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On stage, she isn’t the fragile, erratic girl we met in the forest. She’s sharp, yes–but different. Purposeful. Every inch of her is dialed in, fluid, and composed.

When the instructor steps forward and sets up the count, she doesn’t even wait. Arianette is already moving, predicting the sequence before it’s given, responding before the cue. Her body knows it. Even after all the trauma and scars the muscle memory remains, snapping back to the shape of the music before it starts.

The other dancers move with her, echoing her pace. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it’s like they’re all just orbiting around her. Her timing is intuitive–freakish, even. She doesn’t seem to think about anything; she justis. No second-guessing. No fear. She transforms out there. Like the stage eats all the noise inside her head and spits her out pure.

I can't look away.

There’s a moment when she spins and lands with a perfect pointed foot, and her eyes flick toward the shadows. Not up at me. Not quite. But enough that I wonder if sheknowsI’m here watching. She finishes the turn, spinning smoothly. Keeps dancing. Keeps owning the space.

And all I can think is:this girl is dangerous.Not just because of what she’s done. Not even because of what she might do. But because when she moves like that, it makes me forget about everything else.

Even the way she held onto that knife in the woods, a dying man at her feet.

Even the way she took my mark at Claiming.

Even with who shereallyis, the King's future wife.

The instructor claps her hands, the music starts again, and I lean over just a little more to watch, enthralled. She’s so different when she moves like this. All that feral energy she carries like a second skin–it’s still there, but it's reshaped. Channeled. Like she's not running from the dark anymore, but dragging it with her, weaving it into every arch and kick and spin.

There’s power in it.

A spirit unleashed.

Wild and in control at the same time.

The music hums in my ears, thumping with the steady count of the teacher’s beat:One, two, three, four… my throat tightens along with the front of my pants.

She dips low into a plié, the edge of her leotard revealing the smooth curve of her ass, the muscle in her thigh flexing just enough to make me glance down at the panties in my hand.

Lace and cotton, thin and girlish, but stained with DK’s cum. I know she was aroused when he was fucking with her in the back of the class. I could see it on her face. I press my nose to the crotch of the panties and inhale. Salty, with the hint of flowersalong with something else. Something I shouldn’t crave as much as I do.

She twirls again, arching into a backbend, chest heaving, neck bared, sweat catching in the light. Her lips part around a breath I can’t hear but feel–deep in my spine, in the ache that crawls down into my cock.

I shift my weight on the catwalk, careful not to creak, and lean against one of the supports, then unzip. The metal teeth part just enough for me to reach in and wrap my hand around the aching heat of my cock. I’m already leaking, just from watching her move, and it makes the slide slick, easy. I wrap the panties around the shaft and stroke.

Fuck.

My head tips back, eyes rolling for a second. I’d been fucking desperate for her all day. From the moment she walked out in that little skirt, then when DK unbuttoned her sweater to show off the new hardware, to the strip down when she changed. It’s been a long day of constant teasing and now that I’m alone, I want–noneed–release. I force my eyes open again. I don’t want to miss a second. She lifts her arms, sways her hips, then spins. Like a prayer in motion, a curse made flesh.

My grip tightens, the lace dragging just right, soft and damp and smelling like her,them,the two people I’m bound to by oath. I pump slower, drawing it out, matching the tempo of her movements. My hips twitch against the air, with every flick of her wrist, the rise and fall of her tits, and the delicate point of her toes. I imagine that it’s all for me. Even if she doesn’t look up, even if she never sees me, I pretend she knows.

And that these dirty little panties? She fucking left them for me.

I bite down on my lip to keep from groaning. The pressure builds fast, first in my balls, then climbing my spine. My hand moves faster, rougher, the lace twisting as I fuck into it like I’dfuck into her–desperate and possessive. My cock swells, throbs, pulses between fingers slick with her scent and my own need.

Gripping the railing with my free hand, knuckles white, I come hard into the cotton, body jolting with the force of it. The orgasm tears through me like a live wire, white-hot and explosive, shuddering down every nerve ending until I’m panting, spent, trembling up in the rafters.

Below me, she doesn’t stop dancing. Not when I wipe my cock with her panties, or when I stuff them back in her backpack. She may not have known what I was doing up here, but she will.

Arianette will understand that I’m always watching, whether she’s aware of it or not.

By the time I make it back down, the music has cut out and the instructor is dismissing them with a round of tired applause. Dancers stretch, laugh, peel sweat-soaked shirts from their bodies. I lean against the doorframe of the corridor and watch her before she notices me.

She’s radiant, flushed with exertion, tiny wisps of curls clinging damply to her face. I stick to the side, watching her chest rise and fall as she chats with two girls and one guy. The guy’s too close. Tall, good posture, those long dancer’s limbs that say he knows what he’s doing with a partner. He says something and she laughs.Actually laughs.The sound bubbles out of her like something girlish and untouched, and for a split second I want to erase him.

Just a flick of a wrist. Just one whisper in the right ear.

But I don’t move. Iwatch.