Lead and Follow(4)
“Thanks,” she said.
“It’s on the house. Mr. Shaw’s standing order.”
“I’ll have to thank him too.”
She took a fortifying sip. Even though customers waited for his attention, Paul stood there. Tan with golden hair. Eyes like a blue summer sky. Open and interested. She could read a thousand thoughts in that clear gaze.
Anymore, when she read anything at all in Dima’s expression, it was disappointment. Aloofness. Heartbreaking hesitancy. As if after fifteen years, they couldn’t talk to each other without dance as their language.
She downed her drink in three swallows and blinked away the image of Dima’s sensual lips and stoic reserve. Paul still stood there, watching her while wearing a bemused smile.
“When are you on break?”
He shrugged. “Now, if you want.”
That jolt to her belly turned molten. She exhaled slowly. Bad idea. Totally bad idea, although the tension holding her bones in place wasn’t going away any time soon. She liked to think she would’ve made a sensible decision had she known which way was up.
Lizzie nodded toward a door across from the bar. Dancers’ dressing rooms. One in particular. Christ, smashing a bottle would have more subtlety.
Paul fell in step beside her. He’d shoved on his cowboy hat.
Goddamn.
“In here,” she said.
The lights were off except for an alarm clock on the vanity table. Lizzie had barely flicked on a small lamp when Paul’s hands found her in the near darkness. He kicked the door shut, which freed that deep place where she’d been so nervous. So…not herself.
Just a little fun. The grin that shaped Paul’s lips said the same thing.
He tasted of Coke and maraschino cherries. Sweet. Delicious, actually. A scrape of stubble roughed against her cheeks and down her throat. Lizzie dug her fingers into the bulk of his shoulders. He wasn’t just a bartender, she remembered. A construction worker. That stray thought shot down to her pussy.
They didn’t even undress. Lizzie helped unfasten his jeans, shoving them down to tangle around his knees. She pushed him back in the chair that faced the vanity mirror. His hands climbed beneath her skirt and ripped at her panties. After a crinkle of foil, he rolled on a condom.
Rough guy. Rough hands. Rough, quick fuck.
She straddled his lean hips and sank onto his cock.
“Whoa,” she said, almost unconsciously.
“Like that?”
“Yes.”
He was big, thick, hard. His breath had taken on a desperate edge. To be able to get guys’ hearts pumping had steered her toward Latin dancing rather than her parents’ classical ballet. Dima wasn’t the only one who liked to show off.
She’d shown off for him for years. Somewhere along the line, his approval had come to mean more than that of a cheering crowd.
The worst part was, she knew Paul was just Dima’s type. His tastes occasionally strayed toward guys, and the ones who caught his eye held not an ounce of softness or grace. He liked them all-American with sunny looks and a sunnier disposition.
Great. In her desperation she’d picked a fuck-buddy based on her partner’s tastes. She needed to check herself into a mental ward.
One look down at Paul’s face, however, derailed that disturbing thought. He was a gorgeous hunk of oh-my-God. She ran her hands across his buzzed head, knocked off the cowboy hat and kissed him long and deep.
This man wasn’t Dima. Hell, she didn’t want him to be and she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
I am such a liar.
Chapter Two
Dmitri knew dancing. When everything else in his life busily turned to shit, he still had the stage. The rush he got off being admired was well worth the balls it took to make the first step.
Without Lizzie, it just wasn’t the same. Other women didn’t move like her. Didn’t smell like her. Didn’t feel like her body, shaped perfectly to his hands.
Most of all, they didn’t have her wicked smile.
Lizzie’s primary purpose in life was to bedevil him until he lost his mind. She’d become particularly adept lately. He needed the woman who had filled his life since he was fourteen. Since returning from her parents’ house, however, she’d been nothing but skittish. And hurtful, truth be told. They’d never done anything but support one another, yet until that evening, she’d refused to see him dance at Devant. All he wanted was her opinion. What did she think of this new direction? Was there a slim chance she’d consider joining him?
For Dima, it was something of a last straw. She was determined to break them in two out of pure stubbornness, when he’d taken the job at Devant just to stay with her.
The second he stepped off stage right, he was already on alert. Somewhere out in the crowd, he’d find her—claim her attention, even if it was only for a moment.