“Your dad gets angry about your shoes?” Cal asked breathlessly. Sweat was gathering in the furrows of his ridged belly, along his collarbone, sparkling on his neck. It enchanted Tamsin to see it, see the evidence of how all that muscle and sinew had gone to work to fuck her.
She nodded wordlessly, still trembling from her climax. Cal gave her a rare kind of grin—almost a smirk, almost playful—and then was pulling out of her. She sighed unhappily at the loss, but the sight that greeted her next froze any emotion but pleasure as he knelt on the bed by her feet and yanked off the condom in a rough, urgent move. And then he was jacking himself off, with hard vicious breaths pulling all the muscles of his stomach and rib into sharp detail and his ass taut with the effort as he fucked his hand.
“Tamsin,” he said. Just that, like it was the only word he could remember, and then thick ropes of cum jetted out of his erection, spattering white filth all over her pointe shoes. White cum on pink silk. His entire body strained and tense, he milked himself empty, leaving her soiled and marked.
They both were still for a moment, their breathing the only sound in the room.
This was it, Tamsin thought with a crushing sense of horror. The moment it was all over and she had to go back to her music box life, spinning endlessly in front of cold, judging eyes.
But then Cal got off the bed, went to the drawer and rolled another condom onto his still hard-dick. He didn’t bother to wipe down her feet and she didn’t want him too. She wanted those shoes ruined beyond all hope.
“More?” she asked, reaching towards him.
“More,” he agreed gruffly, and she spread her legs with a smile.
Night Three
Cal
He couldn’t sleep that night, or whatever was left of it when he finally packed a sated, sleepy Tamsin into her friend’s car and then drove home himself. Having sex with Tamsin had clarified only one thing, and it was that he wanted to have sex with Tamsin again. Love her again, as she’d put it in her dreamy voice when she’d begged him to please love her, and he’d obliged the only way he’d ever known how. With skin and sighs and his arms wrapped around her until daybreak came to burn away the night.
To that end, he supposed it had clarified another thing: there was no way he could reveal the truth to Purkiss now. It was a complicated mix of protectiveness and attachment and conscience that Cal didn’t care to examine too closely as he lay in his bed and watched the sun start creeping through his blinds. He’d told himself after his divorce that he was done with relationships for good, done with all their cryptic obligations and nuances of bitterness.
But he wasn’t done with Tamsin. Not even close. And he couldn’t deny that the thought excited him as much as it scared him.
Either way, it meant something needed to be done about Purkiss and this job. He slept for a few fitful hours, woke up to eat and make a couple phone calls, after which he showered and dressed.
Then he drove himself to Purkiss’s ballet school.
*
The club was busy tonight, once again. A Saturday night in the warm summer heat; the rooms overflowed with people hungry for the kind of high they couldn’t get anywhere else. Cal kept his eyes moving as he pushed his way through the crowded rooms, looking for any sign of pale gold hair or pink ballet shoes. He hadn’t dared to go near the ballet school after ending things with Purkiss, since Cal’s presence would only undo the lie he’d tried so carefully to spin. But it meant that he couldn’t be sure the dancers would be here tonight. There was a chance, of course, but he couldn’t be sure.
And there was nothing of Tamsin’s presence, not even a sign of her friends, and for a moment, Cal allowed himself to register the ache of disappointment. The plumes of smoky worry that his plan hadn’t worked and that, even now, Purkiss was venting his anger at his daughter.
He scoured the entire club—the private playrooms excepted—and then in a fit of moody indulgence he rarely allowed himself, ordered a shot of bourbon at the bar. He hoped the girls were safe from Purkiss, that his little scheme this morning had built shelter enough for them to hide in for as long as they needed. He hoped that one day he’d find Tamsin again, although he doubted it. Sometimes you met people that stirred you up like a storm and then you never saw them again. Life didn’t owe anyone shit, and Cal Dugan of all people should know that by now.
“Rough night?” the bartender asked as he pushed the bourbon Cal’s way. “Or not rough enough?”
“Something like that,” Cal muttered, taking the drink in one swift motion and standing back up. He’d go home. There was no point in moping alone in the bar when he could mope alone at home for free.
A cool hand brushed his arm as he stood, and goose bumps raced up his skin as he tried to swallow down the hope that swelled in his throat like a balloon.
He turned to look down into Tamsin’s exquisite face. It was like every feeling he’d ever had in thirty-nine years rushed through his blood and heated him up when he looked at her.
“Can we talk?” she asked in that floating, faraway voice, and Cal nodded mutely, all his words incinerated in the reality of her here, now, in front of him.
“I got a room,” she said, taking his hand to lead him, and the shyness that colored her voice was almost too much to take. He wanted to cup her neck and kiss her until she whimpered, he wanted to cradle her in his arms and take her someplace far, far away from every care except taking the pleasure he wanted to give her.
All of this before his mind really registered her words and anticipation flipped in his belly.
He allowed her to lead him, her slender fingers wrapped in his large ones, through the crowd and down the hallway of private rooms. She let go of his hand to reach for the key, giving him a smile. “Mistress Hell let us have her room for the night.”
Well then. Mistress Hell had been very busy today.
And us?
His suspicions were confirmed as the door swung up to reveal eleven ballerinas, all completely naked except for those maddening shoes. He felt their physical presence like a clench low in his groin, a heat of blood and tightness all along his dick.
“Girls, this is Cal,” Tamsin said, like they were at a cocktail party. “Cal, this is Mary Grace, Louisa, Isabella, Lael, Yasmine, Ling, Ellie, Daneice, Nina, Devorah, and Nanami.”
Each girl smiled or fluttered fingers or did a curtsey as they were introduced. It took every fiber of Cal’s considerable self-control to keep his eyes on their faces. Not only because it felt polite, but because a fledgling sense of duty to Tamsin compelled him to make it clear he wasn’t interested.
Even if that wasn’t entirely true.
But Tamsin smiled. “Cal. It’s okay. We’re all here to say thank you.”
He turned to Tamsin, since she was clothed and nominally his and therefore safe to look at. “You got my note?”
“Yes. And we are so thankful to you and Mistress Hell for fixing this.”