CURTAIN CALL: Driven Dance Theater Romance Series Book 1 (Standalone) Page 16

  “Kent.” Mrs. Harrington beams, and I turn around, dizzy and overwhelmed. My eyes must be saying, get me the hell out of here.

  “Carol.” He nods, his lips tightly pressed together and his eyes fierce, as he turns to me in the crowded room. Another patron intercepts our circle and congratulates the Harringtons.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Kent hushes in my ear. Thank god he says the words. I nod yes. My chin bobs up and down. But there are no words.

  He presses his hand to the center of my back and leads me out of the room. We escape down a side hallway and into an elevator to the underground parking garage, when I can breathe again. He opens the passenger door to his black sedan. Man, am I happy to be out of there.

  We arrive at Kent’s building, a valet takes his keys, and the concierge escorts us to the elevator. He presses the button that says PH, while I stare at Kent in amazement. When the door opens, I am floored.

  A Dale Chihuly blown glass piece hangs in various deep reds that dangle with violence, as though an artery in the ceiling has been ruptured. The entire penthouse is made up of glass windows, with a striking surrounding view.

  “So this is the penthouse?” My jaw nearly hits the floor. This is some bonus gift—more like real estate nirvana, and it almost makes you wonder what he did for it, since making masterpieces and putting this art form on the map before the ripe age of thirty suddenly hardly seems enough. “And the ladies’ room would be…?” I swallow as he places his jacket on the back of a chair and rolls up his sleeves.

  He points me down the hall to the right. I feel his eyes follow me down the hall, and I try to catch my breath from all that’s happened.

  In the bathroom, I stare at myself in the mirror, trying to make sense of everything that is going on, but it is no use. I splash water on my face and force myself to take a few centering breaths. They don’t help. Then again, I don’t feel as bad as one might assume, because deep down perhaps I always knew that Daniela would win in the end. I am no match for her and her power-hungry family. She is gorgeous and talented to boot, not to mention skinnier, with killer legs and the attitude to go with it. I must have been on drugs to even think I had a chance. It’s never been about proving myself against Daniela; it’s always been about doing what I love and was born to do. All I wanted was one worthy last chance, because my career deserves it, and because I have sold myself short over the years, starting with Daniela humiliating me over social media and me running away from my problems years ago.

  I should never have left this town. If I had just stayed in New York everything would have been different and maybe I wouldn’t have destroyed my knees doing Raina’s insane acrobatics. I would have been able to make something of myself. I shake my head in the mirror. Daniela was right: maybe I am just a curvy, nobody dancer whose only claim to fame is the neurotic Raina Freehurst, who was only ever a genius in her own mind. She just had a good way of convincing me she was one too.

  When I return, Patrick Moss’s electronica score, which is played around the clock at the studio, is quietly thumping.

  “Can you turn that up?” I ask, more desperately than I would like, but Kent is looking down, lost in his own little world, with his hands clasped over his thighs and his jaw clenched together.

  He rubs his hands over his face before looking back at me with regret in his eyes, and it makes me have compassion for the position he is in. Were the blinds pulled over his eyes like mine, or did he always know how this would play out? But I have no interest in dwelling in self-pity with the person who makes me feel things more intensely than anyone else. I take a deep breath and try to suck back the heat and confusion taking me over.

  We both take a long sip of our drinks, and the Grey Goose vodka burns my throat and sends liquid heat into my chest, followed by the non-stop invasive sound of more buzzing. He places both of his hands on mine and watches me as he looks out over the skyline, and I shift myself from under his touch. I am not quite satisfied, although I know that politics are not straightforward. He and I are not straightforward.

  “You’ve improved so much, Branwen. I’m so proud of what you have accomplished.”

  His words sound like weak reassurances. The fact that he is speaking in the past tense doesn’t help. He rests a hand on my shoulder, and I turn around to face him.

  The skyscraper-filled sea of gray buildings gone dark is filled with cubicles of neon light spreading into the distance. Beneath the ambient soundscape is the constant buzz—the never-ending buzz.

  “Can you please turn the music up?” I ask again, this time less politely.

  Kent watches me for a good long moment before I notice the remote on the table and pick it up. The bass thumps so loudly the whole penthouse starts pulsing, as though it may come loose from the joints and rocket off into a distant universe where there are stars. I place the remote back on the glass table.

  Kent looks at me and says something that the music overpowers. His eyes are shadowed, his skin glistening. Thump, thump, thump, heartbeats on steroids pound in my ears and block everything else out. I can’t hear him. My own words lost to the noise, I walk up to the glass, flattening my nose and cheek to it. It’s cold and pleasingly hard, unlike the hot thudding vibrations in my heart. I hold out my arms to both sides and imagine flying or floating to the ground like a million pink rose petals. Kent stands beside me, his fingers crawling toward mine as our foreheads press against the glass.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  His fingers hook with mine. He pulls me toward him across the glass as we hover forty floors above ground. He runs the back of his knuckle over my cheek.

  “Ever since Driven exploded…” His chest lifts as he inhales. There’s a note of defeat in his gaze, and it kills me.

  “You’ve taken this art form to a whole new level.” I plead with him.

  He shrugs, and we slide down to the floor, our backs up against the glass and hands clasped, as I lean into him.

  “People want to love you and destroy you when you are successful. They don’t want us to be happy, or free.”

  He looks into the distance fiercely, and I run my fingers through his hair over and over. His hair feels so amazing, better than sticking your fingers in a jar of purple Play-Doh. He presses his head into the places my fingers touch, seeing me, and I slide my fingers down his brow, along the dip between his eyes, along his cheekbones, over his full lips.

  “Maybe I should go,” I say, still looking off into the great illusion of possibility.

  “Branwen.” The muscles in his jaw jump, but my arm slips out from under his. My fingers slide out of his fingers.

  I try to force air into my lungs as my hand rests flat on the cold metal door.

  On a night like this, a night when my future is shot right out of the sky, I might wander into Fuel and flip through a Time Out if all indie publications fail me. I might find myself browsing the smallest slot in the listings for a festival on the outskirts of the East Village, hoping for a gem. Maybe I’d find myself in the back of an empty, off-the-map theater, slumped in a red felt chair, sipping a cold Americano, hoping that this time I will be moved, transformed, shaken out of that gray stream of complacency and into a new reality. An underpaid substitute technician may be filling in for a disorganized yet passionate act making lighting calls in the moment. Or a one-woman show from Toronto may be having her moment to say she made it to the Big Apple, even if I am the only person let into her magnificent secret. And I may leave without remembering to tell her how she changed my life, because she should know. But, the truth is, she will never—ever—know.

  It will become her fate.

  Then, I could call Raina. What if I just dialed her number and it rang, and there was a distant, clipped, and regal hello on the other end? Would we keel over? Surely our hearts wouldn’t stop. The earth wouldn’t shatter. Would she take me back, even if she were right that my career would topple over on itself and wither without the roles only she would ever cast me in?

&nb
sp; “Branwen?”

  I turn around, and he says my name again.

  “Don’t go.”

  19

  If I go, I could save us the fate we have been resisting and any further humiliation. If I go, I might be able to breathe again and think about what this all means and if there is any way to repair my life. But if I stay…

  Kent is looking back at me, standing in the middle of the room in his black suit, with the sea of buildings behind him. If I stay? Suddenly, leaping seems more impossible than ever before, the skyscrapers seem cold and unforgiving, and the man in front of me seems the only thing in the world that might not come with a tragic ending, even if he most definitely does. What if I never know what could have been? What if normal, like my dance career, is never given a fair shot? A short dance career is better than no dance career at all, and the moments that were the happiest in my life were still blessed by them, and still lived out there somewhere in vertical time.

  He walks toward me, looks into me. Melts me.

  I want to stay too. I so want to stay. What am I thinking? There is no way I can go. I let go of the door and swallow. Then I slowly walk toward him.

  He wraps his arms around me, breathing hot air down my neck, and I can smell him. Man, he smells good. He smells like hope, along with his masculine scent.

  He covers my mouth with his mouth, and we kiss for a long time. Kissing him must be one of the only things in the world that compares to being truly inside the dance. I get totally lost, as though I’m not even me anymore. I am just the exquisite sensation of every small movement, connected to one large mysterious web. And it feels so damn good; it’s like flying.

  Our lips pull apart, and his hand grazes my neck as my awareness shifts back into my body and my eyelids slowly open. We look into each other’s eyes. I have never seen anyone so beautiful, inside and out, in my life, and it doesn’t scare me anymore. It’s like when I am finally dancing and all my fears—my stage fright and doubts—fall away, and all that is left is the dance and me. But now, it’s him and me.

  “Let’s go to the bedroom.” His voice is super husky. I nod. I can’t stop nodding as he leads me down the hall and pulls my dress overhead, while I reach for the button of his black pants. I have to stop myself from nodding even though I still want to. It’s like my body is unable to stop saying yes. And he smiles, noticing, and I smile back as he unbuttons his shirt and the sexy cut of his chest and abs is revealed—and I could still be nodding, because I am frozen in my state of yes, dammit!

  He lifts me on to the bed and my eyes fall to the muscles rippling in his abs. My fingers reach around his neck. He places a kiss on my lips, and I’m still smiling, because I can’t stop.

  “You aren’t going to change your mind, are you?” I ask as he watches me, and then I look down and see how crazy hard he is, and he looks there too before looking back up at me with a crooked grin and it nearly makes me blush. He doesn’t correct me. Good. I smile as he crouches over me and presses his lips over my lower belly, making me squirm, a moan escaping the back of my throat. He lowers his lips on my skin, over and over, as I wiggle under his touch, tickled and raw—warm and achy. He kisses my shoulder, the inside of my thigh, my wrist, my neck, the dip in my collarbone. He slides his fingers down my leg and kisses the inside of my ankle and the sensitive skin of my arch, even the crevasse between my toes.

  I lift up and wrap my arms around his neck, tingly all over and touched in so many neglected and newly loved places. “I think you have found every speck of my body.” My lips curve up, and his eyes sparkle.

  “Not every speck.” He pulls me onto his lap. His hands slide down my back, as his cock nods beneath me. Oh. My. God. He has a point. I lower my mouth to his mouth. I could kiss him forever. And I don’t want it to stop, but I also badly want him inside me, and wonder if I can make that happen without ever having to part lips. But I need those boxers off first. The bra and panties will be much easier to handle.

  He unclasps my bra, and his breath gets heavier, his eyelids droopy. His eyes are barely open. I can’t deny that I love the hell out of arousing him, and this makes up for every moment of my career that I have felt unworthy for being fuller than the norm in the breast department. He is salivating, and it’s making me so damn wet, and I know he is going to place his mouth over one of them, but he’ll have to wait because I need to kiss him again first. I catch his lips in mine as his fingers crawl up my sides, and he moans as his hands cup my breasts. My hips rock as I kiss him again and again. I love the little moans that are slipping from his throat into my mouth. I could live in a house in the burbs and have two-and-a-half kids with him.

  His fingers slide back down my sides and hook into my panties: good. I rock, and crush my mouth to his. I reach my hand in his boxers. The skin is smooth and the muscles taut, even if damp, and I wrap my fingers around his velvet, hard flesh and gasp as his fingers unexpectedly slide up inside of my sex. Dear god. I stop kissing him for a moment, even though our lips are sealed, because I literally can’t move. My lips are held open against his. His fingers slide out of me, and he groans in my mouth again and adjusts his weight underneath me as I place my hand on his cock, because I am supposed to be making this good for him too, and I want to, it’s just that, oh my. He slips his fingers back into me.

  My legs and jaw are shaking. I breathe raggedly into his mouth, and he breathes into mine, and it’s just as jerky. He slips his fingers out.

  “You’re wet.”

  His voice is breathy, and it’s not like he had to tell me. I am coming apart. If I let my hips move even slightly more to help out the slick strokes, I am done. He adjusts his hips, and his eyelids shutter as he lets out another one of those pained moans that I absolutely adore. I kiss it away.

  “Has it been a while for you too?” I ask, not even thinking. I blink my eyes open. He seems on edge like me, and maybe it’s my imagination that he’s with me in this the uncontainable arousal, the kind of desire that is going to have me coming in a split second if we’re not careful. But it’s ridiculous to think he hasn’t been with anyone of late and worse to even bring it up. I saw him with that woman the other day, and I am not naïve.

  “It’s been two years.” He swallows, and his eyes blink a pained look when my hips lower and his fingers disappear inside of me. I would be smiling if my jaw wasn’t dropped open pre-orgasm.

  I let out a desperate breath. Two bloody years? My eyes blink open. Really?

  “And I might wet my shorts if I am not inside of you soon.”

  Oh my god, he’s not lying. But I can ask him his story later, because right now, I am definitely going to orgasm on his two fingers if he doesn’t enter me now.

  “Do you have a condom?” I lift my hips away, and his fingers slide out of me, when I slam my lids shut with a tremble.

  “No. Shit, do you?” He rubs his eyes open.

  No. I gulp. Damn. But there is no way in hell that I am going to pass him up, not now, and if he hasn’t had sex in two years, the odds of us being safe seem on our side, and we can always pull out last-minute. This is not the usual circumstance. This could be the man I marry. Okay, I am going to pretend I did not just have that thought, but with all of the talking about it, I can’t blame me. I kick the panties off my ankles and crawl over top of him. I place my legs on either side of his hips, ready to lower myself down on him. His eyelids shutter at the first touch of the head of his length into my sex.

  He slides in deeper.

  Oh. God.

  And deeper: dear me.

  All the way in.

  I bury my head into his hair, which smells like men’s shampoo, and his fingers cup my rear.

  Soon there is nothing left between us other than our slick skin. I have to hold myself over him for a minute. He is so deep inside of me, and it’s been so long. But if I move I am going to shatter. His lips find mine, and one of his palms moves to cradle the back of my neck, his fingers tangling into the damp baby hairs curling against my moist
skin. We are both so damp and shaky.

  “Is this okay?” His jaw clenches as he pushes into me. I press my knees into his bed and slide up, feeling the rub as he sucks in a deep breath.

  Is this okay? How the hell do I answer that when I want to scream hell, yeah—while proposing? Having him inside of me might be the best, most thrilling thing I have ever felt.

  I find his fingers and place them on my breasts. Yes. We kiss again, our lips pull apart. I swallow, and we look into each other’s eyes, and I remember that he didn’t get a chance to take my breasts in his mouth, and I want to give him everything he wants. His Adam’s apple dips low in his throat. “You?” I ask.

  “The best.” He slams his eyelids together in pleasure before opening them. He keeps his hands on my breasts, and my hands are on his hands as we look into each other’s eyes. I ride him, our limbs start shaking, and our breaths become heavier. His lip twitches, and my eyes fall closed.

  “Look at me, Branwen.” His voice catches, and I have never done this before. I have never been able to orgasm without shutting my eyes, but suddenly the idea of not orgasming this very second seems like the only impossible feat. My lips part, and tension knits through my brow as I squirm over him to get closer as he thrusts into me. His jaw clenches and his eyes become fierce, slicing into mine, but he never lets go of his focus, even when I cry out, his fingers lift off my hot breasts and stroke the side of my face, and he gasps as his brow furrows. I am breaking apart, and the twitches become more violent along with his thrusts.

  Don’t close your eyes.

  Breath fast.

  Fingers clenched.

  Oh. God. Please.

  My eyes roll back.

  Stay with me.

  I have never been so high.

  My head falls back.

  He pulls me in, cupping his palm to the back of my damp head.