Free The Dance Off by Ally Blake Page B

through the haze Nadia realised it was the trill of a phone chirruping through the heavy air.
    When Ryder pulled away Nadia went with him, following his lips with hers. Not done yet. Not even close.
    When she came up with nothing but air, her eyes flickered open to find his: dark, tortured. The want she saw there, the reckless desire, teetering on the very edge of control and chaos, scared her. Scared and thrilled her. Because it exactly mirrored her own.
    But instead of throwing her to the floor and having his way with her, he said, “I have to get that.”
    That? Oh, the phone.
    “It’s nearly eleven at night,” she said, her voice ragged, her fingers tugging at the beltline of his track pants. “You really don’t.”
    “It’s nearly eleven at night. I really do.”
    He unhooked her hands, gave them back to her, then turned his back and answered his phone. Leaving Nadia to wrap her arms about herself to control the suddenly very cold shivers wracking her.
    Ryder murmured into the phone so that Nadia couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then he hung up, and grabbed his things, turning to her only when he had everything in hand. “I have to go.”
    Nadia breathed out long and slow, slowing her heart, tempering the mortifying disbelief that this was happening again from ratcheting up to cyclonic levels inside her.
    Then he dumped his things and swore effectively as he came to her, taking her by the arms and bending his head so that he was eye level, which was really the only reason she didn’t boot him out of the flippin’ door and demand he stay the hell away from her.
    “Meet me,” he said, command kindling at the edges of his voice. “Continue this. Tomorrow.”
    Not sticking a high heel in his ass was one thing, but asking for more? Not on your sweet life, chump. “I’m busy.”
    “All day?”
    “Yep. Right this second, though? Not so much.”
    And there it was. If he wanted her, he could have her. Right there, right now. But not at his beck and call.
    She’d been there, dancing to someone else’s tune. And the fact that it wasn’t a man who’d used her affections against her, who’d let her dangle, kept her at a distance even when they’d lived in the same city, danced in the same company, didn’t mean it hadn’t left a mean scar.
    Ryder’s jaw clenched, and he looked as if he wanted to shake her, or kiss her, or toss her over his shoulder and spank her. In the end he did none of the above; he rolled his eyes to the exposed beams he was so in love with, and left, muttering under his breath something about women being the death of him.
    “Dammit!” Nadia cried out once he’d gone, shaking out her hands and pacing and kicking things.
    If it wasn’t so late she’d be on the phone to her boss telling her to find someone else to look after Ryder Bloody Fitzgerald. She’d absolutely do it in the morning. First thing. Before her feet even hit her cruddy apartment floor.
    Till then...
    Till then she stretched her arms high over her head, lifted till the arches of her feet screamed at her to stop, shook out her hair and danced to the sound of the rain drumming on the windows. Danced till sweat dripped into her eyes. Danced until her breaths grew ragged, her heart hammered, and her legs could barely hold her.
    Power still out, muscles shaking and spent, she rugged up, turned things off as best she could, and left.
    By the time she got downstairs, the storm had passed. And Ryder’s luxe car was long gone. Not even a dry patch on the edge of the otherwise drenched and shiny street evidence he’d ever been there.
    For that she had the burn of self-disgust riding deep in her belly and the crescents of still-tender love bites on her chest.
    Nadia twisted her summer scarf into a ball at her neck, and walked the other way.
    * * *
    It was closer to dawn than midnight by the time Ryder turned onto the beach road leading to his Brighton home to find a pancake-flat, electric-blue sports car facing the wrong