obey. Without taking my eyes off his, I reach down and grab his wrist. I feel heat and tendons and sinew before I watch his eyes narrow in confused mirth.
“With your breath, Iris. Move my hand with your breath.”
Next to us, Ramon snickers just as flames of mortification roar beneath my cheeks. I release Beau’s wrist like it’s radioactive.
I’m such an idiot.
“No, keep it there,” Beau says, just a hint of a smile in his eyes. “Keep it there so you can feel what I mean.”
Hesitantly, I grip his wrist again.
“Now breathe.”
I inhale.
“You’re filling the top of your lungs.” He presses into me again, and the sensation echoes all the way to my toes. “Fill your belly.”
I take a tentative breath and let my stomach expand just a little against his hand.
“More,” he orders when I exhale.
I breathe in again, past my lungs, pushing against him a little more.
“More, Iris.”
“I can’t,” I gust out on a sigh.
His eyes narrow in challenge. “You can. You’re moving, but just barely. Let go. Stick your belly way out.”
“No way,” I blurt, backing away. Except I can’t back up much because he’s bracing me from behind.
Beau frowns. “Why not?” He steps in, closing the fraction of an inch I put between us.
“Stick my belly out? Are you crazy? I’ll look fat.”
His brows shoot up. A look I can’t decipher crosses his face. “Trust me,” he says flatly, “you won’t. Now breathe.”
I do, but no deeper than the last time.
“Really?” He looks less than amused. “That’s the best you can do?”
No. It’s not the best I can do. I can stick my stomach out a lot further, but why the hell would I do that? Me dancing is bad enough. Me looking fat while dancing? Well, that’s hell realm material.
“Iris.”
“What?”
He crowds me more than he’s already crowding me. “Dance begins here.” He presses that hand into me, and again, I feel it like a shower of sparks and a mug of hot cocoa all at once. Exhilarating. Soothing. Delicious. “Here. Not in your feet or your legs. But in your core. If you breathe from here and move from here first, everything else works out.”
That can’t be right. Can it?
“But ballet dancers aren’t sticking their bellies out when they’re dancing.”
“Professional ballet dancers have been doing breathwork since Day One,” he says flatly. “They are breathing as deeply as possible to be able to do their lifts and leaps and jetes. They’ve just learned to incorporate breath with movement.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “How do you know?”
The corners of his eyes crease with satisfaction. “Because I studied ballet for eighteen years.”
Maybe I’m an idiot, but I did not see that coming. I look him up and down in his collared shirt and chinos. At first I can’t picture him in a leotard and tights.
And then I totally can. In fact, I’m sure most women—and no small number of men—would pay good money to see him in nothing but Lycra.
But eighteen years?
“Where did you study?” I hear myself ask.
“Here.” One corner of his mouth lifts in a smile.
“Here, in Lafayette?” I ask, confused.
Amusement sparks in his dark eyes. “Right here. At La Fête.”
“Mr. Hebert taught you?” I squawk.
Beau chuckles at my surprise. “He and my mom.”
I blink. “Your mom? Does she teach here too?”
“She used to,” he says, his smile slipping. Then his hand presses into me again and all thoughts of ballerinas flit from my head. “Now breathe. Big this time.”
I do, making the mistake to look down as my belly rounds under his hand.
“Ugh,” I mutter.
“Look up. At me,” he commands.
So I do. He’s so close, and his gaze falls on me, into me. It’s so heavy it’s hypnotic. I immediately stop breathing.
“Breathe, Iris.”
I breathe, stretching my diaphragm, filling my belly.
“Good. Again.”
I do it again and again and again. And then keeping the hand on my middle, he uses his free one to clasp my wrist, and he sweeps it up as I breathe in.
“Heels down,” he reminds me when I tip forward.
I anchor in the heels and raise both hands. Ramon and Sally, who’ve been silent witnesses since Beau touched me, start moving in tandem with us.
We breathe, sweeping our hands up, and after half a dozen times, I realize that my arms no longer feel like they’re made of popsicle sticks. Instead, it feels like they’re moving through water.
Gracefully.
“Great. Great.” Beau gives a tight nod. “We’ll begin with some kind of warm up every time.”
Then he steps back. His hand leaves my