Page 10 of Dirty Dancer

With a grin, I finished pulling on my ballet flats so I didn’t go barefoot all the way through the back. Freddie locked up behind us as I began to half-dance, half-jog down the hall to the stairs. I was a mess of wild energy and as excited as I was to work with Sully again, nothing could top the last thirty minutes.

Nothing.

CHAPTER 4

VAUGHN

Shawn MendesIn My Bloodplayed over the sound system that the techs continued to tweak. Bump in started an hour earlier, but Em had been on the stage working for the past three.Sullyhad only allowed her a brief fifteen minute break for water and to discuss corrections before he put her back to work.

The song was on repeat and while I actually liked it the first time I’d heard it, I was beginning to question my taste, though I would never get tire?—

“Stop,” Sully bellowed out abruptly and the music cut off as Em slid to a halt. She’d been mid-transition, everything about her flowed. The choreographer’s interruptions grew more frequent and more irritating.

“Is it bad that I’m picturing stabbing him right now?” Freddie asked from where he was kicked back in an audience seat with his feet up on the row in front of him.

“No,” Rome responded in a dry voice. His attention remained riveted on the stage. He’d been closer when they started. Yet, after several of Sully’s interruptions, he’d retreated to join us.

One of us should go supervise the bump in, but none of us moved. Sully was an unknown. Yes, he passed muster on a background check Liam had run. Doc had his friends pull another one, but everything came back green lights.

Still, that could just mean he’d never been caught. Background checks on the uncle never revealed his disgusting and brutal predilections where she was concerned. The only thing that had me holding still andnotinterrupting was the sharp focus inherexpression.

If he was irritating the shit out of her like he was us, it wasn’t on display. We were close enough to hear him when he yelled with all his wild hand gestures. Not close enough to hear everything when he spoke as he did now, quiet and intense.

I couldn’t see his expression, but I could read the focused intensity on Dove’s. Whatever he was saying, she seemed to be absorbing. Sweat soaked through her leotard, and her brow was wet. She’d long since coiled her ponytail up into a bun that crowned her head.

As much muscle as she’d put back on, she was still tiny. The strength she housed in that slender body of hers was a thing of wonder.

“Huh,” Freddie grunted and I refocused my attention to the stage. Sully used a remote to start the music and then he began to move on the stage.

Rome straightened and I leaned forward. He was repeating every step Em had done, only there was something…

“It’s predatory,” Freddie said. “When she dances, she’s not the aggressor…”

That was definitely the difference. Sully was repeating her steps but there was just a serious amount of violence in hismovements. At the one minute mark, he cut off the music and faced her again, arms spread like—see?

Head tilted, she put her hands on her hips. Her gaze drifted to us then snapped back to Sully. I had to bite back a smile at the instinct she had to check in with us, but she was right… This wasn’tourdecision.

I stretched, the taut skin along the back of my left arm and shoulder where I’d been burned ached. The scars had left ripples in some of the tattoos. I’d fixed most of it, blended it in to hide the distorted skin. Most of my scars were external, and while Em had them—I flashed a look at the inside of her right arm as she raised it while talking to Sully.

The scars left by the bastard who’d cut into her had been deep and vicious. It had damaged muscle and tendon as well as skin. The butchers who sutured it hadn’t done much to mask the damage, if anything, they’d made it worse.

Doc treated the scars and helped her rehab the muscles and the skin trauma. They were never not going to carry the darker marks of that past, so I put feathers along it on each arm. Herwings.

Every single piece of art on her was my work. I soaked in the sight of her as she repeated the steps without the music or emotion. It was more a question, a pause here or a pause there as she looked at Sully. He would replicate a motion, make some alteration, then she would repeat it and change it more.

They walked through the whole thing, making adjustments. For the first time since they started, I saw her wings coming out even as she raised her chin. There were very clear moments where she saidnoto him. No argument, justno.

The firmness in the response and the snap in her manner made me glad I couldn’t hear the question. Might have made me want to hit him. I used to be the guy with the most even temper,now I pictured rearranging his face for thinking hemightupset her.

Even the mental head shake didn’t clear away the image. Violence was not my first choice. Or it didn’tusedto be my first choice. The last few months…

The music kicked on abruptly and pulled my attention back to the present and the stage. Em and Sully were both dancing, both snapping arms out, then crossing the stage at speed. Their mirrored motions were sharp, violent, and between one breath and the next, I saw what he’d been going for.

“Wow,” Freddie exhaled.

“Yeah,” I said slowly.

While the choreographer mirrored her steps and followed her across the stage, it wasn’t his steps that held me captivated. Emersyn went from hesitation to action, she controlled that stage and every movement was a deliberate provocation. That was what he’d been wanting her to do. Stop questioning the music and motion, tear it up and just own the stage.

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