“Nothing?” He pulls me up, and we’re face to face again, close enough to share air. “Then you won’t mind if I do this.”
He kisses me.
It’s barely a brush of lips, more suggestion than contact, but it sends electricity crackling down my spine. My hands tighten reflexively on his shoulders, and a small sound escapes my throat, entirely against my will.
He pulls back, looking insufferably pleased.
“I thought we agreed,” I manage, “to be professional.”
“We agreed I would follow your lead. You were staring at my mouth.”
“I wasn’t?—”
“You were. You’ve been staring at my mouth all morning, whenever you think I’m not paying attention.” His thumb traces my lower lip, mirroring what I’d apparently been doing with my eyes. “For someone so controlled, you’re remarkably transparent.”
“I’m not transparent.”
“You’re practically see-through. It’s charming.”
“Stop calling me charming. And adorable. And readable.”
“What should I call you instead?”
I don’t have an answer. I don’t have anything except the burning need to kiss him again and the desperate awareness that doing so would make everything exponentially more complicated.
“We should keep practicing.”
“Should we?”
“The showcase?—”
“Isn’t for three weeks. And we’ve been at it for”—he glances at the clock—”two hours and forty-seven minutes. Even you must be tired.”
I am tired. Exhausted, actually, the kind of bone-deep weariness that comes from emotional turmoil disguised as physical exertion. My legs are trembling. My arms ache. And underneath all of it, there’s a tension that has nothing to do with muscle strain.
“I don’t get tired.”
“Everyone gets tired.”
“Not me.”
“Isadora.” He cups my face in both hands, forcing me to meet his eyes. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m—”
“Shaking and visibly exhausted.” His thumbs stroke my cheekbones. “When was the last time you actually rested? Not practiced, not planned, not organized something—just rested?”
I try to remember, and come up blank.
“That’s what I thought.” He releases me, but gently, like I might shatter. “We’re done for today.”
“We’re not done. We still need to work on the synchronization in the third section, and the timing on the final pose is off by?—”
“Tomorrow.”
“Mal—”
“Tomorrow.” He’s already moving toward his bag, pulling out a water bottle and tossing it to me. “Drink that. Go home. Take a bath or read a book or do whatever it is you do when you’re not obsessively perfecting choreography.”
