As the others make their way to slouch against the walls of the studio, I curb my mounting desire to wriggle the horror of this situation off and focus on adopting the erect posture my etiquette teacher has insisted on for a young lady of breeding in the era. I straighten my back. Drop my shoulders. Tilt my chin up.
Beside me, Josh exhales. ‘God help us.’ My thoughts exactly.
‘Break a leg,’ I murmur in a tone curt enough to leave him wondering whether I’m actually wishing him luck or putting a curse on him.
He holds out his arm to me. ‘Miss Kenworthy,’ he murmurs.
The familiar first bars of the music strike up from the sound system, and I take his arm. Together, we move to the middle of the room, both staring straight ahead.
We stop. Turn towards each other. I raise my face to his, and he looks down at me. I wish I was in heels.
‘Ready?’ Josh asks. I nod.
He slides his hand around my waist and pulls me closer, and I slip my left hand over his shoulder as I’ve done with Jack and his team a million times. I extend my right arm straight, and Josh clasps my wrist.
Skin on skin.
The shock of it.
Josh’s hand is warm and dry and strong, his fingers closing effortlessly around my wrist. He’s close. Closer than my rehearsal partners seemed, closer than I thought he would be. Too close?
Despite the height difference, our mouths are inches apart, his lashes sweeping his cheeks as he gazes down at me, and Ihave a couple of most unwelcome, most unhelpful thoughts as he does.
First,he is fucking gorgeous.God. No one can deny the guy that. The fullness of his lips, those liquid brown eyes, his long, straight nose, and the perfect smattering of stubble running from his to-die-for cheekbones to his jaw. However hard Josh Lander is on the heart, fuck knows he’s easy on the eye.
Second,I am really going to enjoy looking at this all day.Despite the fact that this position we’ve got going on is uncomfortably familiar, and looking up at him from this vantage point is doing very strange things to my muscle memory. My body remembers all-too-clearly the unspeakable things we used to get up to from this launch position, as well as his penchant for gripping my wrists when he thrust inside me.
Clearly I won’t be able to relax for a second today. Can’t be on autopilot. Autopilot for taking me through my well-rehearsed dance moves: good. Autopilot for being in Josh Lander’s arms and being very well-rehearsed in closing the gap between our mouths like a starving woman whenever I had a chance: bad.
Josh looks as though he may be struggling with his autopilot too as we tentatively move off in a large circle, while Jack delivers a running commentary of encouragement and praise and tweaks. His eyes darken and his jaw tics and his nostrils flare as he tightens his grip on my wrist and waist, and all of these things make it very hard for me to look away. Very hard indeed. Thank God I’m not the one having to lead.
A small squeak of alarm behind me alerts us both to the fact that we’re about to career into some of the dancers, and Josh comes to his senses, righting us and pulling me even closer to him as we move.
‘Shit. Sorry, Elle.’
Please don’t say my name while I’m in your arms. It is spectacularly unhelpful.
‘Don’t worry. You’re doing fine.’ See? I can be nice. He is doing fine. This is bloody hard work, in every way.
‘It’s okay,’ Jack calls. ‘You guys will need to hold eye contact for most of this waltz eventually, which means you’ll have to lead while appearing to look only at Elle, Josh. But for now, I suggest you keep your eyes on the room while you get a feel for the space.’
Josh’s entire face relaxes. ‘Sure thing,’ he tells Jack, and proceeds to studiously watch where we’re going and avoid eye contact for the next few minutes, leaving me to stare freely at his lips, which are pressed together in concentration.
He’s good. We’re good. We’re doing great. I mean, I know we have past dance floor form that suggested we’d find our stride easily, and we do. The music is perfect, and Josh is a seriously good leader when he’s not gazing down at me and ignoring everything around us. It’s a relief and an irritation that we’re so good together on every kind of dance floor. Not to mention, he smells amazing—exactly like I remember. As we take our turn around the floor, again and again, our body temperatures rise and his scent hits me squarely.
Smell, oh smell, you are the most lethal fucking portal to the past. I force myself to silently chant the line Nora threatened to tattoo backwards on my forehead so I can read it in the mirror:Sociopaths are not hot. Sociopaths are not hot.
CHAPTER 21
Josh
This is going better than I dared to hope. Technically, Elle and I are in perfect sync. She’s clearly been rehearsing as hard as I have; there are astoundingly few stumbles and fuckups. But, even better, I find myself havingfun. This track is killer: light and sexy, Elle is featherlight on her feet, and as we spin around, I suspect the endorphins hit both of us, because when I glance at her face it’s lost some of the tension it held at the start of the rehearsal.
Jack tells us to take a quick water break before the rest of the dancers join us on the floor. I’m sorry to break this fragile truce, but I’m parched and sweating. I need to lose this hoodie. I swig from my water bottle as I unzip my hoodie and shuck it off, towelling my face and neck down with a towel from the pile on the table. I try not to look as Elle pulls her little shirt off over her head, revealing a black crop top to match her leggings. Holy fuck. That is not helpful.
‘Okay, folks,’ Jack tells the others. ‘You’re up. Get in position and we’ll take it from the top. We’re going to count it out together, yeah?’
I’m not sure what he means, but I know the rest of the dancers have been rehearsing without us, and people seem to be murmuring and nodding in agreement. I move back to my mark and Elle comes to stand beside me, graceful as a cat. The music begins. I lead her onto the floor, and we turn to face each other.
