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There are no guards to stop him.
He has no parents around to cast disapproving looks.
But Finlay doesn’t cross any lines. He sits there and watches, blowing out a long exhale, as though seeing me perform right in front of him is too much.
He licks his lips, and I swear I hear a soft, “Damn,” when I strut away from him.
Because I know it’ll irritate him, I turn my back on Rory. I ignore him entirely. In fact, I haven’t even looked him in the eye all evening. Part of me is too nervous, that looking at Rory will make this madness all the morereal.
The other part of me is endlessly curious about his reaction, to the point that performing for the audience at large becomes a struggle.
All I want to do is go over to him. Dance in front of him. Torture him with something this spoilt rich boy will never, ever have.
Me.
I clamp down on the hidden part of me that wants to be positioned half-naked beside his black gleaming shoes, his hand in my hair as he gently feeds me praise.
I keep that part of myself tightly locked up.
When I finally gather the courage to turn my head over my shoulder and look at Rory, he’s frowning. Of course he’s frowning. Rory, my blackmail prince, who’d demanded this dance from me and threatened me with ruin.
You can’t ruin a girl if she decides to self-destruct first.
But his eyes are laser-focused on me, his hot gaze raking me from head to toe and back again. It looks as though he’s trying to rationalize what he’s seeing, ripping up his judgments about hislittle saintwhile I swing my hips to the dreamy beat of the music, the choirs in my head busy spiriting me away.
It’s as though there’s a rush of magic through my system, a celestial sexual rain of magic pattering across my sweat-drenched skin.
Too much? I can’t help it. It’s the reality pulsing through every beat of my heart.
I focus on Rory.
My heart is thundering as I toss my head back, whipping my body into a new kind of geometry. There’s a deep buzz in my veins, in my brain, primal and grasping as I search for something from Rory.
Rory gives me everything but what I crave. He gives me his attention, his interest, the reactions he can’t disguise. As he watches me dance in front of him, my soul breaking to the point of pain, I begin to lose faith in myself, in the music.
I don’t want his attention or interest. I want somethingmore, something I’ll never get from him in public.
His rapture.
Because then I’d finally be able to crush him.
His happiness is his one vulnerability, and he’s never going to shine it upon me.
But still he gazes at me with gray glaring eyes, the music a soundtrack of every raw emotion he’s made me feel this year. It’s an outpouring, an outburst, against the heavy background strings.
It’s as though he’s the opposite of me: a mirrored version, flipped and shattered — the dancer versus the stoic. He doesn’t embrace the dance as Finlay did, he isn’t quietly curious like Luke, he just glares at me like a hunter whose prey has acted out of line.
As I slide my hands up my bare skin, there’s a storm building inside me. It’s visceral, all these emotions stretching through my grasping limbs. It’s as though my body and the music are moving too fast in this world, flying too far through galaxies, swirling atoms, explosions of angelic choirs…
With his eyes still locked on me, Rory slowly pulls out his phone. I don’t stop moving, but he’s capturing my attention instead of the reverse. He presses a button, still looking at me with that cold, brooding expression.
While the shivering music of the strings plays behind us, nothing happens.
And then something soft brushes my cheek.
When I tilt my head up to the ceiling, a gently tumbling avalanche greets my eyes.
Am I really seeing what I’m seeing?
