Blue Lines(53)

The only thing he knew was that he had to get to Piper and make sure she was okay.

* * *

After making sure that Tate had everything he needed to take care of Stanley while they were away, Erik drove like a bat out of hell to Reese Allen’s Dance Studio. After locking the car, he ran up the stairs and entered the gaudy yellow studio. It was bright as hell but it looked good with the black designs and shit that she had hanging everywhere. Music shook the walls as he made his way through the studio, following its beat. He didn’t recognize the song, but that wasn’t new. He usually listened to rap and bluegrass, not this pop stuff they were dancing to. He was a music weirdo, as Jakob would call him.

Erik finally found Piper among the many rooms in the studio. There in the middle of the floor stood Piper in supertight black shorts and a small black sports bra. Reese wore almost the identical thing but her outfit was yellow and blue and her body wasn’t nearly as delectable as Piper’s. Piper had piled her mass of hair on the top of her head. Sweat dripped from her brow and her body glistened with the evidence that she had been working hard. But even with all that sexiness in one little package, the one part he had a hard time breaking eye contact with was her belly.

It was so small, but protruding at the same time. He had only gotten a glimpse of it on the dock, but seeing it now, out in the open, made all of this so much more real. He wanted to walk up to her, press her against the wall, and cradle her stomach, just to feel what she felt every day. He had this unbelievable need to just hold her, and tell her she was beautiful.

“We’ll do it one more time, girls, and then I want y’all to come up here and do it,” Reese said, but Erik’s eyes never left Piper.

When she glanced over at him, she looked shocked that he was there. He gave her an awkward little wave and then slid down the wall, leaning forward on his knees so he could watch. She broke her gaze with him when the music started. Piper and Reese started to move so fluidly and in sync, it was mind-blowing. Watching them dance was like watching two of the same person. The steps they choreographed for the song were perfect, and when Piper took her solo, doing what seemed like a million little turns before kicking her leg up into her arm and falling back to where her head almost hit the ground, Erik almost flew up to help her, but she had it. A dance move he would bet most pregnant woman would never be able to do.

She was on fire.

Erik had never seen anything so beautiful and it started to piss him off when Reese took over the dance. It should have been Piper; she was wickedly awesome. Once the song was over, the girls who sat against the mirrors started to clap as they stood. They couldn’t have been eighteen, and if Erik remembered correctly, he remembered seeing them dance solos at Ally’s last recital. They were damn good, but nothing like Reese and Piper. Reese started teaching the girls as Piper walked toward him. He stood, smoothing out his shirt as she approached.

“Whatcha think?” she asked with a grin.

She was breathing hard, and it made him want to have sex with her, which did not help the raging hard-on in his pants.

“You don’t want to know,” he said with a laugh.

She laughed along as she said, “I do! Did I look like a whale? I know I messed up that fallout.”

“Whales are the last thing on my mind, Piper. You didn’t mess up anything; you outdanced your sister,” he said without looking at her.

When she didn’t say anything, he looked over at her to find her biting her lip as she looked at him.

“That’s really sweet.”

“No, it’s not. It’s the truth.”

Piper smiled and shook her head.

“I’m gonna go shower and raid Reese’s closet.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Piper eyed him suspiciously. “You aren’t taking a shower with me.”

Erik gave her a playful smile.

“But isn’t that what husbands and wives do?”

“We are not real, remember?” she said with a little bit of what he thought was sadness in her voice.

He hated when she got that look on her face. To lighten up the situation, he joked, “Maybe we could try doing the fun stuff of marriage, the sex.”

She paused on the stairs and turned to look at him. Her belly was inches from his face, and if he bent down just a little, her sweet, juicy pussy would be inches from his mouth. But then she started talking, distracting him from the prize in those little black shorts.

“Are you proposing a sexual relationship with me, Mr. Titov?”

Erik gave her a lopsided grin.

“Depends, what would you say?”

She didn’t even hesitate.

“No way.”