33. Deirdre
Deirdre
A t first, it’s hard to focus on the music and the dancers because I’m so utterly aware of Elio beside me.
My thigh practically vibrates beneath his hand, and it’s only embarrassment and a whole lot of willpower that keeps me from parting my legs, just a little bit more, in case he’ll move that hand upwards.
God, I shouldn’t have had that much wine at dinner, and that delicious spiced Amaro with the dessert. I’m not drunk but I feel looser and less guarded than usual. And I think it’s contributing to the slow pound of need between my legs.
This is for school. Pay attention!
I don’t know if I’ll get another chance to see a live music performance for my paper, so I try to block Elio out as much as I can and just focus on the ballet happening below.
In the horseshoe-shaped auditorium, we’re at the highest level, and are at the far right end of the horseshoe.
It actually isn’t ideal for watching the dance because I’m almost looking at the ballet dancers sideways, but being this close is perfect for glimpses into the orchestra pit.
It’s too bad I don’t have anything to take notes with, but I think I have the vague semblance of a thesis taking form as I let the music flow through me.
I haven’t been to the ballet since Mom died.
I didn’t realize just how much I missed it.
I’ve never been a coordinated dancer, despite a few wayward lessons in my youth, and I was always entranced by the way the dancers could fit their bodies so elegantly inside the sounds.
Sometimes Mom got us tickets near the front, and before the show started I’d stand staring down into the pit, watching the violinists warm up with hushed awe.
Kind of like I did just now. With Elio.
A sudden rush of tears blurs my vision. I blink them away, hoping Elio doesn’t notice. I was so excited when we first got here. I didn’t think I would be affected like this. Didn’t think I’d be suddenly adrift in a cacophony of notes that harbour nostalgia and grief and joy all in equal measure.
I don’t know how he does this. Reaching right into me and exposing every hidden, painful place. Cracking every barrier I’ve built up, some of them years in the making, until I’m trembling and exposed and he shoves me naked out into the light.
It’s infinitely painful. And yet, it feels oddly necessary. I thought that Elio had put me into a cage.
Maybe he’s pulling me out of a different one.
Maybe it’s the wine, or maybe it’s the overwhelming beauty of the music and dancers, or maybe it’s the grief or the darkness or the heat penetrating the glove on his hand and the skirt on my thigh, but I want to be closer to him.
I tip to the side, leaning my head against his shoulder and wrapping both my arms around his.
Now he hasn’t just got me locked in. Because I’ve locked him in too.
I feel a tightening of surprise in his muscles, but it melts away immediately. He strokes his fingers against my leg in a movement that’s somehow almost more comforting than erotic. I give a shaky sigh, and let the tears flow freely down my cheeks now, all of them silent.
We stay like that for a long time as the dance progresses. The Royal York Ballet’s soloist Katerina Turgeneva flits about the stage in her red tutu like a living flame, whirling and leaping so fast she becomes a glittering, heated blur.
A creeping sort of tension manifests itself in Elio’s arm. Leaning against him the way I am, I can tell the way that his breathing quickens, grows uneven. His fingers dig into the flesh of my leg.
“Elio?” I whisper, lifting my head from his shoulder and giving him a puzzled look. He doesn’t seem to hear me – maybe because the music has reached a feverish crescendo. Or maybe…
Because he’s not really here with me right now.
I’ve seen him like this before. Where he seems to get unsteady, lost in something beyond what I can see. The fires of his past. I remember his fear, his panic, when he was living out his nightmares during his illness, and my throat closes with pain for him.
“Elio,” I say a little louder this time. “It’s alright. You’re here with me.”
Unsure what else to do, I slide out of my seat and clamber into his lap. I place both my hands on his face, feeling the scars and the smoothness, and put my eyes directly before his own.
“You’re here with me,” I repeat. “We’re at the ballet and everything is alright.”
His eyes bore into mine, his chest heaving beneath my elbows.
“I know,” he says gruffly.
“Show me that you know,” I murmur, stroking his skin, like I can draw his pain out of him with the touch of my fingers. “Show me that you’re here with me.”
I figure that he’ll nod and calm down, or maybe hug me or something. So I’m completely unprepared when he wordlessly tips his head forward and fits his mouth hungrily against mine.
The unsplinted hand that was once on my leg is now seared to my spine, a hot leather stamp against the skin exposed by the low back of my dress.
Using that hand as support, Elio leans forward in his seat until I’m tipping back, his mouth travelling in a scorching, wet line across my jaw and down my neck.
The kisses are rough, messy, greedy. Claiming me with lips and tongue and teeth.
Dazedly, undone by the sensations, I wonder if I’m going to have a dark necklace of hickeys on my own wedding day.
I gasp when he dips lower, tonguing my nipple through the exquisitely thin silk of the gown.
“Elio!” I force out as white-hot need twists my insides. “Stop! We’re in public. We’re at the ballet! We-”
“Right,” he growls against my breast. “You need to see what’s going on for your schoolwork.”
It’s amazing how strong he is, how easily he can manipulate my body when one of his hands is almost completely out of commission.
But before I know it, I’m wrenched upwards and spun around so that I’m facing forward once again.
I think he’s letting me go, so I lurch forward to get off of his lap and return to my own seat, but his arm locks like a bar of steel around my waist. He hitches my ass backwards until I feel the shape of his hardness.
“Keep your eyes open,” he murmurs against the side of my throat. “Don’t miss anything. I expect you to write that fucking paper.”
His right arm stays tight around my waist while his uninjured left hand drifts upwards to stroke my left nipple through the dress. It tightens into diamond hardness, so sensitive I want to cry. Cry for him to let me go.
Cry for him to give me more.
“Someone will see,” I mewl, straining in his hold.
“It’s dark.”
It is dark, but only up to a point. The lights aimed at the stage give off enough of a glow that I can see the ghostly shapes of people in the audience below.
And if I can see them from here, then any one of them could look up and see me too.
See me squirming and panting in Elio’s lap like the sordid little Songbird he’s turned me into.
“Stop moving so much,” he grunts as my ass bumps his erection. “Pay attention.”
I don’t know if he’s telling me to pay attention to the music and the ballet or to what he’s doing to my body.
Maybe both. But it’s impossible. My brain isn’t big enough to process all of that at once.
The stage fades to a bright blur, the music turning into nonsensical background noise as Elio’s touch overpowers everything else.
My nerves flare and leap, just like the dancer below.
Elio’s touch darts back and forth across my chest, teasing one nipple, then the other, until I’m arching and panting and pathetic, unable to tell him to stop, unable to pull myself out of the wicked hold he has on me.
I wonder if something’s wrong with me, that his touch can break me down so completely, or if it’s just a testament to the kind of power he has over me.
But maybe I have some kind of power over him too, because his breath is rough and ragged, his erection grinding against me as he claims my breast with a possessive, kneading motion.
I cry out, then instantly clap my hands over my mouth. Luckily, the music is loud right now, but it won’t be loud forever. I need to get a hold of myself.
I need to tell him to stop.
But I’m terrified that if my hands come away from my mouth now, that the moan that escapes is going to be so lurid and dirty that everyone in this whole fucking place will hear me, from the audience members to the ballerinas right down to the bored employees waiting for intermission in the lobby.
Panic and need rising with equal force inside me, I feel Elio tear his glove off with his teeth.
“Spread your legs,” he commands, sliding his now-bare hand beneath my long, flowing silk skirt and over my knee.
I shake my head rapidly, keeping my left hand plastered over my mouth and grasping his forearm with my other one.
“Fine,” he hisses, his voice like ripping satin at my throat, “If you won’t spread them then I’ll make it impossible for you to keep them closed.”
His hand glides softly up my thigh, a whisper of a touch that draws my muscles taut as a string on my violin.
I’m shaking trying to keep my thighs pressed together.
The skirt shifts against my bare pubic area, and I feel so much more sensitive and exposed than before. It heightens everything that Elio does.
Elio draws a brutal-sounding breath when his fingertips reach my naked vulva. My voice skitters up my throat, muffled by my sweating hand.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Songbird?” he seethes quietly. “No fucking panties? And no hair, either.” He kneads my skin, as if getting used to the new sensation of me bare beneath his fingers. My clit zings with the need for him to move lower, but he doesn’t. Not yet.
“You don’t have any razors,” he breathes against my ear. “How’d you manage that? Was it wax? Did you get that hot, sticky stuff all over you so that you could make this plump little pussy all smooth for me?”