Her green eyes are lit with such passion, and the smile playing about her lips is the most gorgeous one I’ve seen yet. I think I feel more exuberance and life just radiating off of her than I’ve ever felt about something myself.
The way she talks about dance is a little like how I feel when I look at her. Overwhelmed and fulfilled and falling apart all at the same time.
I climb off the couch and pull her to her feet, suddenly desperate to see it.
“Show me.”
She’s still in a bit of a trance, caught up in her thoughts and emotions, and it takes her a few seconds to say, “What?”
“Show me. I want to see you dance.”
Her eyes widen, and she chokes on a laugh.
“I can’t just show you in your living room, Carson. I’m in jeans and boots and there’s no room and no music and—”
I grip her arm and tug her away from the couch and out into the open space where I occasionally work out at home.
“To quote your dad: don’t give me excuses, Cole. Give me results.”
Irritation blooms across her face. “Ugh. Why did you say that? I hate when he says that.”
I laugh, and move my hand in gesture that tells her to get to it.
“I’m waiting, Daredevil.” I stick out my arm, closing my hand in a fist. I throw her a playful smile and add, “You can use me as your bar thing, if you want.”
“You are not seriously making me do this, are you?”
“Come on. What are you afraid of?”
“Making a fool of myself, twisting an ankle, splitting these ridiculously tight pants, giving you material to mock me for the next century . . . should I keep going?”
I shake my head, unable to contain my wide smile.
She sucks in a deep breath and starts in again. “Falling on my face, disgracing dancers everywhere, failing to impress you—”
I cut her off, getting right in her face.
“Hey.” I take hold of her chin for extra emphasis. “You don’t ever have to worry about impressing me.”
“Just because you tell me not to worry about something doesn’t mean I can stop. It’s not a switch I can turn on and off.”
“Then teach me something. I’ll do it with you, and I promise I’ll be the only one disgracing dancers everywhere.”
She hesitates, and I can see her weighing her own dislike for the situation against the desire to watch me make a fool of myself.
Finally, she huffs, “Okay. I’ll show you the basics. But I’m not dancing for real for you in your apartment. That’s just weird.”
She squares her shoulders and shakes her hair out of her face and begins. “So, there are basic positions for your feet and arms and then basic orientations, and everything else in ballet sort of works off of those.”
“And that’s what you do? Ballet?”
She sighs. “Yes and no. I do ballet. I love it. But I don’t really have the training to be as good as I would need to be to do it professionally, and I’m not going to get it here. So mostly I do lyrical or contemporary, which is a little less rigid and more about the movement as a whole rather than body positioning and technique. But most people learn the basics of ballet first. And that’s what I teach, too.”
“You teach? You didn’t tell me that.”
“It’s just something I do to help out my old dance teacher. I teach a couple classes of little kids with five-minute attention spans. It’s . . . interesting.”
“Okay then, teach. Show me what to do.”
“This is first position.”
She stands with her heels touching and her feet spread so wide they’re practically in a straight line.
I try to copy her, but lose my balance when I try to push my toes that wide and my body protests. She catches one of my flailing arms and smirks at me as I get my feet into the widest V I can manage.
“Close, but now you need to straighten your legs.”
I do as she says, and the muscles of my calves and my ass pull uncomfortably tight. She’s still holding on to my arm, and she releases it to place both hands on my midsection, one on my stomach and one on my back. I’m hunched over slightly, and she pushes against me. “Stand up straight.”
I do, but I have to hold on to her to manage it, which leaves her tucked under my arm, still touching my waist.
“Maybe we should have done this by a wall,” she says.
“I’m a slow learner. The hands-on approach works best.”
“Could you be any more obvious?”
“Sure.”
I let go of the crazy foot position and use the arm around her shoulders to wrench her toward me. Then, just to make sure she doesn’t wiggle away, I drop my arm down until it circles her waist and draw her closer. Both her hands have migrated to my lower back, so I don’t feel too guilty.
“Do you ever dance with a partner?”
She doesn’t meet my eyes, staring straight ahead at my neck instead. Then slowly, she bends her head until her forehead rests on my chest just below my collarbone. Beneath my hands, I feel her body curve on an inhale. She turns her head, shifts a little closer, and lays her cheek against my shoulder as she answers.
“No.”
Chapter 17
Dallas
One of Carson’s hands slips up my spine and curls around my shoulder, holding me the way he did the night we met. But now his hand is only under my jacket, not my shirt. His hold now is softer, sweeter, and surprisingly sexier.