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He joined me soon enough, his arm wrapping proprietorially around my waist and pulling me close, caressing my skin, kissing my neck to prove something we both already knew. His sister looked on with a strange curiosity in her eyes, seeing the way he possessed me, seeing the way I succumbed. A strange kind of understanding passed between us, and I knew we were all aware of it. Our connection, the impossibility of ever breaking apart.
“Lili,” Thorn said to his sister. “Your room is set up already. You will begin training Rose tomorrow, once you’ve had a proper rest. I want her to excel. I want you to push her, not like that pansy who was here before her. I want you to train her so well she will dance like never before. I want this last performance to be incredible.”
“Understood,” she nodded, glancing at me to see whether I was okay with this.
I wasn’t sure just how much she knew. Was she aware of the test Thorn had given me? Did she know what I would inevitably have to go through to be able to stay at his side? Would she try to talk me out of it?
Either way, I knew I wouldn’t change my mind. My decision had been made, my fate sealed. I was Thorn’s for better or for worse.
“You two will talk tomorrow,” Thorn said, effectively dismissing any chance I had of a conversation with my mentor. “Lili, a guard will show you to your room.”
A man appeared as soon as he’d uttered the words, taking Madame’s small bag and leading her away. She gave me one last look, as if looking for reassurance, to make sure I was alright with what was going on. I gave her my bravest smile, and it seemed to placate her. She left the room without saying another word, leaving Thorn and me alone.
Once she was gone, he turned me around in his arms, his hands on my shoulders as he inspected me. I didn’t hide anything from him, not the pain nor the excitement that my mentor was back in my life.
A small part of me was grateful for his role in things. Grateful that he’d guided me on a path I knew I needed to be on, a path that would inevitably lead me into his arms. I now knew it was where I’d belonged this whole time.
“My beautiful girl,” he muttered as his fingertips slid down my cheek, gently caressing his property. “I knew I’d made the right choice. I knew all along you were the one for me.”
“You never gave me a choice,” I whispered, speaking out about my concern in all of this. “You never let me choose.”
It was true. I now knew none of this had been my decision. Nothing in my life came because I wanted it. I was a dancer because Thorn had planted the seed in my mind, a seed that bloomed into a beautiful rose just as I blossomed from a young girl with hopes and dreams into a dancer who lived for the thrill of standing center stage, and later on, a woman who thrived under his punishing hand, a woman who lived for pain just as much as she did for pleasure.
“You didn’t need one,” he said calmly, slowly leaning down until his lips met mine, kissing, biting, taking from me what he wanted. “You would have ended up in my arms one way or another, wouldn’t you, little Rose?”
“Yes,” I whispered as his lips met mine again and again, and I felt my body submitting yet again – the natural reaction I had when Thorn was around. “Yes, I would have.”
I was his. Fully, completely. I belonged to a man who’d trained me for this role before I was even aware of it. He was my past, my present, and my future. He was my everything.
“Tell me you’re mine,” he demanded, and I looked right into his dark, stormy eyes, and gave him exactly what he wanted.
“I’m yours,” I promised solemnly. “And I’ll never leave your side…”
Seven
Rose
My training was to begin that morning, and I felt jittery and scared as I prepared for the day.
Would it be the same as it was in London? Would I feel the same passion, the same determination I had when Madame had pushed me before? Would she be as demanding and sometimes cruel as she had been at the old studio?
All those questions and more went through my head as I got ready. My tights went on first, then my leotard. I put my hair into the tightest bun, knowing how much Madame hated flyaways and strands of hair that were out of place. And then I pulled out a box – Thorn’s gift from when I had first joined him. My ballet shoes from London.
