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"Listening." He leaned back on both palms, his side touching hers. He smelled like heat, tar, smoke, wind. "You must do this all the time. Sit and listen to it."
"I do." Though she was surprised he guessed that. When Julie had arrived, she'd given up her room at the Extended Stay as soon as she'd set up a cot in the dressing room. Madison had already achieved so much, but Julie would require some insanely long hours to get the theater, staff and first performance, already being promoted, ready on time.
That was just an excuse, though. She liked exploring the silent building in the middle of the night, imagining the performances that would happen here, the responses of the audience.
"What do you hear?" he asked.
"All of it. Every performance, the chara
cters laughing, crying, talking. The audience responding. The thumps as they rush across the stage. The audience gasping." She gestured, sweeping her arms wide. "And I won't have to imagine it much longer. Once we start doing performances, the theater stores it away. Then you can hear all that even more clearly in the silence. I think it's the way a theater breathes."
Initially, Madison had hoped to start the theater in the building she'd used for her earlier benefit, but the cost and city regulations were too prohibitive. The rural zoning had been essential, since permitting for an erotic theater might have met greater opposition in the city limits. It might have even in the county, but Logan's personal friendship with two of the county commissioners had helped, as he'd been able to assure them this would be avant-garde theater, not a sleazy strip club that attracted criminal elements.
One of the donors had offered Madison a great lease-to-own deal on a long-vacant tax write-off property outside Matthews. The picturesque town where Madison ran Naughty Bits butted up against the edge of Charlotte.
Inhaling the energy of this building, an infant theater about to be born, Julie knew this was where it had meant to be all the time.
She took a thoughtful sip of her cider. "You're like a character come to life yourself. Far too colorful to be real."
"Most people are colorful, if you shine the right light on them." He studied the darkened rows of seats before them. "I'd like to be a pirate stepping out from the curtains, loud and dangerous." He straightened, puffing out his chest in parody. "I'd pick the most spirited woman out of the audience, tie her to my main mast and bring out all her inner fire."
"That would be great for a scene. Oh..." She drew in a breath, grabbing onto the idea and his arm at the same time. "You come out dressed as a pirate. Your partner, she's in the audience, an aisle seat. When you head in her direction, she tries to run away, but you cut her off, like you're kidnapping her. You toss her over your shoulder, carry her to the stage... While you have her over your shoulder, you could bellow at the man nearest you: 'If you're thinking of rescuing her, mate, my cutlass is far bigger than yours... Wanna see?'"
She made her voice boom, echo off the walls, causing his eyes to widen and a grin cross his face. She knew her gaze was sparkling, filled with the idea, because his reaction seemed as much for that as for her unexpected vocalization.
"Okay, but how do you transition that to the intensity of the rope scene?" he asked. "You don't want that part to be comedy."
"No, definitely. Even the audience part shouldn't be entirely farce. Except for that one joke, you would be serious, romantic, dashing. Very large, powerful and dominant, making every sub's pulse flutter. Or that part of each person that can imagine being a sub, even if we aren't actually that way all the time, or identify as that."
Des pursed his lips. "I could pull off romantic and dashing, but you'd need to pad my shoulders to make 'large' work."
She nudged him. "I've felt your grip. You can pull it off. The pirate bit would inject humor, pageantry, a hint of the sexual excitement to come. Your outfit could be piratical in the audience, but on stage, you strip down to black trousers, returning us to the contemporary, and a more serious note. We could apply some sexy tattoos on you, like your ladies. Do you have any real ones? Can I see?"
The lines alongside his eyes were still creased with amusement at her enthusiasm. "Yes, but I have to take my shirt off to show you."
"How horrible. I'll suffer through it. Off, off, off."
He shook his head. "Don't get pushy with me wench. I'll tie you to my mainmast."
"Is that a hugely optimistic double entendre?"
She shrieked as he reached out and grabbed her thigh above the knee, a ticklish spot. "Remember, this is hypothetical," he warned. "I'm not one of your performers."
"No, but roll with it. I might be able to make it work for another rigger. Seeing you shirtless will help the creative process."
He snorted but complied with her hopeful request. He took off the hat and playfully put it on her own head. As she adjusted it to a cocky angle and gave him an expectant look, he removed the shirt. He did it in a functional way, telling her he was neither overly proud of his physique nor self-conscious about it. Slipping several buttons of the garment, he pulled the whole thing over his head rather than unbuttoning it all the way, and put it down next to him.
He was lean and hard all over, as her glimpse of his abdomen at the garden had suggested. He wasn't wearing the insulin pump or cannula tonight. It must be a day he was changing out the injection site. She saw some nicks and scars on his torso, probably the result of his very physical job. The light mat of dark hair on his chest funneled to that silky arrow of hair she still wanted to touch. To prevent herself from being too forward, she focused on the reason she'd asked him to remove his shirt.
A tattoo of a black dragon coiled around his biceps. It started as a spiral of rope and became a serpentine version of the mythical creature. The other arm had a black inked rope wrapped around his biceps, intertwined with a vine of thorns.
"One more on my back." He twisted around to show her the design, a sunburst between his shoulder blades in blazing colors of orange, gold and red, the orb outlined in another twist of rope.
"I'm sensing a theme," she observed.
"Yeah, rope's kind of my thing."
She reached out to the dragon on his biceps. It was lovely work, but it was merely an excuse to touch him. He was incredibly resilient, his muscles even at rest as evident as an anatomical drawing. She wanted to explore that terrain further, but when his gaze dropped to the contact, she withdrew.
