A particularly gorgeous face, as it happened.
“Okay,” I said later that same night, while we fought to catch our breath in the vast king-size bed in the penthouse he stayed in when he was in Manhattan. Because, naturally, he was the kind of man who had property everywhere he might wish to go. Which was lucky, because it turned out our connection hadn’t dimmed any now that we knew each other’s names and were outside the confines of the club. “I guess we can date.”
“You guess?”
“I guess it would be okay. As an experiment. Probably a short experiment.”
“Then I will tell you the rules,” he replied, as if he’d been waiting for me to say that. And more, as if he’d known all along that I would. His mouth curved as I propped myself up, my hands beneath my chin as I sprawled there across his chest. “There will be no one else. Just you and me, you understand?”
“You can make all the rules you want,” I said lazily, because I felt deliciously limp and wrung out. “You’re about to find out that I already have a demanding lover.” I smiled when something dark and hot flashed in those bright blue eyes of his. “The ballet. I’ve yet to meet anyone it doesn’t make wildly, madly jealous. And fast.”
That hot gleam in his eyes changed. He reached over and took a strand of my hair between his fingers. And tugged a little. Not entirely gently.
“You have the ballet. I have a Fortune 500 company. Somehow, I don’t think jealousy will be an issue.”
I didn’t argue, though I knew better. These things always followed the same pattern. Within a month, I would feel smothered. Too many dramatic phone calls, wondering why I never had any time to lavish on him. Too many demands that I skip this or that to spend a little more time together, as if skipping my workouts didn’t directly impact my dancing.
It always came down to a choice. I always chose the ballet, and regretted only the time I’d taken away from it while attempting to appease a new lover.
But Sebastian was beautiful. Dark and demanding. And my half-formed fears that we would only find each other electric within the confines of our Paris fantasy disappeared almost immediately. He’d come to find me here in New York, which I couldn’t pretend I didn’t love. And I had never fit anywhere better or more securely in all my life than in his arms, with him surging deep inside of me, turning me inside out.
Over and over again.
“No other people.” His voice was stern. Just the way I liked it. “And no lies.”
“Has there been a rash of lying that I’m unaware of?” I laughed. “I thought our relationship was remarkably straightforward, actually. Given that until tonight it was literally a transaction.”
“I’d like it to stay that way, as much as possible. I prefer the clarity of commerce. I favor direct conversation over missish half truths.”
I raised a brow at him. “I prefer less male posturing and more applied emotional intelligence.”
Sebastian blinked. “Did you just obliquely suggest that I’m...dumb?”
“Not dumb. Just a man.” But I grinned to take the sting out of it. “If you feel something, say so. Don’t grunt it out, pick a fight, then storm off because you don’t know how to say what’s bothering you.”
“Have I given any indication that I might be likely to do such a thing?”
“I thought we were laying out our ground rules for...whatever this is. Not making pointed commentary. I can do pointed commentary, too, if you want. Just say the word.”
There was something like steel in his gaze, though it was much, much hotter. But he didn’t argue.
“We have a deal,” he said, instead.
And he showed me exactly how he liked to celebrate it.
When I made it in to our morning class the following day, I was a wreck. Miss Fortunato was appalled by my arabesque, and I was so delirious that I only laughed in reply—which was not wise. But it was worth the grueling, painful day that followed, because the night with Sebastian had been that good.
It’s been a total of two nights, I told myself later as I dragged myself home after the show. Two nights are always good. Two nights suck you in and make you believe. It’s the day in and day out that ruins everything.
“That’s life, though, isn’t it?” I ranted at Annabelle a few mornings later. We were on side-by-side ellipticals at the gym, and I was going much faster than usual. Too fast, you might even say, but I didn’t stop. I courted the ache in my quads and glutes. “Everyone wants center stage. The spotlight. They think they’re going to wake up one morning, and boom! There it is. Everything they ever dreamed about, right in front of them on a silver platter. You and I know that’s not how it goes. There’s no such thing as an overnight success. There’s only years upon years of practice. Failures. Rejections and reinvention, over and over again. That’s what success is.”
“You need to stop yelling at me,” Annabelle replied, sounding grumpy as her red ponytail swished back and forth. “You’re making me feel hungover and I didn’t even drink last night.”
I slowed down and bit my tongue. I started counting days. It had never taken more than about two weeks to know that I was wasting my time with a man, and another two to extricate myself. And I expected that a man who would go to the trouble to hunt me down outside of the club’s anonymity would insert himself into my life with a vengeance and stay there, expediting that timeline with all of that arrogance he wore so well.
But Sebastian Dumont wasn’t like any man I’d ever known.
When he told me that he was busy himself, and that it was unlikely he’d find himself jealous of my work or my life, he’d meant it.