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What she was doing now was different from the way she’d danced to the same song with her student. This wasn’t a routine; she was simply moving to the music, however it moved her. It was much sadder, and he could see it on her face in the mirror. Realizing that made him focus more on the lyrics, and he heard how much they resonated with what she was going through with her dad.
He couldn’t stand out here any longer, so close but so separated. He opened the door.
She saw him in the mirror and spun toward him, as if it were part of her dance. Then she ran straight to him. He caught her in his arms, and she coiled around him at once, like she would bury herself in his chest if she could.
Holding her like this, Jay understood two crucial truths: she really did need him—him specifically—in this moment, and he’d never felt stronger or more grounded in his life.
Neither said a word; they only stood in the middle of the empty dance studio, wound together as tightly as a braid. The song ended and, a second later, started again; she had it on repeat.
At some point, he began to sway to the music; he didn’t realize it until Petra’s hands slipped from his head and neck and trailed gracefully over his shoulders as she bent backward over his arms. Dancing with him. As he held her, she began to dance in earnest, at first only moving against and around him as he stood more or less still. She took his hand in hers and lifted their arms, spinning under them, slipping his arm across her back and bending over it again.
Jay had the thought that he should feel self-conscious and awkward; he liked to dance but was embarrassed about it. It was one thing to lowkey sidle into the Dawghouse on line-dancing night and fold himself into a crowd of strangers, but alone with Petra in an actual dance studio, he should have felt too exposed.
Yet he didn’t. He felt calm and intimately connected to this beautiful woman who needed him. But he didn’t know this kind of dancing.
“I don’t know how,” he said aloud, his voice a churchy whisper in keeping with the reverence he felt.
She smiled, but her eyes were sad. It killed him to see his sunny, positive girl so cloudy.
“Let me lead,” she answered.
He did. Wearing his kutte and his heavy-soled riding boots, Jay danced with Petra, following her lead. They moved all over the floor, and each time she turned from his arms, he pulled her to spin back. When she came back and jumped, he caught her and turned before he set her down. Eventually he comprehended that he wasn’t merely physically following her but doing so in spirit as well, growing to understand what his next move should be, realizing that his job in this dance was to support her, to be the strong center, to lift her and turn her and set her down gently—and he was astute enough to see the metaphor in that.
They danced the song through at least twice, until she finally drew to a stop as it ended. When it started again, she didn’t move. They stood holding each other, Petra’s face downturned, the crown of her head brushing his chest.
Slipping his hand under her chin, Jay lifted her head so he could see her eyes. She gave him that sad smile again but didn’t say anything. Not a single word had passed between them yet.
He wanted to ask her if she was okay, but he knew the answer, didn’t he? He could see it in her eyes—no, she wasn’t. So he bent to kiss her instead.
But then he stopped, just before their lips met. Leaning back again, Jay took a good look at her. There was some faint discoloration around her mouth. Not bad, but definitely bruising. Intending to ask her what happened, he brushed his thumb over the darkest part of the fading bruise.
She took hold of his hand and shook her head. The plea in her eyes was clear: she didn’t want to talk about that—or maybe anything at all. The heady, weighty silence between them—something that had occurred between them more than once—was too significant to break.
So he kissed her.
Her soft whimper slipped from her mouth to his, and he felt the change in her body, a kind of frantic relief, an easing of tension and an acceleration of intensity, like he’d given her exactly what she’d needed and she wanted all she could get, as fast as she could get it.
Jay deepened the kiss, drawing her tightly to him, searching the deepest reaches of her her mouth, sliding his tongue with hers. She whimpered again, a sound ripe with need, and her hands grabbed at the collar of his kutte like she wanted to rip it off.
He groaned with a lust that had pulsed on the floor of his gut since he’d stood in the hallway and watched her through the window. He lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around him, still kissing him wildly.
He knew where they were, that there was a window in that door, and anyone who passed by could see them. There had been children here, and as far as he knew, there might still be. But with Petra holding him with such fierce, obvious need, kissing him like she might die if she stopped, Jay couldn’t care about who might see them. He bent his knees and lowered them to the floor.
As soon as he laid her down, she started to snatch at his clothes and her own, back and forth, too impatient to get anything really done. Jay helped her, opening his jeans so she could focus on her own. She pushed her stretchy pants down and worked one leg completely free.
He caught her knee and brought her leg over his hip, and she wrapped a hand around him, pulling him toward her with such brisk determination he had to rock his hips forward before she yanked his cock clean off. With no check to see if she was ready, no preamble but their dance, he pushed in, and she held him until there was no room left for her hand.
She was wet, and his slide was smooth, but a harsh, grunting sound left him anyway. He felt like his entire inner workings, brain, muscle, organ, blood, all of it, were scrambled and stretched and boiled. Loving this woman was like being reassembled into something new.
Loving this woman. Jay froze as the thought gonged in his head.Loving this woman.He closed his eyes and tried to find a place for that thought. It was true; he felt the truth of it everywhere, in him, around him, everywhere. But fuck, it scared him. Was he loveable? He didn’t know. Could he survive loving someone who didn’t love him? Lovingherif she didn’t love him?
“Please don’t stop,” Petra whispered. “Please, I need it. Please love me.”
Jay opened his eyes. She was looking up at him, her eyes full of need and sorrow.
He knew she meant the word in the sense of the physical act he’d stopped in the middle of. He knew she didn’t mean more than that. But all he could think wasI do.
Picking up his rhythm again, those two words became a refrain, a chant in his head, timed with every thrust:I do. I do. I do.
