Page 113 of The Dangerous Dance

"Watch," I say.

His breath catches.

I unbutton the rest of his shirt slowly, one button at a time, and I watch him watching me in the mirror. The way his jaw tightens. The way his hands hang at his sides like he is choosing not to use them yet, like he is letting me set the pace, like this is something he is giving me even though I can see how much it costs him.

I push the shirt off his shoulders. It falls.

His body in the work light. The scar on his arm. The one low on his ribs that I asked about once and he told me about without the operational register, just the fact of it.

I run my hands up his torso. Slow. Over his ribs, over the plane of his stomach, over his chest. His hands are still at his sides but his breathing is not.

"Nadia." Third time. Different register. The register of someone who has reached the edge of waiting.

I reach up. I put my hands on either side of his face. I kiss him.

This is the first time we have touched like this tonight. My mouth on his, his mouth opening, the taste of him. Wine and something else, the taste that is just him. His hands finally move. They come to my waist, not gentle exactly, not rough either. The grip of someone who has been holding back and has decided not to hold back.

He walks me backward.

I feel the barre hit the small of my back. The wood, solid, the right height, exactly as he said it would be. His hands are on my hips, pressing me against it, and his mouth is on my throat now, the heat of his breath against my skin, and I make a sound. Not the performed version. The actual sound of what his mouth does to my throat.

"Again," he says against my skin. "Make that sound again."

I make it again. Louder. His hands tighten on my hips.

He pulls back just enough to look at me. My back against the barre, my chest rising and falling, my face in the state of someone who is not performing desire but experiencing it.

"I have thought about this," he says. "In the mirror. Against the barre. I thought."

"Show me."

He does not need to be told twice.

His hands go to the hem of my top, the fitted thing I wear for practice. He pulls it up slowly, his knuckles dragging against my skin, and I lift my arms and he takes it off me and drops it with his shirt on the floor.

The air on my bare skin. The work lights. His eyes.

"You're beautiful," he says again. The same fact, stated differently this time, with his hands on my ribcage, with my back against the barre.

"Your turn to watch," I say.

I reach behind me and I unsnap my bra. I let it fall off my shoulders.

His breathing changes again. His hands on my ribcage tighten.

"Nadia."

"In the mirror," I say.

He looks. At my back in the mirror, the line of my spine, the reflection of my bare shoulders and the barre cutting across my waist. Then he looks back at me.

His hands come up. He cups me, both hands, slow, his palms warm against my nipples, which are already hard from the air and the want and his mouth on my throat. I gasp. The gasp echoes slightly in the studio, the old walls reflecting it back, and his hands tighten and I watch his face watching his hands and I think I understand something about him I did not before. That the looking is part of it for him. That seeing what he does to me is essential. That the mirrors in this room are not incidental.

"More," I say.

He bends his head. His mouth finds my breast, the heat and wet of his tongue against my nipple, the pull of his lips, the way my back arches against the barre. I make a sound that is not a word. He makes a sound in answer, not words either, just the responsive noise of a man with his mouth on my body, his hands on my hips, and the echo of both sounds moves through the studio like something alive.

His mouth moves to my other breast. The asymmetry of attention. The first one still wet from his tongue, the air cool on it, the second one now receiving the heat. I arch further against the barre, my hands finding his shoulders, my fingers digging into the muscle.