The ballet academy’s main hallway was busy as students spilled out of the classrooms, the noise of their conversations echoing off the high ceilings and glossy floors. Lia dodged dancers stretching against the wall between classes, or preparing their shoes, the tap-tap of the stiff toe-boxes being broken into shape against the floor a percussion to life as a ballet dancer.
During the lunch break, Paris found her. “I have it,” she announced waving a sheet of paper. “I went to the library this morning and printed the advertisement for the third room. What do you think?”
Lia took the piece of paper and read it through. “It is good, thanks Paris.”
“Got to keep a roof over our heads, eh?” Paris nudged her. “Let’s go put it up and see if we can attract a new roomie.”
There was a corkboard in the main hall, and she and Paris had decided that if they were going to have to have a third house-mate, another dancer was their first choice. They wove their way between the other dancers to the administration office where the cork board was.
As Lia hesitated, looking for a space where their advertisement wasn’t going to cover others, Paris continued to talk about Brock and her weekend. Lia tuned her out until Paris suddenly gripped her arm: “Ooh,” she said with approval. “Very nice.”
“What?” Lia was baffled.
“The blonde,” Paris jerked her head towards the man leaning against the opposite wall.
Lia followed her gaze and accidentally met the man’s eyes. He grinned, showing white, straight teeth. He reminded her of a movie star, with his clean-cut good looks and golden blonde hair, his posture deliberately elegant as if he wanted to attract their attention. He had the legs of a dancer, she thought, strong, powerful, and long.
She blushed and looked away towards the cork board on the opposite wall. Her eyes were drawn back to him however, and she slid a look at him from under her eyelashes, trying to be discrete.
He was still looking at her, and his shoulders shook with silent laughter which left her in no doubt that he had caught her looking at him. Vain, she thought, and with good reason. He would be popular around the dance academy, with both male and female dancers, he had the sort of glow to him that attracted people and made them want to look and touch him.
“I hope he is in our classes,” Paris sent him a flirtatious smile. “We need some more testosterone.”
“Brock and Raiden have plenty of testosterone,” Lia commented as she peeked again, and he raised his eyebrows in invitation. There was something, she thought, so familiar about his face. Perhaps her initial impression had been correct, and he had featured on a soap opera, or something on TV, someone not quite famous, but seen often enough to trick the eye into thinking it knew them.
Paris giggled.
Lia tried to focus on the cork board, but the blonde man was like the glow of the sun in her peripheral vision, enticing her to look again.
Cork board, Cecelia, she told herself sternly. Male dancers were just trouble, and she wasn’t in the market for a boyfriend, she had Raiden who reminded her so much of the kind-eyed boy from the day of her parent’s car crash. Thinking of the car crash brought to mind the golden-haired man who had saved her. Maybe that was why, she thought stealing another look at the man, he seemed eye-catchingly familiar. He had the same colouring as the golden-haired man that as a child she had thought was an angel – a trick of the light, the police had thought, the sun glare or smoke causing a six-year-old traumatized child to see something that wasn’t.
And it was impossible that this man would be the same one – that man would be older, probably married with his own children, she thought.
Here,” Paris took the sheet of paper from Lia’s hand and stuck it to the board over several other notices with complete disregard for whatever they were advertising. She tore off the first phone number tear-away. “Creating demand,” she told Lia. “Makes people think – crap, must get onto that before someone else gets the room. Come on,” she linked her arm through Lia’s. “Lunch time and you have yet to tell me how it went with Raiden’s parents.” Paris put an extra twitch into her hips as they walked past the blonde man.
Lia met his eyes again, the golden pull of him irresistible. He looked, she thought, just like her angel, but she could not trust her childhood memory of a man seen only for the briefest of times after such a traumatic event. For all she knew, the real man who had saved her had been dark hair and bearded and her child-self had made something more glamourous up.
“So, Raiden’s parents,” Paris prompted as they made their way towards the cafeteria.
“They were very nice,” Lia replied automatically, still distracted by her ruminations of the blonde man. She focused on the conversation. “They were lovely really. Like the ideal family. Their houses are amazing.”
“Aren’t they, though!” Paris agreed as they entered the noisy cafeteria and joined the queue for food. “Family money, I tell you, Lia.”
“Mmm,” Lia’s eye had been caught by the crumpled little form pressed between the door into the kitchen and the wall. She wondered how she was going to retrieve it without being seen.
“So, Raiden stayed over last night,” Paris nudged her. “Did you and he…?”
“No, not that,” Lia was embarrassed enough to be pulled from her plans and looked around her to see if they had been overheard. “Not here, Paris.”
“Such a prude,” Paris chortled.
Lia swore and made a grab for her ear: “Earring fell out. There it is!” She stepped out of the queue and scooped up the broken form. If she had wondered if the fairy was still alive, that question was answered when the damnable thing sank its teeth into her fingers.
Sharp, bloody teeth.
Lia shoved her hand into her bag and shook it off, the pain putting her beyond caring if she damaged it further in doing so.
“Lucky,” Paris commented. “It would have been a shame to lose it.”
“Yes, one of my favourites, too,” Lia tried to inspect the wound discretely as she faked returning an earring to her ear.
The after-lunch classes slipped by quickly, and Lia and Paris trotted down the stairs and out the main doors onto the pavement in front of the academy, dodging through pedestrian traffic, onto the sidewalk, the swell of traffic noise rolling over them, it’s music as well known as the pieces that they danced to.
“There is Brock,” Paris waved.
“And Raiden,” Lia’s heart leapt into her throat as her werewolf pushed himself off the side of the Ute he had been leaning against and a slow smile spread across his features. He and Brock had been talking as they waited – Brock’s bike was parked on the pavement, and he held a helmet ready for Paris, who released her hair and flicked it out flirtatiously. They met and kissed in a passionate display that didn’t care at all about what the people around them thought.
Lia blushed as she walked up to Raiden. He pulled her against him and leaned over to kiss her. She melted into him, her body craving nothing more than his against it, and she suddenly understood how Brock and Paris could be so indifferent to others, whilst Raiden’s lips were against hers, the world around them ceased to exist.
He eased the kiss and grinned. She could feel that he was hard, throbbing against her. “Hey,” his voice was soft and dark with his desire. “I have missed you today.”
“I noticed,” she smiled at him. “I missed you too.”
“Good,” he walked her around the side of the Ute and opened the door before lifting her up. She risked a peek at her fairy as he returned around the bonnet to the driver door. The creature hissed at her. She closed the bag hastily as Raiden opened the door and slid into the seat.
“So, I will run you home,” he said as he started the engine. “And then I have to go to a meeting. I will pick up some groceries on my way back, and we will cook dinner?”
“Sounds wonderful,” She agreed. The meeting, she guessed, was with Elior. On Monday, Raiden had said in the club on Saturday night after the incident with Lucian.
The city streets peeled back into the elderly trees of suburbia. Once the area might have been thriving, full of young families, but the property was stubbornly held by the aging occupants, and the young families saw more appeal in new build estates than the ramshackle houses in need of renovation and new life. As a result, the once proud fences now peeled paint and were gap toothed, and the once tidy gardens were overgrown wildernesses hiding the pretty facades of the houses from the street.
Lia’s house was typical of the street, run down and faded. As they pulled up in the driveway, she flushed in embarrassment, considering the sad state of her house in comparison to the mansions he and his family lived it.
Raiden parked and got out, walking around the car to open her door and help her down. He deliberately did so in a way that their bodies slid against each other and her heart rate spiked with desire. His smile was wicked with lust.
“I am looking forward to my skin against yours,” he murmured.
He pulled the pins from her hair, releasing it, and threaded his fingers through it, pulling her face up so that he could run his tongue over her bottom lip. She wrapped her arms around him with a gasp, her leg hooking around his hips, grinding herself against him as he deepened the kiss, his tongue stroking against hers.
His hands sculpted her body, exploring the curve of her breast and teasing her nipple to stand hard against the lycra of her leotard. She moaned into his mouth.
Someone cleared their throat behind them, making her jump.