17. Eden

SEVENTEEN

EDEN

Classical music echoed through the hall, the hardwood floors of the studio familiar beneath my feet. The lights were dimmed, only the barest glow emanating from the recessed coves and glowing through the rambling space. The walls were mirrored, and the barres had been pushed aside after my last class of the day.

It was just after six, and I should have been at home grabbing a quick nap before I went in for my shift at the club tonight.

But I needed this.

To dance.

To let my body flow with the tempo.

To be entranced by the moves.

Entranced by the music.

To let my heart rise and fall with the beat.

Where it was just me and the beauty of the movement.

I dipped into a plié before rising up and jumping into a grande jeté. I glided from one move to the other. A mix of graceful and harsh. The music hushed and held in anticipation before it would rise to a thrill of mini-crescendos.

It was funny how ballet was such an intrinsic part of me, yet it still felt incredibly private.

It was where I found myself. Where I lost myself. Where worries and concerns drifted away into the nothingness, and the only thing that mattered was the feeling. The sensation coursing through my veins.

As if I were flying.

Free.

Alive.

It was a little unnerving how that feeling could be so closely compared to Trent Lawson.

In the moment, all rational thought gone. Sane judgement slayed.

When dancing, the only thing I was living for was the high. The rush.

And in the heat of the moment with Trent, the only thing of any consequence or consideration was the ghosting of his fingertips across my skin. The sizzle of those eyes and the impact of those hands.

An entirely different high. An entirely different rush. One I wasn’t sure I could ever stop chasing.

Which was why I’d needed to come here and hide myself away. Get lost somewhere else.

Nothing but the charge of adrenaline and the march of the composition.

Art.

Where I understood what I wanted. Who I was and where I stood.

Where there weren’t flickers of fear or a blaze of need.

I moved into a pirouette as the music rose to its highest height. I spun and spun, alternating between point and demi-point. Round and round and round. My pulse thundered, and my chest stretched tight with the exertion as every muscle in my body flexed and extended.

Bound with the beautiful exhaustion of this labor of love.

Shivers raced.

That feeling lifting.

Sensation flashed across my flesh.

Growing and compounding.

In it, I let myself completely go. All inhibitions floored. Crushed under the thunder of my feet.

I spun and spun. The mirrors were a blur of streaking ribbons and light. It felt as if it might be the only way for me to fly. To rise to the surreal. Where these impossible questions might hold answers.

It only amplified. Increased. And I was gasping when the song hit its end and cut off with a sudden, jarring high-pitched note.

One second later, a softer, more somber song filtered through the overhead speakers.

But I didn’t feel somber or at ease.

Warmth spiraled down my spine, overheating my already sweat-slicked skin.

Tingles raced.

Prickles of need hitched in my spirit.

A glitch in my soul.

Panting, I stilled, shocked out of the trance. My eyes adjusted to the dimly-lit dance studio. Through the mirror, I caught sight of the silhouette at the back, already knowing he would be there.

That menacing, intimidating man stood just inside the double doors with his hands stuffed in his pockets.

A wicked temptation.

A beautiful wish.

Hungry eyes met mine through the reflection, a tangle of greed and awe. A shockwave of that energy blistered through the air, nearly knocking me from my feet.

“What are you doing here?” I could barely force out the question between the surprise and desire that lit.

“Needed to see you,” he grunted.

“Did you sign in?”

He cracked a grin. Sweet but at my expense.

“Always following the rules, aren’t you, Kitten?”

Redness clawed up my neck and splashed my cheeks. I was pretty sure I broke a thousand of my own rules last night. Gave in and let go.

I couldn’t begin to find a way to regret that now.

Not when Trent took a step forward and the ground trembled beneath my feet.

A tiny earthquake.

A warning of coming destruction as he advanced.

Darkness swept like shadows across the dance floor as he edged my direction. Slow. Measured. The hunter circling his prey. His eyes wild and his mouth watering.

My already heaving breaths turned jagged. Short and choppy. Nerves jumping into my bloodstream and wreaking havoc on my senses.

Excitement and confusion and desire.

Because he was every single thing I’d never thought I’d want. The exact type of man I’d never go after.

I’d wanted security.

Safety.

Peace.

Hell, I’d never even had to run from a man like him before because I’d never let myself get that close.

But there I was, my spirit thrashing and whipping and begging him to come near.

He stole forward. A dark, dark storm that gathered from the corners of the room.

Encroaching.

Invading.

Overtaking.

His breath hit the back of my neck, and it sent a rash of shivers racing across my flesh, goosebumps lifting in anticipation of what was to come.

He ghosted his fingertips down my right arm, chasing the thrill, the heady breaths jutting from his lungs curling through the air and inundating my senses.

Leather and nutmeg and man.

Lust pooled in my belly, and I couldn’t look away from that fierce, unrelenting gaze that held me captive through the mirrors.

“Think I just walked into a dream, Eden, you in here owning that floor. A fucking superstar hidden away in a mountain town, only for me to see.” He murmured it at my bare shoulder, those eyes watching me as he did. “Look at you.”

His lips barely brushed my flesh.

So soft. A tender caress.

But those eyes were hardly tender when they took my reflection in.

They were raving.

Roving.

Half-mad.

“What do you see?” I let the question free, the words wispy tendrils that curled through the dense, heated air.

His intense eyes flared, and he exhaled as he splayed a big hand across my belly covered by my leotard and moved his mouth to my ear. “I see the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen. Kind of beauty that knocks the breath from my lungs every time I catch a glimpse. So goddamn sexy I can’t think straight. So sweet I forget my name.”

The words were a heave and a hook.

I trembled beneath them, barely able to breathe as he continued, “I see a treasure. I see a vision. I see light and goodness and grace. I see Heaven . I see everything I shouldn’t want. Everything I don’t deserve.”

He pulled me tighter against the strength of his body. We’d begun to sway, this slow dance that twined our spirits as one. Our bodies melting into the other.

“But I also see a tragedy, Eden. Pain waiting out ahead to devour us both. I know I can’t take what I want because that kind of selfishness is only going to ruin us all in the end. And here I am, the greedy bastard standing with you in my arms because I don’t have the first clue how to stay away from you.”

I gulped. Struggled to remain strong. To stand for what I’d stood for all my life.

But somehow…somehow that image had changed. Brushstrokes painting a new picture. Something so stunning you couldn’t help but stare.

So often it were the most haunting canvases that created the most priceless beauty.

“What is it you see, Kitten, when you look at me?” It was a gruff challenge. I got the sense he wanted me to admit I was afraid after what he’d revealed last night. He craved my disgust because it was the only thing he knew.

Part of it was true. The truth that my entire being quivered with the dread. With the ideas of what his life might have looked like before. The violence and brutality.

But more, I wondered how that might spill into the here and now.

What he might be capable of.

Who was the man currently wrapped around me? The one who held me like a hedge of safety? A shield? Hope in the bleakness that had dimmed both our lives?

“I see a man who’s held me from the moment I met him. A man so devastatingly gorgeous he tripped up my feet and set my heart on fire. Made it burn for the first time in years. In a way it never had.”

Against better judgement, I let that confession out.

Possession left him on a grunt, and he curled his arms tighter around me as my whispered words filled the atmosphere, “I see a man who holds the power to spark to life what once was dead. I see a father. I see a protector. I see a warrior. I see someone who is good and kind when he has no idea that he is. I see a kind of beauty I’ve never recognized before.”

Every muscle in his towering frame flexed.

Peril and perfection.

“Eden,” he muttered.

We were rocking. Swaying and drifting. Our limbs tangled as we fell into a slow slide of sensation.

Still, I pushed, giving him more of my truth the way he’d given his. “I also see my heart shattered all over the place if I let this go much farther. I see your fear, Trent, and I see what it’s become. It’s become savagery. A threat of devastation.”

The man exhaled, those arms unwavering. “Always been that, Eden, from day one. That’s what it’s been. Savagery and devastation. Only thing that ever softened it was Gage.” He pressed his nose to the back of my neck, running it up the length until it was buried in my hair. “And you. You are the only thing that could make this evil heart go soft, and that’s probably the most dangerous part of all. Fact you make me want to let my guard down. Give in when I’ve been given one thing to live for. Don’t know how to live for two.”

Despair wound with his admission, his voice cracking with an old grief that he would forever possess.

I wanted to wrap him up. Tell him we could try. That we could be good together.

That maybe if we just met in the middle…

“It would never work.” He gruffed it like he was answering a question I’d asked aloud.

“I know,” I whispered. “There are things I want for my life that I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

Love and life and stability.

I didn’t need a white-picket fence, but I wanted a family.

A home.

Children to fill it.

To be cherished, loved, and a priority to a man who crawled into bed with me night after night.

It seemed like a no brainer with Gage built in, but that vein of scars might have cut too deep. And with the little he’d exposed about his childhood growing up, I didn’t get the sense he’d had the healthiest of experiences.

And more than that, I wanted—I needed—safety. For my children to have it.

Gage filled my mind. Those eyes and those cheeks and his sweet words. My heart felt like it would implode with my love for him. This protectiveness zapping me straight through.

And somehow, I knew—trusted with every part of me—this man would do everything to protect him.

“And still, look at your face. Those eyes watching me like they know me,” he rasped against my flesh. Everything beat. Pounded and shook.

“I don’t know how to look away,” I whispered.

“View ain’t pretty, Kitten.”

“You’re wrong. It’s stunning.”

He gave a harsh shake of his head. “Nah. My view is much better.”

His lips brushed along the slope of my neck. My knees nearly buckled. “It’s torment getting a peek at Heaven from the vantage of Hell. Maybe that’s the real meaning of eternal punishment.”

My brow furrowed. “Is that really what you think? That you’re condemned?”

A low grumble of disbelief rumbled in his throat, and his hand glided up my neck, fingers digging into the tight twist of my hair. “If there is an afterlife? Believe me, baby, I know exactly where I’m going.”

My chest ached. “I don’t believe that.”

“Because you believe in what’s not there.”

Wow. That hurt.

“You believe in me,” he clarified.

My eyes were pinned on his through the mirror. “Don’t you think it’s time someone did?”

The twitch of a smile kissed the edge of his sinful mouth. “There we go, trying to figure out how this would work. How two opposites could be when we know we don’t fit.”

“It’d be fun trying.” My voice was the tendril of a plea as I repeated the same thing he’d said to me the first time he’d followed me home.

Although this—it no longer felt like a mistake.

He let go of a rough, jagged chuckle.

Warmth and light.

It flooded me.

Filled me full.

And he didn’t even know.

His hand caressed down my left arm. It left a trail of flames in its wake. He didn’t stop until he was tracing over the bracelet that his son had made. The one I wore around my wrist. One I doubted I would ever remove. “We need to end this now before it hurts too much. My son is already half in love with you.”

I’m already half in love with you.

I didn’t dare say it.

Emotion gathered in my throat, my words thick and soggy when I admitted, “I care about him so much.”

Too much.

My eyes glistened in the bare reflection, and Trent watched me like he didn’t need me to say it. That he felt it. Saw it. The way I saw something shine in him, too.

“Would give anything to be a different man for you.”

But that was the thing. I didn’t think I wanted anyone different. I wanted him.

Reckless.

Another chip stacked against us. A push to admit he was right.

We would never work.

My nod was jerky. Pulled out of me against my will.

Trent’s was slow and resigned.

Then he pressed the softest kiss to the underside of my jaw. His mouth rested there.

Lingering.

I could feel him squeeze his eyes closed as he savored.

Relished.

As he remembered.

He held me tight for another moment before he peeled himself away, then the man stalked back across the room.

I could physically feel him taking the storm with him.

The whooshing of the receding wind and the void it left behind.

My breath and a piece of my heart I never should have let him have.

My lungs shuddered with the impact, my body frozen in position where I stared at the man walking away through the mirror.

He paused at the door, and he tossed me a tender grin from over his shoulder. “See ya around, Kitten.”

Wistfulness tugged at my lips. Not quite a smile, though it still held more adoration than either of us could afford.

One second later, Trent opened the door and was gone.

Right along with a piece of me that I would never get back.