The Dance Off

Fingers spanning her ribs, he rolled the layers of wet cotton up her body, over her breasts, and away. Her relieved sigh swept up the stairs, but was soon cut short as Ryder found her bare breast and took it in his mouth. His hot tongue swirled about the cool peak and her vision turned black.

With a groan that rocked the walls he arched her back as he took her other breast in his mouth. She trembled so much with the pleasure of it all she was very much afraid she might cry. She emptied her lungs on a long juddering breath and gave herself over to it. To him. To the absorption of his touch. The sexy shadowy darkness of the stairwell intensifying every shift, every sound, every slide of skin on skin.

When he lowered her to the stairs, she braced herself on her elbows. He tore her jeans down her thighs, taking her ballet flats with them, leaving her butt naked, while he was still fully clothed.

Before she even had a chance to rectify that, Ryder fell to his knees, pressed hers apart and took her in his mouth, his tongue, his hot lips, his not so steady breath driving her to an absolute craze until everything inside her spun out of control, and all she was, all she felt, was wave after wave of hot pleasure as it swept into a great aching that scooped her hollow. And just when she was sure she couldn’t take it any more, the world stilled, lifted, swelled and splintered into a million points of light.

Body like rubber, mind complete pulp, her name came to her, the sound rolling over her skin like a caress, drawing her back to the present to find Ryder poised over her, his dark eyes burning into hers.

“Nadia,” he said. That one word making her feel so much. Too much.

Closing her eyes against all it meant, she slid a hand behind his neck and pulled him to her. Vanishing into his kiss, his touch, his latent heat. This man who’d thought of her, waited for her, worried about her, and hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her long enough to make it up one tiny flight of stairs...

She slid a leg along his to find his pants were gone. And with a smile she arched away from the stairs, wrapped her legs about the man and took him. Deep, hard. Her turn to cry out his name as he once again swept away every effort to keep him at emotional arm’s length and once again sent her world crashing about her.

As they came back to earth Nadia held Ryder’s head in the crook of her arm, breathing in when he breathed in, and staring at the paint peeling off the ceiling a half a floor above. As only now lying in the quiet with the big man’s breaths easing over her skin, making her feel as if she were pure energy, barely bound, she knew where the “new raw emotion” the producers had raved about had come from. How she’d been able to “leave herself vulnerable” for the first time in her professional career.

But bar a malevolent miracle, or her ex having more influence than he deserved, she was going to Vegas. And soon. Her initial contract would be for six months, with an option to extend it out to two years if the show was a success. And it would be a success. Sky High was a phenomenon that showed no signs of waning.

And yet for a second, she let herself wonder...what if? What if she didn’t get the job? What if they actually had a chance to take this thing for a spin and see where it might lead?

But a second was all it lasted. After Sam’s wedding there would be no more dance lessons to keep them together. And the decision to remain so after that had been made before they’d even met. Because Ryder had been nothing but honest about his limitations as he saw them. About how his father’s indiscriminate behaviour had burned him to the thought of for ever. And even while Sam claimed he held on tight to the things that mattered to him, despite the spark, despite the reverence in his touch and unquenched hunger in his eyes, despite the way he saw into the deep dark heart of her like nobody else she’d ever met, he’d never asked anything of her.

Not because she didn’t matter; she just didn’t matter enough.

And she’d been there, taken whatever scraps she was fed in the hopes of being loved. But something had shifted inside her these past few weeks. And she’d never choose to let herself not matter again.

Ryder lifted himself with a groan, his voice drugged, slow, deep. “Can you walk?”

“I’ve been known to.”

They peeled themselves off the stairs, straightening as much clothing as possible.

She held out her hand, and after a moment Ryder took it, curling his big warm hand around hers before taking the stairs two at a time to lead the way. And when her heart thumped against her ribs at the feel of him, the sight of him, the knowledge that one day she’d wake up and know she’d never see him again, a little piece of her heart broke away from the whole.