Blue Angel Read Free Page B

things she’d come to love the most about him. She’d slept with a few other guys before Alec, but all of her important “firsts” were with him: First simultaneous orgasm. First sex in a public space (library stacks one weekend when he was visiting her at law school). First time she let someone take a nude picture of her. (She made him erase it, but it was surprisingly hot.) He’d even talked her into getting a Brazilian bikini wax not too long ago. She was angry when he suggested it. She found it offensive that he would tell her what to do with her own body. But after consultation with Julie, she decided she should try it. And she loved it—not the actual process, but the result felt so smooth and clean. When Alec suggested she try something, he was usually right. And everything he opened her up to made her feel closer to him, and closer to her own sexuality. But this whole threesome with another woman thing . . . she was afraid it would have the opposite effect—on her and on their relationship.
    “I thought you were thinking about getting that woman home with us,” Mallory said, her stomach tightening.
    “No. I was thinking about you.” His gray-blue eyes had that cloudy, intense look they got sometimes. It was incredibly sexy. She remembered the first time she got on top when they were having sex, and he had looked up at her with that heavy-lidded, cobalt gaze, and it made her come.
    He took her hand and kissed it. “I’m serious, Mal. I’m not going to fuck you tonight unless you dance for me.”
    She knew he was serious.
    “Oh, my God. Fine. Put something on.”
    “You should pick the song,” he said, tossing her his iPod. “I’ll get us some drinks.”
    She scrolled through his playlist while he uncorked a bottle of red wine. It only took her a few seconds to know what she was looking for.
    Alec settled back on the couch, handing her a glass. She dimmed the lights and cued up the Mos Def song “The Beggar” on the iDock. She took a gulp, and pressed Play.
    It was ridiculous after all the times he had seen her naked, after all the different ways he had fucked her—but standing there like that, she felt nervous taking off her shirt, despite the fact that she had just done it in front of dozens of strangers. But somehow, being on the stage made it impersonal. She had felt, for a few moments up there, like someone else. But now she was just Mallory.
    She tried to imagine that she was someone else. She pictured Bette Noir, and somehow that put her in the right frame of mind to sway to the music and slowly unbutton her blouse. Thankfully, twelve years of ballet muscle memory gave her some idea of what to do with her body. Shrugging out of her top, she moved her arms into
bras au repos
. It was amazing to her that, seven years since she’d last set foot in a dance studio, her limbs still ached for the positions that had been imprinted on them.
    Alec watched her with a look she’d never seen before, and it made her incredibly hot. She dropped the ballet arms and eased out of her skirt. Wearing only her bra, underwear, and the silver Elsa Peretti heart pendant he had given her earlier in the night, she swayed in front of Alec to the lyrics about love and devotion.
    She tried to think of a burlesque move she’d seen at the club, but she couldn’t find the right motion. Instead, she did a
piqué
turn, and even though she felt silly doing it in her underwear, it was exhilarating to use her body in that way. With Alec’s eyes following her every move, she felt more beautiful than she had in a long time. Moving to the music, she connected to something she’d thought was long gone, a feeling of power and inspiration that she had pushed away as an indulgence of adolescence. She’d quit ballet when she went off to college. After all, as her parents had constantly reminded her, there was no “real world” application, and it was a major time commitment. Her love of dance was something she packed away with