dance?" Illarion asked.

  "Not much. Not ballroom."

  "Oksanna!" Illarion called over one of the female teachers. "Have you time to give introductory lesson? First three lessons are free," he told David, not giving him a chance to refuse. "Is good to watch beautiful woman dance. Anyone can do. Is better to dance with her."

  Despite self-confident smiles reeking of geniality, the exchange between Illarion and David was bursting with subtext. No one could have missed the gauntlet thrown down by Illarion, or that it was picked up by David's, "Lead on, Oksanna."

  JJ was sorry the next dance Illarion led her into was the rumba. Despite proficiency in the steps, despite follow ing every instruction, JJ always felt she wasn't doing it well. Illarion was asking for something more.

  She intuited what the more was. Unlike the playfully flirty cha-cha or the intense, sharp battle of the sexes of the tango, the rumba was explicitly sexy, frank seduc tion—a celebration of attraction and desire. She wasn't holding back. She just couldn't make herself one with the movements.

  Illarion was as patient, as encouraging, as pleased with any effort as always. He led her to the mirrored wall to demonstrate how to extend her arm with her fin gers spread wide. Again.

  Behind her in the mirror on the other side of the room, Oksanna had David rumba-ing in the face-to-face closed position—already. Nobody taught JJ that in her first lesson! Unbelievably, even as JJ watched, Oksanna showed him the open position and the same arm exten sion Illarion wanted her to perfect.

  "Energy!" Illarion demanded.

  Attempting to emulate him, JJ made her fingers tenser. Stiffer. Behind her, David and Oksanna had re turned to closed position. His hips swiveled smoothly. His footwork was accurate.

  Illarion followed her gaze. Nodded. To JJ, he said, "Energy!"

  The energy he was looking for—suddenly, she knew how to access it. JJ allowed a hot surge of hunger for David to fill her. She invited it. She chose it. She let her self consciously, deliberately experience her woman's capacity for desire. Every muscle clenched. At the mo ment the sensual charge peaked, she flung out her hand. The energy shot out her fingertips.

  "Yes, JJ! That! That is rumba!"

  "Will you give me some more dance lessons?" David asked as he unlocked the door into the house and disarmed the security system. After leaving the dance studio, they had stopped at JJ's favorite Thai restaurant for dinner.

  "Illarion was right to only let us partner each other about two minutes. I'm not ready to teach. It's that sense of direction thing, I think. I can do my steps, but when I try to reverse them to show a partner, I get all confused. But you were amazing. You were doing moves I didn't learn in a month."

  In the kitchen, the misnamed mongrel rose from his hunter-green dog bed. He still moved gingerly, but his amber eyes were bright, his velvety ears at a jaunty, alert angle. It was amazing what twenty-four hours of being out of pain had done for him.

  David gently pulled the dog's ears and then went to the sink to refill his water bowl. He looked at JJ over his shoulder and returned to the subject of dancing. "A SEAL is expected to pay attention. Something as simple as where to put his feet, he should do after being shown once. It might take repetitions to become skillful, but when he's told by an instructor, 'Do this, this way,' that's what he does—or gets his ass chewed."

  "Once?"

  David set the water bowl down. "As our instructors are fond of saying, 'There are no second-place wins in a gunfight.'"

  JJ's heartbeat stumbled at the laconic understatement with which he spoke of his deadly work. He told funny stories, and he chatted easily on almost any subject, but he rarely alluded to the purpose of what he did. It was written on his face that he went into harm's way, but to her the scar had become just part of how he looked. No more significant than hair color. It was easy to forget what it meant.

  He cocked his head at her silence. "What?"

  "Why did you come to the dance studio?"

  "I wanted to see you. I wanted to know you. What time is it?" He changed the subject abruptly.

  JJ glanced at her watch. "Seven-twenty."

  "I need to take Snatch outside." He gave her the to tally bland, completely straight-faced look she had come to profoundly mistrust. It was exactly how he looked when he had suggested Snatch as a dog's name. He reached for the simple loop leash they were using until the dog could wear a collar.

  He disarmed the security system and opened the patio door. Then he said, "Did I mention that Ham has prom ised to keep your grandfather busy until nine-thirty?"

  A man could accomplish a lot in an hour and… David slammed into one of the concrete barriers in his mind. He shouldn't have to think about how many minutes lay between seven-twenty-five and nine-thirty. He should know, and the crazy thing was he did know, but he reached for it… and whammo! Concrete wall.

  He clinched his teeth, fighting the mind-bending, skull-tightening, stomach-knotting frustration. The biggest single difference between those who made it as SEALs and those who didn't was that SEALs didn't quit. Confronted with a challenge, they had an almost overwhelming drive to keep trying, to push harder. But trying would only push the goal further away.

  Let it go. With a conscious act of will, he wrested his attention back to his task. There was enough time. That was all that mattered.

  He tugged Snatch's leash. Snatch obligingly stopped sniffing the tires of the Land Rover and followed him to the Lexus he'd parked minutes before. David retrieved JJ's dancing tote from the trunk.

  He had followed her to the dance studio tonight be cause he wanted to get to know her. Dancing was the only thing she had ever mentioned that seemed to be about her. Something she did for herself, because she was herself, not the head of Caruthers, not the charity or civic leader. Just herself.

  Back in the kitchen, Snatch went to his bowl and lapped a bit, then collapsed with a deep, grateful sounding sigh onto his bed. He'd been much more willing to go outside tonight, but movement was still painful for the guy.

  To make sure it wasn't time for more pain meds, David slipped the medication schedule he'd made from his pocket, although JJ had written out a schedule and taped it on the inside of a cabinet door. Numbers could be slippery. On the schedule he'd made, drawn clock faces showed each dose. Needing pictures embarrassed him. It looked kindergarten-ish. Looked… hell, it was. He unfolded it and compared his drawing to the kitchen wall clock—which had flowers instead of numbers anyway. A corner of his mouth quirked in philosophical humor. At least in this place, pictures made as much sense as numbers.

  He listened for JJ, not that he expected to hear her if she was upstairs. This house made silence into an art form. Even the refrigerator motor kept its workings to it self. Some intuition sent him into the dark family room.

  She perched on the arm of a sofa, head tilted as if she was listening to something.

  JJ, sitting still, doing nothing. Something he'd never seen before. He paused on the threshold. "Am I inter rupting anything?"

  JJ leaned over to switch on a lamp. She was smiling. He'd seen her smile before, but not like this. JJ kept her beautiful features composed most of the time, giving away little of what she thought or felt. Now her whole face was softened. In the lamplight, her green eyes twinkled, and her disbelieving smile
held affection. She quirked an eyebrow. "Since when do you mind inter rupting me?"

  He shrugged. "Bothering you when you're rushing around, already ten minutes into the future—that's one thing. Breaking in when you've found something important enough to bring you to a full stop—that's something else." He sat on the couch and hauled her down beside him.

  She swiveled her hips so that she landed perfectly in his lap. God, he loved the way she could take care of herself. Around her, he could get physical with a spon taneity that had rarely been possible since he couldn't take a chance on hurting a woman. He couldn't wait to see what else was possible. "So, what made you hit the pause button?"

  "You wanted to watch me dance—that's what you said."

  "Watching you do almost anything would be worth while. Watching you dance? It was beautiful. Anyone would want to."

  "Do you think Lucas would?"

  "You think he wouldn't? Is that why you don't want him to know?"

  "I've been thinking he would say it was a waste of time. One time I asked my grandmother for ballet lessons. She said okay. The next morning at breakfast, she mentioned to Lucas she was looking around for a ballet teacher. He said, 'All right, Beth. You know how to raise a girl. Me, I'd rather see her spend her time learning something that'll make a difference.' So I told her I'd changed my mind, I didn't want to. But he didn't say I couldn't take lessons. He just wasn't interested. Now I wonder how many opportuni ties I've missed because of what I thought he wanted."

  David struggled to see the connection. He understood enough about women to know that they weren't talking about nothing when their logical leaps baffled him. He went back to the part he understood. She liked that he wanted to watch her dance. And he had known watching her dance would be a way to get to know her.

  "JJ. Tell me about dancing."

  "When I'm dancing, I think of nothing. I'm dancing, and that's all I'm doing."

  "Is it like focus?"

  "Like on a video game? No."

  "Like intense concentration?"

  "No, it's like the opposite of concentration. But it isn't spaciness. That implies an out-of-it, out-of-touch condition. I would have to say space-fullness. I am there, and what I'm doing is dancing. If this is how athletes feel about their sport, then I understand how they can dedicate their lives to it."

  Again, though he might not have understood all she meant by her words, he understood the arms spread wide to encompass and embrace the totality of all that-there-is.

  People thought SEALs were adrenaline junkies in constant need for excitement. To an extent that was true. But there was something else. Something harder to talk about because there weren't any words and the experience was rare. SEALs practiced various move ment sequences until anywhere, under any conditions, their bodies would respond flawlessly. At the same time, they practiced what JJ had called space-fullness—it was as good a word as any. Every iota of their being was in whatever space they were in.

  He looked into her face. "Dance with me. Do it. Put your dancing clothes back on."

  "My clothes are out in the car."

  "I brought them in."

  "You planned this?"

  "I plan for what I want."

  He understood what he had to give her. Freedom. Freedom of her body.

  In her bedroom, JJ trailed her fingers over the dress's glistening white satin jersey.

  As well as being too short, the skirt had an off-center sarong drape that allowed way too much thigh. The hal ter top plunged way too deep between her breasts in the front and exposed all of her back to a couple of inches below her waist. Only ingenious internal construction and the miracle of Lycra would keep the top on.

  The dress might have done for Hollywood, but it was too extreme in every way for Wilmington society. It was a dancing dress. Expressly designed to display a female body. When she bought it, she had doubted she'd ever wear it, but she'd had to have it.

  She finished buckling the collection of straps that made dancing in five-inch heels possible and quickly checked herself in the mirror. Oh yeah. The dress looked like it would go gliding off at any moment. And since there wasn't a man in the world who didn't think makeup on a woman was sexy, whether he approved of makeup or not, she had added lots of dramatic eyeliner and smoky shadow and Carmen red lipstick.

  Downstairs, David quickly confirmed for himself that the front entry had the most clear floor space. He ruth lessly rolled up the undoubtedly irreplaceable oriental rug and dragged it into the hall of Lucas's wing. The wide polished boards gleamed bare and ready.

  He had just finished when he heard soft footfalls on the stairs. His heartbeat faltered. Then it chugged into a deeper, stronger rhythm while he took in long, long legs, and bare shoulders and arms. The white dress displayed the rosy apricot swells of her breasts in mouthwatering lusciousness. It flowed over them to the deep curve of her waist. It swirled around her hips as if it were made of white water and depended on magic to keep it on, which of course riveted him on the possibility that at any moment it would let go.

  She'd made her eyes look huge and mysterious, her mouth—oh well, her lips were x-rated.

  He had once said she was a goddess. Now she came down the stairs without hurry, a woman fully aware of her feminine power and ready to wield it.

  His.

  Lest the harsh, atavistic, triumphant, totally retro thought show on his face, he inclined his head in grave obeisance. He lifted his hand to her. "Would you like to dance?"

  She moved down another step and bestowed her hand in his. "I would," she answered, gracious acceptance curving those hot, hot lips.

  "There's the question of music." He handed her the remote to the 800-channel satellite system. "I thought you would know which channels have the best dance music."

  "Actually, I don't." She clicked through the menu. "I've never done this before." She paused to smile warmly into his eyes. "Okay, here's Latin. Do you want to rumba?"

  "Sorta got to. It's all I know."

  He raised his left palm. There was the tiniest tremor, the slightest coolness in her fingertips as she fitted her palm to his. The trust and faith she was showing humbled him.

  He stepped into the music.

  Chapter 39

  JJ WAS DETERMINED TO LET HIM LEAD, NO MATTER what. IN those two minutes Illarion had allowed them to dance together, David had shown amazing profi ciency, but he was, after all, a beginner. Even a danc ing genius could learn only so many steps in a half hour. Still, the heart of ballroom was not fancy foot work. It was synergy of partnership.

  For the first half of the song, he kept to a simple box step. He adjusted the size of his step to hers. His timing was flawless. With the simplicity of the steps, JJ relaxed into a deeper, smoother swivel of her hips. Felt him feel it happen.

  So smoothly she hardly knew he had done it, he led her into an underarm turn. She rewarded him with a flir tatious glance over her shoulder.

  The underarm turn in the rumba is slow, taken through four steps to return to the partner. He took his time to play his eyes over her, letting his gaze linger on her breasts and hips in frank, masculine greed.

  She returned the look with a knowing smile and one eyebrow lifted in challenge.

  After that, who knew if they danced steps ever seen be fore on a ballroom floor? With his lead so sure, so indis putable, so perfectly timed, her response was instinctual.

  They danced.

  Quick-quick-slow.

  The music throbbed in leisurely undulations.

  Quick-quick-slow.

  Golden droplets of light sprinkled by the chandelier trickled over the rosy apricot of her cheeks. He took his hand from beneath her shoulder blade and stroked down her arm to signal open position so that he could better view the light slipping across the swells of her breasts. The skin between them gleamed from the heat of lazily relentless quick-quick-slow.

  "Oksanna told me this step says I am dancing with the most beautiful woman in the room. I am showing her off to ma
ke all the men envy me."

  Quick-quick-slow.

  JJ peeped from the corner of her eyes. "I am the only woman in the room."

  Quick-quick-slow.

  "You are the most beautiful woman in this room or in any room in the world. And you—"

  Quick-quick-slow.

  "Are the only woman—"

  Quick-quick-slow.

  "In the world."

  Quick-quick-slow.

  "When I think the other men have admired her enough," he gave the authoritative snap that would cause her to pivot on the ball of her foot. He loved doing that. "I bring her back."

  Her eyes were dark with desire. He drew her closer. With every sway of their torsos, her breasts brushed his chest. His erection brushed her mound. His lips found hers. Took.