Page 51 of The Alchemists

“Sounds fun,” she said, trying to ignore the sudden gnawing in her stomach. She’d barely been anywhere, not even Savarelle or Dunmoody.

“I’ll bring the pages, don’t worry.”

“You don’t need to do that. Did you want to look at some of these lifts?”

“Yeah.” He slid to his stomach as she opened her laptop, both of them glad for the distraction.

As she hit play, she immediately regretted showing him one of her videos. She should have found something else. Her Nutcracker video was two years old, and he’d think it was childish. She half-watched him as it played, lip tugged between her teeth, but his attention was as serious and focused as it ever was.

“Wait,” he said, halfway through. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s⁠—”

“That’s amazing.” He rolled slightly to look at her then, and something warm fluttered in her chest.

“Thanks.”

They watched the rest of the video in silence, then went back to the middle so Seb could rewatch a combo he wanted to try. It was one of her favorite parts of the dance, but she kept her pleasure to herself.

“Okay.” He jumped up, shaking his arms out. “I think I’ve got it. Slow?”

She nodded as they moved to the panel mat they’d laid down. Seb extended his arm, and she gripped his forearm as she jumped and twisted, aiming her hips for his shoulder. Instead, she landed on his arm like a sack of potatoes, her breath crushing out of her in a grunt. He flopped her back to her feet.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she laughed, partly at his concern, partly because she’d forgotten what it was like to work with someone new, partly because she’d suppressed the joy of throwing herself at someone knowing they’d catch her for so long. “Let’s go again.”

They did. And again, and again, moving on to new skills as they exhausted the current ones, until they were both damp and out of breath. She’d worked with a handful of partners before, and she’d been nervous that she and Sebastian wouldn’t have the movement chemistry, the proportions, to make it work.

At first they were awkward and cautious with each other, leaving too much space, not quite committing—but now, with a streak of his sweat across her bicep and her breath on his neck, she knew. Even with his lack of experience, working with him already felt more natural than anyone she’d danced with.

“Do you want to try that combo with music?” he asked as he grabbed some water. “We could add that sequence you showed me the other night.”

“S-sure.” She swallowed as her memory bounced back to that night in the library, Seb watching her in the darkness, his eyes hooded, profile sculpted. She pictured him sleeping and vulnerable on her couch, remembering what that sight had done to the thing that lived in her chest. She pictured the antimony wolves, touching gently, nose to nose.

“Is this it?”

He traced his leg in a wide circle, bringing it forward before shooting back, letting the momentum pull him to the ground, then roll him back up over his shoulder. His shirt rode up as he spun, exposing an inch of flat stomach and hipbone.

“Yeah. That’s it.”

He nodded, grinning. “If we do it in opposite directions, we should meet in the middle, and then we can go straight into the lift combo. What do you want to put on?”

“Why not some of Asher’s music?” Sebastian looked pleasantly stricken. “He showed me what he was working on the other morning.”

She offered him the speaker and he paired his phone as he scrolled, trying out a few songs before settling on one with a sinuous beat and sparse arrangement. Lily bobbed her head, getting the flow of it. Sebastian snapped off the count, and they began, finding their shared rhythm as they went. When Seb caught her gaze before she moved in for the lift, he might have been the center of the galaxy. He tossed her up in a leap, throwing her higher than he had any time before, or maybe she’d jumped harder, but she landed softly before he spun her.

She went up and over his shoulder, twisting as she pivoted around his neck, before he guided her down to the ground, her hips pressed against his chest, her arms extended overhead, his hands clasped around her back. They finished in a low dip, his nose an inch from hers, and she could see every shade of gold and green that made up the nebula of his iris. For a moment, neither of them breathed, and she thought, for a single, insane second, that he was going to kiss her.

I want him to kiss me.

Not trusting herself with the realization, she rolled out of his arms, groping for her water. When she could finally face him, he was still frozen in place, his expression inscrutable. She tossed him his water bottle to break the trance, because she couldn’t look at him looking like that. Her skin was on fire.

He sank to the ground, drinking deeply. Say something, she thought, but she didn’t trust herself to say anything at all. When he pushed his hand through his sweaty hair, she closed her eyes.

“When do you leave for Québec?”

“Tuesday, but we’ll be back in time for the Halloween dance.”