Elle
“What are you doing?” Gant asks dumbfounded, as he enters the dance studio.
Just the sound of his deep voice fills me with breath-taking dread. But lately, that small dose of fear is accompanied by excitement.
Maybe a shot would’ve helped to take the edge off.
Damn, I wish I had time to sneak into the forest where Aria and I hid the liquor bottles near the old greenhouse two days ago. Miss Trix, surprisingly, wasn’t drunk enough for us to enact our plan last weekend. ‘The stalker’ has pushed her so close to the edge that she’s not been getting wasted lately. She’s been on high alert, flitting around the garden and windows with binoculars, but no one’s ever there. Of course, they aren’t, because no one can sneak out with all of her lurking.
As Gant shuts the door behind him, my stomach clenches and I don’t know why I’m so damn nervous. Excited. I’m here to work on my technique. My ballet technique, that is.
I’m not here to beg. To plead for a repeat of what happened in the old greenhouse.
I’m here to dance.
Vertically.
As always, Gant looks like a dream, in all black, a wet, dark lock falling across his forehead. Even though he’s not wearing grey sweatpants, not much is left to my imagination with the sweats he has on. Clearly, he’d forgone the ballet undergarments required during class.
I can practically smell the steam from his shower mixed in with his typical scent of leather, sandalwood and mint as he approaches me. It’s always sandalwood, isn’t it? But its commonality doesn’t stop me from going feral.
I’d taken a bath too, much to Stassi’s horror when the hot water ran out during her second deep conditioning. But I’m already self-conscious about my dancing and pilled leotard. The last thing I need to worry about is my odour as I sweat.
Can he smell the vanilla and honey body scrub and wash I’d soaked in? Stassi was throwing them out for being too basic, but I didn’t think I could get any more basic than my two-for-one bar soap. Aria had gifted me some conditioner too, saying it didn’t have enough slip for her curls. I can only assume that’s a bad thing, but it softened my hair considerably and Stassi offered to blow it out with her round brush.
When I walk now, my ponytail actually swishes, rather than just jutting out from my neck and back, held in shape by a layer of my own sweat and natural hair grease.
Did Gant notice that too?
I could lie and say all the primping this morning is merely my usual pre-class routine, but I didn’t often steal Aria’s light-up, magnifying makeup mirror to zoom in between my ass cheeks. I’d made sure every hair had been annihilated with my razor.
Because now that Aria’s given me a little more insight into Gant’s mind and reasoning, I’ve finally accepted my own. There’s no trauma bonding on my end or some deeper, obscure meaning. I’m just horny. End of story.
Once I stop denying myself and play with Gant, my new obsession will subside and I’ll have full mental clarity to enact my next move. But first, we play because I can’t take Gant haunting my dreams anymore. I can’t bear this hyper fixation I have of finding explicit content of men that look like him, only to get mad that the girl isn’t me. I can’t keep hogging Aria and Stassi’s e-readers to download the smuttiest books instead, so I can take away the visuals while inserting myself into the characters.
It’s consuming all my time when I can just have the real thing and be done because then it won’t be so special anymore.
This desire, it’s just a lack of information, and once I’ve had him, I’ll finally be enlightened and then disenchanted.
“Stretching, obviously,” I say, gazing up from a front split. From this angle, I can make out how far his cock juts out and it’s soft. I can only imagine when it’s hard. I lick my lips, thinking about the feel of it pressed against me. He’s seen me bare, but I’ve never gotten the chance to see him yet. Well, when it’s hard and not spraying me with urine. Is it straight? Curved? Which direction? Right, left or up?
Please don’t be curved downward.
“Who taught you to stretch like that?”
“Like what?” I ask unsurely and a little defensively as I push up onto my elbows. Sure, my dancing had been critiqued relentlessly, but my stretching?
Is that another thing I don’t do correctly?
He shakes his head, sliding his water bottle and gym bag onto the floor beside mine. “Seriously, just look in the mirror while you’re doing it. Your form is utter shit. No wonder you dance so stiffly. You’re not loosening up correctly.”
I’d been told my dancing was a lot of things but not stiff.
“I follow a typical stretch protocol twice a day. I—”
“Overstretch and overload your muscles instead of helping them. Your hips aren’t opening up the way they should and it’s preventing you from having a good turnout. We have to fix that.”
I’d always thought my turnout was good. Not great, but good. I stare at my feet now and wonder, not for the first time, just how delusional I’ve been. Just how much of my confidence for the past few years has been based on reality?
I may hate Gant.
I may want to argue with him simply because he’s an ass, but it won’t make him any less right. Mistress Errard is in full agreement and she trusts Gant to teach just like she trusted his mother.
His mother who thought me to be so hopeless that she advised I quit.
But Gant is different from his mother, even if I can’t make out his motives just yet.
We have to fix that.
When had Madame offered to help me fix anything? She was determined that I was beyond fixing. Mistress Errard seemed passively hopeful, and Gant seemed determined that I could do anything because he could do anything.
Maybe that’s why I’m trusting someone that I shouldn’t. Because in some fucked up way he believes in me and right now, that’s what I need.
It’s all I’ve ever needed.
It’s all I’ve never gotten.
“I had the best turnout at my old school,” I lament with a weak snort. “Can you believe that?”
“I can.”I hadn’t expected him to answer me.
“You thought you were a good dancer because you were a good dancer. At your defunded public school where the ballet instructor doubled as the art and music teacher, right? A Madame Dumont, who only took two levels of ballet in college and never got cast in any major productions barring a dancing mouse in The Nutcracker.”
A dancing mouse is a harder role to procure than you’d think.
“I hardly think she qualifies as a Madame. Perhaps a Miss.”
“Well, she was the best in our district,” I say defensively. My old teacher probably wasn’t the most qualified, but at least she encouraged me, unlike Gant’s mother.
Encouraged you? Or encouraged your delusions?
“Just like you were the best in your class. A dove amongst pigeons.”
I bite the tip of my tongue and taste the metallic twang of blood.
“But here you’re amongst swans. You blend in colour-wise, but you’re too small. You get lost in the shuffle.”
“I don’t want to be a swan,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Let me guess,” Gant smirks. “You want to be a phoenix?”
It sounds insanely cheesy out loud, but I nod and, surprisingly, Gant doesn’t laugh.
“Then you’ll have to shake off all that ash.”
“Half of which you blew on me?” I lift a brow.
“I’ll blow a lot more on you than ash,” he says, his dark eyes twinkling.
I gaze up at him from beneath my lashes. “I hope so.”
The incredulous smile that tugs at his lips is more than worth it, but another thought’s nagging at me.
“Why did you know my old teacher’s name?”
“I know everything about you. I brought you here.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” I quip. “But why did you do a deep dive into my instructor’s dance history? How was that important?” I ask. Sure, he’d gone to extreme lengths to get me enrolled at Beaulieu just so he could torture me, and now…teach me? That still didn’t make sense, interlude or not. But still, I never mentioned my instructor’s name on my application, much less her ballet achievements. “Did you think having insight about her would give you a better idea of my dancing level?”
“Is that not obvious?”
“You used a body double for my audition tape.”
He says nothing, waiting for me to get to the point.
“But once I got here, there would be no way to hide that I’m not up to Beaulieu’s standard. You knew that would happen…and you knew you would end up tutoring me?”
Again, he doesn’t deny it.
“But why? You didn’t anticipate an interlude back then, right?”
“I didn’t.”
“But you were still going to tutor me? Help me?”
“Of course. How else would you have stayed with me?”
I swallow. “This obsession you have with me…it started before we met again in the theatre, didn’t it?” That’s the only way it could make sense. Those trauma bonds went deeper than I thought.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think that’s…abnormal? Like, deeply unhealthy?”
“Yes. That’s why you’re here, dove. You’re my cure.”
“I don’t—”
“You don’t need to understand. You need to dance because time’s slipping away,” he says, eyeing the digital clock above the door. “Besides, I’m the one asking the questions, remember? Twenty-one of them, to be exact.” He moves to the speakers and plugs in his phone before eyeing me wearily. “Don’t bother trying to hack into it this time. I have a password.”
A half second later, Cinderella’s classical ballet soundtrack that we’ll be using for the play flits through the speakers.
I snort. “As if there’s anything on there I’d care about.”
“You’re on there.”
I freeze. “What do you mean?”
“What I just said. You’re on there. Lots of you.”
I straighten. “Gant—”
“Get away from the barre. You’re not ready for it yet,” he says as I grip it for support to keep from falling. Suddenly I feel faintish.
What does he mean I’m on there? In what capacity???
“Get back on the floor. We only have the studio for forty-five minutes.” His eyes flicker to his phone again. “Thirty-nine.”
Mistress’ threat of demotion circles in my head as I swallow the argument ready to bubble from my throat. I could bicker with him later.
When I oblige, sinking back onto the hardwood, I’m shocked when he doesn’t get directly behind me. To be honest, I thought he’d use the stretches as another excuse to get between my legs again.
Am I disappointed that he isn’t? Even after what he’s just said?
“Let’s start with a mirror split,” he says from a safe distance away. “Open your legs wide, and get as close to the mirror as you can. I’m going to push on your hips.”
I follow his instructions and a second later, his feet push into my ass, pressing my crotch as flat to the mirror as it’ll go. Tears burn my eyes and I swallow a whimper as I try to bear the burning sensation running horizontally between both legs. I hadn’t done a mirror stretch since Madame Pelletier’s class. Maybe if I’d stuck to it, I’d be more flushed now.
I’d forgone all of Madame Pelletier’s advice, latching onto whatever my new instructor had said. I’d convinced myself that she was wiser despite her lack of accomplishments to Madame in comparison. I wholeheartedly believed that she’d lead me down a better path than Madame Pelletier ever could. But being at Beaulieu has shown me that my disdain for Pelletier only impeded my own success.
Gant’s words two years ago swirl in my mind.
‘Hating her won’t make you a better dancer.’No, it made me a willingly worse one.
“Elle.”
My only response is a whimper.
“Elle. Look at me.”
I crack an eye open to stare into my own green eyes. I’d smooshed my face against the cold glass, relying on the tiny amount of relief its cool surface gave me.
I close it again, scrunching my face to endure the pain, but Gant digs his knee into my spine.
“I said look at me.”
His commanding voice shatters the trance I’d lured myself into. My eyes snap open, and my spine straightens as I peer back at him in the mirror’s reflection. I don’t think I could resist anything he said in that tone.
“Don’t force it. Tell me if it hurts, if I’m pushing you too hard.”
I say nothing, biting my lip and trying to breathe to stop myself from screaming.
Yeah, right, like I’ll admit that anything’s too hard to him.
“We’ll go slow at first. Slow and easy so you can adjust.” Though I don’t tell him to, he eases the pressure and I sigh in relief.
“This won’t work if you aren’t honest with me.” He says, glancing down at me, his arms braced against the glass. “Don’t try to spite me by spiting yourself. You’ll just end up injured. If this is going to work, you’ll have to trust me.”
Trust that he wouldn’t be the one to injure me? Hard pass. But what choice do I have? I can bear all my suffering, all the bullying, all of Gant’s shenanigans for one year if I can stay in the advanced class. Right?
I manage a nod. “Fine, can you ease up a bit more?”
He relents and the fire burning at the apex of my thighs decreases.
“Was that so hard?” he coos. “I know when to be gentle, dove. I know when it’s too much for you, and I know when you can be a good girl and take it.”
Pleasurable warmth begins to overtake the burning in my core at his words as I follow his instructions to count down from thirty before he releases me for a fifteen-second break. We repeat the cycle five times, and each time he presses a smidge harder, opening me wider.
“There you go,” he says when on the final stretch I’m practically flat. “Just breathe through the burning and relax. Soon the pain will disappear and it’ll feel good.”
“I doubt that,” I squeak.
“I promise. The more you do it, the better it’ll feel. Pleasure and pain are only a hair away from each other. If you don’t endure the pain, you can’t get the pleasure.”
I tilt my head back and meet his eyes rather than peering at his reflection. He looks incredible even at this angle. The muscles in his arms as he braces himself against the mirror are flexed from the motion, his drying hair framing his eyes like a dark curtain.
We weren’t just talking about stretches.
Good.
“Up,” he says, releasing me and taking a step back. “Grip the barre.”
My mind and legs are like jelly as I follow suit.
“You’ve been dancing since you were eleven,” he says, noting my shaking. “A late start, but that’s still seven years ago. You should be used to all of this by now.”
He looks genuinely concerned as he grasps my ankle and rests it on top of his shoulder. My skin burns at the contact, but I try to keep my breathing even and my blush at bay as he shamelessly zones in on my sex.
The burning isn’t too bad, until he walks closer, pushing my leg until it’s almost touching the side of my head. My back leg begins to wobble, and he braces his leg behind it, his free hand wrapping around my ass and grabbing the back of my thigh, massaging it.
“Three years and this leg’s still weak.”
“I can’t believe you still remember that. Much less which leg it is.”
“Don’t you get it by now? I remember everything about you. I haven’t forgotten a single detail. I refuse to.”
Why?
I try to concentrate on the stretch even as he pushes my leg higher.
“Too much?” he asks, but he doesn’t relent, waiting for me to bite out the answer.
“No.”
“Good, you can take it. Just breathe.”
And I do, letting out a shaky breath.
His fingers massaging my thigh dig deeper, stirring an intense sensation deep in my core.
“First question.”
Right now? I want to hiss, but I nod instead. I need the distraction from the pain, from the fact that the outline of his dick is just centimetres from my slit.
“Why did you call me daddy at the lake?”
Of all the questions I thought he’d ask, that isn’t one of them.
“Why not?” I quip. “Ohfuck!”
“We said honesty,” he says darkly, pressing my leg higher, so it grazes my temple and makes my pussy feel like it’ll shred in two. “Is it because your father pushed you into the water?”
After a long beat, I nod and he lowers my leg, letting it rest.
“How old were you?”
“Is that your third question?” I ask, brows raised. “Because I’m only answering twenty-one.”
“Second, seeing as you never answered the first.”
I grit my teeth. “Nine. I was nine when he shoved me in.”
“Was he trying to teach you how to swim?”
“That’s the third question and no.” I wince as he grabs my leg again and hefts it over his shoulder.
He doesn’t look the least bit surprised by my answer. Like he knew it all along. “He knew you couldn’t swim.”
It isn’t a question.
“Why does it matter?” I say. The last thing I needed right now was a trip down Jarett Lane. I want to forget that I have a father at all.
Wait…
Is that what this is all about? The twenty-one question rule during each of our private lessons? Getting information on Jarett?
But if his father is as powerful as Mum says, why would he need me as a source?
“When we first met, you told me that everything was wrong with your father. That one incident already tells me the sort of person he was.”
“Is,” I snort. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Tell me what happened that day. When you nearly drowned.”
“Ask me.”
“What?”
“I’m not offering up any information for free. You said twenty-one questions and you have nineteen left. Or did you think I wouldn’t notice that wasn’t a question?”
His smirk tells me that he did think that.
“What happened the day you nearly drowned, Elle?”
I release a breath as he spins me around to lift my other leg and I grab the bar tighter for support. “We were at the community pool. I kept wading in the shallow. Holding onto the wall and trying to kick like the bigger kids were doing. Jarett thought I was faking for attention. He hated it when my mother paid me attention. When anyone paid me attention which they normally did just from my hair alone. Anyway, he said the floats I had on were babyish and to take them off. Eventually, I did because I suddenly felt embarrassed by them. Stupid. Stupid for being nine and wearing them like the four-year-olds. I’d gotten out of the water and just sat on the side, dipping my toes. The other kids kept trying to get me to play with them, but I couldn’t stand where they were. Somehow, my not joining them made Jarett mad. furious. Humiliated.”
“Because he hated the thought of something being ‘wrong’ with his kid, even though he’d done nothing to teach you. He’d just expected you to know somehow. Like you’d turn seven and become aquatic.”
He’s talking like he knows Jarett directly. But if he did, he wouldn’t be asking me these questions.
“Like you’d turn twelve and suddenly have the logic of a fully developed man.”
Maybe he does know. Not Jarett, but someone just like him.
“Your father?” I ask, and Gant’s eyes snap to mine as he lowers my leg.
“It’s my game. I’m asking the questions. Go on.”
I roll my eyes. “Jarett threw me in and I woke up in the hospital. I passed out and sprained my foot. I guess the water was too shallow. Sometimes I have flashbacks of it.”
“When I pushed you, you saw your father.”
Again, not a question.
There’s a storm of emotions flickering in his dark gaze, too fast and too convoluted for me to decipher. “What about when you grew into your teens? How did Jarett treat you then?”
My teens? He means when the incident with Madame occurred. I think back to Mum’s paranoia over the Auclairs getting their hands on Jarett. But why would knowing how shitty Jarett was as a father make him any easier to find if that’s Gant’s motive?
“Why are you asking me about my father?” I say as he places my ankle on his shoulder again. “You know I haven’t seen him since…since the incident.”
His eyes bore into my own. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Protect him.”
“I’m not. I’m telling you the truth. I haven’t seen him.”
“But you’re glad you haven’t because you don’t want to share that information with me. Why do you even care about what happens to a monster like that?”
“I don’t.”
“Then if you knew where he was, you’d tell me, right?”
I hesitate, and Gant arches a brow.
“See?”
“There’s a difference between not caring about someone’s fate and having a hand in its course. What the hell would your father even do to him?”
My heartbeat slows as does my breathing as I wait for the answer because I’d never thought that far ahead about the Auclairs like Mum did.
“Answer my question and tell me what he did to you. I’ll forward the inspirations to my father. Not that he needs any help.”
“Gant—”
“Both of our fathers are monsters, Elle, and monsters do what monsters do. There’s no use in trying to guess about it. Your mind isn’t imaginative enough to come up with the sorts of things they can.”
Fear slides across my skin like an icy caress.
“Is that why you want to know more about Jarett? To see who the bigger monster is? Who will win?”
He shakes his head slowly, lifting my leg for another rep. “My father always wins.”
“Then why?”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“Understand what?”
For a second, I don’t think he’ll answer me but then he squeezes my ankle as if he needs something to keep him tethered to reality and says, “When you screamed daddy, it reminded me of the one time I cried for my father. He made sure I never cried for him ever again. The fear…the tone…it was all the same. Wanting to get away from him and pleading for him at the same time to save you. To save us. But they aren’t saviours.”
I keep quiet, trying to follow him carefully.
“I made myself believe that Jarett could be a saviour. Because that’d make sense as to why my mother wanted him. But no, she chose another beast.”
Damn.
“Tell me about the beast, Elle.”
Understanding trickles through my veins that slowly warm again as I lower my leg for a final time. As I finally understand what it is he’s after. Well, in this moment at least.
Why Jarett? Why did Madame risk it all for Jarett if he was no better than her own husband? Gant’s own father? The thought had crossed my mind numerous times too.
But if he’s seeking answers and not vengeance, does this mean his temper’s died down enough to listen to reason? Is he slowly beginning to believe me about the tape? The motive behind why I wanted the video?
“Jarett wanted me dead,” I say. “He’d throw dishes at me. Or beer cans, but the older I got, the more the abuse transferred to being verbal. I guess he thought I could understand him clearly at that point. It isn’t as fun to discuss abortion to an eight-year-old who doesn’t get it. But in the end. He got what he wanted. We both got what we wanted. Him getting the hell away from me and my mum.”
Gant just watches me. His expression is too full and too empty all at once.
Somehow, it encourages me to go on.
“Jarett had a way of doing things indirectly, so he’s not fully at fault. Ways of putting me in danger. Like leaving me alone at the fuel station in the middle of the night after luring me into his truck with the promise of ice cream. Or when I was older, and he’d throw dishes at my head in the hopes that I’d ‘get in the way’. Or the rare occasion when he’d insist on picking me up from school so drunk we’d run off the road and into a tree. On the passenger side, of course. I thought it was so he could ease his guilt by pinning the end result on someone or something else, but the more I think about it…”
“The more you realise that can’t be true,” Gant finishes for me. “Because that would mean a piece of his soul is still alive. Or that piece of it is still good.”I nod. “And there’s nothing good about Jarett. Whatever your mother saw him in, I never did.”
“But there’s something about him. My mother had access to any type of man. I can’t even accept that it was his endowments that she sought.”
“Maybe he was just rougher than she was used to. Different. Exciting.”
Gant shakes his head no. “My mother was a lot of things, but not whimsical and shallow, to be moved by such a thing. If she chose Jarett, there was something about him she couldn’t resist. It goes beyond the physical. With a husband like my father, it has to.”
Or you just want it to.
Sympathy blooms in my chest. I tried to rationalise a lot about Jarett as a kid. It took me until age fourteen to realise that Jarett’s actions had no reasoning. No, things I could understand, digest, or try to help fix and solve so he could feel better. So I could feel better.
“Did he ever fake things with you in front of her? Pretend to be a doting father?”
Would a doting father really endear Madame, because she craved that for her own son so desperately?
“My father’s a terrible actor,” I say slowly, repeating Mum’s words. “I can’t give you what you want, Gant. The answer as to what makes Jarett so special to your mother. I don’t think anyone can.”
“Stop it.”
“What?”
“You’re trying to protect them again. You’re trying to get me to not seek answers elsewhere.”
I swallow. “My mother doesn’t know anything.”“Is that the excuse you always use for her? That she just doesn’t know? Or that she doesn’t entirely understand. Like she’s the child?”
I don’t say anything. I can’t.
“Is that why you want to protect her?”
“Six. It has nothing to do with protecting anyone. I’m just saying that sometimes…things aren’t so black and white. Sometimes there is no logical answer, right?”
Like you and me and the chemistry rippling between us.
Maybe with Jarett and Madame, there is no rhyme or reason.
He blinks, snapping out of whatever trance he’s slowly slipping into. “Wrong. Every problem has a solution.”
Did he think bringing me here would help him find it? His solution?
“Bend backwards.”
I grip the barre with both hands and curl my spine backwards, watching him upside down. He’s so close his cock can practically rest on my face.
His fingers slide across my back and dip beneath the low back of my leotard before trailing down my ribs. I jump from the ticklish sensation and nearly release the barre as his fingertips settle into the small concave of my scar that’s still tender, depending on the weather. Butterflies erupt in my stomach as he peels the fabric at my side away to stare pensively at the mark.
“Why didn’t you go to the hospital after the car accident?”
“Seven,” I bite out. “That’s the seventh question.” And a wasteful one. “Why do you think? I was too busy running away from your family.”
“After that. You never sought help?”
Did he actually care?
Impossible.
“No. Eight.”
“The pain must have been excruciating.”
That’s not a question.“Your mother must’ve noticed.”
“She didn’t.” Damnit! It wasn’t a question.
His eyes darken. “Has she ever noticed your suffering?”
“She was suffering—”
“That’s not what I asked, but your non-answer is answer enough.”
I bite my tongue.
“Did the car stop? That hit you?”
I shake my head as I stand upright again and feel the blood rush downward. “Once I scrambled to my feet, it shot off. The driver was probably a cheap ass, despite how nice the car was. Nine.”
“What did it look like? The hood must’ve had an ornament to leave a scar like that.”
“Ten. That’s the tenth question,” I say, standing upright, before dipping down into another backbend and peering up at him. “There was an ornament. It was tall and thin but protruded at the sides. Like something with wings maybe.”
“And the car itself?”
Why does he even care?
“Eleven. It was one of those old-fashioned cars. Like the nineteen forties. A deep forest green with sparkles.” I stand upright again. “But you’d almost mistake it for black.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“Twelve. It was so dark, but when he hit me, I fell on the hood and I got a closer look at his face. He was middle-aged. Regal looking, but that could’ve been a placebo effect because of the fancy car. I can’t remember much of his features, just his eyes.”
“What about them?”
“They were so bright. Nearly translucent.”
“Blue?”
I shake my head no. “Thirteen. Grey. Like crystals.”