“You’re not rusty.”
“Please?”
The soft rumble of his voice twines through my senses. His voice is trained even more than his body is and I feel like he’s using it as a weapon against me.
I scramble for an excuse not to feel his hands all over me again. I’ve got nothing. “Uh, sure. Did you ever do The Nutcracker at your dance school?”
He smiles. “When I was nine. I was a mouse.”
“Do you remember the grand pas de deux?” The emotional climax of the ballet. That unrestrained style, but with a contemporary twist, will contrast well with the folkloric back-up dancers. The Sacrifice and the Priestess have broken away from the others and want each other. Badly.
“Of course. You want lifts like those?”
“Similar. That mood. The crescendo of the music, the big feelings, all that emotion.”
I describe the first to him, a simple fall, catch and lift. More of a raise off the floor, nothing crazy, but he’s got to react quickly to his partner’s fall or he’ll drop her and she’ll go crashing to the ground.
I take his hand. “You’re going to let go of me and then step forward and catch me with your arm before I fall,” I explain, glancing at the hard, shiny wooden floor. “On second thought, maybe we should try this outside on the grass.”
“You think I’d let you fall?”
I make the mistake of meeting his eyes. His face is just a few inches from mine. My lips remember how his felt on mine just yesterday.
One breath.
Two.
He leans closer to me and I’m seconds away from falling into something far more dangerous than the wooden floor.
“Okay, good. Great. Um, let’s try it out.” I look at his cheek, not into his eyes. No backup plan. If he drops me, I’ll fall.
I stand on tiptoe and raise my right leg up over my head. “On three, okay? One, two, three.”
Rush lets go of my hand and I raise both arms above my head like a bird taking flight. I tip back and let my body arch, giving in completely to gravity. To him. To the trust that he’ll catch me before I fall. Every millisecond passes by in slow motion. One-tenth of a second. Three-tenths. Five-tenths. Why isn’t he catching me?
I’m a split second from dropping my arms and my raised leg before I fall into a heap, when his arm slips around my waist.
He’s got me. I relax and arch back over his arm as he lifts me. My foot leaves the floor and I surrender completely.
Slowly, Rush places me down, and as I raise up, his grip transfers smoothly from my waist to my hand, pulling me back to standing. This lift actually continues with the female partner being lifted onto her partner’s shoulder. I wasn’t going to contemplate that as it’s too complex.
He’s good enough, though. We could do that.
Or rather, Rush and the dancer cast as the Priestess could.
“Wow. Not bad.” I pretend to be distracted with the waistband of my leggings while I try and calm my racing heart. I just haven’t done lifts in ages, that’s all.
“What’s next? An overhead lift?” Rush asks.
“Uh, yeah, actually. Are you sure, though? You’re not tired?”
“Dree, we’ve only been rehearsing for forty minutes. I can last longer than that.”
I’ll bet you can.
The stupid thought flits across my mind and I give it a swift mental kick in the ass. Stop thinking about that. This is about dancing.
“Okay, a simple one, and then we’ll call it a day.” I describe what I want. I’ll start facing him, jump in the air and into a twist until my back is facing him. Meanwhile he dips, catches me around the waist, lifts me onto his shoulder and straightens up.
The height difference between us means I have to jump high and he has to dip low, so it could look clunky and effortful. Nothing should seem like a struggle in dance. No one wants to see the blood, agony and tears. They only want to see the beauty.
I jump, and he catches me and places me on his shoulder at the same time he straightens. Fluid and graceful. Damn, he moves well.
Beneath me, Rush turns on the spot in a slow circle. “Nice. I always liked this one.”
“Great. You can put me down now.”
“You feel pretty good up there. I don’t really want to.”
I gaze down at Rush and receive the full force of his smile. “Stop messing about.”
“I’m not messing. Been thinking about what we did yesterday?”
I try to wriggle out of his grip, so I can slip from his shoulder, but he won’t let me go. “Rush, we’ve both got things to do.”
He starts walking over to the windows that look out over the garden. “I’m doing them. I’m practicing lifts with my dance partner.”
“I’m not your—”