She bites her lip. “And you won’t… like, tell anyone? About our arrangement, I mean.”
I solemnly shake my head. “No. It’s honestly just as bad for an administrator to be seen sleeping with a dancer as it is for a dancer to have a side job. Either one spells trouble if they were found out.”
Kaia blows out a long breath, then looks at me. “Then… yes. I’ll do it.” Her cheeks blaze bright red. “Should I… do you want me to get undressed right now?”
I’m taken aback by her red-faced offer. I tilt my head, looking at her for a moment.
I don’t know her very well at all, but I’m starting to get two things about her.
She lacks self-confidence and she really has low expectations for how she should be treated. Whether I should read into that or not, I have yet to decide.
It honestly probably doesn’t bode very well for me. But she is so, so fucking hot.
Not to mention untouched…
My lips quirk. “No, beauty. Save it for the next time we’re alone.”
She gives me a small lopsided smile, but I can see the gears turning behind her eyes. She’s trying to figure me out, just as I am her.
I lean forward, kissing her collarbone. I like the way she shivers at my touch; I like the way her skin gets goosebumps everywhere I touch. I like the way her breathing becomes uneven as I suck on her collarbone hard enough to make a mark.
Kaia pushes away from me after a minute and slides off my lap. “I should go. I have to talk to management, I guess.”
My lips twitch. “Let me take care of it. You can just go home and get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, you’ll get a call inviting you to the NYB.”
She blows out a breath. “I guess… thank you, Calum.”
That draws out my most wicked grin. “Don’t thank me yet. I promise that you’ll earn your keep, beauty.”
Her eyes widen. But instead of asking me more questions, she turns and rushes off, heading down into the club.
13
Kaia
“I still can’t believe that all three of us are here,” Eric says. He glances at himself in the mirrored wall of one the New York Ballet’s rehearsal spaces, stretching his hamstrings out at the barre.
He’s not wrong. For this morning’s class, we have more than thirty people crammed into a relatively small dance studio. “I wonder how many people they let go and how many people they brought in,” I murmur, looking around.
Ella is in splits on the ground. She throws her hair back and purses her lips at him. “I can’t believe that Manon got called, too. It honestly makes me wonder what the instructors were thinking.”
Sitting down on the floor to do butterfly stretches, I giggle at that. “You’re terrible.”
Manon turns from where she is warming up at with a glare. She does a rude imitation of my giggle. “Hehehe!” Then her lips twist bitterly. “I hope you all get hit by busses on the way home.”
I give her a skeptical glance, shaking my head. Ella doesn’t miss a beat.
“Manon, how’s your mom’s pill addiction doing? I heard that she flunked out of rehab for the third time in a row.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Manon snaps.
Ella gives her a thumbs up, smiling sarcastically. “You’re still a bitch!”
I roll my eyes. “You two really get each other going.”
“Look,” Eric says, jerking his chin to the entrance of the rehearsal space.
The room quiets as Basil and Calum stalk in, already looking pissed. Basil wears dark spandex leggings and a dark tank top. Calum wears a pair of loose gray pants and a plain white t-shirt.
Prowling around the room already, Calum runs a hand through his dark hair. He’s magnetic without saying a word; I can’t take my eyes off of him.
“Is that one of our directors?” Ella whispers to me. “He’s so fucking hot. He must work out a lot.”
I nod, not looking away from Calum. I watch his gaze swing around, observing the room. He pauses when he sees me, a smirk appearing on his face for just a second. His sapphire eyes pin me in place and sear me through.
“All right!” he calls. “I need your attention, everyone…”
Basil claps his hands, the sound they produce thunderous. Everyone falls silent, directing their attention to the front of the room. I realize just then that my heartbeat is going a million miles an hour.
Just being in Calum’s presence makes my stomach flutter oddly and my cheeks feel hot.
“I’m Basil, or Bas. You all know me from your auditions. I’m the main choreographer here at NYB. Three facts about me: I’m married. I live in Florence three months out of the year. And I like seeing a lot of lift and extension in dance. Okay?”
He pauses. There are a couple of tentative yeses mumbled through our class.
Calum puts his hands behind his back, appearing pensive. He walks by the row of students on the other side of the room, observing each one as he paces. “I’m Calum. I’m your stage director for the spring season. I’m going to cut to the chase.” He smiles coldly, his eyes taking in everyone in the room. “As you can see, we’ve brought in thirty five of you to replace the departing cast. We only need twenty or twenty five of you. So this first week will be a test of sorts. I’m going to be separating the what from the chaff. Dead weight gets cut.”
My eyes widen. I glance at Ella. She looks at me briefly, her mouth tightening.
Calum pauses, looking at Basil. “Are you ready to get this class started?”
Basil cocks a brow. “I suppose so. Meesha, are you ready?”
He turns to the accompanist, a dark skinned young woman sitting behind the upright piano. Meesha nods. “Whatever you would like for me to play, Bas,” she replies in heavily accented English.
“Some Schubert,” he says, lifting his hands. She begins to play and Basil calls out to the class. “I hope you are all stretched out. Let us begin with simple plies.”
I clamber to my feet and position myself at the barre. Bas claps in time to the beat, explaining what to do.
“First position. And one, two, three, four. Now raise, two, three. Down, two, three, four. And lie, two, three, four… deeper, two, three, four.”
His words are meaningful of course, but they sort of fade into the background for me. For almost my entire life I’ve had someone chanting those words or something nearly identical to me. The teachers were old and young, black and white, male and female. It really doesn’t matter to me in the slightest.
No, I’m not worried about him. It’s Calum that I catch myself looking at in the mirror. It’s Calum who soon completes his circuit around the room. “That’s the worst line I think I’ve ever seen.”
He points to a ballerina at one of the barres set up in the middle of the room. “Straighten your back, stick your ass out, find your fucking center of gravity.”
The ballerina turns red and plies again, prompting Calum to shake his head. “You’re going to have to do better to earn your place.”
An unsettling silence fills the room for a minute. He frowns and moves on, stopping a few places down at a young Latina dancer. “I’m not sure you’ve ever done this before. Work on your posture. Extend your arm…”