Free Dance of Desire (1001 Dark Nights) by Christopher Rice Page A

him, she gives Amber a look full of wide-eyed confusion. Then Caleb gently shuts the door with one hand. Now it’s just the two of them, alone together for the first time in years.
    “It’s a terrible idea,” he says.
    “Why did she tell you?”
    “Because she wants me to stop you.”
    “That’s not true. I talked to her this afternoon and she told me she wanted me to go.”
    “Well, she must have changed her mind,” he says.
    “Well, I haven’t changed mine.”
    “A sex club?” he bellows. “What are you? Crazy?”
    “Since when are you so full of judgment? I’ve never seen you in church!”
    “And I’ve never seen you in a sex club!”
    “Have you been to that many? Who knows? I could have a whole secret life you don’t even know about.”
    “I know who you are, Amber. I know how you are.”
    “And what does that mean?”
    “Amber, you stayed a virgin until you were nineteen. That puts you in the, like, one percentile of girls in our high school.”
    “How do you know that? I never told you that!”
    “I had my sources.”
    “You were keeping tabs on my virginity? That’s rich. I thought you were too busy starting fistfights outside Valley View Mall so you didn’t have to feel anything.”
    “And you were too busy tending to my wounds ’cause it gave you an excuse to look at my chest.”
    “Get out of my house!”
    “Amber—”
    “Get out!”
    He bows his head. A lesser man would ignore her request, but he knows he’s bound by it.
    “I shouldn’t have said that,” Caleb whispers. “I’m sorry.”
    He turns to leave.
    “You know, I forgave you a lot because you lost a lot. But don’t you pretend for one second that you joined our family with a smile and a thank you and that was that. Those first few years, it was like living with a tornado. You were impossible ! And you were nothing like the guy I’d...”
    He turns away from the front door. “The guy you’d what?”
    “All I’m saying is that even if I’d wanted to…”
    “Wanted to what?”
    He’s closing the distance between them. Her head wants to run from him. Her soul wants to run to him. Her body’s forced to split the difference. She’s got no choice but to stand there while he advances on her, nostrils flaring, blue eyes blazing.
    “Tell me why you really don’t want me to go,” she hears herself whisper. “Tell me why you—”
    He takes her in his arms and rocks them into the wall, so suddenly she expects her head to knock against the wood, but one of his powerful hands cushions the back of her skull just in time.
    His lips meet the nape of her neck, grazing, testing. It’s hesitant, the kiss he gives her there, as if he’s afraid she’s an apparition that will vanish if he tries to take a real taste.
    He gathers the hem of her shirt into his fist, knuckles grazing the skin of her stomach. She’s trying to speak but the only things coming out of her are stuttering gasps. She’s been rendered wordless by the feel of the forbidden, by the weight of the forbidden, by the power of the forbidden. 
    It’s the first time they’ve touched since that night on the boat dock, if you don’t include the light dabs of hydrogen peroxide she’d apply to the wounds he got fighting, usually while they sat together in the kitchen, her parents watching over them nervously. So many years living under the same roof and they never shared so much as a hug after that night, nothing that might risk the feel of his skin against her own.
    And now this.
    Now the intoxicating blend of the cologne he wore as a teenager mingling with the musky aroma of his belt and boots. Now the knowledge that he’d asked after her virginity years before, that the thought of her lying with another man had filled him with protective, jealous rage then just as it does now.
    She feels boneless and moist. One of those feelings isn’t an illusion.
    If this is what it feels like to be bad, she thinks, no wonder so many people get addicted.
    “Tell