Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,60

the street. A few small flakes drifted down, momentarily illuminated, before they swirled away, lost to the night once again. He touched the smooth glass, the cold seeping into his palm.

He didn’t want to talk. He wouldn’t know where to begin. So the words, when he spoke them, came from deep within, from a place he’d long forgotten about.

“Dance for me.” Brandon turned away from the vista and caught sight of Leanne’s surprised face, mystified by the abrupt change in the conversation. There was enough darkness in his life already. Enough cold. For now, in this suspended instant, he wanted to bask in Leanne’s heat, if only for tonight.

He wanted to ensure that even when they went their separate ways, she would always remember him.

“Dance for me,” he said again.

She laughed nervously. Pointing at herself in her best Jane of the Jungle imitation, she tried to dissuade him. “Me, English. You, dance.”

But he wasn’t deterred. He’d wanted to distract her, to avoid a talk that he knew would be painful. But as spontaneously as the idea had come to him, the rightness of his suggestion only grew. He stepped closer and rested his hands on the tempting curves of her hips. Bending to touch his lips to her neck, relishing the sensation of her soft skin, he traced a whisper-soft path along the quivering tendons of her neck. Her pulse quickened as his mouth followed the ivory column and his senses cheered when he felt her body soften under his loving assault, her hands sliding up to tangle themselves around his shoulders, her pelvis pressing against his erection.

Moving his hips to increase the persuasive pressure against her mound, he whispered, “Dance for me, Leanne. Please.”

Her eyes fluttered open and met his. She licked her lips, wetting them and ratcheting his need even tighter. “Why do you want me to?” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and averted her eyes. “Because I can’t dance. At all. You know that, right? I am the dictionary definition of uncoordinated.”

Putting his hand beneath her chin, he forced her to look at him. In her face, he could read every slight, every sneer, every cruel name, every broken date and lonely Friday night she’d ever suffered. His heart clenched and the emotion he could not name roared.

He hurried into speech before the words he could not control, could not even acknowledge, escaped him.

“I want to see you. All of you. That’s why I want you to dance. I—I want you to show me what you like. How you touch yourself. How you please yourself. I want to watch you move to the music and have you show me…”

Your soul.

He gulped. Where had that come from? A place he didn’t know existed. A place he’d thought too scarred to ever be rejuvenated. Another tremor of fear shot through him. This, whatever this was, wasn’t supposed to be possible for someone like him. He’d been through too much, suffered too much, to ever believe in something as tenuous, as false, as love ever again.

Leanne was looking at him now, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Show you?”

“Everything,” he said, choosing the safer word. Everything could mean sex, right? It didn’t have to mean more than that. He didn’t really want to see her soul, or her fears, or her dreams, or her heart.

Except that he did. Desperately.

But he knew he couldn’t. No matter how much his heart pleaded with him to give it one more chance. It was too risky.

But the reality was, no matter the arguments and facts against it, he couldn’t help wishing that he could draw out his time with Leanne even longer. To find out if what had blossomed between them so unexpectedly might actually be a harbinger of something more permanent. Even entertaining the idea of permanence was a rare experience for him, and for that he was overwhelmed with gratitude.

Leanne had done that for him. She’d never realize, of course, just what she’d given him, by letting her share a small corner of her life for a few days. He couldn’t tell her. But he wanted to express his gratitude. As a dancer, he knew that he could do that best without words. He watched her as uncertainty, doubt and reluctant interest flitted across her transparent face in rapid succession. He waited with barely contained anticipation.

Would she dance for him?

God, he hoped so.

It seemed such an unlikely proposition. He was the graceful one, the musical one, the one