Center of Gravity (Marauders Book 3) (5 page)

“I know!”

“She was eighteen, for chrissake, you don’t meet the love of you life when you’re eighteen!”

“I’m with you.”

“Her first boyfriend, and he’s.... so fucking nice!”

“Very nice!”

“They’re so... fucking...”

“...Perfect.” Mitch agreed. They looked at each other and started to laugh. “Jealous?”

“A little. And here they are.”

Mitch turned his head and saw Mac and Vi coming towards them, so apparently Vi was home from the convention. She sat down on the bench next to her sister, shaking her head at him.

“I leave my Old Man with you for a weekend, and he’s a wreck.”

“Hey! I’m the impressionable baby brother, don’t blame me!” He turned to the side and put his hand on her bump. “How’s the squid?”

“Fine. It’s awesome being pregnant, no one gets upset when I say I need a break, they run and get me anything I want. Think I’m gonna try to stay pregnant as much as possible for the coming years.”

“Move over,” Mac muttered and lay down on the table next to him. “This is almost as bad as my bachelor party hangover.”

Mitch laughed. That had been one of the best parties he’d ever been to. Admittedly his memory of the later hours of that night were a bit hazy, but he knew he’d had a good time. He also knew he’d pulled a ‘Dawg’ and had taken two girls with him to his room at the end of the night. He’d said it was to take the bullet for Mac, since he couldn’t fuck a stripper that night.

As much as he teased his brother for keeping it in his pants, he’d be the first one having a go at him in the ring if he found out he’d been cheating on Vi. Then he’d hand him over to Bear.

Mitch and Mac were on the table, and Vi and Lisa on the benches. It was at times like this he really wished he did have the hots for Lisa, because they made a great foursome. Wasn’t gonna happen, though. Lisa was high maintenance; he could sniff out one of those girls out in a second, and Mitch was not the kind of guy who could deal with a high maintenance girl.

CHAPTER THREE

Doctor’s Orders

-o0o-

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was always the stiffness and the beginnings of a dull pain on the inside of my lower leg. The most badly damaged nerve was the sciatic nerve, which lead to numbness and pain in that area—among other things. It obviously meant that those muscles weren’t working properly, and in the long run that could mean permanent stiffness, but I was trying to keep it at bay the best I could.

I lay still and slowly started moving my foot, stretching as well as I could to just get some blood flow to the leg. Then I sat up and started to massage the thigh, slowly continuing down the leg. Once the stiffness started to subside, I started stretching while still massaging.

Brett had given me a program to do each day, and I always did it. The full thing took about twenty minutes, but it didn’t bother me much, since I’d noticed that the days when I shortened it or didn’t do it properly, I had more pain and the leg worked even worse.

Once I’d gone through the entire series, I picked up my cane and went into the bathroom for a pee and a shower.

Irina was in the kitchen when I went in.

“Morning, Zvezda,” she said as she handed me a cup of coffee. “Done with the exercises?”

I nodded and smiled. That was actually a familiar question, and she’d asked it every morning since I was six. Before the accident, my exercises were done in the ballet room down the hall instead of in my bed, but I liked how she still asked.

“Isn’t it your day off?” she asked, and I nodded again while taking my first sip of the coffee. I wasn’t working full time, mostly afternoons and nights. My boss, Richard, had told me it might be more later on, but there was no need for it yet. Irina continued, “Anything exciting going on today?”

“Not really. PT and then I’m meeting Lisa.”

“That sounds pretty exciting to me,” Irina smiled, and then she sighed. “At least sounds a lot more exciting than my day.”

I was about to ask her what she meant, but she waved her hand and chugged down her coffee on her way towards her bedroom, so I assumed she was getting late. I looked at the overfull kitchen table with a smile. Time for breakfast—a big one! In general, I was starting to really see the perks about not being on a rigid schedule and diet. But I still missed dancing. Every day.

-o0o-

Since seeing her at the clubhouse, three months earlier, Lisa had moved to Greenville. She was working on a research project about antibiotics in Phoenix, and we met quite often. It was fun—when she didn’t give long speeches about resistant diseases and their effects. She had a tendency to slip into her interests in that way. That was something she’d done even when we were young. She’d always been curious about stuff and eager to learn
everything.
Back then she’d argued that it was one of the reasons she got along so well with Mitchell Baxter, but I frankly had a hard time seeing him as being curious about anything but the insides of girls’ panties.

Another thing I liked about Lisa was that she wasn’t tiptoeing around me—about anything. She was one of few people who asked me about dancing and if I missed it. I still avoided the topic, but it was nice to know that when I was ready for it, I’d be able to talk to her. She wouldn’t ignore it or tell me to forget about it, to not dwell on it, or anything like that; she’d let me talk and she’d listen. She poked in other areas as well. Which was what she was doing while we were having coffee at a small local diner.

“Seriously?” she asked with her sandwich still halfway to her mouth. “Before the accident?”

“My body had to heal and... stuff,” I tried.

“Honey, that might’ve been true the first six months, maybe eight, but still. How long before the accident?” She looked at me, and I tried to avoid meeting her stare. “No bullshit, Anna. How long?”

“Six months maybe.”

“Jesus! Are you telling me you haven’t had dick in, like, two years?”

“Oh, wow! Thank you! Say that a little louder, I’m not sure the guy in the bathroom heard you.”

“Well good, maybe he can come out and take you back there for a proper fuck.” She did lower her voice a little, though. “But really!”

“I was doing a lot of big roles just before and… I don’t know. I guess I was busy. Besides, the guys at the ballet are quite often not on the market.”

“Gays?”

“Yes.”

“And outside the ballet?” she asked, and I looked at her with a lifted eyebrow. “You didn’t meet people outside the ballet?”

The closest I’ve ever been to be able to explain to others what life in a ballet company was like, was to compare it with going into a convent. I went to live at the school when I was fourteen, and I’d been living and breathing dance every single day since then. Once school was over, I’d moved into an apartment with two other dancers. It wasn’t as if I was a virgin, and I’d been in relationships, too. I’d even tried it twice with people outside the ballet, but that hadn’t even been close to working. The only truly serious thing had been with a fellow dancer, but he’d gotten an offer at a ballet company in Paris, and I had fully understood when he left. I would’ve done the same if I had been in his situation and had received the same offer.

“Lisa,” I started and then just… tried to explain what it was like. “Training started at half past ten every day. At twelve there were rehearsals for six hours and then the performance. I didn’t really meet a lot of people outside the ballet. Just when we had drinks with people who supported the theater and things like that.”

“Wow. You must be dying for some dick.”

“Sure.” I cleared my throat.

“Okay, baby, I saw that.” And when I looked at her, she was pointing her finger at me. “What was that? You’re not dying for dick, why?”

“Lisa—”

“Are you gay? I’d be okay with it, you know. Wouldn’t be able to help you since I’m really not. Kind of wish I was—I really like boobs.”

“I’m not gay!”

“Then what?” She stared at me, and I could see when she figured it out. “Honey,” she said in a low voice. “You know it’s not gonna matter.”

When we were kids, we talked about our bodies a lot, like most girls did. Lisa was beautiful, stunningly so, and she had a lot of curves in all the right places—as a man would put it. I looked like most dancers did, but at the same time we’d always had very different approaches to our bodies.

Mine was my tool; it needed to function and especially my legs. Lisa had admired my legs to the point where I actually liked them as well. My feet were something of a mess, like all dancers’ feet are, but I’d still loved them—calluses and all—simply since they were a clear display of my hard work. My body fat used to be nonexistent, which meant I didn’t have any curves to talk about and hardly any breasts. My legs, feet, and long neck were what I liked about myself. My legs were long and slim, but still muscular. With emphasis on
were
. Now, one of my legs was beautiful, the other—not so much.

“It matters to me.” I looked down at the table. “Whenever I did manage to meet someone, especially if they were outside the ballet, they loved my legs.”

“Bet they did. Having those things wrapped around your waist has to be something.”

“I love you, Lisa,” I said with a laugh. “Yes. That was it. And the fact that I could put them behind my neck if I wanted to.”

“With all the physical therapy you’re doing, I bet you’re still pretty flexible.”

“It’s not bad, but that’s not it. It looks horrible. There are scars all over it and marks from the nails that were pinned through it.”

She reached over the table and took my hand. “Honey, you’re a beautiful woman, and the fact that one of your legs is fucked up isn’t gonna matter.”

“Like I said, it matters to me.”

We sat in silence for a while, and then she looked at me again. “You gotta masturbate like a maniac.”

My coffee got stuck halfway down my throat, and I coughed so bad the waitress came over to make sure I was okay.

“Tell me you at least have a B.O.B.,” Lisa said once the waitress was gone.

“A what?”

“Battery operated boyfriend.”

“No. I’d die of embarrassment if I walked into a sex shop.”

“Anna, it’s the 21
st
century. The only ones going into sex shops are couples––since it’s kind of sexy––or people hoping to hook up with someone else who really needs some. People order stuff online.”

“I live with my aunt. Think she’d notice the package.”

“You are such a prude! I’ll take you to the sex shop at The Booty Bank.”

“No!” I did not want to go to a sex shop where I was sure to meet with people I kind of knew. “Not going to happen!”

“I’m not taking no for an answer. Either that, or you let me set you up with someone.”

“Who would you set me up with?” Not that I would do it, but I was curious about who she’d pick.

“Mitch,” she said without even thinking about it.

“Mitchell Baxter?!”

“Yes. What?”

“No. No way. He must’ve nailed half our school—the female half.”

“I know! Imagine the training he’s had. If it’s just to get laid, experience is a good thing.”

“You’re not setting me up and definitely not with Mitch Baxter.”

“He’s hot!”

He was hot. Very hot and very good looking, but I shook my head. I wasn’t comfortable at all with the idea that he would see my leg, or any other part of me for that matter.

“Honey. You have to choose, you might spontaneously combust if you don’t get some kind of penis—fake or real.”

“Is that your medical opinion?”

“Damn right,” she said with a big smile. “So what’s it gonna be?”

There was no way in hell I’d let her set me up with Mitch.

“Sex shop.”

Not a full hour later, we were walking towards it. To make matters worse, Mitch was sitting outside it next to a blonde guy in his late forties with a long beard.

“Lisa,” Mitch said and tsked when we came closer. “I’ve told you, if you’re aching I’ll set you free.”

“Such a stud,” she winked as she walked inside. I followed her, and I was probably bright red.

There was another guy inside, standing behind the counter.

“Hey, Wrench,” Lisa said to him. He had black hair and the most amazing blue eyes. If she’d tried to set me up with him, I might’ve agreed, but Lisa just waved towards the door. “Get out. Give us girls some privacy.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled when the door closed behind him.

Then I started to look around in the shop, still not moving. The shop was surprisingly... nice. It was bright, not seedy at all, and well organized. My eyes fell on the rack of stripper shoes, and I walked up to them.

“Can’t believe they’re able to dance in these.”

“This from the girl who used to dance on the tip of her toes,” I heard from the door and turned around to see Mitch standing in it, leaning against the frame. “I find that a little more impressive.”

I blushed again and turned away from him.

“Mitch! Girl time!” Lisa yelled.

“Girl time in a sex shop. I might cum in my pants.”

“Out.” She started to physically push him outside.

“I’m going, I’m going,” Mitch laughed and waved at me over Lisa’s head. “See you, Anna.”

When he winked at me, what Lisa’d said about him probably being pretty damn good and her wanting to set me up with him really got to me. I took a deep breath and turned around to look at the shelves with the vibrators.

If it had been before the accident, I might’ve tried because he was hot, but the cane I was holding onto reminded me of why I was in a sex shop, so I didn’t bother. Despite what Lisa seemed to think, I wasn’t a prude. I used to like sex a lot. We had parties for friends of the ballet on occasion and saying that you were one of the ballerinas pretty much ensured that you got laid if you wanted to. Flexibility was a good thing in bed, and I used to be able to be a damn pretzel if I wanted to. Still could, if the stretching at my physical therapy was any indication.

“If it helps, I can just turn around and you put whatever you want in your bag, and we’re out of here.”

“I’ll pay,” I mumbled, and my eyes fell on one that looked pretty.

I didn’t want one of those penis-looking things with veins on them, but that one looked almost like a rose bud in white and pink.

“Don’t be silly. Just take whatever you want.”

I picked up the rosebud one and put it in my bag. “I’m done.”

“Sure? Just one?”

I looked around again and nodded. I really just wanted to get out of there before Mitch or someone else came back inside. Or someone I’d really be embarrassed to meet in a sex shop, like Bear. Lisa reached for something and put it in my bag before hooking my arm and finally walking towards the door.

“Every girl needs a bullet vibrator. Once you do get over that leg thing, it’s great for sex with a partner as well.”

I laughed and kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”