ANYA SHIVERED WITH want now, rather than stage fright.
Her legs, which had just a short while ago performed the most amazing feats, barely remembered how to walk as he took her by the hand and led her to the dressing-room chair. He moved it so that she faced to the side and he came round and got down on one knee.
He undid the silk ribbons of her pointe shoes and slipped them off, and Anya grimaced as he did so. Always, after a performance, it hurt to remove them.
There was blood on the toes of her ballet tights, even though she had worn in her shoes and bandaged her feet carefully. He caressed the soles of her feet and her sore heels and then he ran warm hands up her aching calves too.
Roman felt the cramped muscles beneath his fingers and he smoothed and soothed them for a couple of moments and Anya held onto his shoulder as she wished his hand would move higher.
‘Come on,’ he said in that deep low voice that made her throb, and as he stood so too did Anya and she lifted her arms.
Roman knew to be careful and his fingers found the small concealed zip and slid it down.
She stepped out of it and stood as he hung up her costume.
‘Don’t tell me I’m too thin...’
‘Shh,’ he said. He did not want to relive that final row. Instead he went to the waist of her ballet tights and slid them down. She was naked save for the bandages on her feet.
Again she sat on her dressing chair and he dealt with the bandages. Anya couldn’t help herself, she reached and touched his gleaming black hair, unable to believe he was really here after all those years apart.
Still kneeling, he looked up and observed her body. He saw the small breasts and she closed her eyes as he licked at one and then blew, and then toyed with her nipple between his lips.
She held onto his head as he took her breast in his mouth and sucked and then did the same to the other, took it so deep that it hurt, and her thighs shook but his hands held them down.
‘Roman...’
She was drunk on him, aching to be with him, and when he removed his mouth she caught her breath and watched as he parted her thighs and looked at her. Oh, she ached for him to bury his head there but he stroked her for a moment and slipped his fingers inside and then ran a figure of eight with one damp finger around her clitoris. They smiled at the memory of their first time and her telling him where it was.
Roman had cared only for his pleasure back then.
At first.
Then he had discovered the sanctuary of her bliss.
Now he removed his finger and stood.
She could see his erection and then she felt it for herself, running her hand over and over it as he unbuckled his belt. She took it out as he removed his tie and undid the buttons of his shirt so his chest was bare, but he left his shirt and jacket on.
Such beauty, she thought as she licked her lips and lowered her head to take just one small taste.
That turned into more.
The feathers of her headdresses moved and shivered and teased against his toned stomach, soft and tender, unlike the feel of her skilled mouth that gave rapid flicks and enslaved him. Roman’s breathing tripped into a moan that was a familiar one and turned Anya on totally.
She took him deeper but now more slowly as his fingers worked the pins of her headdress and, care forgotten, he tossed it aside and pushed her head lower.
His fingers were busy freeing her hair, and then he lifted her head. He was so close to coming and she licked her lips. He raised her, lifted her body against his and kicked away the chair. He brushed away all her carefully placed trinkets in one motion and then placed her on the dressing table. Anya stroked him as he carefully angled the mirrors so that there were hundreds of them and then he pulled her bottom to the edge of the table and parted her legs, and in his deep gravelly voice he told her that he was going to fill her with ecstasy.
He did.
Anya gripped tight to the edge of the table and arched back as he drove in.
He tore into her and the pain and bliss of their first time was replicated.
Roman had always loved to watch them, and now he looked down and widened her legs for better exposure, so that he could see himself glide in and out.
Anya looked at the mirror.
There they were, an endless stretch of Anyas and Romans but there were hundreds of images when instead there should be hundreds of memories, all denied to her by him.
‘I hate you for leaving,’ she sobbed as he started to thrust faster into her, and then she pressed her lips together so she would not reveal more of her hurt.
He did not look to the mirrors, he simply looked down and then when he had to have her body closer, he scooped her in to him and her skin was against his naked chest as her mouth found his.
Anya wrapped her legs around him and she was no longer on the table. She moved on him, and for all she had danced tonight, she did so again. Gripping him, grinding herself on him, wrapping toned legs tightly to his loins, and she held on as his powerful thighs allowed him to thrust harder.
She was fit enough not to require holding and now Roman’s large hands cupped her buttocks and he stroked them in deep rhythm till she shivered from the inside.
‘Stay still...’ he told her.
‘I can’t.’
‘I want to feel you.’
He knew she was almost there and now his hands held her rigid and would not allow her to move. He knew her body, and he was right, because as he held her still she felt him swell and he let out a primal grunt as he did what he had promised, filled her with ecstasy. The feel of him coming long and deep into her brought Anya to her own intense climax. It raced the length of her spine, she seized in his arms and pulsed and dragged out from him every precious drop and ached as still she fought for more.
They kissed and even now, Anya knew, she could have him again.
Such was their endless desire that, as they rested their foreheads on each other, Anya knew she could bring him back with just a few shifts of her hips—they could resume and chase oblivion again.
Their mouths meshed and their tongues mingled as her hips did just that, and she gripped and massaged him back, but there was knocking at the door.
Anya closed her eyes in frustration as she was informed that the car would soon be there to take her to the after party.
Their lips parted in regret and as Roman lowered her she never wanted her feet to hit the floor, but they did. She rested her head on his chest and drank in the scent of him, of them.
‘Did you love me?’
Anya had to know but he did not answer.
Almost fourteen years later and she still didn’t know.
Fourteen years without seeing him.
Only that wasn’t quite true, as he regularly appeared in her dreams.
But, no, there had been that one time she had seen him since then. It was something she had tried to erase from her memory.
A sight she would have preferred never to have seen.
Yet she had.
She looked up at his mouth, at his slight smile, and Anya knew how rare a smile from Roman was.
But then she looked into his eyes and was there a glint of triumph there?
Was that a smug smile at how easily he could have her? That, after all these years,