Dance for Me (Fenbrook Academy #1) - New Adult Romance by Helena Newbury

down, until he was kneeling on the floor with me draped across his knees. I reached up and grabbed his shoulder, pulling him down further so that we were lying on the floor, him on top. The concrete should have been freezing through my leotard. It wasn’t. It felt like we were warming the whole area around us.
    His hand was on my hip and I gasped not so much from the touch as the idea that he was touching me. He slid it up my side, tracing my waist through the smooth black Lycra. Up to my chest, to the side of my breast. My whole body tensed, wanting him to, but he held back. He smoothed over my bare shoulder and I writhed under him and then we were kissing again, both of us breathing in slow, shuddering gasps. Like before, it felt like we weren’t in control. It felt like this was just happening and all we could do was watch.
    He broke the kiss, my lips throbbing and damp. His hand was on my stomach, now, his warmth spreading through the tight material and waking a dark, animal craving inside me. He started to slide it higher, the whole time keeping his eyes on mine, checking it was okay.
    I stared straight back at him.
    Up, over my core. Up, his fingertips tracing along my ribs. The very edge of his hand brushed the underside of my breast and I parted my lips a little wider, but I didn’t tell him to stop. And then he was right on it, his palm smoothing over the softness of it, and I wanted to grind my hips and arch into him because it felt so goddamn good.
    He squeezed, so, so gently, and I caught my breath, hot spirals radiating outwards through my body.
    “Clarissa is upstairs,” I panted.
    He stared down at me and then nodded and released my breast. His hand found mine and he stood, pulling me up with him.
    “What is this?” I asked him again, and this time my eyes told him I wasn’t going to let him escape without a proper answer.
    “I don’t know. I...I really like you. A lot.”
    The way he said it—so clumsy, so him —made me swell up inside. That tiny glow of hope was shining brightly now, pushing back the fear.
    But it was crazy. “You don’t even know me,” I told him, my voice scarcely more than a whisper. “And I don’t know you.”
    He looked at me for a long moment, and then nodded, and sat down on the edge of the stage. I sat down next to him.
    He looked at me steadily. “Ask me anything.”
    Weird how, when you’re suddenly put on the spot with a person you’re insanely curious about, all the questions go out of your head.
    I looked around the room for inspiration, then up at the mansion, above us. “Are your parents rich?”
    “My parents are dead. No, they weren’t rich. It’s my money.”
    There was something strange about his answer. He wasn’t being defensive, or bragging about the money being his. It was more like he was owning up to it.
    I went to ask him something else, and then stopped. “Ask me something. Otherwise it feels like I’m interrogating you.”
    “When you danced in that audition...what were you thinking about?”
    Did he know? “You,” I said simply. “I felt like I was dancing with you.” I wasn’t used to telling the truth. It felt odd.
    “And before that, when you were angry. Was that me?”
    God, he’d noticed that, too? Even then, he’d been observing me, able to see the difference between the emotion in the dance and what I was actually feeling. “Yes,” I said, for safety.
    “Really?” He looked hurt.
    “No.” But I said it in a way that said don’t ask, and he didn’t. “How did they die?”
    He blinked a couple of times and I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he turned away for a second.
    “Wait,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter. Sorry.”
    He drew in a deep breath. “Car bomb.” Each word dragged like a rusty blade from his chest.
    I swayed back on the edge of the stage and pulled my legs up. Twisted on my ass and slid myself towards him, then sat down behind him, so he was between my thighs. I wrapped my arms around