Pointe of Pride

Chapter 20

“So, are you going to tell me what the dress looks like?” Nick asked as Carly sat against the headboard, the sheets pulled up to cover her breasts. It was late, and he was planning to be up early to surf with Marcus, but the last thing he wanted to do was sleep.

“I can’t tell you, it’s a surprise,” Carly said in mock outrage. Her cheeks were still flushed and her ponytail was tangled and askew. She looked like someone who had just come, hard, which she was. He licked his lips. He could still taste her.

“It’s a surprise for the groom,” he corrected. “You have to tell me if she’s chosen something that makes her look like a walking pavlova so I can be ready to keep a straight face when I see her coming down the beach at us.”

“Heather has impeccable taste in dresses and dessert, and the good sense not to confuse the two. I promise you, the dress is elegant and beautiful, just like she is. And you’re polite enough to keep a straight face even if it isn’t.”

“That’s true,” he mused, scooting towards her on the bed. “But what about your dress? What am I going to do when I see you coming down the aisle in that strappy teal thing? I’m pretty sure I saw a very high slit up one side.” With one hand, he pulled her to him, then ran the other hand up her bare thigh, tracing the muscle under the silky skin, feeling soft hairs beneath his fingertips. She sighed, then looked up into his face and gave him a wicked grin.

“Easy, just imagine I’m a walking pavlova.”

He laughed and kissed her, wishing they could stay up all night bantering and fooling around. But tomorrow was a big day: after he was done at the beach, they had their interview with the Morning Sun. His stomach fluttered with nerves as he thought about it. So far, their plan was working. He needed it to keep working until it translated into something more than online followers. He needed those followers to turn into job offers or freelance gigs, and soon. In less than a week, Marcus and Heather would be married, his hotel reservation would end, and he’d have to figure out where to go next and what to do once he got there.

“What’s up?” Carly asked, and he realized his shoulders had stiffened under her hands.

“Nothing,” he lied, willing his muscles to relax. “Just thinking about tomorrow. We should get some rest.”

“But I’m not sleepy,” Carly protested, running her hands down his back to squeeze his ass. “I’m horny.”

He chuckled. “One of Snow White’s lesser-known dwarves.”

“Exactly. Strange that Disney didn’t include him.” One of her hands snaked around and stroked the front of his pants, and his cock responded immediately, like it always did with her.

“Fuck,” he breathed, and she gave him a wry smile.

“I can’t, as you know. But there are other things I can do, and I’m very good at them, as you also know. When you have a broken vagina, you get very good at blow jobs, and you give a whole lot of them. Which in turn only makes you better at them. Practice, perfect, et cetera.”

“I’m well aware of how good you are.” He smiled dutifully. She joked like this sometimes, making light of her condition and the way she’d coped with it over the years, and though he was glad she could joke about it, he couldn’t muster any amusement. The idea of Carly hurting, of her being with men who were content to let her hurt right in front of them, wasn’t funny to him at all. He liked penetrative sex, obviously, but he couldn’t imagine wanting it enough to hurt someone to get it, or being so oblivious during it that he wouldn’t notice that his partner was in pain. Carly was a good actress, but she wasn’t that good. He took hold of her wrist and stopped her hand.

“You can practice on me another time, Horny, I promise,” he said, kissing her forehead. “But we should really get some rest.”

A few short hours later, he and Marcus had rinsed and dried their boards and stopped by the surf club kiosk for a coffee, and he returned to his room to find Carly still dozing in his bed. She stirred as he entered and looked up as he set an iced coffee down on the bedside table next to her.

“Room service for madame,” he said.

“Mmmpph,” she replied, which he’d learned by now was her usual morning greeting. “Not human yet.”

“Well, drink your coffee and get human. I need to shower, and then we’ve got a journalist to impress.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she grumbled. “So early.”

“I know, Sleepy.” He sat on the side of the bed sipping his own coffee, marveling not for the first time at the way her curls took over her entire pillow. Wondering what it would be like to wake up every morning with them straying onto his. Slowly, she sat up and reached for the coffee. The relieved little groan she let out when she swallowed her first mouthful shouldn’t have turned him on, but it did. Almost everything about Carly Montgomery turned him on now, even her half-human harrumphs first thing in the morning.

“How’s the surf this morning?”

“It’s good. Bigger swell than we’ve had the last few days, but I did all right. Getting my legs back under me after so many years away.” Marcus had given him a few pointers last week, and since then he could feel his balance improving and his instinct for how a wave was going to move and shift beneath his board growing. Maybe if he stuck around after the wedding, he’d have a chance to improve further, he thought, studying the lid of his coffee. But that would require a plan for what his life looked like a week from now, and he still didn’t know where in the world he’d be or what he’d be doing there.

He looked up to find Carly watching him. “Your hair’s all salty,” she said, reaching up to rub a few strands of it between her fingers. Nick sat still, letting her work her hand into the damp strands, her fingertips thrillingly cold from her coffee cup. His pulse tripped, and then sped, as he remembered how she’d clung to his hair as she came last night, fingertips scraping against his scalp as she bucked against his mouth and begged him not to stop.

Carly disentangled her fingers from his hair and trailed them down the side of his neck. He was disappointed when she pulled her hand away, but a second later, she slipped a fingertip into her mouth and sucked on it, and his throat went dry. “Tastes salty, too,” she said huskily.

“I need a shower,” he repeated, watching her mouth. “Would you like to join me in the shower?”

“No, I insist on joining you in the shower,” she grinned.

“Thank God,” he stood and set both their coffees on the bedside table, and a second later she was laughing as he scooped her out of the bed and carried her into the bathroom.

“Last time we tried this I fell asleep,” she said, when he’d set her down on the bathmat and turned on the water.

Nick turned back to face her, his entire body hungry for the taste of her, the way she arched into his hands and whimpered his name. “I promise this time you’ll be wide awake. If I have my way, you’ll wake the entire hotel.”

She was going to hold him to that promise, Carly thought, stepping forward and seizing the hem of his shirt. His skin and board shorts were damp, but they worked them off together, and by the time Nick was naked, steam was billowing out of the shower. She watched the delicious shift of his chest muscles under his skin as he reached out and pulled her tank top over her head, and the unmistakable need in his eyes, the determined set in his jaw, as he tugged her damp panties off her hips and slid them slowly but deliberately down her thighs. They fell to the ground, leaving her pussy aching with want. It had only been hours since she’d last come and it felt like years.

He stepped backward into the shower and tested the water, then reached and pulled her in gently by her waist. Carly groaned with relief as the warm water sprayed her shoulders and soaked into her scalp. He hadn’t let go of her, and his large body crowded her pleasantly, pushing her further under the spray. She wanted to tip her head back and close her eyes against the water, but that would mean missing the glisten of his wet skin and the play and slide of droplets over his chest and down his stomach. She reached out and brought his hips flush to hers, pulling him closer to the water and letting his thick, hard cock press against her lower stomach. He growled and ground against her, the sound desperate and addictive, then took a small step back and guided her backward until she felt tiles against her shoulder blades.

She gasped at the sudden press of cold on her back, but he caught the sound with a fierce kiss, and within a few seconds the sensation had passed, replaced by a feverish heat that crawled over her skin, magnifying every stroke of his tongue and slide of his hands. It only intensified when he pulled his mouth from hers and put his hands on the tiles on either side of her body, then slowly lowered himself to his knees.

Distantly, Carly remembered a tipsy conversation she’d had with Heather, about a year before her engagement to Jack had imploded. They’d been hanging out at Heather’s place on a Sunday evening, after a matinee performance, with the promise of Monday off. Jack wasn’t there—in hindsight Carly had realized that he was probably out fooling around with one of his many side pieces. She and Heather had sprawled, jelly-legged and wine-loose on Jack’s deep velvet couch, and ranked sexual positions from most overrated to least.

“Everyone thinks shower sex is such a good idea,” Carly had said, gesturing with a sloshing wine glass for emphasis. “Like, let’s go fuck against cold, hard tiles and hope we don’t slip and break a wrist before we come.”

Heather had giggled and insisted that shower sex had its merits and should be lower on the overrated list. Carly had shook her head, wondering in silence how she was expected to enjoy being repeatedly stabbed in the vagina while her fingertips went pruney from the water. But then, past-Carly had never had shower sex like this.

Nick settled himself on his knees in front of her, the water sliding down his long, taut back, and looked up into her face. Droplets beaded on his dark lashes, threatening to fall into his eyes, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I want to stop if anything hurts, okay?” he said, just like he had last night. Just like he had every time. “Promise you’ll tell me.”

“Of course,” she said, surprised to hear that her voice was steady, a stark contrast to the anticipation and need that were rocketing through her. He nodded but didn’t move. “Of course,” she repeated, realizing as she spoke that she meant it. Of course it would be easy to tell Nick she wanted to stop. He knew the truth about her body. He understood it, and didn’t ask her for more than she wanted to give. Not yet, anyway.

He took his time stroking up the insides of her thighs, tracing teasing circles on the slick, sensitive skin, before replacing his fingers with his lips, and then his tongue. One hand slid back up her body, caressing her rib cage, then reaching up to flutter teasingly over one nipple. With the other hand, he anchored himself on her hip, and then, when she thought she might pass out from wanting him to touch her, he dipped his head and ran his tongue lightly, almost imperceptibly, between her slick folds.

The sound that escaped her was something between a sigh and a sob. She knew he heard it, because he repeated the motion with even less pressure, and for a moment she felt a familiar twinge of irritation at him. Of course he was going to tease her. Of course he was going to make her squirm against the tiles, twisting her hips and widening her legs to urge him for more. She wanted to strangle him, but that would interrupt what he was doing, and that was unacceptable.

“Please,” she managed, her eyes squeezed shut and the back of her head grinding against the hard tiles. She looked down and met his eyes and saw that he was grinning, the absolute bastard.

She was about to tell him that he was an absolute bastard when he flicked his tongue over her clit and she lost the ability to put even that sentence together. With his fingers gently pinching her nipple, his other hand tight on her hip, and his tongue dancing over her most sensitive place, she was incoherent, capable of little more than gasping and whimpering at the ceiling as he moaned against her needy flesh. He was good at this. Of course he was good at this, the absolute bastard.

She felt her climax taking shape, a wave gathering in her muscles, and she chased it, putting a hand in his drenched hair and holding him against her so she could grind against his mouth. He moaned louder, and the vibrations spiraled through her until she was breathless and desperate, until the world beyond this shower, beyond his mouth and his wicked grin and her buzzing, screaming nerve endings, ceased to exist.

“Fuck,” she gasped. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, Nick, don’t stop.”

He didn’t stop. Instead, he removed his hand from her hip, moaning against her, and when she looked down, she saw that he’d wrapped it around his cock and was sliding it up and down in firm, rapid strokes to match the rhythm of his tongue on her clit.

The wave broke. She shuddered against his mouth, her fingers scrabbling to find purchase in his hair as that strange sigh-sob escaped her again. A second later, she heard him groan and felt him spasm, and realized that even as he’d come, he’d never stopped lavishing attention on her clit. He kept licking her, his pace gentling as the wave receded and she caught her breath.

After a few minutes, he stood up on shaky legs and kissed her lips, then rinsed himself under the water.

“We should probably turn it off,” she said, her voice still breathy. “Isn’t there a drought?”

He turned back to her, grin back in place. It did something to her, that grin. Lit up the darkest, hardest to find places in her chest.

“I don’t know about a drought,” he said, kissing her jaw, then her neck. “Far as I can tell, things around here are very wet.”

Carly gave him a playful shove, then remembered they were in a shower and put her hand on his waist to steady him in case he slipped. He laughed, turned off the water, then stepped out and passed her a towel. She thanked him with a kiss and watched him walk out of the room, wondering if she could follow on legs that had almost given out in the shower.

“Marcus said they’re picking up Heather’s mum at the airport this morning,” he said, heading to the wardrobe. “What do I need to know about Mrs. Hays before I meet her?”

“Heather didn’t write you a one-page briefing memo?”

“No, I think she’s counting on you to brief me.”

“Well, first of all, it’s Ms. Hays. Linda. Heather’s dad left before she was even born, and Linda never remarried. She’s … she’s nice enough. She worked all the time when Heather was little, because he only paid child support sometimes, so she wasn’t around a lot. Heather moved into the dorms when she was fourteen, and she spent a lot of time at my place. Kind of like you and Marcus’s family. But Linda loved Jack. Loved him. Or the idea of him.”

“Why?”

Carly worked her fingers through her hair and sighed.

“He looked stable. He was from a wealthy family, and he was always going to have a job in the ballet world, because of who he was and who his parents were. I think Linda thought he was finally going to give Heather the kind of life she wished she could have given her. He put on a good show of being loving and attentive when the right people were watching, and he fooled her, just like he fooled everyone else.”

Nick returned to the bathroom, wearing a pale blue short-sleeve button shirt and a pair of chino shorts. He stepped behind her and met her eyes in the mirror.

“But he didn’t fool you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No. I’ve known Jack since I was five and he was seven. He was an asshole of a kid. Entitled, manipulative. As we got older, he only got worse.”

“How does Linda feel about Marcus? They’ve met, right?”

“We all went out to dinner when Heather was guesting with NYB last year,” Carly nodded, reaching for her sunscreen. “I think Linda was skeptical, but Marcus did okay. I was there as a buffer, and I think that helped, too. Linda likes me fine, even if she’s always thought I’m a bit of a bad influence on Heather.”

“Are you?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“You’re damn right I am,” she said quickly, but then she paused. “Heather was such a serious kid, from the very first day she arrived at the NYB school. So obedient and determined and focused. I mean, you’ve seen the spreadsheets and the to-do lists. A bit of that rubbed off on me, I think, but a bit of my rebellion rubbed off on her, too, which I’m sure Linda didn’t appreciate. She really just wants Heather to be settled already, and the last few years have been a bit unsettled. It was the first time Heather ever deviated from her grand plan. It worked out okay, though.”

“Better than okay, I’d say. They’re great together,” he said, and she could feel him watching her as she walked into the bedroom to retrieve her clothes.

So are we, a tiny voice whispered in the back of her mind, and she stopped dead in the middle of pulling on her bra. She glanced over her shoulder, as if Nick could have heard the thought, but he was busy fixing his hair in the bathroom mirror. Ridiculous, she told herself. That voice wasn’t real. It was the orgasm talking, that was all. Next week this—this fling, this whatever it was—would be over, before Nick could tire of her. She’d go back to New York, back to work and the real world. She pulled her dress over her head, ignoring the hollow feeling in her stomach at the thought.

Carly and Nick had arranged to meet Ivy Page at a café on the Freshwater main drag. In the twenty-four hours since she’d asked to interview them, their follower counts had both jumped again. The photo Carly had posted this morning from a session they’d done in one of the old shopping arcades in the heart of the city, with shoppers bustling and blurring past her as she posed on pointe on the tiled floor, had amassed thousands of likes already.

Still, Carly was nervous. She didn’t have a lot of experience talking to the press. Heather and Nick had done plenty of it, but no one cared much what a corps dancer had to say about anything. She needed to get through this interview without fucking up.

They’d been waiting at a table for about ten minutes, and Carly had already finished her lamington, when a woman entered the café, looked around, and strode over to them. Ivy Page was petite and curvy, with shoulder-length light brown hair tucked behind her ears. She wore glossy black plastic glasses, a snug black dress that reached her shins, and a pair of strappy, block-heeled sandals, without which Carly suspected Ivy would be several inches shorter than her.

“You must be Nick and Carly,” she smiled down at them when she reached their table. “I’m Ivy. Thanks for making time for me.” They both stood to shake her hand, and Carly’s suspicions were confirmed; even with the heels, Nick towered over her.

“I’ll just go order a coffee and then we can get started,” Ivy said, and Carly nodded silently. As Ivy turned away and walked to the counter at the front of the café, Carly realized how sweaty her hand was and wiped it surreptitiously on her dress. Nick noticed, of course.

“Are you nervous?” he asked as they sat back down.

“A little,” she admitted. “I know this isn’t a big deal for you, Mr. Big Shot, but I really need this to work.”

Nick’s gaze dropped to the table, but then he reached down and squeezed her clammy hand. “It is working. That’s why we’re here.”

“I know, but …”

Nick glanced over his shoulder at Ivy, who was collecting her coffee from the counter. “No buts,” he said, turning back to Carly. “You earned this. This whole project was your idea, and you talked me into it even though I didn’t want to do it. And if you can win me over after nearly killing me with your luggage trolley, you can do just about anything.”

“I didn’t nearly kill you,” she objected. “It was a light maiming, at most.”

“A mild to moderate maiming,” he smiled. “And you still managed to bend me to your will.”

“Because I’m a ballet brat?” she laughed weakly.

Nick watched her for a few silent seconds. “All right, let’s try it this way,” he said, straightening up and looking down his nose at her. “You can’t do this. I’d like to see you try. You’re going to fail. You’re going to be Peasant Maiden #4 forever.”

Carly’s eyes widened as he spoke. What the hell kind of pep talk was that? Honestly, some people deserved to have slates smashed over their heads. She opened her mouth to tell him off, but then he winked.

Oh. Oh. Game on, asshole. Challenge accepted. Ballet brat mode activated.

Carly grinned, then quickly schooled her face into a glower. She leaned in close, eyes narrowed. When she spoke, her voice was low and deadly, but he didn’t look intimidated.

“It’s going to feel so good when I prove you wrong, Nick Jacobs.”

Nick smiled triumphantly at her as Ivy arrived at the table, and Carly sat back and squared her shoulders. She could do this, she thought. Not because she wanted to prove Nick wrong. Nick believed in her, despite all the evidence she’d given him to the contrary. Despite all the times she’d fucked up and lost her cool in front of him. No, she could do it because she’d spent her life waiting for this opportunity, dancing around in the background with the other nameless peasant maidens, hoping her moment in the spotlight would come. And now it was here. Not because her parents had bought it for her, or because Heather had called in a favor. It was here because Carly had willed it into being. She had convinced Nick to help her, and they’d worked hard together, and now here she was, with a chance to be something other than a body in the background.

Main character energy. That’s what she needed right now. As Ivy sat down across from them and pulled out a notebook and a phone, Carly threw her a confident smile.