LITMIR.BIZ

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was about to say—however he was going to do it, this inevitable breakup that I didn’t want at all—it was the time to share them.

      “Sebastian,” I began.

      “Quiet, little dancer,” was all he said, in that voice that I remembered from Paris. Strong and sure. Controlled.

      I didn’t realize that I’d fallen asleep until he was lifting me into his arms and carrying me out of the car. He didn’t put me down as he stepped into his private elevator with its own private entrance to the building, and I was more than okay with it. That meant I could pretend a little while longer. I could rest my head on his shoulder. Lose myself in his arms.

      Pretend this could last forever, the way I’d started to imagine it might.

      I expected him to let loose when we walked inside the penthouse, but he didn’t. He carried me through one high-ceilinged, scrupulously elegant room after the next, until he brought me into the bathroom next to the master suite. He didn’t have a giant pool masquerading as a bath like the club had offered us in Paris, but it was an elegant, claw-foot tub all the same. It wasn’t until he sat me down beside it that I realized it was already filled. And the water was steaming. Ready.

      “Sebastian. I don’t…”

      “Get in,” he ordered me. “Soak.”

      And I didn’t think I was the only one who shuddered a bit as the echoes of Paris swirled there between us.

      Just like I had in Paris, I obeyed him.

      Because it felt good to let him take control. It felt like freedom to simply…surrender. The way that fearsome woman in that Fifth Avenue brownstone had suggested so long ago.

      After the bath, he fed me. He iced my feet, then helped me apply my favorite ointments and bandage them up. He didn’t speak. I thought that certainly he would exact some form of payment in the currency we both liked best—but instead, he merely put me to bed.

      And in the morning, he was gone when I woke.

      But he had left strict instructions with his staff. And from that night on, whether he was in town or across the world, I was met after every performance. There was always a tub waiting, and all the ice packs and easily digestible protein a girl could want.

      It lulled me into a sense of security.

      Christmas came and went. Nutcracker season was almost over. Sebastian had arrived two days before from his Christmas with his mother in England, and I would have known that he’d seen her even if he hadn’t told me.

      He held himself differently. His mouth was tighter, his eyes bleaker.

      The great benefit of what I did was that I had to do it on Christmas Day. Which meant I couldn’t head up north to celebrate the holiday with my parents. An arrangement that had suited all of us for years now.

      “I can’t wait for New Year’s,” I said, because I had it off. I smiled at him. “I’m hoping it will snow you in and we can sit here, just like this.”

      We were in the study, my favorite room in his penthouse. There was a fireplace with a delightful fire, the cold weather outside held at bay, and I had wrapped myself in one of the soft cashmere throws that lay over the leather furniture. Sebastian sat beside me, a tumbler of whiskey in one hand and his brooding gaze on the dancing flames.

      We were both, for the moment, sated.

      “We can do that,” he said. He shifted that brooding gaze from the fire to my face. “But I need you to marry me.”

      This time, I laughed, though my heart leaped inside my chest. “You realize you’re talking about a lifetime of tending to these feet. A lifetime of Nutcracker season, when you’re lucky if I rise to the level of brain-dead for the entire month of December. At least.”

      His mouth curved, and I got the sense—as I often did—that he surprised himself when he smiled. “I understand what it is to do what you love. And what sacrifices it requires.”

      His hand was on the nape of my neck, because he liked to hold it there. As if he liked to know exactly where I was at all times when we were together. And I liked the weight of his hand there. It centered me. Connected me to him and reminded me of Paris. All these weeks since. And the mad fire that still roared between us. No matter how many times we surrendered to it, stoked it and immolated ourselves, still it burned on.

      “Do I love it?” I asked, and I wasn’t sure as the words came out of my mouth whether the question was as rhetorical as I’d meant it to sound. “It’s a complicated love, at best. Sometimes I think I hate it. You dream of being a ballerina. You don’t dream about being that girl in the back. Especially when the amount of work is the same. But you’re doing it, so you dance. And you give it everything you have. And the sad truth is that some people have that thing. That spark that sets them apart. And others don’t, no matter how hard they work. Maybe it’s not about work. Maybe it’s luck. The right dancer and the right choreographer and the right ballet… I don’t know.”

      Sebastian’s gaze seemed to sharpen on me. “Does it matter how your success can be measured? Or does it matter that it’s what you love?”

      “I love ballet.” I didn’t understand why it felt as if I was making vows. Here, now. And at some great risk that made my chest feel tight. “I love everything about it. The obsession with form. How strict it is. How rigid. All in service to that flow. That perfect flight. But it doesn’t matter how much you love some things, does it? Loving them doesn’t mean they bring you any joy. The act of loving something doesn’t make it good for you.”

      “Are you talking about ballet, Darcy?” His voice was crisp. His eyes burned. “Or me?”

      I was flustered suddenly. “I’m just talking.”

      “I never told you I would bring you joy. Or that I would be good for you, whatever that is.” He sounded fierce. Remote. “I guaranteed you orgasms. And anything else you could possibly want, the moment you want it. Why isn’t that enough?”

      “I didn’t say it was or wasn’t enough.” I studied his face. “Is this about me? Because I was talking about ballet.” Or I thought I had been. “Is this what happens when you spend time with your mother?”

      “You don’t understand.” Sebastian got to his feet, moving restlessly toward the window. Outside, the city looked cold and bright. As if it was filled with chilly light, not all those lives. “It’s not her fault.”

      “Yes, yes. Your father was cruel.” I rolled my eyes. “But he died a long time ago. And she’s a grown woman. At what point does a person have to take responsibility for their own happiness?”

      He turned back around. And he looked like a stranger, then. Something in me, some kind of panic, coiled tight.

      “Why do you continue in the ballet if you don’t love it, Darcy?” he fired back at me. “If it doesn’t make you happy, why do it at all?”

      That felt like a kick, as if he’d taken out a knee, and I found I was curling my hands into fists in my lap.

      Are you really lecturing me on happiness? I wanted to shout, but I didn’t. I made myself stay calm—or look calm, anyway. “Do you even know what happy is, Sebastian? Your mother’s horrible to you and you let her do it. Your brother stopped talking to you years ago, and you accepted it. You don’t love me, as you make sure to tell me in case I get ideas, but you still want to marry me. Why?”

      “What would you have me do? Throw my mother on the street? Force my brother to revisit the most painful time of his life when that’s clearly not what he wants?”

      I noticed he didn’t touch the marriage thing. And that made me clench my fists even harder.

      “All I’m saying is that if we’re talking about pursuing happiness tonight, you could start with yourself.” There was something wild in that bright blue gaze of his

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