The Ballerina & The Fighter (Book 1) (2 page)

I took pictures of both girls
for several minutes. It didn’t escape me that so far Ivy hadn’t said more to
me than hi. But her eyes kept checking me out when she thought I wasn’t paying
attention. I always paid attention. It’s why I was such a good fighter. It was
the tells, those slight moves, a tiny shift to the left or right that let me
know in which direction a punch or kick would come from, or a fraction of a
blink the second before an opponent made a move. Being able to read those tells
provided me with all the warning I needed to put up a block or get the hell out
of the way of a punch or kick.

“Hey,” Shelly said, coming
toward me, Ivy following behind her. Her face flushed from all the moves the
girls had been making and damned some of them were hawt! “How about Ivy take a
couple of pictures of us and then I’ll take some of you and Ivy?”

“That’s cool,” I said, trying
to hide my grin and so failing because hell yeah alls I could think was my
hands are so going to be all over Ivy. I handed her the camera and winked, she
smiled shyly back at me.

After she took a couple of
pictures of Shelly and me, Shelly took her arm from around my waist and stepped
toward Ivy with her hand outstretched. “My turn,” Shelly said.

I could have kissed Shelly
after she said that, I settled for a grin. The girl was trying to match us up.
Thank you God for small favors. Because when Ivy came to stand beside me, she
put her arm around my waist, casual like Shelly had done. But I was going for
anything but casual. Besides I had no choice the moment her bare arm connected
with my bare skin, electricity surged through every cell in my body. I felt a
tremor go through her body, too. She felt the same charge I had and I didn’t
want to back away from it. No, I wanted to immerse myself in the currents
coursing back and forth between us.

I slipped both arms around
her tiny waist and pulled her in real close. At first she stiffened but then I
heard and felt her intake of air and then she exhaled, before she relaxed
against me. I made sure I only touched bare skin, not hard to do since the
shirt was already high. Although my hands itched to move and stroke her bare
skin not just lay innocently against it. My thoughts were anything but
innocent. I was both in heaven and hell.

Then Shelly began to call out
instructions and position us. I was good with that too, all of it. Cause her
positioning involved a lot of touching. Me touching Ivy and Ivy touching me.
The first time she placed her hands on my chest I felt the tremor in them, I
knew she felt the way my heart banged against my chest. This torture sure as
shit had better been mutual. When Shelly told us to face each other and Ivy’s
arms wrapped around my neck, our gazes locked. I damned near bent my head to
kiss her right then. Cause damned if that light in her eyes wasn’t telling me
to do just that. But I could control myself, barely.

Oh I planned on kissing her
all right, later. For now I came in close, only a sliver separated our slightly
parted lips. I felt her warm sweet breath like a peppermint brush against my
mouth. She didn’t flinch or move away, she held her ground, but I could feel
the pulse of her heartbeat throughout her body moving in rhythm with mine. I so
loved that.

But then she sucked her lips
in like she was moistening them. “Damn, girl,” I moaned. She blinked up at me
and grinned.

“Don’t do that,” I gritted
out, unable to take my gaze off her lush mouth.

“What?”

“You know damned well what.”

She frowned; she seemed a
little confused. Hell maybe I was wrong and she really was just wetting her
lips. But it was sexy as hell and I had her in my arms. “Never mind. Sorry.”

“I got some great shots.”
Shelly’s voice cut through the spell between Ivy and me. But it was too late. I
was hooked.

Ivy released her arms from
around my neck and turned away to take a look at the camera screen. All I could
think was I wanted her hands back around my neck. I wanted Ivy’s hands all over
my body.

It was getting dark and it
was harder to see the pictures on the camera screen, but damn those shots of me
and Ivy were smokin’. The attraction between us jumped off the screen, the lust
in my eyes sure as shit reflected back in hers.

“Can you send me those pics,
the ones of Ivy and me and some of the ones you all took on the beach?” I knew
I was being bold but I had to have them. Didn’t hurt to ask.

“Why?” Ivy asked glancing at
me.

“So I can put them up on my
social networks about the hot girls I met on the beach.” I smiled.

“Sure,” Shelly said pulling
her phone out of her back pocket. “These files are large. What’s your email?”

I gave it to her. “What are
you ladies doing later?”

Shelly shrugged. “We’ve got
to do dinner with the folks and then were just going to hang out.”

I crossed my arms over my
chest so I wouldn’t try to reach out and grasp Ivy’s hand. I missed the feel of
her hands on me and mine on her. I can’t believe I was being such a pussy with
want for a girl. But she wasn’t just any girl to me. “I’m going to be at the
skateboard court later. Maybe you can meet me there.”

“Sure,” Shelly nodded.
“Later.”

Shelly turned to walk away
but Ivy hesitated like she wanted to say something to me but didn’t. Instead
she just smiled at me. But as she began to turn away I gave into my urges, one
of them, I grabbed her hand. She stopped and turned to look at me.

I pulled out my phone from my
back pocket and one handed entered the passcode then handed it to her. “Put
your phone number in there for me. I’ll text you if I won’t be there.”

She took the phone from me
and looked at our joined hands. “You can do it one handed.” I grinned. She
snorted. But she did. She punched in her number and handed the phone back to
me. I took it from her and hit call. A second later I heard buzzing coming from
her pocket. “Now you can call me or text me if you can’t come. So, see you
later?”

“Perhaps.” She grinned and
glanced over her shoulder. Shelly had stopped at the path and waited for her
there. “I’ve got to go.”

Still she made no move to
pull away from me. “I’ll see you later.” I made it a statement this time but
needed to hear confirmation from her.

“All right.”

I smiled and only then did I
release her hand.

Chapter Two

Ivy

“Holy Shit! He was hawt!”

Shelly exclaimed, and grabbed
my arm as we ran toward the beach rental our parents had gotten for the summer.
Shelly and I became best friends when we met in dance class at the age of
three, fourteen years ago. Our moms became best friends too and our dads came
along for the ride, as our moms liked to say. But in truth, we were like one
big happy extended family. Shelly and I didn’t go to the same school, we lived
in the same district about ten minutes from each other, but I went to a private
school and Shel public. But we had the same circle of friends and we were in
the center of the circle to make sure it stayed that way.

“He was all into you too,
Ivy,” Shell said.

I grinned. “At first I
thought he was coming on to you.”

Shel shook her short purple
and black hair. She’d cut and dyed it after our spring ballet concert, but
already it was growing out. Her last gasp of rebellion. In the fall, she’d head
off to college to major in dance.

“Nah. I’ll be real, I was
eyeing him but he was only checking you out with those gorgeous gray eyes.
Damn, dark hair and light eyes.” She fanned herself. “Hot. If that boy were any
finer, I might have expired on the spot. And those pictures of the two of you
are smoking. And did you check out his tats?”

I laughed. That was Shel,
talking a mile a minute and always dramatic. “Ah yeah! Those symbols on his
inside wrist looked Asian and that dragon that ran down his side was killer.
And his body was cut and ripped. How tall do you think he was?”

“Six feet at least, enough we
could wear four inch heels and still not quite meet eye to eye.” She grabbed my
arm and giggled. “But what I’d like to know, actually see, is how far that
dragon goes down his side. I wonder if the tail curls around his thigh and if
so how high.”

The thought had occurred to
me, too. I couldn’t help but grin. “I know right.” I loved tattoos in
principle, I thought them works of art, but as a ballerina I had to be careful
about getting one and where to put it. Not to mention the fact that my parents
would probably kill me. Although I had been thinking about getting a small one
on my lower back so it would be clearly hidden by any costumes and from my
folks. “How old do you think he is?”

Shel shrugged and glanced at
one of the pictures one last time as we came to a stop at the bottom of the
steps to our rental. She zoomed in the picture of his face. Damn the boy was
fine.

“I’d say definitely older
than us, maybe even twenty.”

Twenty I could work with.
Shel and I were both September babies. Our eighteenth birthdays were still a
month away, so we’d both start our respective schools before we turned
eighteen. Shel would be a dance major in a college program that had an
excellent rep, and I would attend a professional ballet school owned by a
world-renowned ballet company. My future was firmly set in the world of dance.
I had worked hard for this all my life. My only disappointment was Shel would
not be coming with me. We both auditioned at the same time for the school, of
the two hundred and fifty girls that auditioned, only five were chosen. And
only two or three would eventually be made an offer to join the dance company
attached to the school. I still did not understand why Shel was not one of the
chosen five. But the college she was attending was a good one, and a lot of the
students from there ended up in primer ballet companies so I was not worried
about her future either.

We couldn’t get through
dinner with our families fast enough. Afterward, our parents pulled out a deck
of cards and settled in around the living room coffee table with their glasses
of wine. Thank God for Shel who looked at me and nodded toward the door.

“Ah, we thought we’d take the
cart. Check out the neighborhood.” This was one of those enclosed resorts where
most people parked their cars in the car ports and used golf carts to get around.
Some places were only wide enough for the golf carts to traverse and each
rental unit came with at least one, and you could rent more.

My mom was just sitting down
on the floor at one end of the oval coffee table. “Okay. Any idea where you’re
going or just wondering around?”

“Someone said there’s a
skateboard pit here where the kids hang out.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about
that,” Shel’s mom said as she shuffled the deck.

“Okay,” my dad said. “Have
fun and make sure you have your phones and they’re charged. Otherwise charge
them before you leave.”

I nodded. We’d charged them
during dinner. “They’re fully loaded.”

“Curfew is still midnight
ladies,” my mom said.

“Dad, we’re on vacation,” I
groaned.

My dad glanced at my mom.
“She has a point. This place is pretty safe. It’s all enclosed and there’re
guards at the gate. Besides those carts don’t go more than ten miles an hour,
and that’s if you push it.”

My mom glanced at Shel’s mom.
“Bev, what do you think?”

“It’s fine. They can’t leave
the grounds on those carts.” Bev glanced at Shel and me and said, “Be careful.
No later than one and don’t make me come looking for either of you. I need my
beauty sleep.” We all laughed at that, Shel’s mom at forty could have put
runway models to shame, and she had a good heart. Like Shel.

Shel hugged her mom and then
mine. I followed behind her but in reverse, hugging my mom first then hers.
Afterward, with a casual wave in their direction, we both ran out the door
before either of our moms could change their minds.

We weren’t exactly sure where
the skateboard pit was, but the place wasn’t that large. We figured it would be
over by the tennis and basketball courts and headed in that direction. Sure
‘nuff we found it. We just followed the loud cheers or groans. While there was
no one on the lighted tennis courts at that hour there were a few guys playing
basketball, but the skateboard court was crowded hands down. We had to park the
cart over by the basketball court and walk about half a block back to the
skateboard area. There was no parking there. The place was a crush. Bodies,
three people deep surrounded the pit; there was no getting through to the edge
to see what was going on.