Page 11 of Run, Starlight (The Royal Ballet Presents #3)

MARCELLA

Each time I think about last night’s humiliation, my stomach falls out and my cheeks glow red.

If anyone is particularly watching me at this rehearsal, they’re probably thinking I’m overworked and exhausted.

That’s usually what it means when a ballerina is red in the face, but not this time.

I just can’t stand the feel of my own skin after what’s happened.

Rehearsal comes to a close after a couple of grueling hours.

The eyes on me are uncomfortable rather than thrilling.

The attention that fuels and drives me is more like sticky humidity.

The other dancers talk to one another, and it seems like they’re dawdling far more than normal.

Finally, the room clears, and I wish I could go with them, but I simply won’t be able to shut down for the night. I have hours left of energy to spend.

Some girls say they dance their problems away, but fortunately for me, mine are infinitely spawned by my own brain and able to multiply at the slightest command.

I need to dance until I’m too exhausted to torture myself.

That buys me a few hours before the nightmares come.

I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m a professional ballerina.

Once they’re all gone, I take a long look at myself in the mirror.

The entire room reflects back at me, every inch of my body that I willingly revealed for my stalker stares back at me.

My flesh holds questions my brain doesn’t want to answer, accusations I can’t bear to confront just yet.

It’s the first time I’ve faced myself since I asked my stalker if he wanted to watch me masturbate, and he didn’t answer.

How could I manage to attract a stalker and chase him away so quickly?

That’s an impressive level of fucked up.

What are you doing, Marcella? I ask myself.

There are no answers other than dancing, and I know that amounts to ignoring my problems, but knowing you have issues doesn’t give you the tools to fix them.

And what about when you’ve searched through all the tools available and none of them work on you?

I was a relatively normal girl before my brother killed himself in front of me.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all fix for that level of destruction.

I don’t have any goddamn answers or ways to get back to that girl, so I just keep fucking dancing.

That’s what I am now, a physical vessel for art and nothing more.

My feet get ready in fifth position, arms soft in port de bras, as I wait for the music to reach the point I need.

I dance my piece for the show, but it’s not taking the edge off.

My heartbeat speeds, the tension rolls off me, and I need more, something that will leave me drained and exhausted so I can forget my own disgrace.

I throw my head forward. My hair flies loose from the bun.

Stepping to the side, I use my hips to create rhythm within the classical music.

I might be the only one hearing the daring notes underneath Tchaikovsky, but I don't need anyone else to hear what I intend to translate for them.

Arms, legs, position, and pirouette. It flows through my body, wave after wave crashing against my chest. The drama feeds me, I give all my sadness to the performance, and it translates into beautiful, haunting art.

I fall to the floor, landing with soft and practiced elegance.

A new sequence emerges while I’m down. My leg goes long when I push against the floor.

I work my hips down and roll away, transitioning to my back.

I push against the floor, and my chest goes up with the rhythm as if my heart is beating as loud as the music and forcing me off the ground.

I work my hips again, and it might be the frustrations from the past few days—the masturbation and being followed last night.

It’s all coming out now with a life of its own.

I fuck the air like a whore, and my hands wander over my own body?—

The lights abruptly turn off, and with the darkness, I’m plunged into silence.

I gasp at the sudden change. An exit sign in the distance flips on, but the building has a backup generator for emergency signs and escape routes, so I’m not sure if we’re entirely without power.

I sit up, trying to see anything, but it's completely dark outside with just those red letters in the distance. I try to stay reasonable as I sort out what’s happening.

Even the hallway is pitch black. My heart speeds, and fear curls in the bottom of my stomach.

I don't like the dark.

Fabrizio killed himself in front of me, unworried that his blood would soak my pink rug and stain my wall, and it’s spread far beyond that since.

I went from a relatively happy and social person to terrified.

Where I had nothing but confidence, I was suddenly filled with fears, anxieties so bad they would become disordered.

The list of things I can’t stand after his death only grows instead of shrinking: the dark, sickness, animals I’ll never see in real life.

Fears that I can't explain, nightmares that repeat over and over again.

They play despite their audience booing, fully unbothered by my screams of exhaustion.

The silence invites all those thoughts running through my head like wild horses unable to be tamed, powerful enough to drive engines and push me past the last edges of my sanity.

I rub my temples, begging to fly out of my body and become anyone but me.

Instead, my lungs seize, grasping for oxygen they can’t find.

I start hyperventilating. Every breath hurts, and my eyes fill with tears.

It’s been less than a minute, and I still don’t know who turned out the lights, and I haven’t even asked.

Why am I like this?

My lungs clear, a gasp fills them, and a sob follows.

“Miss Marcella?” a soothing and familiar voice asks as a beam of light flashes over the space. It’s not enough for me to see, but I’m sure he can.

“Enzo?” I ask, desperate for it to be him. I couldn’t stand someone else seeing me right now. Even if we only shared one flirtation, I feel closer to him than anyone else here—other than my stalker.

“It’s me.” His voice is a balm to my soul. When the light reaches my face, I flinch away, but that means he’s found me. I’ll be safe.

“I'm sorry,” he says, turning the flashlight off. My fear ticks up again, but then his hands are on me.

He’s warm when he reaches me. His cedar and masculine scent almost makes me feel better, but I’m too far gone. I reach for him, grabbing his shirt between my hands as I take desperate gulps of air.

“What’s happening?” I ask. “Why did the lights go out?”

“They’re doing work on the power lines,” he says. “They dropped off a flyer earlier. ”

I didn’t see it. I wouldn’t have stayed here.

My lips are dry, and I can’t decide what to say next.

Thoughts after thoughts arrive at a blinding speed, and I open my mouth just to close it again.

I try to sit, but he stops me with a hand covering my chest, a trapped breath comes out ragged as I collapse into him and let him hold me.

It’s just my arm against him and his hand on my chest, but it’s everything to me.

He’s so warm, his heat burns through my leotard.

I let his shirt go and grip his hand with mine, afraid he’ll move before I’m ready to let him go.

“Are you afraid of the dark?” he asks me gently, but I can’t answer him.

“Squeeze my hand once for yes and twice for no,” he gently instructs, somehow managing to give me a way I can manage to interact right now.

Squeeze.

“I was afraid of the dark once too. Can you believe that?”

Squeeze, squeeze.

He laughs softly. “Are your eyes open?”

Squeeze.

“Close them.”

But I don’t respond this time. It won’t change anything but I can’t do that. My heart speeds up again, and I don’t like this. I’m scared of my own mind too, and the nightmares that follow me when I close my eyes. I don’t want him to know I’m scared of so much, yet I’m helpless here.

“Marcella, embrace the darkness.”

I can’t. My hands stay still around his.

“When darkness comes, you need to make sure it’s on your own terms. That’s what I had to do,” he says.

The quality of his voice changes. It goes lower, raspier.

It brings chills to my skin, but I feel like I’m missing something.

He sounds like he knows too much about accepting your demons, and I don’t want that either. He’s too kind.

“Close your eyes, Marcella.”

Not Miss Marcella. Not the soft and well-mannered man who arrived yesterday, but something different that has me pausing for a second.

The thought comes, but it’s like trying to hold on to smoke.

It seeps through my fingers, and it’s gone.

Instead of trying to figure out what feels odd about him today, I close my eyes.

His other hand moves to my cheeks, and his thumb grazes over my eyes as if checking that I’m following his instructions. His fingers force them to shut.

I gasp. It's dark enough that the only difference when my eyes are open or closed is the red letters spelling exit in the distance. That is the scariest part of it all. I know I can’t open my eyes to escape.

I can’t ever escape. It’s hell, and it’s inside me all day long.

That sign is a taunt. There is no exit, only an endless cage built from my own pain.

“Choose the darkness,” he says again, interrupting my thoughts, changing them, and offering me a solution I hadn’t considered.

I shake my head. I don’t want darkness. I want light and peace and a full night of sleep. I wasn’t born for the darkness. Fabrizio tossed me into it and left me behind. A pang of guilt follows on the heels of that thought. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He just didn’t want to die alone.

“You can’t escape it. It’s here to get you whether you want it or not. But you do have a choice.”

He lets the offer hang there, tempting me out of my shell.

“What’s my choice?” They’re the first words I’ve spoken, and they take a lot of effort.

“Be the predator who uses the dark to your advantage. Dance with it. Hunt in it. ”

What does he mean?

His words shake me, but they also tickle something deep inside me that has been hungry and desperate to regain my power for a long time.

How do I become what I’m most afraid of?

I’m not even sure where I begin and Fabrizio ends anymore.

With my eyes still closed, I try to feel like a predator instead of the prey.

I don’t even know how someone stronger would react.

Would they realize Fabrizio wasn’t well?

Would they be a better sister and help him before it was too late?

Enzo’s hands grab my chin a little too forcefully, and he tips it up. “Tell me what you’re so afraid to say.”

“Why?” The word comes out cracked from my lips.

“Because you’re not afraid anymore, are you? You’re the predator.”

His fingers are rough on my chin, a contrast with the quality of his clothes. His words quiet the ghosts haunting me enough that I can concentrate on the feeling of his hands. My cheeks burn when I notice how close we are, but I push that embarrassment away.

It’s not very predator of me.

“Yesterday when you asked me if I wanted anything else I lied,” I say. I’m not ready to talk about my brother or all the other things I’m hiding, but I can manage this one truth.

He hums in a masculine way, raising the hairs on my arm. “You wanted something more?”

“Yeah.”

I became this shell of a person when I was too young.

Men have been the last thing on my mind as I’ve pursued the only career I could manage.

I’m not built for other things, including coming on to someone, but it could be fun, right?

Take the initiative. I don’t have to shove him down on the ground and make him eat me out—even thinking about it gets me wet between my legs—but I’m pretty sure all I have to do is ask.

“Tell me now. What do you want?” His words encourage me, and the darkness itself encourages me for once.

“I want you to eat me out,” I say, afraid, but finally of something scary, putting myself out there, being rejected like my stalker turned me down yesterday.

He's silent for a second too long. I hold my breath, thinking I went too far and made him uncomfortable, and I’ll be turned down twice in as many days.

The doubts melt from my mind when he comes closer, and his warm, minty breath fans over my face.

The moment is loaded with electricity, and his lips graze over mine.

“Tell me exactly what you want me to do, Miss Marcella.”

Heat snakes up my spine and reaches my warm cheeks.

Here in the dark, he's different. When he knocked at my door, I was attracted to him.

Enzo is a good-looking man, so of course I noticed.

But now he has an edge I didn't see before.

Something in the quality of his voice today makes me unnerved and hot at the same time.

“Eat my pussy, Enzo,” I say, shifting from aroused to desperate.

He growls, and I gasp when he takes me in his arms, shifting me so we can move.

He's careful putting me down on the couch against the city view I love so much.

My legs apart, he brings his warm hands up, and I shiver in anticipation.

I don't dare open my eyes yet, not when I'm so close to being fearless.

He shuffles away. I wait quietly, expecting him to remove my clothes, but instead, I feel silk over my eyes.

“What—” I ask.

“I'm tying my tie around your eyes. Are you afraid? ”

I swallow the lump in my throat. “A little.”

“Good,” he groans, working the knot behind my head.

I don't get a chance to ask why it’s good to be afraid. A flash of cold touches my skin, making me jump. I understand that it’s a blade too close to my skin when he slashes my leotard and exposes my skin to the air.

Why does good-mannered Enzo have a knife on him? His tongue parts my pussy, and I grip his hair as a moan slips free. Suddenly, there are no thoughts left, just him.