Chapter 25 #3
She wet her lips, and her voice became a husky rasp saying words she hadn’t planned. “Drop the towel.”
He cocked an eyebrow.
Yesterday he’d been her knight in shining armor—tackling Roth, going after Shane, gifting her with his best locker room speech.
She appreciated all of it, but she didn’t need a knight in shining armor to rescue her. All she needed was her own courage.
“Drop it,” she repeated.
Slowly, he did as she demanded, and she took him in. Every visible inch . . . after inch . . . after inch. Letting him stand
there, hard and naked. The object of her desire. Her pleasure. She wanted to kiss the bruise on his ribs. Make it disappear.
Lips curling in a slow smile, she crossed her arms over her chest and pulled off her sweater, her bra. She stepped out of
her shoes and stripped off her jeans. Slipped her fingers into the waistband of her bikini underpants. Slid them down slowly.
Let them pool in a tiny black puddle at her ankles.
“You’re killing me,” he said hoarsely.
She caught her bottom lip beneath her teeth and drifted toward him. Confident and beautiful, she lifted her arms, draped them
around his neck, and pressed the heat of her bare body against the heat of his. “Service me.”
He groaned. Took her mouth. Starting slowly—soft and tender—desire building until they were ravishing each other. She dug
her fingers into his hair, and all the tight, coiled pieces of herself unfolded. Everything between them that had been so
murky was now crystal clear.
He lowered her onto the bed. Cupping his big hands around her thighs, he spread them and knelt between them. He leaned forward
to kiss her shoulder, her neck, tease her breasts.
Fire burned through her, but he gave her no ease. Going lower. Propping her thighs on his shoulders and lavishing her everywhere with his mouth. His fingers.
Making her fall. And cry out. And fall again.
Life was so beautiful.
He slid up her body and twined a lock of her hair between his fingers. With half-lidded eyes, he whispered into her ear, with
perfect, sexy menace, “I’m going to take you now. Hard.”
She caught her breath and dug her fingers into his shoulders. Lifted her knees. Cried out as her slick body took him in.
The tight, purposeful rhythm began. He braced himself so she wasn’t bearing all his weight, but she reveled in the heft of
his body on top of her own. The heft of him inside her. His strength. His caring. The smell of him, the feel of him.
Their rhythm quickened. Sweat slicked their bodies. The sounds they made . . . pleas and gasps. Obscenities and praise. Until
they joined together in the final surge.
When the last of their spasms faded, he lay depleted, but she was filled with energy. She rolled out of bed and smacked his
thigh. “Good job, dude.”
He groaned. She grabbed her clothes from the floor and disappeared into the bathroom. She didn’t want to talk about this now,
but later. Later they would talk.
When she emerged, he was still in bed, elbow crooked, head propped on his hand.
“Did you come up here for a reason?” he said. “Other than the obvious?”
“I need to borrow one of your shirts.”
He gave her a smoky smile. “And you got sidetracked on the way?”
“It can happen.” She entered his closet and chose a simple, long-sleeved white dress shirt. Perfect for making her entrance.
Her entrance . . . the play. Tonight. Reality returned. She was going to do it.
Clint and another man assembled the stage. It sat only a foot off the floor and was both narrower and shallower than the Shore
stage, but it would do. She repositioned the furniture and mumbled her way through readjusting the blocking. Her nerves had
temporarily steadied, but in its place was something worse. Resignation. A pressing urgency to get to the other side of this
disaster and never put herself in the same position again.
Her phone pinged with a photo from Bisa of a wrinkly, red, swollen-eyed infant with ears that stuck far out from her head.
A baby orangutan was cuter than this little critter all wrapped up in a pink blanket. The only message was a series of heart
emojis.
She’s perfect, Dancy texted back, without even a trace of envy. And then, because Bisa was Bisa and Dancy was Dancy . . . She looks exactly like you.
The teens arrived. Mia couldn’t get over being in Clint Garrett’s house, talking to Clint Garrett, and having Clint Garrett
himself show her how to work his sound system. Clint also helped Leo experiment with the lights in the great room for best
results. Dancy left them alone to figure it out.
Clint had said he invited his mother, but Kristin didn’t appear, and Dancy could at least be grateful for that. “Your mother
is more pressure than I need,” she said.
“Oh, she’s here,” he replied cheerfully. “But I told her she couldn’t come inside until Erin opens the doors to everyone.”
“Where is she?”
“Holed up in the caboose with Watch.”
Dancy groaned. “Don’t let her eat him!”
By seven that evening, an hour before the performance, a crowd had gathered in Clint’s driveway, many more people than the
twenty-five Erin had invited or the thirty-five the chairs would hold. “I’ll take care of it,” he told her.
She’d grown too numb to ask what he intended to do.
She used the upstairs guest room for a dressing room and worked mechanically—putting on makeup, clipping her hair into a bun.
Her face was pale in the mirror, blank of expression. She was drained and empty as she slipped Clint’s shirt over the bodysuit
and rolled up the cuffs, leaving the front unbuttoned. He came into the room. “You look beautiful.”
“That’s me, all right,” she said tonelessly. “Simply beautiful.”
“Don’t make me give you my speech again.”
She manufactured a smile she didn’t feel. “It was a great speech.”
“For both of us.” He kissed her forehead and left her alone.
Mia appeared. “Five minutes. I didn’t know you were, like, so famous. All these people are trying to get in. Clint had to
go out front and turn them away.”
Mia set off. Dancy took a last look at her pale face in the mirror before she left the bedroom. She moved along the catwalk,
her legs wooden. Below her, every chair was full, Clint’s sanctuary despoiled. She spotted Kristin with a man who must be
Clint’s stepfather. Clint’s curly-haired sister, Rory, sat with a handsome man, almost certainly her husband, Brett. Dancy
couldn’t see Clint.
Even with the sounds of the audience drifting up from below, she felt none of the paralyzing anxiety of yesterday. Only a grim determination to get to the other side so she never had to think of this again.
Leo stood next to a bank of light switches by the bookcases. He gazed up at her, nodded, and—without waiting for her okay—killed
the lights. She dragged herself halfway down the stairs behind the audience. She would have preferred panic to this nothingness.
Leo signaled Mia, who stood across the room from him. She raised a small microphone to her mouth. “Ladies and gentlemen, Dancy
Flynn.”
Leo brought up the lights at the rear of the room. Heads swiveled. Dancy forced her arms into the air and struck a pose she
didn’t feel.
She was on.