The Dance Off

She uncurled herself from the chair and shook out her whole body. Ryder’s eyes roved over her mane of unkempt hair, her sexy bare feet with the faint crisscross of old rope burns and the sparkly hipster G-string under that T-shirt of his. She far from harmonised with the minimalist décor of his home. So why did she look so damn good inside it?

It hit him that it wouldn’t be much longer before he’d no longer have this view to look forward to. No more of that soft, sweet warmth to smooth the edges off his busy days. No more of that spitting, sparking heat to set fire to his spacious bed. No more fogged-up bathroom after her decadently long hot showers. No more missing fruit. No more Nadia.

Glad she’d stayed, he reached out and snagged her hips, catching her off balance so she fell into him. Laughing, she settled her thighs over his, shuffling till she was more comfortable, till he was anything but.

He slid a hand into her hair. Laughter lit her eyes, laughter and enquiry. When he ran a thumb down her cheek, tangling his fingers in that wild voluptuous hair, the laughter dried up. And he once again caught that touch of yearning.

And he knew he wasn’t the only one now counting the days, the hours, wondering which kiss would be their last.

Nadia pressed her lips to his neck; it was so welcome he groaned. She kissed him again, more, until kisses rained all over his cheeks, his ear lobe, his collarbone. Her tongue following in their wake, warm and terrible in the reactions it invoked. The need, the tension, building and burning inside him, impossible and everything all at once.

Then gentle hands found his buttons and opened them one by one. Slow enough he felt each pop like something unhooking inside him.

Her touch was reverent, her mouth searching. The yearning not locked away this time, but right there. Every kiss honest and real, peeling away the layers of reluctance he’d spent years building. And by the time she laid his shirt open, she’d laid him bare.

He could feel his heart beating, not only in his chest, but in his wrists, in his feet, at the back of his head, as if a tornado were trapped behind his skin.

Then her mouth was on his chest, her lips following the rises, her tongue dipping sweetly into the falls, before her teeth closed over his nipple, biting down. It lasted a second, probably less, but the shock of it was like a dagger in his thorax.

He swallowed down the pain, owning it. He had to if he had any intention of enduring this as she slid his shirt from his shoulders and kissed him there. Her hands running down the flats of his blades, her fingers tracing his spine, spanning his waist till every muscle clenched with the sweet agony of her touch.

It was unbearable. Ryder clenched his teeth till his head rang from it.

And when her hands moved to slide under his backside, her mouth slanting over his, he gave up and took it. Took it all. He’d suffer the guilt another day. Right then he was too far gone to care.

In one swift move, he flipped her onto her back, her hair falling in waves across the cushions, her eyes bright, her luscious lips slick. And he made love to her right there. Slowly, gently, eyes on hers the entire time. Feelings sweeping through so strong him he could barely breathe.

Nadia came with a swift rise of heat, her neck arching, her hands gripping his arms, her mouth sliding open with sweet pleasure. And as she hit her peak his followed, pleasure riveting him inside and out, for the longest time, until he thought it might clear knock him out.

And then in a shudder of limbs and sighs they tumbled into afterglow. Together.

Her hand dove into the hair at the back of his neck, and she pressed herself closer, as if searching for an anchor. He felt it too; the wreckage, the insanity, the irrationality of how good they were together. How frustratingly perfect. It reverberated through him. Like a warning. Like a huge calamitous siren that any rational person would know meant go back, do not enter.

Danger lurked behind that door. The kind he’d long since vowed he’d never risk. And yet there’d been a moment back there when he’d shoved aside reason, knowing he was about to knock on that door hard enough to split the thing right down the middle.

Gripping onto his last tattered vestiges of sense, Ryder pulled himself away from her.

“Come on,” said Ryder, taking her hand in his to haul her limp, soft, stunning body from his couch.

“Come on what?”

“Just come on.”

“Don’t you have to go to work?”

“Not today.” He did, of course. But he wouldn’t. For the first time in his life he was blowing off work. Today, it seemed, was a day of breaking rules.

“So where are we going?”

Anywhere but here. Anything but this.

“You’ll see.”