cameras before we go in. We’re both being extra cautious because the Jackal certainly taught us that lesson in the worst way and there’s no way I’m being kidnapped by some psycho again.
Once we have the all clear I direct him to park right at the front door in the spot Illi usually uses. With the electric gate shut and the sensors all on I should feel safe but when Aodhan helps me out of the car the hole from the stalker’s knife is like a morbid reminder that someone really has set their sights on me.
I just don’t know if they want me dead or just scared but neither are happening anytime soon.
Aodhan goes straight upstairs to call Illi and shower in my bathroom to clean his uncle’s blood from his body.
I don’t think about it at all.
I know that I’m the only one who hasn’t cleaned the blood of my victims off of myself here, Lips and the guys have all cleaned themselves up wherever the last couple of years, but I’ve only scrubbed myself raw from my own blood. It makes some kind of cosmic sense that Aodhan would be up there in my ensuite using my soaps and shampoos to scrub away the mess he’d made of Diarmuid on my behalf.
I go down to the studio and get changed into my ballet gear. My leotard and tights are a little looser than they should be and I make a note to get back to eating more regularly now I’m not keeping to the guys’ eating schedule. Harley never failed to keep me eating every three or so hours thanks to his high metabolism. It takes a lot of calories to be as jacked as he is.
I wince as I put my feet into the pointe shoes, cursing under my breath as useless tears fill my eyes. They hurt more than they should to go in and there’s a good chance I’m not going to be able to dance as well as I could before the Jackal burned me.
I stretch out for twice as long as I would normally just to be sure I’m ready to move my body without risking my body any more than necessary. I run through one of my old routines slowly, testing to see which of my muscles feel tight and which are more sore than they were previously.
Before the Jackal had taken me and damaged my feet, I was working through the routines required to dance as Aurora in ‘Sleeping Beauty’. I didn’t have any grand plans of becoming a professional dancer, I don’t want to be some pretty thing for rich men to covet, but the idea of never being able to push my body like this again is terrifying.
I need to dance and feel the burning of my muscles the same way that Ash needs to run until he loses feeling in his legs. We need to push our bodies into feeling something so we don’t drown in the overwhelmingly crushing doom of our lives.
I take a deep breath and I start.
It hurts but I push on, holding my core and watching my form, counting in my brain to shift my focus away from the pain. Lips taught me all about that. There are three different languages that I can work through if I need to although it’s been a while since I had to use Russian.
I make it through the first act before I pause and find Aodhan sitting on the floor, leaning against the mirror there with one leg bent up and his arm resting on top like this is just a regular occurrence for him.
The look in his eyes makes my breath catch in my throat.
Breath control is something a dancer always has to work on and I try to hide the effect he’s having on me but the smirk that stretches over his lips is telling.
“No one has ever looked that fucking good in a tutu before, Queenie. That shit should be illegal… I can’t believe your brother was okay with you dancing in it.”
I roll my eyes and walk over to him, slipping my shoes off before stretching. Okay, slipping isn’t the right word for describing the torture of pulling them off of my battered and scarred feet but I’m trying to look effortless and elegant. I don’t look down at the state they’re in and, thankfully, Aodhan doesn’t either.
He’s too busy eyeing off every inch of my body in the leotard. It’s tight