Chapter 17
FREYA
Jake and I are on fully good terms, it feels like, when we go, along with the others, into the room that’s been designated our salsa dancing venue.
We’re all given classic Latin dancing outfits and shoes to wear.
My skirt and top are extremely skimpy, the top little more than a glorified bra, and Jake’s satiny trousers are very tight around the crotch and bottom area, and his shirt seems to be missing most of its buttons, giving the rest of us an excellent view of his very well-toned chest.
‘I’m guessing that Sonja was sniggering as she chose these,’ Jake says after we’ve all emerged from the changing rooms.
I laugh, while I try hard not to stare at his chest and crotch.
‘Did you tell them your size?’ I ask him, looking around at everyone. Every single person’s outfit is exactly the right size (and no-one else’s is quite as revealing as mine and Jake’s).
‘Nope.’
‘Me neither.’ I ask the same question of the couple of people closest to me, and then everyone, and, no, no-one gave their sizes.
‘This seems very sinister,’ I whisper to Jake. ‘Not only is Sonja someone whose spit contains super-hot chilli, she psychically knows our clothing and shoe sizes.’
‘Yeah, or they just noted the sizes when we got kitted up for the assault course.’
‘Oh yes.’ Dammit. I was almost enjoying feeling that we’d arrived in some kind of Sonja-led dystopia. ‘Are you also going to suggest that she does not in fact have chilli spit and just added actual chilli to our food?’
‘Sadly, I do think we’re going to have to consider that a very real possibility.’
‘Well, damn. I don’t want her to be a regular mean woman with no magical powers.’
‘Yeah, although a mean woman with magical powers would be scarier to deal with.’
‘Very true.’ I bend down to adjust my right shoe and then stand up again, fast, conscious that my skirt is way too short for me to be bending over like that. ‘Learning salsa is going to be so much fun. I’m now almost grateful to Sonja.’
‘Whoa, steady. I feel that we should expect a catch.’
Ten minutes later, I think I’ve worked out what the catch is.
If you’ve watched Strictly, you know what’s involved in the salsa.
And I have watched Strictly, so it should have immediately occurred to me.
There’s a lot of physical proximity involved.
I think I was just still too mind-blown by everything that’s already happened this weekend to think about what was going to happen next.
We’re learning some basic moves, which involve Jake’s hands on my bare waist quite a lot, plus a lot of shimmying side by side.
I’m very, very aware of where his hands touch me, and even the shimmying feels very intimate, because we have to watch each other the whole time so that we move in sync with each other, which means that I’m just looking at (ogling) his (remarkably gorgeous) body, and I can feel his eyes on me.
I’m extremely conscious of his eyes straying quite a lot to my boobs (there’s quite a lot of jiggle involved in this dance) and my bare tummy, and even more conscious of the struggle to keep my eyes away from where certain parts of his anatomy are highlighted.
The one good thing about having to think so hard about the moves is that it’s a slight distraction from all the looking and feeling.
Things get worse when we’ve learnt the basic moves.
Now I have to twirl and shimmy in front of Jake while he lightly holds my waist. Obviously the premise of the dance is that I’m doing it for him, and, watching the way his eyes follow my body and he swallows, hard, as I go for a particularly vigorous shimmy, it does feel as though I’m putting on a show just for him.
And – horrifyingly – I find myself liking it.
As we do our moves side by side, and then he holds my waist as I do my thing, and then he twirls me round before we resume our side-by-side moves, I’m consumed with a definite sense of huge achievement (when the two professional dancers demonstrated the moves for us at the beginning I had a strong I-can’t-ever-do-that feeling) but also a definite sense of extreme lust. Like…
Jake is hot. And he’s making me feel hot.
He’s looking at me as though I’m the only person – thing – anything – in the world that he’s interested in right now, and it’s making me glow inside.
I realise – when a tiny part of my brain tries to analyse it as we stop for a moment while our instructors talk to us – that this is maybe a knack he has.
Maybe this – not just his ridiculously classical handsomeness – is what causes so many people to blossom in his presence.
He just hasn’t exercised this particular talent on me until now, because until sometime during the assault course we had our whole mutual loathing thing going.
‘Jake and Freya, you two have been doing verrrrry well. Why don’t you demonstrate this new move for us?’ says Vince, one of the instructors.
Eek. I wasn’t paying attention at all.
‘Could you possibly show us one more time?’ I ask.
‘Of course.’ Vince and his partner Rosetta clearly love their job; they’re more than happy at any given moment to dance, and they’re almost falling over themselves to impart as much knowledge as possible to us.
And this is a real eek now. Vince is running his hands up and down Rosetta’s sides. I’m getting flustered just imagining Jake doing that to me.
And, oh, okay, we’re up. Here we go.
We do some of the little forwards and backwards steps, feet going diagonally in front and behind each other, next to each other, all good, and then we turn to face each other and Jake pulls me in and does the hands up and down my sides thing and oh my goodness I am melting.
Jake’s eyes are on mine the whole time, and we maintain that eye contact until I pirouette round in a twirl. When I get back round, he’s still looking at me, and I feel something inside me give a gigantic lollop.
When we finish the routine, it feels entirely natural that he pulls me in for a lingering hug. I can feel his heart pumping where our chests are pressed together, and I feel as though I don’t ever want him to let go of me.
And that is clearly the power of Latin dancing and the reason for the Strictly curse. I mean, of course if two people do this day in day out alone in a dance studio the weaker-minded of them might succumb to the obvious physical temptation. It’s intoxicating.
Rosetta claps. ‘That was wonderful, Jake and Freya. And now, everyone all together.’
And now I’m not thinking at all, I’m just doing.
The moves are coming more naturally; our bodies seem to be working together in perfect harmony.
Everyone in the room has a slight sheen of sweat to them, which should be disgusting but actually isn’t; it just adds to the atmosphere, and we’re doing nothing but dancing, as though we’re communicating a story with our bodies.
And the only way of interpreting that story is that we’re performing for each other and that we’re both loving it.
We continue with the shimmying, twirling, fast footwork, mutually admiring (devouring) looks, and it’s one of the most blissful experiences of my life.
‘More?’ asks Vince when we finish and there’s a chorus of Yes from all corners of the room.
We continue with the lessons for a while, and then Vince and Rosetta tell us that the rest of the evening will be us improvising.
They start their playlist and join us on the floor, and we all dance late into the night, focused almost entirely on our partners, with only minimal interaction with the others.
Eventually, several of us begin to stumble with tiredness, and we decide as a group that we’re all going to head to bed.
Our own clothes and shoes have been taken to our rooms by the staff, so there’s no need for us to get changed now.
Jake and I are standing with our arms round each other’s waists as we finish the last dance, and, somehow, maybe because after such an intense experience we can’t just stop, we walk like that, still linked, our hips brushing each other, all the way back to our suite.
And when we get inside the door, we’re still, basically, entwined.
‘That was fun.’ Jake pulls me against him in a salsa move and then twizzles me under his arm, round and round, until I’m dizzy and fall against him laughing.
He steadies me with a hand on either side of my waist as I land with my hands planted against his chest.
I look up into his face and see that he’s gazing intently down at me.
We’re so close, it’s as though we’re almost one. The way his hands are resting on the bare skin just above my waist, as though they belong there; the way our chests are rising and falling to the same rhythm; the way, as he moistens his lips with his tongue, I do the same.
I feel him move his thumbs very slightly against my lower ribs and it’s as though his touch reaches deep inside me. I take a deep, juddering breath as he moves his head closer to mine until our lips are almost touching.
We hover there like that, for a few unbearably long moments. Jake caresses the top of my waist again with his thumbs, and I clench my hands against his chest.
And then, almost as though reflecting the way we seem to have come such a long way from extreme dislike to this…
friendship… that we’ve developed this weekend, we move our heads closer and closer together, but gradually, tilting our heads this way and the other, mirroring each other, as we do, until, finally, Jake’s lips brush mine.
It’s nice, it’s really nice, but it isn’t enough. I want a proper kiss.
He’s drawn back and is studying my face.
I take one of my hands and run it up his chest and slide it round his neck.
He continues to stare at me for a torturous moment longer, before he dips closer and brushes his lips annoyingly lightly against mine again, and then, suddenly, he’s kissing me hard, passionately, urgently, and my other arm has reached round his neck and I’m pulling him against me.
His hands are continuing to caress my skin, and it’s the best kiss I’ve ever had.
We stay there in the middle of the room for a long time, kissing, and then Jake’s hands move a little further up and then somehow we’re undressing each other, and then we’re on the sofa, and it’s truly amazing.
I wake up at some point during the night. Most of me is lovely and warm where Jake is holding me in his sleep, but my legs, which are on top of his are cold. I wriggle so that my legs are on the side and snuggle against him, nearly falling off the sofa.
I stand up, and he stirs, and then wakes fully, smiling up at me.
And, weirdly, because I don’t usually like being naked in front of other people, the way Jake’s openly admiring me, reaching his arms out to me, just makes me feel good.
‘Come here.’ His voice is hoarse, as though suffused with desire, which I love.
‘Come here,’ I say, and lead him through to my bedroom. We make very, very good use of the bed, before falling asleep again in a tangle of limbs and sheets.
Jake wakes me up in the morning, by pulling my hair back from my face and kissing my neck, which is a gorgeous way to be woken up.
I know it’s the morning due to the sunlight streaming through the windows where we didn’t draw any of the curtains last night. It doesn’t feel like morning, though; it feels like the middle of the night. I’m far, far too tired to get out of bed immediately.
‘We’re going to have to get up,’ Jake says, kissing me again. ‘I think that having come this far we shouldn’t fall at the last hurdle and incur the wrath of Sonja.’
‘You’re right,’ I mumble, too tired and also enjoying the snuggly kissing too much to be able to speak properly.
‘Okay,’ Jake says after a while, ‘I’m going to drag myself out of this bed and go and get into the shower. And obviously I am not in charge of you and it’s entirely your choice but I feel that you should maybe do the same.’
‘Definitely.’ I’m still mumbling.
‘Freya? Are you actually fully awake?’
‘Totally.’
‘Okay.’ And off he goes, which does in the moment make me feel bereft because it was nice being held in his arms. However, this bed is very comfortable and I’m very tired, so I’m still very much liking being under this duvet.
Jake’s right; I should definitely get up and have my shower.
Might just close my eyes for five minutes, though.
‘Freya!’ Someone’s calling me. What’s happening? I’m… Oh, shit. It’s Jake and we have to get up and I went back to sleep.
‘How much time have I got?’ I sit bolt upright and then realise that I’m naked, and pull the covers up, fast.
Jake’s standing in the doorway looking a little wild-eyed.
‘We have to go now,’ he says. ‘For breakfast.’
‘I have to have a shower,’ I tell him. ‘Have to.’ I cannot have a night of (amazing) sex and then see people before I’ve showered.
‘Fair enough. What’s the fastest time you can be ready in?’
‘Ten minutes?’ That’s a lie but I think I can do fifteen.
‘Okay. I’ll go in a minute and cover for you. Say you have a headache or something but you’ll be coming soon.’
‘Thank you.’ I smile at him and he returns my smile and my insides do yet another gigantic leap.
I have no idea what happened last night – well, I do; it was kind of along the lines of the Strictly curse without the cheated-on spouses (obviously) – but it was a lot of fun.
I don’t really know whether we’re going to do that again, but I do know that Jake is a lot nicer than I initially thought he was.
If I were the kind of person who dated seriously (which I am certainly not) I might almost be having ideas about him.