Dance With Me (25 page)

Laurie resisted for a few seconds, jolted out of the moment, but then Ed stroked his backside, then slapped it lightly and pushed his finger again. Laurie convulsed, but his anus relaxed enough that Ed's finger made a little headway in. And then he relaxed a little more, and Ed's finger slipped deeper. It disappeared briefly, and Laurie knew cold at his back, then Ed was back, and this time when his finger pushed against Laurie's entrance, it was cold and slick with lube. Ed wedged himself back into place, meshing their bodies, thrusting with his hips to slide his cock beneath Laurie's as his finger pushed inside, insistent. Laurie didn't fight him. He let go, deeper than he had before, giving in, letting Ed take him. The finger was all the way in now, but not thrusting, just buried inside him as Ed kept pistoning with his cock. Laurie felt full, but it wasn't enough. He needed—he needed—

“Fuck me,” he cried weakly, then lifted his head a little and said it again, a little louder. “Fuck me, Ed. Fuck me. Fuck me—”

He moaned as Ed did, pushing his finger in time to his cock, giving Laurie the sensation that he really was being fucked, that this was Ed's cock inside him, pushing into him, filling him, taking him—

He cried out, a strangled scream, and he came all over the bed.

But Ed didn't stop. His hips kept rolling, and he kept his finger going. “So hot, baby,” he whispered, getting his rhythm back again. “You're so hot, so fucking hot. So beautiful. So fucking, fucking beautiful.” His finger pulled out, and he gripped the sides of Laurie's ass again, pulling him open, and Laurie shut his eyes, shaking, knowing Ed was looking at him, wanting him. He let him look, and when he had the courage, he bent forward a little more, spreading himself, a silent invitation.
Yes. Yes, Ed. Look at me. Have me.

Abruptly, Ed pulled back, swore under his breath, and for a few moments the bed shook as Ed jerked himself. Then Laurie felt hot cum spraying all over his back, some making it all the way up to his hair. It should have been as jarring as the spit, and on some level it was. But on another level he was coming down from an intense orgasm, and he was very, very sated, and all he could think of was how much he loved that Ed wanted him so much.

And a tiny part of him liked the wicked feeling of being covered in cum...so long as it was Ed's.

All of him loved it when Ed sank against him, gluing his chest to Laurie's back as he rolled them away to the side, out of range of Laurie's own pond he'd made on the comforter, and drew Laurie tight against him. Rasping, he kissed Laurie hard on the shoulder with more than a little tongue.

“Good morning.”

Laurie smiled and reached back for his hair weakly. “Yes,” he agreed.

“Sorry I went everywhere,” Ed murmured, still tasting Laurie's skin. “You just had me so wound up. Fucking hell, Laur. That was seriously hot.”

Laurie's smile was going to break his face. “You're the only one who's ever told me that.”

“You are. You're a fucking wildcat in bed, baby.” He stroked Laurie's arm, once, then again. “Can you come over again tonight?”

“I have another performance this afternoon and a reception after that I can't skip.” He slid his fingers through the hair on Ed's arm. “But after, sure.”

“We don't—” Ed nuzzled once, then stopped. “I don't care what we do. Or don't. I just want to be with you.”

Laurie was sure they would end up in bed again, doing this and more, but it made his heart warm to hear Ed say that, because he was fairly sure he meant it. He felt...wanted. Which was an odd thing to cherish, because Laurie had been wanted a lot in his life. But it had been professional or for sex. This was different.

Don't break this, he urged himself and rolled over for a kiss.

Ed tried to take him out for breakfast, but they'd lingered so long in bed that Laurie really was edging toward running late. So after another shower, Ed fed him coffee and toast before he drove him to where he'd left his car downtown. They kissed a lingering good-bye inside the car, and Laurie promised to call once he was free for the evening.

He felt buoyant, though, until he got to the theater and had to worry about his performance. He made no missteps this time, but he was more careful too. A critic might say his heart wasn't in it, and several likely would. He didn't care. He couldn't make a mistake like that again.

As he waited in the wings for the curtain call, he forced himself not to think about it, to think about Ed instead, the memories making his blood hum. It was the way Ed regarded him with his...dare he call it his heart in his eyes? Affection, at least. Ed looked at him in open affection, and it made his own heart warm. Sex wasn't too difficult to come by, if one was determined to go and get it. The way Ed looked at him—well. It had been a long, long time. Laurie decided he deserved to feel a little giddy.

Especially when he came back to his dressing room after the show to find a ridiculously huge bouquet of red roses waiting for him. He tried to temper his heart as it leaped up at the sight, tried to warn it that the flowers might not be from Ed, but Laurie saw the two-letter signature before he even started to read the note.

Figured I shouldn't come backstage again after, because you know how I get when you're in tights. Sent these instead. I wrote this card before the show, but I know you were amazing as always. Looking forward to seeing you later.—Ed

Laurie felt his face heat even as his heart moved well beyond his throat and seemed to hover somewhere near the ceiling. Ed had come to the performance? Again? And he'd sent flowers? Laurie clutched the card to his chest, smiling so hard his face hurt. Then he read the card again and again and again. Finally, with reluctance, he set the card back down and began to get dressed, though he had to stop frequently to reread the card or stare at the bouquet and grin.

He was fingering the edge of a rose and trying to work out how he could skip the reception after all when a knock came on the door. Leaving the roses, Laurie crossed to open it and found himself, to his surprise, staring at his mother.

Caroline Parker smiled her thin, abstracted smile. “Good. I was hoping to catch you before you left this time. I wanted to talk to you about the charity benefit.” When he didn't move right away, she patted his arm and nudged him gently but deliberately out of the way so she could come into his dressing room. Her eyes lit up as she saw the flowers. “Are these from the children? That's lovely.” She reached for the card.

Waking up at last, Laurie hurried over and snatched the card out of her hand before she could read it. She blinked at him, surprised and clearly a little affronted. Laurie pretended not to notice and tucked the card into his trouser pocket, his thumb rubbing against the edge of Ed's card. “What about the charity benefit?”

“I want you to agree to perform, sweetheart. Now that you've done so well for Oliver, surely you're ready for more?”

Laurie didn't physically withdraw, but the warm glow Ed had cast inside him died as the hollow emptiness this argument always inspired filled him instead. “I'm not performing.”

She continued as if Laurie hadn't spoken. “I was thinking it could be something unconventional. Even if you were to do something with Maggie, something simple, that would do. It'll draw more people if they think they'll be seeing Laurie Parker perform again after all these years. What you do, exactly, is nearly immaterial.”

“I'm not performing,” Laurie said again, working actively to keep his teeth from clenching. “If you advertise otherwise, you'll be the one explaining why you misled them, and if you make it purposefully awkward for me, I simply won't come.”

“Stop being so petulant, Laurence. It doesn't become you. You just performed half an hour ago, and you performed yesterday as well. And it all went well, just as we all told you it would. Now it's time to take the next step forward.” She glanced at the roses again, then at Laurie's pocket, where he'd stowed the card. “Who
are
the flowers from?”

Laurie said, “From my boyfriend.”

The confession shocked them both, and they stood there, each reeling in it for a few seconds.

Caroline fingered the petals of one of the roses, staring at it intently as she spoke. “I see. I take it this is someone you're seeing...publicly?”

Laurie's chest was hurting, his heart and belly feeling open and vulnerable, and he could see she had noticed his discomfort. But he thought of Oliver and all his talk about raw sex, about what he had done that morning with Ed, about how good it had felt, and he made himself say, “Yes.”

“I see.” She gave him a polite, distant smile. “I won't be coming to the reception, so I'll say good-bye to you now. But while all these people greet you and tell you how wonderful you were, think of what it would be like to perform again for real. Think of what it would be like, Laurie. To be normal again.” She crossed to him and pressed close in a formal, polite embrace. She pressed her hands on his shoulders and her cheek to his, her lips grazing his skin with little more than a brush of breath as she withdrew. He did not reach up to return the gesture, which earned him a flashing glance of disapproval, but once again, she said nothing out loud, not about that. She just smiled and said, “I'll call you later in the week once you've had a chance to think things over,” and then she headed for the door.

Laurie just stood there, watching her go.

Once the door closed behind her, though, he turned to the flowers. He didn't touch them, didn't smell them, just stood there with his hands in his pockets, clutching the card as everything jumbled inside him. When it became clear it wasn't going to settle, he slipped into his coat, pulled out his keys, and grabbed the vase, bracing it as gracefully as he could against his side as he carried it out of the dressing room.

It garnered him plenty of stares. At first that unsettled him, but the floral scent kept wrapping around him and pulling him back in. Roses didn't really smell that wonderful to him, but the arrangement collectively did: it was more earthy and grassy than floral, associating the bouquet even more strongly with Ed. By the time Laurie was on the back stairs, he was smiling and even enjoying carrying a ridiculously large vase of flowers out to his car. He didn't even care when it took him ten minutes to get it arranged on the seat so that the flowers wouldn't get crushed, but it wouldn't tip over as he drove, and he glanced over to smile at it every time he was at a stoplight.

There were at least three dozen flowers in there. He was late to the reception because he'd stood in the kitchen trying to count them. And he'd been right; there were almost three and a
half
dozen flowers in there. Laurie had pressed his hand over his lips to stay his ridiculous grin, heart swelling inside his chest as he imagined Ed picking them out. He could just see him standing there, overseeing the stuffing of the great big—horribly gaudy—vase, rejecting roses he didn't think were good enough, not caring about how many were in there but how it
looked
.

Laurie tried to think of the last time someone had done something like this for him. He couldn't come up with anything that even remotely compared.

The reception was at a country club in the wealthier part of St. Paul. Ostensibly it was a thank-you to some of the sponsors of the performance, but mostly it was a chance for everyone to rub elbows with one another and for Maggie and the other instructors who organized it to brag up their studio. Laurie had never liked these things, but he especially disliked them tonight. All he wanted to do was go find Ed and thank him for the flowers, to kiss him, to touch him, to make love to him, but even just to be with him. Instead he was pasting on a smile and staying the urge to dull the edges of the event with too much champagne.

Especially when he found out his mother had already begun her campaign to get him to perform at her benefit; everyone at the reception kept telling him how excited they were to see him perform again.

It was this that ultimately led him to leave early. He'd planned to cut it short as it was, but he left before they even brought out dessert, not even bothering to excuse himself to Maggie. He would hear about it the next day at the studio, but he didn't care. The longer he stayed, the angrier he would be at the donors, at Maggie, and most of all at his mother. And he didn't want to be angry. He wanted the giddy feeling back that he had when he was with Ed, when he thought of him.

It came back a little as he navigated his way back to Ed's apartment, missing the streets a few times and having to double back, but mostly he was nervous now and jumbled. He should have called, but he didn't want to. He wanted to just appear. He wanted to simply see him, to see his face—somehow it wouldn't be as real if it were on the phone. Oh, it didn't make sense when he tried to articulate it, even to his thoughts. He just knew he needed Ed, live and in person.

Normal, his mother had said. Laurie didn't even know what that was. He didn't think he'd ever known. He might not be meant for normal. All he knew right now was that he was tired of feeling guilty and sleepy. He needed something. Something more. He needed... He didn't know.

Ed. He just needed Ed.

He hoped Ed needed him too. He feared that he'd simply had an emotional, ridiculous day and had imagined all this, that Ed had simply sent flowers and that was all. He still feared this would end somehow, feared that it would hurt more than he could bear, and he wondered where those thoughts were coming from and what they meant. But right now all he knew was that he needed Ed.
Needed
him. Now.

As he climbed the stairs to Ed's door, his heart beat in his ears, and his stomach flipped over and over with every step. By the time he knocked on Ed's door, he was a wreck, and as he waited in the endless seconds between his knocking and its opening, he had to remind himself to breathe.

And then Ed was there, disheveled and messy and wearing a dark gray muscle T-shirt stained with sweat. He was surprised, and then his face changed, and Laurie realized this was what he'd needed to see, why he couldn't call, why he had to simply arrive. Because first there was surprise, yes, and then there was joy. It faded quickly, turning to awkwardness as he ran his hand over his hair, but there had been that joy, that same eagerness and giddiness that had wrapped Laurie up since he'd seen the flowers—in truth, since he'd woken up this morning in Ed's arms.