DANCE FOR ME (DANCE FOR ME SERIES Book 1) Read online

  DANCE FOR ME

  1

  Second Edition

  FROM THE DANCE FOR ME

  EROTIC ROMANCE SHORT STORY SERIES

  BY

  HOLLY STONE

  Dance For Me (1) Copyright © 2015 Holly Stone

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United Kingdom. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  “You’re a dancer,” a deep voice said from across the theatre. I turned, to see who had spoken and watched as a man dressed in a t shirt and loose grey sweats emerged from behind the drawn curtain.

  I knew him immediately. Dimitri Novikov was the star performer in the internationally renowned magic show that had finished hours before. His torso was featured on posters that adorned the walls outside the theatre – a black and white representation of male perfection – but I had seen his face in the programme; illusionist, escape artist, darling of the critics and from an elite performing family.

  In the magic world he was a superstar.

  “I’m a cleaner,” I replied, shaking my head, watching as he sat on the edge of the stage, the skin of his bare feet standing out against the black wood. He had the kind of grace you only see in male performers and athletes, as if every single one of their muscles had been honed for perfect movement, and a cold, hard beauty about him, as if he was descended from a long line of men who had grafted in horrendous conditions for Mother Russia.

  “But you dance too, I can see it in the way you walk…your posture?”

  “A long time ago.” I rested the black bin-liner I was holding down on the floor, suddenly feeling ridiculous in my blue plastic gloves.

  Dimitri nodded once but continued to stare at me as if he was waiting for me to elaborate. I didn’t though. My life story wasn’t something I would blurt out to a stranger, even one as powerful and mesmerising as him.

  As seconds that felt like minutes ticked by I reached down and grasped the bag that I had been using to collect the audience discarded rubbish, turning away to continue working. Molly was at home with my mum and I hated leaving her, even for things that were necessary.

  “Ballet?” His voice rang out in the vast space, thunder deep and commanding.

  “Yes,” I said, wondering how he knew. Maybe he saw the same thing in my posture and movements that I saw in his; that instinctive poise.

  “But you stopped?”

  “Yes.”

  Dimitri was silent for a while so that when he spoke his voice seemed to cut the silence. “You should never give up on the things you love,” he said, swinging his legs out in front of him, his fingers grasping the edge of the stage. He spoke with such certainly I bristled.

  “What if you love more than one thing and have to choose?” I said, surprised at myself for questioning him rather than just telling him to mind his own business.

  “Someone made you choose?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

  “Life made me choose,” I said, a burning lump forming at the back of my throat, fire left over from when my dreams had disappeared like smoke in the wind. His turquoise blue eyes seem to flash at me then, as if I had said something to annoy him but I didn’t care. He was pushing my buttons, so I was happy to know that I might be pushing back.

  “Life can’t make you choose, dancing girl,” he said softy. “You choose and blame it on life.”

  I had nothing to say to that. Maybe he saw things in black and white while I viewed everything as a murky shade of grey.

  Everything apart from Molly. She was my rainbow.

  I had finished picking up the rubbish, so I tied the top of the bag and headed to the cupboard to fetch the vacuum cleaner. I hoped he would take my disappearance as an indication that I wasn’t interested in continuing our conversation but when I returned he was sitting at the back of the Stalls, his feet resting on the seat in front. My exasperated sigh must have alerted his attention but he didn’t turn. From where I was standing I could see him in detail; the thick sandy-coloured glossiness of his hair, the vulnerable shell of his ear and the strong line of his jaw. He had superstar status for those who came to watch him, and maybe on stage he could hold the illusion, but up close he was just a man. It seemed he was going to be keeping me company and I was infuriated with myself for feeling an excited flutter in my chest

  Determined not to show Dimitri anything other than my disinterest, I plugged in and started to vacuum, beginning at the side furthest away, keeping my back towards him as much as I could. Every time I glanced at him surreptitiously he was staring straight ahead, but when I wasn’t looking I could feel my skin prickle as if his eyes were on me, watching.

  I wondered why he wasn’t out partying with the rest of the performers. What was driving him to hang around like an unmasked phantom of the opera? It certainly wasn’t my witty conversational skills.

  I was almost finished, having left the aisle next to where he was sitting to last. As I began to move closer to him I felt his hand on my wrist. His grip was strong, but rather than wanting to pull my hand away, the firmness of his touch seemed to quiet something inside me. I waited for him to say something but he didn’t. Instead, he slipped a piece of paper into my palm and released me before standing and turning to walk away. I watched his retreating figure, the way his muscles moved under the fabric of his clothing. He was a panther of a man.

  When he was gone I opened the paper. Inside he had written three words that took my breath away.

  DANCE FOR ME.

  Beneath was the name of a local hotel and a room number.

  ***

  I like to think that human beings function best when their hearts and minds are in equilibrium. Good decisions come from thorough thought combined with feeling and empathy. Bad decisions come when emotions rule too strongly or when cold logic overtakes. As I exited the theatre’s staff door into a cold and drizzly night, my head and heart were at war. I knew I should go straight home so that I could get some sleep and be ready to take Molly to school in the morning. That was the responsible thing to do, the sensible thing. But my heart was shouting loudly too. It was pleading for just a few minutes to be myself again, without the ties that bound me to the post of dependability.

  It was foolish to be drawn to a man with whom I had only exchanged a few sentences with, foolish to consider going to a hotel room to visit a stranger, but my heart wanted to dance and Dimitri was the only one who had asked to see that part of me in so long. For all his brusqueness and black and white vision he saw through what I had become. It was my heart that made me text my mum to let her know I was meeting up with a friend and would be home later than usual. She would be sleeping but I didn’t want her to worry if she woke up to check on me.

  I walked the short distance to the small boutique hotel that Dimitri was staying at with a pounding heart and sweaty palms, my mind still trying to rule but with little success. There were marble stairs leading up to a revolving door and I paused to draw in the deepest breath of my recent life, feeling like I used to before I had to step on stage; filled with a heady mix of elated anticipation and weighed down by nervous butterflies. I turned to face the road, suddenly unsure, running my palms over my leggings, glancing at a taxi that was pulling up at the kerb. Can I do this, I thought? Somewhere deep inside I obviously believed I could, having come so far alrea
dy. When I turned Dimitri was standing at the top of the stairs looking down at me, his face as serious as an old propaganda poster from the communist era. He held out his hand, and I went to him, feeling his silent command as physically as a palm on the small of my back.

  He drew me through the revolving doors into the modern lobby and towards the lifts in the back corner. There was a murmur coming from a bar and I wondered if that’s where he had been sitting, close enough to the window to see me hesitating outside. He’d probably been drinking with his friends but I imagined him alone, nursing a glass of neat vodka, the picture of the stoical Russian, a stereotype I seemed to keep overlaying him with.

  Dimitri’s hand was warm in mine, large and strong from hours of strength and agility training, years of honing his skills. He didn’t look at me directly but I could see his face as a blurred reflection in the matt metal elevator doors and his eyes never left my face. I wondered what he was thinking. Maybe he felt sorry for me. I felt sorry for myself dressed in my shabby coat, my hair scraped back into a tight, practical bun, face nearly bare of make up after a day on the go. But then I thought about what he had asked of me, what he had seen in me at the theatre.

  The dancer.

  My heart swelled a little through the nerves that had me shivering in his grasp.

  As the door opened, Dimitri pulled me forward into the mirrored interior of the lift then manoeuvred me until I was standing in front of him, no longer touching. His presence behind me was electric, but it was when the doors closed and our eyes met in the mirror that I exhaled a shaky breath. He reached for my hand again, linking his fingers with mine and said. “Do not be nervous dancing girl. You are here because you decided, because you are brave, because you are curious.” He squeezed my hand in reassurance. “And maybe because you don’t want to let life choose everything for you.”

  I couldn’t hold his gaze in the mirror, for fear he would see the glassiness of my eyes and know how his words had affected me.

  I followed him in a haze through the featureless corridor to his room, more conscious of my body than I had been in years, more conscious of Dimitri’s than I had been of a mans since the mistake that was Molly’s father. At the door he slipped a key card out of his pocket and into the door slot. As he reached to press down the handle, he leaned into me, looking down into my eyes and then stroked his thumb over my cheekbone.

  “Do you want to come in? You can still turn around if you have changed your mind.”

  His eyes contained a softness that I didn’t expect; the blue melting in the middle like caramel. The gentleness of his hands on my skin gave me a sense of determination. I had performed for thousands, and Dimitri was just one man, one intense, incredible man who had dared to wake me up.

  I stepped into the dimness of his room as if I was in a dream. A bedside lamp cast a yellow arc, highlighting that all the furniture had been pushed to one wall, leaving a large open area of carpet. I wondered if he had done it for me or for his own exercise routine. The thought that he could have been so sure I would be brave enough to do this made me flush with pleasure.

  Dimitri followed me, closing the door quietly. I put my handbag down on a chair and unbuttoned my coat with my back to him, folding it neatly before resting it down. Removing my sweatshirt left me in leggings and a tight black vest top, the contours of my body on show. His eyes were on me, I could feel them as true as the press of fingers and when I bent to remove my boots I heard him shift behind me until he was leaning back against the wall.

  The carpet was soft under my bare feet and the air pleasant on the skin of my arms but I still had goose bumps. I didn’t turn as I started to do my warm-up exercises, trying to keep the weird situation as business like as possible. I could think of it as an audition, I thought, although as I was about to dance for Dimitri I was less sure who this was really for. Was it about some kind of sexual titillation, of him being in control, or was it about me? As I stood there trying to remember the kind of dance I had done the last time I had to impress, I realised it didn’t matter.

  I felt alive in a way I hadn’t in years.

  My pointe work would be limited as I didn’t have my shoes but I could still do something graceful, a dance that meant something to me and that would hopefully mean something to him.

  I turned and curtsied, then began to dance something from my last formal role; the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker. I pretended Dimitri wasn’t there, imagined I was in a small studio practicing for the role and it relaxed me to think that my imperfections didn’t matter, that they were all part of rehearsals. I could hear the music by Tchaikovsky in my mind, the layers of strings and horns, the rising and falling that accompanied the dance itself. I was rusty but as I raised my arms into the air, completing the movements required, I felt as light as a feather and as graceful as a swan. Avoiding Dimitri’s gaze was difficult but I found a picture on the wall and used it as a point of focus. I must have danced for five minutes before I was out of breath and felt like I had done enough.

  I bent over and rested my palms against my thighs, stretching my back and avoiding Dimitri’s gaze. Dancing again had left me strangely empty but so happy that a bubble of laughter forced its way up and out. I saw Dimitri’s feet in front of me before his hand touched my shoulder.

  “It was beautiful,” he said, and I sighed joyfully, leaning into his palm like a nuzzling cat. When I stood straight and looked up into his ocean-deep eyes, I was so unbelievably grateful that in a giddy rush I flung my arms around his shoulders and hugged him tightly. The feeling of his arms around me was almost too much. I had been starved of adult affection for so long.

  “Thank you,” I whispered against his neck, my lips brushing his skin gently with each word. He smelt so good and clean, like expensive hotel shower gel and warm man. His jumper was cashmere soft and so thin I could feel his muscles move with each breath he took. He didn’t pull away but reached further around me, drawing my body closer and cradling me against him.

  “Thank you,” he replied, as though I had given him something precious. In his arms I felt rare and treasured, like something delicate and valued. We had barely exchanged enough sentences to classify as a conversation but I knew Dimitri was a good man; his every word and action proved it to me more clearly than two years of relationship with Molly father.

  It felt natural to draw back and stand on my toes to press a kiss to Dimitri’s lips. He took only a second to respond and then his hand came up to cup the back of my head, as his lips moved against mine, igniting nerve endings from neck to crown. He kissed me as though he was tasting something delicious and decadent, slowly taking each of my lips between his and sucking them gently. It was a sweet kiss with a dirty promise of more when his tongue dipped in to tease, hot and firm and in control. I moaned into his mouth, and was rewarded with a squeeze to my ass as he pulled me closer, the evidence of his arousal now pressed against my belly.

  My hands that were against his chest were restless for more contact. I wanted to feel his heat, the burning smooth texture of his skin, so I found the edge of his top, reaching up to stroke the side of his ribcage, earning a low moan in response. Dimitri was as solid as man could be, packed with hard muscle and definition. I read his form like braille, each stroke of my palm soaking up the hours of meticulous practice at his craft that it would have taken for him to earn such strength. He loomed large over me but I felt only comforted by his size and reassured by his words when he asked if I was okay, if I wanted this.

  I couldn’t answer, my voice lost to the hunger I was feeling, the raw craving for touch and affection that comes after a long drought. Instead, I stepped back and lifted my vest over my head, watching his eyes spark at the sight of my black lace bra and the promise of what lay beneath. When I reached behind my back to undo the clasp he said, “Wait”. Coming closer, his fingers stroked along my neck and across my collar bone, as soft as a feather, making me shiver. He hooked a finger in my bra strap and drew it down my arm so painfu
lly slowly it was torturous. I watched his progress, seeing a tremble in his hand that softened my heart. It was an amazing thing to see such a man so undone by my body.

  The room was silent, except for our breathing which was fast and erratic as I waited for the moment he would pull on the fabric and reveal what he was anticipating so greatly. His other hand gripped my waist as if he feared I would pull away and all would be lost. I watched his face, the focus of his eyes on my skin, the slight flare of his nostrils as he tugged the fabric hard enough to reveal my nipple. His hand cupped my flesh, finger and thumb pinching hard enough to make me cry out. He pushed the other strap down with haste as though his patience had worn thin. His hands looked huge against my narrow ribcage, my breasts tiny in his palms. Dimitri kissed the corner of my mouth and whispered for me to turn around then he undid the clasp of my bra and, to my surprise, loosened my hair until it tumbled from its fastening. His hand smoothed the waves over my back, to where the ends rested at the waistband of my leggings in a way that felt almost reverent.

  He would have felt me tremble when he held the tops of my arms and pressed a kiss to the side of my neck, whispering a stream of Russian words that sounded like a prayer. I moved with him until I was in front of a mirror.

  “Hold on,” Dimitri said, his voice gravelly with desire, and I grasped the edge of the dressing table, watching our reflections as he knelt behind me and drew my leggings down to my ankles, lifting my feet in turn.

  There is something so erotic about being undressed slowly, layers peeled away, eyes seeing private places for the first time. My knuckles were white as I gripped the wood surface tightly. Dimitri held my calves and pressed a soft kiss to the back of my thigh, high enough that is nose brushed my ass, high enough that when he inhaled my pussy pulsed.

  “I can smell you,” he whispered, kissing my skin, leaving cool wet patches where he tasted me. “I can smell how much you want this.”