Page 43 of Second Position (Astor Hill #2)

Gen

My muscles ache with every step and the soles of my feet feel hopelessly bruised. The muscles in my calves burn as I ascend the stairs to Grant’s, but I lean into it, stretching the tendons there until it feels like I’m working them again.

Rehearsals have gotten more intense, and more frequent, as we approach the show.

With only a month to go, most parts are beginning to be called every day which means I’ve gone from rehearsing a few times a week to constantly.

It’s exhausting, and my social life has become nonexistent and I love it .

The ferocious grace of the dance, the performance of it, those are a part of it but for me, the extent to which you have to give yourself over to the craft is addicting.

You leave, battered and bruised, but knowing you created something so beautiful, for only a moment in time, with your body.

The only thing I want to do more than sink into a deep sleep is see Grant.

I rap my knuckles on the door of his apartment once, then twice, before it gives way.

He stands there, dark charcoal sweatpants, a black t-shirt, and dark baseball cap backwards on his head, scanning me.

I drop my duffel and reach up, reveling in the soreness brought to the fore by my movement.

I kiss him for the first time in two days, and you know when you’d lose your mom in the supermarket, heart racing, and then you’d spot her?

It’s relief. Like oh—he’s still here and I found him and he found me.

“I missed you.” His smile is crooked, charming, distracting, and I want to photograph it.

“I missed you,” I say, my heart feeling like it’s going to burst.

What I don’t tell him is that I kept spinning out of my pirouettes for the first thirty minutes of rehearsal because I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

I don’t tell him that when Jean and I practice our press lift, I have to stop the image of his hands against my skin from flashing through my mind.

“Get a room ,” Sloane croons from the couch. “And hey babe.”

I press a quick kiss to Grant’s lips and he smiles in resignation as I throw myself next to Sloane.

“Don’t worry—I missed you, too,” I tell her, meaning it. When I’m not with Grant, or rehearsing, or at class—which admittedly is less and less these days—, I’m usually with Sloane. I haven’t had a friend like her in a long time. I rest my head against her shoulder.

“You always smell so good,” I say.

“Juliette Has a Gun,” she tells me, her shrug causing me to slide off. “You smell like a locker room. And I already showered. So…” Her laugh is part grimace as I hop off the sofa.

“Weren’t you going somewhere?” Grant’s cuts in, clearly wanting her to go.

“You know, when I moved in here, you didn’t have a girlfriend, and I don’t know if I’m okay with this.” She looks between us with false disgust, smirking. “I’m leaving,” she sing-songs.

I mouth the word “sorry” as she escapes out the door, my blush subsiding once the door shuts. “You didn’t have to kick her out,” I chastise him, picking up my bag before walking it down to his bedroom.

When I turn to see him standing in the door frame, his gaze is heated.

“I was just giving her a warning.” Heat coils lower in my belly just from the way he’s looking at me. “Get undressed,” he tells me before slipping into the bathroom, turning on the shower.

“So bossy,” I tease, pulling off my sweatshirt and leggings.

“Your live reunion starts in an hour,” he says when he returns, his hands sliding across my shoulders, and pushing down the straps of leotard.

“And I have plans for you.” It’s a whisper against my ear, and I shiver, feeling myself involuntarily clenching around nothing, suddenly not caring if I miss the entire show.

Steam greets me as soon as we’re in the bathroom, the suffocating heat around us heating more than just my skin.

I watch him get undressed and my adrenaline kicks up at the sight of him.

The broad expanse of his chest, the muscles that ripple there, the ones that twine down his arms, twine down everywhere—I see it and where he’s usually a safe place to land, like this he’s an escape I never knew I could want so badly.

When he guides me into the shower, I expect him to kiss me, am dying for him to touch me, but he doesn’t.

He takes the shower head and drenches my hair with water, then lathers the shampoo I left here in his hands.

I feel their strength as they sink into my hair and move against my scalp with expert care, and I moan in pleasure.

“I love your hair like this.” He wrings the suds out of my hair, taking the shower head again to rinse it out before going in with my conditioner.

“Dirty?” I laugh, relaxing into the steady stream of wet heat pouring across me.

“Curly,” he says distantly, like he’s deep in thought. He spins me around, leaving the conditioner in my hair as he squirts my body wash in his hands. He scrubs my body in sensual circles, and when he dips between my legs it takes everything in me not to buckle.

“You don’t like when it’s straight?” I try to focus on the words, the conversation, and not the way he’s toying with every sensitive spot on my body as he washes away my exertion.

“No—I love that, too.” He grabs the shower head again, rinsing me off, the pressure spraying against my clit making me writhe where I stand.

He slides the shower head back into place and kneels, his palms spread wide across my hips, then my ass.

“But those curls,” he says, looking up at me, “they’re my favorite. ”

He kisses the skin stretched taut over my hip bone on one side, then the other, kissing down until he’s where I want him. His hand slips under my legs and hooks it over his shoulder, giving him better access as his tongue dips into me.

I shudder on the exhale, the pressure already climbing as my slippery hands try to find purchase in his hair. Hot water drips down me, heightens every feeling, drenches him as he plucks at the strings of my desire.

“So fucking perfect,” he says, his gaze briefly locking with mine before sliding two fingers inside me, his touch feather light as he guides me into my climax.

“Grant,” I moan as it crashes over me, the pleasure coursing through me amplified by the fact that he knows my body well enough to do this to me.

He gets up, a satisfied gleam in his eyes, sliding his hands up my body and turns me around with a gentle ease that makes something ache inside me. I feel the spray of water against my head, hear the water rinsing the conditioner away, register the way his fingers comb through my curls.

“How’d you know to let the conditioner sit?” I manage to say, still breathless.

“It’s on the bottle,” he chuckles. “But I might’ve done some research.”

When I turn to face him, he’s got a towel ready to wrap around me, and I wonder if he can hear how harshly my heart is beating inside my chest.

“On my hair?”

“On lots of things since it’s been like this between us.” He brushes a wet curl off my face, his gaze still heated.

I swallow, hoping it’ll slow down the emotion welling behind my eyes, rising in my throat.

“Well, you did a good job.” His eyes light with a quiet pride as I step out of the shower, drying off and sopping up the excess water still in my curls.

He heads toward his dresser, pulls out a pair of underwear, and I press up behind him.

“What are you doing?” I say, wrapping my arms around and sliding my hands down to where he clearly needs my assistance.

“I wanted to take care of you,” he tells me, the muscles of his back tensing as I move my hand up and down the length of him. When I come around to face him, I realize his jaw is set, his molars grinding against each other.

“And I want to take care of you.” The feel of him in my hand has me breathing harder, has me peppering his chest with kisses.

“I don’t want you to think you have to give me anything.”

And I feel protectiveness for him wash over me, feel like he deserves to know that he can want things from me. That he doesn’t have to prove himself by never asking for anything in return.

“I happen to love giving you things. Isn’t that convenient?”

His breaths are shallow and ragged as I feel my way down him, lowering until I’m licking the length of him, the hard heat of him causing a twinge of need between my legs.

“Is that okay?” I ask him, my desire to make him feel the way I felt winning out over my na?veté. I keep my eyes on him, taking him in more fully.

Bracing himself with a hand against the wall, he curses under his breath. “It’s perfect,” he grits out, his free hand now resting on the back of my head in this show of intimate reassurance that has my body tingling. “Look at you,” he says, gazing down at me. “Fuck, Gen.”

The praise has me moaning around him, and he pulls out suddenly, his strong arms lifting me to him and I wrap my legs around him on instinct, rubbing and wriggling, seeking the friction I need.

His lips crash into mine, and nothing else feels like this; nothing ever has. I hear the tearing of a wrapper, only feel the loss of him for a moment, and then I’m pressed into his sheets, lost in his woodsmoke, digging my fingertips into his back as he buries himself inside me.

“Don’t be careful this time,” I breathe against his ear, craving the relentless side of him I know is there.

His thrusts turn rougher, more frequent, as he reaches between us, taking what he needs from me in a way that has me barreling towards my climax.

Pleasure pools between my legs, grows until I feel it wrap around the base of my spine, feel it implode on itself.

Hot sparks of pleasure shoot through my core as I spasm around him.

He’s unraveling too—I can feel him pulsing, the motion sustaining my own orgasm.

With his head against my shoulder, I hear him exhale. Like he needed that, too.