12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Alyssa
I hadn’t touched Pasha in two weeks—not a graze, not a brush of the hand, nothing.
Every night, I dreamed of him, of touching him, of my legs locked around him while he brought me to climax over and over.
I’d never had so many orgasmic dreams about anyone.
Each dance session was chock-full of sexual tension, and at night, my subconscious took over, offering satisfaction I couldn’t find while I was awake.
He’d finally mastered the basic steps, the hip sway, the rock step, and he and Mia had started to break apart the routine. Today, whether I liked it or not, we’d have to touch during our session. Basic steps were over. The complicated routine I’d been so happy to craft loomed in front of us.
I had taken on the male part during the joint session to give Mia the freedom to go through the whole routine and for Pasha to study it in all its broken pieces.
From the sidelines, he’d watched, his face changing from amusement to a frown depending on which section of the routine Mia and I had done in slow motion.
“Worried yet?” I asked him once the door clicked closed and Mia was gone.
“No, no, no.” He took his place in the middle of the floor. “I’ll be fine. ”
“You say that about everything.” Over the last few weeks, it hadn’t mattered what difficult thing he’d been asked to do by me or by Mia. His response was always the same. There was no way everything was always fine.
“I know,” he said, running through the basic steps again at a faster speed. “It’s true. Very few things are truly terrible.”
I stared at him while I thought through what he’d said. Being this far in debt was terrible. Choosing shitty boyfriends all the time was terrible. Thinking about having to move in with my sister and her awful boyfriend was terrible.
“So, like, what’s the standard? The benchmark you measure that by?” I asked.
He stopped dancing, picked up his water bottle, and poured its contents into his mouth. “Everyone is alive. Everything is okay.”
I digested his words, surprise momentarily stealing my voice.
“That’s a pretty high standard for something being fine .
” What did it say about his life that he thought death was the worst thing possible?
It was. But death wasn’t where my mind went first when I thought about terrible things. Did I want to ask?
“Everyone is different.” He came back to the mirror and raised his eyebrows. “Are we starting?” He extended his hand.
My hand hovered over his before I molded our palms together, our hands clasped, and I rested my other hand on his shoulder. His other hand was on my hip, but it was too low.
I cleared my throat. “You probably want to bring that other hand higher—between my ribs and shoulder blades, since you’re leading me.”
I’d considered wearing a longer shirt for this rehearsal, knowing he’d be touching my bare skin.
Instead, I’d worn a sports bra and leggings.
Part of teaching him the dance was hand positions, and bare skin made it easy to figure out where he’d touched and whether he was in the right spot.
Now that I was standing so close to him, my justification was weak.
There was so much electricity running, I could be wearing ten full coverage snowsuits and still know exactly the place where his hand had grazed my body.
I hadn’t worn this to teach him the dance. I’d worn it to torture us.
He moved his hand, and my body warmed at the contact. I tried to ignore the spark of desire and covered his hand on my side with mine.
“See, if I turn this way.” In slow motion, I spun, keeping our hands locked in place. “Or if I turn this way.” I rotated back and went the other way. “You’re steering me.” When I returned to the starting position, our gazes locked, and my heart kicked. “Easy,” I whispered.
“Easy,” he agreed, his focus split between my lips and eyes.
Not again. Not again . I stepped back and cleared my throat, letting his hand drop. “So, I’ll take us through the first count. We’ll start there today.”
“A lot of spinning.” He made a whirling motion with his index finger.
“Yeah, there are a few turns. We’ll take it slow. No music. I’ll just count it out.”
He nodded and secured me in a closed hold.
I took a deep breath and met his gaze. A mistake. Instead of starting the count, I searched his face. “Why is death the standard?” The words were whispered, as though they snuck out without my consent.
His face softened, but he didn’t break eye contact. “There is nothing worse than losing one of the great loves of your heart.”
The words were an arrow, piercing the bubble I’d tried to keep inflated between them. I ran my thumb along his jawline, the desire to touch him, to comfort him more than I could suppress. “Who was the great love of your heart?”
“Zoya.” His voice was gruff. “Her name was Zoya.”
“And she died?”
“She did.”
My chest tightened at the grief flickering across his face, a story I couldn’t translate.
Had I ever loved like that? To call anyone I’d dated a great love of my heart wouldn’t fit.
Even Ricky, my last boyfriend, the one I’d thought maybe, maybe about had left, and I’d cared more about the things he’d taken, the debt he’d racked up than his absence from my life.
What would it be like to miss someone the way his expression said he still missed Zoya? “In Russia?”
“Yes. That’s why I left.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“I would not want you to.”
If I could take some of his hurt, erase the pain I saw in the depths of his pale eyes, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Had any of the men I’d dated been capable of this deep well of emotion?
Not that I’d seen. Certainly not for me.
A great love . Fairy tales and happily-ever-afters had never been my thing as a kid.
My father had been physically present but emotionally absent, and I’d never thought of men as being capable of more than that.
Pasha was more. So much more.
The door handle rattled, and the two of us sprung apart as though we’d been electrocuted.
I let out a shaky laugh and silently thanked the heavens he’d remembered to lock the door.
We’d been a lot more careful since Tyler saw us, even though a lot less was going on.
This was the closest we’d been in weeks, and had someone walked in, all they’d have seen was us staring into each other’s eyes. Intimate in a different way .
He unlocked the door and opened it to Amy on the other side, her hand poised as though she’d been going to knock. “Oh, uh… I was coming to see if Alyssa wanted to grab lunch. Some of us are going out.” She peeked around Pasha’s wide shoulders. “You hungry?”
“Um…” We hadn’t done much practicing so far, and time was ticking for him to master the routine. “That’s okay. Not today. We aren’t quite done.”
Amy’s gaze zipped between us. What was the air like in here?
Tension had filled the room moments ago.
Had it lingered? Maybe Amy could sense how close we were to doing things we shouldn’t.
I wasn’t too worried about Amy saying something to anyone else because she wasn’t prone to random bits of gossip based on nothing but a feeling.
“I’ll catch you later,” Amy said with a knowing smile before turning and walking away. Before Pasha closed the door again, I heard Amy yell down the arena hall, “She’s not coming. They’re still practicing.”
Mia had broken down and told all the dancers that I was doing her a favor for her wedding. She’d made it clear the details were top secret, and Pasha and I were to be given some leeway with each other. She’d looked at Jazz as she’d said it. Bold, in my opinion, since Jazz was the vindictive sort.
“I’m sorry I’m taking so much of your time,” he said from beside the door. “I really will find a way to repay you.”
An image of him hovering over me, his breath hot in my ear, the Russian words caressing my senses as he brought me to climax, surfaced before I could force the thought down. “It’s my pleasure.”
He met me in the middle of the room, poised in first position. “That’s not enough as a payment.”
I’d certainly been satisfied the last time he’d unknowingly paid up.
But I had to agree those payments hadn’t been enough.
Would I ever get enough of him? Would I ever get more?
At the rate we were going, the tour would end, I’d leave to start rehearsal for Sarah Telling’s tour, and we’d never see each other again.
I had a phone interview with Sarah next week, which Mia had assured me was more a formality than an actual interview.
“I’m well paid,” I said. I locked my hand with his and rested my other hand on his shoulder. This time, he didn’t hesitate in putting his hand in the correct place. “All right.” I looked at a spot just over his shoulder, avoiding the danger of eye contact. “One, step back.”
We went through the counts over and over, me spinning around him, Pasha learning to change his handholds and steer me through each step in the count.
When my stomach rumbled, he checked his watch. “Two o’clock.”
“Did you want to stop? I have an apple in my bag. I can just eat that if you want to keep going.”
He eyed me, disapproval coating his face.
“You have a show tonight. You can’t survive on an apple for lunch.
” With his water bottle in his hand, he seemed to be considering something.
When he glanced up, his expression was determined.
“I have a car. I can drive us somewhere—somewhere far—for lunch.”
Privacy. Other than the possibility of being seen in the car together, which we could explain any number of ways, there was no chance of being caught. My heart raced. I searched his face, trying to determine if lunch was code for something else. Did I care if it was?
Not as much as I should.
“Yes,” I said, my voice breathless. “Yes.”