Naked Angel (10 page)

“Second floor,” said the security guard.

As soon as she stepped out of the elevator, Nadia smelled the familiar ballet studio smell, a woodsy and stale combination of sweat, powder, and something indefinable yet universal. Every studio she had ever been in, even in other countries, smelled exactly the same.

Four rooms ran side by side, each identical with front mirrors, pianos in the back right corner, and wide windows so all classes and rehearsals could be viewed from the outside. Only one of these rooms was in use. Nadia spotted Max at the front of the room, and she took a seat on one of the benches lining the wall.

The dancers practiced a series of
fouettés en tournant
. Nadia loved that step. One of her favorite moments in ballet was the thirty-two continuous
fouettés
in the coda of “Black Swan” from
Swan Lake
.

A woman sat on the floor in the front of the room taking notes on a clipboard in her lap. Nadia knew that had to be his assistant choreographer, Pauline Penn; she’d read about her defection from the School of American Ballet for Max’s company; it was big news at the time. Nadia had wondered what he’d offered Pauline to lure her away from her coveted position at SAB. Now, watching the woman gaze at Max with rapt adoration, it wasn’t hard for Nadia to guess.
God, that man is a piece of work
.

As if sensing Nadia’s stare, Max looked away from the dancers and directly at her. He smiled, and Nadia realized he was not smiling at her, but smiling spontaneously at the sight of her. This confused and, she hated to admit, delighted her. What was going on?

She turned her focus to the dancers. She watched them bend, arch, and leap through motions that were achingly familiar to her. As much as she wanted to be able to remain detached, each one of her senses was consumed with all that she missed about ballet. And all the confidence and bravado she’d felt while walking from the subway evaporated.

She jumped up from the bench and headed for the exit. Her heart pounded as she pressed the button for the elevator. All she could think was,
get me out of here
. When the wide elevator door opened, she wanted it to swallow her. She pressed the Close Door button, needing the fresh air of the street, anything but that ballet smell.

But just before the elevator door slid completely closed, it receded back to open again. Nadia quickly pressed the Close button repeatedly, to no avail.

And then Max stepped inside.

“Where are you running off to?” he said.

She was flabbergasted.

“You left rehearsal to ask me that?”

He shrugged. “It seems like an important question.”

“I remembered that I need to be somewhere.”

“Bullshit,” he said. She couldn’t help looking at his lips: lush, and—at the moment—quite pouty.

“What do you want from me?” Nadia said as the elevator mercifully deposited them on the ground floor. She assumed—erroneously—that reaching the front doors would put an end to this impromptu chat. But Max followed her outside.

“Did it upset you to be inside a ballet studio?” he said.

“Not at all. Did you want it to upset me?”

“No, Nadia. I did not want it to upset you. I just want you to examine what you’re doing, and to admit you’re not ready to walk away from ballet.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. But her body betrayed her yet again: To her absolute horror, her eyes teared up. Max did what anyone would do in that situation: He put his arms around her. His gesture startled her out of her crying jag, and she pulled away from him. “I’m fine,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Want to get something to eat?”

“What?” she said, not sure she’d heard him correctly.

“Eat. Food. The practice commonly known as lunch?”

“Don’t you have to get back to rehearsal?”

He shrugged. “Pauline can cover for me. Come on—the least I can do is buy you lunch after I traumatized you,” he said, walking toward a café on the outskirts of Bryant Park. Reluctantly, Nadia followed him.

“You didn’t ‘traumatize’ me,” she said. “I’m just feeling emotional lately.”

“Understandable.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not patronizing you! That was empathy. Jeez, you’re difficult to please,” he said with a smile. Nadia supposed he thought he knew everything there was to know about “pleasing” women. But she wasn’t one of his BA groupies.

There was a line at the café, and Max suggested she get a table in the park while he picked up the food.

“Okay. Can you order me a tuna salad and iced tea?” She tried to hand him a ten-dollar bill. He waved the money away, and she could tell it would be useless to fight him on it.

She walked off to find a place to sit.

It was as perfect a day as you could ask of New York in August, not scorching hot, surprisingly low humidity. The park was teeming with people on their lunch breaks, but Nadia spotted a couple just finishing their food. She hovered nearby and sat down at the table when they left.

After a few minutes, she saw Max approach in the distance. The way he moved clearly signaled the grace and strength of a dancer, though an average woman probably wouldn’t know that. She would just perceive that he had something remarkably sexy going on. Nadia told herself that she did not find him attractive—that the dancer in her was simply responding to the fine form of another artist.

That fine form sat next to her, and her heart beat undeniably faster.

“Thanks,” she said as he placed her salad in front of her.

He smiled and dug right into his sandwich. She decided now was as good a time as any to ask him the question she’d been wondering about since she’d first read about Ballet Arts.

“Can I ask you something?” she said.

“Yes, I’d be happy to have you work at Ballet Arts. Done.”

Nadia laughed, despite herself. “That’s not what I was going to ask you.”

He feigned surprise and disappointment. Or maybe the disappointment wasn’t feigned. “How do you manage to fund Ballet Arts? I mean, you’re so young, and I didn’t read about any corporate investors.” Nadia assumed he had a relationship with a large benefactor, maybe a patron of the arts who supported him as Lincoln Kirstein had famously partnered with Balanchine.

“I inherited a lot of money when I was in college,” he said.

“Really?
That
much money?”

He nodded. “My father ran a huge hedge fund.”

“Your father died when you were in college?”

He shook his head. “He died when I was in high school.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been very difficult.”

“It was. But if it hadn’t happened, I don’t think I’d be a dancer today.”

“Why not?”

“My father was completely unsupportive of my interest in ballet. It was something my mother got me into. They were divorced—honestly, I have no idea how they ever thought they could be married in the first place. Anyway, at first, when I seemed so intent on performing, he thought I was gay. And he blamed my mother, because she was a . . . performer, of sorts. And he hated that part of her life. He made her quit, and she resented it, and she encouraged me to be artistic.”

“Was she a ballet dancer?”

“No,” he said.

When she realized he was not going to elaborate, she asked, “So did your father ever figure out that you’re straight?”

“Yeah, eventually he realized that I was actually girl-crazy. Then he felt free to tell me I was being an idiot about the dancing, and I was going to waste my life, and that if this was what I chose, I could forget about any support from him.”

Nadia was surprised by this torrent of personal information. And just as she thought about how surprising it was, he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m even telling you all of this.”

“No, don’t apologize. It’s . . . I mean, I’m happy to listen.”

“So, to make a long story short, I learned when I was twenty-one that he had left me the bulk of his wealth. I’ll never know what changed his mind about me, or maybe he felt confident I would come to my senses by the time I was an adult and do something else with my life.”

“Maybe he realized he was wrong, and he just didn’t have it in him to admit that to you face-to-face.”

Max shook his head. “I doubt my father ever considered that he could be wrong. But it’s a nice thought.”

They fell silent. Nadia wasn’t hungry. She should have been starving after the morning workout, but she felt completely off-center sitting there with Max. Why did she keep finding herself seated across from this man who did nothing but provoke her?

“Well, you made something great out of his money. So you should feel good about that,” she said.

“It could be greater,” he said.

“How?” she said, and instantly realized he’d baited her and she’d fallen for it.

“Come join us.”

Nadia closed the plastic lid on her salad container and stood up to leave.

“Thanks for lunch. I’ve got to get going.”

Without missing a beat, Max stood up next to her.

“You didn’t even eat. And you’re not dancing anymore, so there’s no reason to starve yourself.”

Asshole!

“I
am
dancing,” she said. “Just not ballet.”

They stared at each other, locked in a standoff. And then he leaned close, held her face, and before she could react, kissed her.

Mallory paced the dressing room. Eight hours until showtime, and she was missing half her show.

This was the problem with surrounding yourself with talented people: They always had other options. First, Bette’s manager had called her to Vancouver for a costume fitting for the movie she was about to start shooting. Then their stage kitten—the hot young woman who picked up the discarded garments after each set—got called to LA for an audition for
Playboy
. And their newest hire, Tori Tempest, had called in sick.

“You need to relax,” Alec said. “If the show is a little short tonight, that’s just the way it will have to be.”

“No!” Mallory said. “We haven’t earned the right to have a show that’s half-assed. Every show is supposed to be fantastic. I’m going to have to get up there myself tonight. But that still won’t fill the show.”

Alec gave her a look when she said she had to get onstage. She sighed with exasperation. “I know you want me to focus on producing, not performing. But this is no time for you to be precious about it. The best thing I can do as a producer tonight is to perform,” she said.

“Who else can you call in?”

“I don’t know who is around. Maybe Nadia? But she’s not even comfortable with her routine yet. I was going to give her time off to practice more and then have her get back onstage with me at Justin’s party.”

“Just call her. You know what? Don’t even ask her to perform burlesque. Let her do some ballet in a sexy costume. The audience will love it. It’s an opportunity to throw something different into the show—something no one else is doing.”

Mallory considered it for a minute. “I love the idea, but there’s one problem: She can’t go
en pointe
now. That’s the whole reason she’s not doing ballet.”

“Couldn’t she do something without wearing those crazy toe shoes? Like, when my sister did ballet, she just wore those flat little slippers. You know what I mean?”

“I do. You know what? It’s worth a call. You’re brilliant,” she said, kissing him.

“Can I ask you something?” he said. “I know you’re planning the shows for the club . . . and planning for the burlesque festival. But are you thinking about planning our wedding at all?”

“Um, of course,” Mallory lied.

“Really? Because we’ve never talked about it. I mean, I don’t even have an idea when you’d want to do it. This winter? Spring?”

Mallory sat down in a chair in front of one of the makeup mirrors. “Alec, there’s so much going on right now. Let’s just back-burner it for now, okay?”

“You want to ‘back-burner’ our wedding?” he said, visibly upset.

“What? No, I’m sorry—that didn’t come out right. I just mean, it’s a hard thing to think about right now.”

He gave her a pointed look.

“Don’t be angry,” she pleaded.

“Fine. I’ll just give you something else hard to think about,” he said, pulling her hand between his legs. She felt his cock already straining against his pants. “See? Just talking about marrying you makes me excited.”

“Oh, Alec!” she said, looking up at him and smiling.

“Promise me you’ll start thinking about it?” he said, unzipping his pants.

“Think about it? I’m looking right at it,” she said, leaning forward to run her tongue over his boxers along the length of his shaft. She slipped her hand in the flap and brought him out so she could take him in her mouth.

“You know what I mean,” he said, his voice catching as she gripped his cock, her mouth working on the tip.

Pulling down his boxers, she caressed his ass, then his cock, until she slid her hand firmly from the tip to the base, her mouth following it. He moved his pelvis, pressing his cock deeper, until he reached the back of her throat and she almost gagged.

His fingertips pressed against her scalp, and she glided her mouth back to a place where she had more control. She kept a steady rhythm, her hands moving to hold his hips. He moaned, and she tasted the first bead of semen. He pressed on her head harder, and she picked up the pace of her movements, bringing one hand back to his cock to work in tandem with her mouth. His hands twisted in her hair, and she felt his body tense. Oh, God, she loved taking him in her mouth this way. He moaned as he thrust into her, and the sound turned her on. Her stomach did a little flip as it always did when she knew she had brought him such intense pleasure.

She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and leaned back in the chair. He knelt down and kissed her, then pulled her against him in a tight embrace.

“That was incredible,” he said.

“Your cock inspires me,” she said. “Now, I have to go call Nadia.”

“I feel so used.”

“Later, I’ll hope you’ll use me,” she said. “But first I have to salvage this show.”