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Блейк Элли
The Dance Off
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THREE
Lights flashed through the darkness and music through speakers too old to handle the beat as bodies bumped and ground across the dance floor.
Nadia lifted her bare arms over her head, eyes closed, hips swaying, feet burning, as deep in her bliss she tripped the light fantastic. For her that was exactly how it felt; when the killer groove of the song met the rhythm in her bones, filling her muscles with liquid heat, and sparkling across her senses. It was approaching divine.
Add a fall of silk, a length of rope, better yet a sparkling silver hula hoop suspended thirty feet above the stage, adding danger, suspense, and an audience hushed with a mix of hope for a touch of magic and fear that something might go wrong... Now that was nothing short of orgasmic.
Feet well and truly on the ground—unless you counted three-inch spikes a prop—the vertical-drop strands of her fringed silver sparkly top swished over her belly, sensual, sexual, lifting the experience a nudge higher. Especially when she could so easily imagine the stroke of the strands belonged to the sure, sensual fingers of a man with dark hair and dark eyes and a dark voice that settled like a purr in her very core. Since she couldn’t have him, she had to ease the sexual tension somehow, and dancing the hours away in a hip club deep within Prahran was the best way she knew how.
A sudden wave of dehydration swelled over her, condensing her vision to a pinprick. Knowing when she’d overdone it, Nadia wiped her hands over her face, slipped through the surge of sweaty bodies, and headed for the stairs that led down to the bar. And iced water. A jug of it for starters.
She skipped lightly down the stairs, doing a little twirl as the song upstairs hit its crescendo.
“Kiss me, Dancing Queen!”
Nadia felt herself grabbed. With a “Whoa!” she held onto a strong male arm, using momentum as much as the strength of his arm at her waist to haul herself upright. Then she looked up to find herself in the grip of a random guy. With golden curls and a wonky grin, he was cute as a button.
“What’s in it for me?”
“My mates bet me a twenty you wouldn’t. Too gorgeous, they said. Way out of my league. Do a guy a favour and show them different. I’ll split it, fifty-fifty.” The guy flashed his adorable dimple, proving no woman on the planet was out of his league.
When the dancing was as good as it got, it might even be better than sex, but sex sure had its place. And the guy was a serious honey. If she wanted a fling, a chance to scratch the itch that had been bothering her all week, this was it. Unfortunately the kick in her belly, the tension making her ache, wasn’t his to erase.
“I’ll have to pass.” She grabbed his hand, ducked under his arm and twirled away, leaving behind a “Hey!” as she threaded through the lighter crowd to find the bar.
Instead she found that while she’d been dancing Sam and her friends had made their way downstairs too, taking up a group of soft velvet couches in a warm little alcove in the corner of the busy bar. Nadia walked that way in time with the smooth song crooning gently below the sweet murmur of conversation.
Sam stood and waved her over. Tall, skinny, knobbly; like a newborn colt. With her long straight dark hair and fey grey eyes Sam was quietly beautiful. Though, perhaps that was only compared with her brother’s terrible masculine beauty, which was like a smack between the eyes.
Nadia nudged Sam’s fiancé, Ben, to scoot over.
“Don’t you go sweating on me, Miss Nadia,” said Ben as he made space. “This jacket is suede.”
Nadia eyed it, and raised an eyebrow. “That jacket is a travesty.”
“See!” Sam called across the couch. She grinned past the straw between her teeth, the other end of which was deep in a tall glass of something poison green.
Nadia spied the jug of the stuff, mist wafting from the ice sprinkled across the top—at least she hoped it was mist—and poured herself a glass. Dancing hadn’t erased the tight craving in her belly, and, since she’d stupidly given up a chance at a cute guy, poison-green cocktails might be her last resort.
She took a sip, shook her head at the beautiful bitterness, and settled into the lounge and the conversation swirling around her. The first real friends she’d made since moving home. Being able to talk about other things, fun things, silly things, serious things, things that had nothing to do with dance, was unexpectedly nice. Rare times she might even admit it was a relief.
Sam’s eyes suddenly widened to comical proportions as she spied something over Nadia’s shoulder. Enough that Nadia lifted herself from her slump and turned. And found herself looking into the hot hazel eyes of the man who’d sent her to drink.
“Ryder,” she and Sam said at the same time.
Nadia clamped her teeth around the straw so as not to say anything else incriminating.
“The big man!” called Ben, pulling himself to half standing to extend a handshake to his future brother-in-law.
Ryder moved in to take Ben’s hand, his shadow flowing over Nadia in the process.
He acknowledged the chorus of greetings with a smile in his eyes. Though when he finally looked down at Nadia, lifting his chin in acknowledgement, the glints hardened. Nadia crossed her legs to hold in the sensation that poured unbidden through her.
Belatedly, she noticed he’d changed. Gone was the ubiquitous pristine suit and in its place dark jeans and a dark sports coat. Beneath that an olive-green T-shirt that hugged the curves and definitions of his chest and made the very most of the flecks of green in his eyes. Nadia shoved the straw deeper in her mouth and took a hearty gulp.
“I’m so glad you came!” Sam called across the couch. “Was it the begging that did it? Or the promise of dancing? Ooh, you should dance with Nadia. Nothing like doing it for real to pick up some pointers.”
Nadia bit down on her straw so hard her jaw hurt. Oh, Lordy, Sam was playing matchmaker. Nadia would have to put a stop to that. Meaning she’d probably have to explain why.
She’d managed not to tell a soul here her plans as yet. Not at the studio. Not her mother. And not Sam and her friends.
Not that she had any concerns of jinxing things. She’d never been superstitious though she knew many dancers who were: lucky shoes, miracle lipstick, turning three times on the spot while chanting “Isadora Duncan” over and over. It was a little more selfish than that—she’d moved on a lot in her life and knew how people began to pull away when a job was near the end. She wanted this—the ease, the acceptance—a little while longer.
“I just remembered!” Ben jumped in. “The Big Man’s taking lessons too. I hear she told you you’d have to wear tights. Classic!”
Nadia opened her eyes wide at Ben but he just looked at her in sweet ignorance.
“Told you that, did she?” said Ryder.
“She’s sitting right in front of you,” Nadia muttered into her straw.
“How is he going, Nadia?” Sam asked. “I bet he tries to lead all the time.”
Nadia smiled at Sam. “He’s got potential, especially if he keeps applying himself.”
“Applying himself to dance?” Sam repeated, eyes wide and suggestive as she grinned at her brother. “Well, I never.”
Nadia made the mistake of looking up at the man in question to find his eyes glinting in warning. Unfortunately he didn’t know her well enough to know that he’d just tossed fuel on her fire.
She blinked up at him. “Turns out he has excellent posture too. Quite the form.”
Another beat went by in which the gleam in his eyes deepened, and the pulse in her wrist began to kick like a wild thing.
“In fact,” she continued, evidently unstoppable, “I have a few amateur ballroom enthusiasts on my books who are desperate for a male partner. If I let slip about your brother here, there’ll be blood in the water.
”The muscle twitched in Ryder’s jaw and he shoved his hands in the front pockets of his trousers, drawing her eyes down to what he’d framed all too nicely. Accident? Who knew? The man was an ocean of enigmas. Either way, by the time her eyes rose back to his, the pulse in her wrist had begun to beat loud and proud behind her ears.
Which was when the strains of a Kylie song filtered down the stairs and as one Sam’s friends shot to their feet, babbling about the song and the school formal and somebody falling off the stage, before they were all gone up the stairs in the search of the dance floor.
Ben remained, stoic in his charge of the bags and chairs, and not about to get his new suede jacket anywhere near the sweaty dancers upstairs. Then with the couch all to himself he shuffled deeper, and spread out with a sigh.
“Want to get some air?” Ryder asked, not having moved an inch.
She looked back up at him, and up, and up. Did she? Hell, yeah. “You okay, Ben?”
“As a lark.”
“Then air it is.” Nadia put her cocktail back on the table and stood, running her damp hands down the thighs of her jeans.
She pointed the way to a balcony populated with beer drinkers and followed as Ryder made a way through the throng and to a quiet patch of railing. Music pulsed through the windows above. Soft chatter spread from the star-gazers outside. While Nadia breathed deep of the cool night air, the busy street below, the Prahran railway station peeking between the nearby buildings.
Then, without preface, Ryder asked, “When I asked you out for coffee, why didn’t you tell me you had plans with Sam?” and with a darkness in his voice that Nadia hadn’t seen coming.
Completely foxed by the direction of his conversation, her incredulity was ripe as she blurted, “Why? Do you have a problem with that?”
He stayed silent, but the twitch in his cheek gave her the answer.
“You do!” She jabbed his forearm with a finger; when it hit solid muscle it bounced right back. “What do you think I’m going to do, corrupt her? Buddy, that venomous green potion masquerading as a drink back there was all hers.”
Ryder’s hands curled around the railing, the frown marring his forehead easing some. “She’s...open-hearted. She’s never been very good at protecting herself. That’s long since fallen to me.”
Okay, then. Not so much an indictment on her. This was about him. Nadia lowered her mental dukes. “I’d say Ben back there has you covered on that score.”
Ryder scoffed, his frown back with a vengeance.
“What? Ben’s smart, solid, and he’s clearly smitten with her. I’m totally jealous.”
“Jealous?” Well, that wiped the frown from his face. He turned to lean his elbows against the railing as he stared through the crowd at the young man scooched low in the soft seat, the collar of his jacket bunched up about his ears.
Nadia rolled her eyes. “Not of Sam, you goose. Of how much Ben adores her. I’ve never even been close to so adored.”
Ryder’s eyes slid back to hers, an eyebrow raised in raging disbelief.
“Admired by audiences, sure,” she said, floating a who cares hand between them. “Envied by other dancers, oh yeah. Enjoyed by men, you can count on it. But adored?” She shook her head as Ryder continued to stare at her as if she’d grown an extra head. “Don’t panic, Ryder. I’m not about to huddle in a corner and cry. A dancer’s life is an endless series of rejections with just enough triumphs thrown in to keep us hungry. We’re a tough breed, Kent women and dancers both. And it’s hard to be tough and adorable at the same time.”
“Puppies are adorable,” said Ryder, his eyes now roving over her face, her hair, her shimmering silver top that she’d not all that long ago imagined slid over her skin with his touch. When his eyes roved back to hers she felt a good degree hotter. “Baby bunnies too.”
“And your sister.”
“Alas, my sister has a tendency to be that, to my constant disadvantage. As for you...” Nadia fought the urge to twist and turn under his heady gaze. “Adorable you may not be. But only because you’re something else entirely.”
The urge to ask what he thought was so acute she only just managed to swallow it down. If she went there, there’d be no going back.
Instead she leant on the railing and looked out into the night.
“My adorable sister is really marrying the twerp, isn’t she?” Ryder asked at long last.
“Yeah,” Nadia said on a relieved laugh. “Did you think it was all pretend?”
“No. Maybe.” He ran a hand over his face, then through his hair, leaving it in spikes. And upon witnessing the first spark of vulnerability she’d ever seen in the man, Nadia felt her heart kick hard against her ribs.
In punishment, she bumped her hip against the railing hard enough to leave a bruise, and said, “I see what’s going on here. It’s like something out of a Jane Austen novel. The big sister—or in this case brother—overlooked, left on the shelf, while the younger sister shines.”
As hoped, the ridiculousness smacked the vulnerability from his eyes. Then he grinned, his teeth flashing white in the moonlight. “Alas, I am a confirmed bachelor.”
“Confirmed by whom?”
“Every woman I’ve ever been with.”
Not dated. Not known. Been with. Nadia breathed deep.
“I’m a determined man when motivated, Miss Kent. And my motivations lead me to work eighty hours a week in a job I take seriously. I am less motivated to give up my standing holiday in Belize every Australian winter, one ticket return. Or full rights to the remote control. And at the end of the day I go home to the bachelor pad to end all bachelor pads.”
“Posters of women in bikinis straddling large...motorbikes all over your walls?”
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