Page 20 of Tendu: Dancing in the Castle

I struggled to keep my face neutral, recalling how Aleks had said he’d wanted to feed me chocolate with his fingers since the cake at Covent Garden. If someone else had made such a comment it might have sounded sleazy, but from him it was just so sexy and romantic and delicious. “Umm…” I said to Justin. “Must have lain on it, or something. I did have a shower afterwards.”

It wasn’t clear at what point the purpose of that shower had ceased to be the removal of chocolate mousse, but there was no stopping the memory of Aleks lifting me up against the tiled wall. Or the way his wet body had felt, his firm chest and arms, my limbs wrapped about him, the water cascading off us both…

“There’s going to be a proper debriefing later,” Justin began, only to be cut short by the striding arrival of Aleks who handed me a piece of paper.

“Is arranged,” he said. The paper bore the times of my tap classes. “This one,” he said, pointing to Tuesday afternoon. “We do in my studio. Is better, no? First one, now, is today, right after morning class.”

Official information given, our teacher paced briskly to the front of the room. Was that all he was now? We hadn’t made any plans to see each other again, other than the official written ones in my hand.

Barre. Focus. Breathe.

Even in the lifts at the end of class my concentration remained on technique, extension, balance. Not the strength of Aleks’s arms, not the attentiveness of his eyes.

Then it was over. Class, and maybe everything else too.

“Treadwell?” Will paused at the door. “I’m sorry.”

A shake of my head dismissed him. What did it matter now?

Aleks closed the door. I braced myself. How could I be here again? Day after day, facing the same, or similar, end-of-class doom? We’d been so close, so intimate, and now—

“Tonight, I will pick you up earlier, and cook for you?”

My vision blurred.

“Ah, I have say something wrong again. I make assumption, so stupid. You are already busy with other things and people?”

“I didn’t know…” Was I really going to tell him this? “I didn’t know if it was a one-night stand.”

“A one-night—? This is what you wanted?”

“No, I…”

“Did I do something to make you feel this is what is happening?”

I shook my head, worried that I’d offended him. “Justin. He said probably. He was just trying to protect me.”

“Malphia, come, sit.”

There was no pianist for the private lesson, so I sat on the recently vacated piano stool.

Aleks crouched beside me and took my hand. “Between us there is… is wrong to say sparks, more like big, big fire. We have to explore, see where we go. Is something very special here, to me this is how it is feeling.”

“To me, too,” I said, looking down at him. “But...”

“But?”

“I’ve already been warned about behaving properly, and obeying the rules, by Madame this term. So, we’d have to keep it a secret.”

He smiled. “A secret could be fun, no?”

I nodded. I suspected it could.

“So, I will pick you up at six? You bring your things this time?” A smile flickered back and forth between us. “But, no, this is terrible,” he said, standing up in horror. “We are talking through your lesson time. And it is to be the best you ever had.”

It was.

Chapter 7

---