Lead and Follow(70)

They were on. It was the first time in six months that they would dance in public.

God, it was like a life sentence.

Although Dima would lead throughout the dance, Lizzie, as always, was the first into the studio—their makeshift stage. Arrive with attitude, their coach had said for years. Arrive already performing. That meant she walked ahead and gathered up the stares, the coos, the clapping. Dima stalked behind her, a dark force at her back.

Dressed in red spangles from head to toe—quite literally, as her hair adornments and shoes exactly matched the gown—she knew how she must look to those two-hundred-odd bigwigs. All sex and attitude. Good. There was a certain comfort in being able to face those lions in full regalia. Roughly twenty tiny square inches of beaded armor on top, with a weighted skirt down the backs of her thighs to swing and twirl.

With a quick scan of the airy, high-ceiling studio, Lizzie spotted all the bigwigs out in force. Because it was only a little past noon, they dressed in elegant suits and luncheon dresses. A few of what must be the school’s best students, all teen girls except for two young men who looked like dead ringers for Dima’s Russian bone structure, sat together. Sweat still lined their smooth brows, meaning their performance had already taken place.

Lionel Woodruff’s partner, a thin and exact black man in his mid-fifties, sat on a chair at center left that may as well have been a dais. A former soloist with the American Ballet Company, he was the public face of his late lover’s legacy—a picture of dignity, grace and loss. Reporters and two television cameras ringed him and his collection of close associates.

Great. Maybe Declan would have the implosion of Maynes and Turgenev on film for his collection.

The music started, to herald the beginning of their famous paso doble, the one for which they’d earned perfect marks in Berlin to clinch their first world title. A lifetime ago.

That same music took control. In this dance, Dima was the matador and she was the cape. For the next two minutes, if at no other time, everything would be as it should.

From across roughly ten feet, they stared one another down. Slowly, they walked with exaggerated steps to meet in the middle. Dima’s eyes blazed. He was in character, sure, but it was real. His passion and intensity. She’d been feeling waves of it for weeks, even as he tried his damnedest to hold it back. Now it pulsed from him in shimmering currents that sparked her inner desires. Fight back. Win. This was a dance of competition, and she would not be defeated.

Their first touch was…shocking. As if they had never touched before, not as partners or as lovers. Their bodies connecting. Hers woke up with a start, screaming for more. His skin. His fingers, although he held them taut and straight in proper form—not caressing so much as guiding. They clasped hands and broke eye contact for the first time, as if inviting the assembly to join in their conflict. Balanced just so, they extended their feet in a matched développé that tested their strength and flexibility.

Showing off.

Damn, they did it well.

Spinning Lizzie out of that position of control, he unleashed pure fire. So in command, so incredibly masculine, he led her body with practiced finesse. She became cloth, twirling and spinning at his merest direction. All the while his movements remained dramatic and larger than life. When she was free of his hold, Lizzie dipped into a low backbend, while Dima performed a graceful rond de jambe kick across her torso. Such velocity and control. She started in on a series of flamenco steps. His split leap ate half the distance across the floor, then matched her flamenco as he worked back to meet her.

Her lungs seared with heat. They could combust right there, right at that moment, doing what they loved, together, and she’d be happy.

Their hands touched again. Sweat. Dark eyes. Flared nostrils. He was more like an angered bull than a matador, as if their dance could finally bust through what bricks he’d stacked around deeper emotions. Arms locked, she backed away and away from his high, advancing steps. Lizzie escaped his pursuit, only to be caught by the wrist and coiled around his body like a cape. They came together in a controlled collision of pelvis to pelvis. She grasped his out-thrust hips. His hands reached overhead before bowing possessively low. The whole time, their foreheads pressed together, mouths open, breathing one another’s fire.

The rigid strength of his frame was all the tension she required to gather momentum for the upcoming lift. But Dima overcompensated, just as she’d seen him do with Jeanne in the practice video. Instead of perching gracefully on his shoulders before sliding back down like a slither of silk, she nearly toppled. Panic gripped her heart and gave it a yank. Dima grunted only loud enough for Lizzie to hear. A swift readjustment of his hands kept her from falling, but the lift couldn’t be saved. She curved down and through his legs in a classic snake twist.