For long moments they lay still together, gasping for breath. He slid his knees under her thighs and held her trapped beneath his chest, and she didn’t feel the slightest impulse to escape his weight. She felt so close to him, connected to him in a way that went beyond partnering and professional matters, even beyond a typical sexual experience. This was a universe away from what she and her previous sex partners had done. It simply wasn’t the same thing. Rubio’s chest felt perfect against her chest, and his legs felt perfect against her legs. His cock felt perfect inside her as she flexed her sore, hot cheeks. Everything was perfect, balanced and aligned. It wasn’t exaggeration, it was the truth.
Slowly, as she came to her senses, another truth devastated her.
They could never, ever do this again.
*** *** ***
Rubio thought he was crushing Petra. He was almost sure of it, but he didn’t care. He wanted to crush her. He wanted to put her in a cage in his loft and keep her there whenever he wasn’t using her. He wanted to put his cock in her mouth and shove it in balls deep. He wanted to fuck her again, tonight, tomorrow night, every night until she begged him to leave her alone. He wanted to do every perverted and sordid thing in the world to beautiful Petra.
“Meu bem,” he whispered against her ear. “What were you saying? You don’t want me?”p>
She smiled, but then she shook her head and buried her face in her hands. This reaction befuddled him. He was still drifting in the afterglow of their luscious, mind-altering sex, but she looked unhappy. Why?
Jesus Cristo, he’d hurt her. He must have hurt her too badly. He must have misread her signals.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered in frantic repetition, checking over her slender frame. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what you liked. I was too rough. I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t that.”
“What then?” He pulled out since he was going soft, but he still held her in his arms. “What’s the matter? You are angry? Hurt? Please, tell me.”
“It’s just…” She turned away from him. “We can’t do this. It’s even worse than I thought.”
With patient, gentle pressure, he managed to uncurl her from her fetal ball. He nudged her hands away from her face. “What do you mean, worse than you thought? What are you saying? I don’t understand.”
She stared up at him, her eyes hard now, and bleak. “I thought, just one time. Just once would be okay, to satisfy my curiosity. I didn’t realize it would feel so...perfect.”
“Is bad? To feel perfect?”
“No. I mean, yes! Don’t you understand how dangerous this is to me, to my career? I don’t want to fall in love with you, and end up heartbroken and used, and get knocked up with some baby you don’t want, and spend the rest of my life crippled with regrets. Crippled and angry and bitter and resentful.”
He tried to follow the miserable tangle of her words. “But...” He shook his head. “I didn’t make a baby in you. I used a condom. Petra, look.” He held up the used, filled receptacle before it occurred to him it was pretty disgusting. “Here, let me up a minute.”
He went to the bathroom and threw it away, and washed his hands. When he returned, Petra was propped up against her pillows, huddled in her blanket. He went to sit beside her. He wanted to comfort her, but he was afraid to even touch her in her current mood. “Petra, I know your concerns. But I liked what we just did. I liked it a lot. Didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I only want to dance with you. We should be dance partners, that’s all.”
“Sure, we are dance partners,” he said to soothe her. He pulled her against his side, and when she didn’t shove him away, he pressed a kiss to her temple. “Listen, we can make this work. We don’t have to make a baby, like your mother and father. We can dance and then we can have sex sometimes if you like. We can even play at Liam’s party, or here, or at my place—”
“No, we can’t do that,” she cried. “That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.”
“But it was so fun. You liked it when we played. You liked it just now, when I spanked you and fucked you,” he said in sultry flirtation. “You were so wet.”
“I know. It felt really good, all of it.”
He scratched his forehead. “Is this because I called you a naughty little slut? Because that was just doing dirty talk. It’s a sadist thing, to say nasty names and threats and all that. I didn’t mean it for real.”
That made her bury her face in her hands again, and he decided he better shut his mouth before he made things worse. He ran fingers up and down her arm, resisting the urge to grope her tit. He breathed in the scent of her sugar-vanilla hair and sighed.
“Ah, Petra. This makes me very sad, your rejection. I’m sorry,” he said, because he didn’t know what else to say. “I thought you wanted it. I’m sorry I made you angry.”
“I’m not angry.” She flung her arms around his neck. “The sex was good. Too good. It was spectacular. That’s why we can’t do it again. I don’t want to lose my head and act stupid, and go chasing after you—”
“You don’t have to chase me. I’m right here. If you like, we can do it again. And again.”
She made an irate sound and got up from the bed, taking the blanket with her and revealing the fact that his cock was stiff, ready for an encore.
He pulled the corner of a sheet over the evidence. “I would like to do it again,” he said. “But I understand you don’t want to. Okay. Because you don’t want to get hurt or...because I will do to you like Petr Grigolyuk do to your mother? But I don’t like when people say I’m like him. I’m me. Different person.”
She walked over to get his clothes with the blanket wrenched tightly around her. “It’s not
your fault, okay? It’s me. It’s my issues, my fears.”
“My cock was so happy inside you.” He stepped into his jeans, thinking about all the possibilities. “We could do it whenever you liked. Before class, after shows. During rehearsal breaks in my dressing room.”
“No.”
“I don’t care if you want to live your own life. I won’t make any demands. Only tease you and hurt you and fuck you, and maybe sometimes I’ll pee on you in the shower—”
“No!”
He frowned. “But...then...where will you get sex? From someone else?” He scowled at her as he shrugged into his sweater. “When you could be with me? This isn’t fair. There is so much more we could do together. Restraints and toys, and nasty sex, and whips, and all kinds of fun stuff. God, Petra. You would love it, to play with me. It makes no sense.”
“It makes sense to me.”
He glared at her with his arms crossed over his chest. “Right now, you are being a very, very bad girl.”
She looked apologetic but determined. “If you care about me, please don’t push this. Please, just pretend this never happened.”
Somehow that hurt him most of all. Pretend it never happened? Impossible, for him anyway. He could count on one hand the number of women who’d affected him this way since he’d come to London. One finger, really. There was so much promise between him and Petra, so many possibilities to explore. So much perversion to wallow in. But she was his partner. If she pouted and fussed at him all the time like this, they’d both go mad.
“Okay,” he said. “I don’t have a choice, do I? But I’m not happy about this, and I won’t pretend it never happened, because it did happen. I’m not good at pretending.”
“You pretend all the time. When you dance, and act on stage. That’s all pretend, isn’t it?”
He glared at her. Why was she doing this? He wasn’t Petr Grigolyuk, and she wasn’t her mother, and partners slept with each other all the time. It wasn’t exactly professional, but it was common.