Epilogue
It's opening night of a new season. I stand in the wings before the curtain rises, waiting to go onstage. Sebastian leans close to my ear. “Don't disappoint me, firebird.”
I laugh. “I'm really scared if you don't know which ballet we're doing.”
“Just keeping you on your toes. And the sass ends as soon as we get home. Understand?”
“Y-Yes, Master,” I whisper so the other nearby dancers don't hear. I don't know how he still keeps me on this knife edge of fear and desire. Even as I know who he is. Even as I know I can trust him. I've finally come to accept my life is safe in his hands—in both men's hands.
He leans in again and whispers. “You'll always be my firebird.”
A low jolt of desire runs through me as the curtain rises.
We dance Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. Each time his hands are on me in a pas de deux, it feels like a tease. His hands are on me, but they aren't on me in the way I need for them to be on me. Henry was right that it's as if we are fucking on stage. The audience can feel it, too.
In some perverse way, they’re watching burlesque right now, not ballet.
But they love it. They drink it up like desperate parched people lost in a desert.
Everyone in the audience knows that this man owns me, body and soul.
Even if they don't know they know it. Even the dimmest among them cannot possibly miss the erotically possessive way his hands move on me as we dance.
Even the most innocent touch telegraphs sex.
They’re transfixed by our interpretation of the star-crossed lovers. We take our final bows; the applause of the crowd is thunderous. The audience surges to their feet. Bouquets of fresh flowers are tossed at ours. We are perfection.
I wonder if our sophisticated moneyed voyeurs will have the same passion we share tonight. I wonder if our energy somehow fed something inside them... a visual aphrodisiac. The roars of the crowd continue forever, and we stand there drinking it all in, letting their energy charge us.
A large bouquet of dark red roses is tossed from the private box where Morgan watched us dance. I tentatively step forward and take the bouquet from the stage. There’s a card. I pull it out and read.
Be ready, little rabbit. The wolves are hungry tonight.
Sebastian squeezes my hand. My gaze goes to his, and he holds me there, trapped and pinned by the knowledge of what he will demand of my body soon. What they both will demand. They’re predators, and I am their prey. And when this curtain goes down, the chase will begin.
I hope you enjoyed PERFECTION.