The West Wind (5 page)

Hero looked nervously toward Hellespont’s entrance for the
fifteenth time in as many minutes. There was no band tonight, just a DJ playing
a list a little too loudly from his laptop. Hero’s hands smoothed out the bell
of her black vintage dress impatiently. A thick red halter strap ran from
behind her neck down the sides of the empire bodice and around the back. A
matching belt was sewn into the high waist. She had danced several times since
the Coven, as she’d secretly started calling her friends, arrived, but had been
too distracted to really enjoy herself. Every time she could get away with it
without insulting her current partner, she craned her neck to see if Xander was
somewhere in the crowd.

“Who
are
you looking for?” Jaimie asked her. Hero hadn’t
told her about the conversation she had had with Xander. She wasn’t sure why,
but she wanted to keep it to herself.

“Probably hoping her Adonis will show up so he can drop her
again,” Jeremy supplied, somehow making ‘Adonis’ sound like an insult.

“His name is Xander,” Hero said a little too quickly.

Jaimie looked shocked, “You are looking for him, aren’t you? Did
you forget that he called you a slut?”

“He apologized for that. That’s not what he said, anyway. That
wasn’t what he meant.”

“Have you been sneaking around behind my back?” Jaimie asked,
pretending to be a  jealous lover. When Hero didn’t answer she took Hero’s
silence as proof. “Oh my god, you little tramp.”

“Come off it, Jaimie. We talked for a minute the other day, that’s
all.”

“A minute? What, at the coffee shop?”

“No, after.”

“And you didn’t tell me? You bitch! Bathroom, now.”

“Not now, Jaimie.”

“Now, Hero, or you’re never getting these clothes back.” Jaimie
was once again dressed in an outfit from Hero’s closet. Tonight she was made up
to look like Rosie, a famous vintage ad of a woman in a red bandana and blue,
button-up shirt flexing her muscles with the words, “We can do it,” across the
top.

Hero rolled her eyes, exasperated. “Fine.” She stood up and
followed Jaimie into the women’s restroom, looking over her shoulder every few
feet. Just as the door swung shut behind her, she saw him step into the room
and saw Jessica Crowley fling herself onto him.

Xander walked into Hellespont, money already in his hand when the
bouncer started to ask. He told him to keep the change, as an apology for his
entrance last week. The bouncer, who turned out to be named Mike, became much
friendlier after that. He asked Xander a few questions about what Carolyn was
like. They chatted for a while, but Xander made his excuses as soon as he could
do so politely. He moved into the club, craning his neck in search of Hero.

He hadn’t been looking long when out of nowhere a warm, soft form
melded to his and nearly knocked him off his feet. It was Jessica, in a tight
red dress that left little room for the imagination. He hoped she was wearing
bloomers, but thought it unlikely. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl who
cared for that kind of etiquette. The dress wasn’t particularly ideal for swing
dancing either, nor the four-inch tall matching stilettos. He hugged her back
and put her back on her own feet quickly.

“Xander, come dance with me,” she begged.

“I just got here, give me a minute.”

“Oh come on,” she wheedled. “How can you say no to me when I look
like this?”

He didn’t tell her that as sexy as she looked, it was part of why
he wanted to say no. It bothered him when people didn’t bother to change their
paradigm at least a little to match the event they were attending. The dress
would have been fine for a night out or a different kind of club dancing, but
for swing it made no sense. She pouted at him with big eyes and an equally big
lower lip. He rolled his eyes and gave in.

In the bathroom, Hero turned around immediately to open the door
again and found her way blocked by Jaimie as she slipped between her friend and
the exit. Hero sighed.

“What? I want to go dance.”

“You talked to Xander?” Jaimie asked as if Hero hadn’t spoken.

“Yes, it wasn’t a big deal. He apologized, we joked a bit, he
walked me to the boat.”

“And you flirted.”

“What? No.”

“I know you, Hero DiBenedetto, and you don’t spend an hour trying
to separate your head from your neck to look at the door for nothing.”

“I just want to try again, that’s all.”

“Try what again?” Jaimie looked at her friend suspiciously.

“Dancing! We’re. At. A. Dance. I want to go dance.”

“With him.” Jaimie stated.

“Yes, jaimie, with him. With Xander. With Adonis. Now will you
move? I want to grab him before Jess attaches herself to him like a leech and
we have to burn her off him.”

“Why don’t you just let her have him? You can do better. Dance
with Brian.”

“Brian’s gay, Jaimie.”

“What? No, he isn’t.”

“Are you kidding? Haven’t you seen him staring at Jeremy?”

While Jaimie stood flabbergasted, her mouth opening and closing
like a fish gasping for air, Hero slipped past her and out of the bathroom.

Hero strode past the Coven’s table and straight to the edge of the
dance floor. Xander was twirling Jessica about ten feet away. She watched them
as they danced, annoyed. How was her dress staying on, anyway? Glue? The hem,
which Hero would have described as “barely covers her ass,” somehow defied the
laws of physics and refused the awkward climb anyone would have expected it to
make. They were dancing East Coast Swing, which meant Xander was dancing to
Jessica’s level. She smiled. It was the right thing for a good lead to do, and
gave Hero the satisfaction of know he would never be forced to do so with her.
She waited patiently, hands clasped in front of her while the song seemed to go
on and on.

Xander caught Hero’s eye as soon as she stepped up to the floor.
He grinned at her and nodded. Jessica beamed up at him, thinking the look was
for her. As Xander spun her, her face changed and she glared at Hero. Xander
dipped her as the song ended, and she held onto him as he brought her back up.

“Dance with me again,” she pleaded.

He shook his head. “I promised the next dance to someone else.”

“Please, don’t dance with her.”

His eyes grew hard and his voice firm. “Jess, you’re a great girl
and a lot of fun, but don’t tell me who I should or shouldn’t dance with again.
Ever.” Before she could answer he left her standing in the middle of the floor,
alone. She watched him go, hurt.

“For a minute I thought you were going to need surgery to get
free,” Hero joked as Xander walked up to her and took her hand.

“Hero DiBenedetto, will you dance with me?” he asked formally.

“I’d love to,” she responded, letting him lead her to the middle
of the floor.

Metisse’s ‘Boom Boom Ba’ started to play over the loudspeakers.
Xander took her up into a close, almost intimate position. His arm snaked
around her back, the back of his right hand turned to catch her beneath the
shoulder blade. Thumb and forefinger of his left wrapped around her wrist,
which he held low, level with her hip, a hold she was only familiar with in the
Blues style of dancing. He was so close she could feel the heat between them, a
charged cushion of space that provoked more of a rush of desire than if they
had actually been touching. She swallowed and bit her lip.

“What are we doing?” she asked, trying to determine what style he
intended to dance. She was used to dancing West Coast Swing to the song, like
most of the dancer’s around them were preparing to do as the intro wound out.

“Dancing,” he said with a mischievous grin.

“Brat,” she replied with a smile.

Then there was no more time for words. Leading from his chest,
Xander took a step forward. At the slightest pressure Hero slid a step back,
just slightly behind the beat. Almost as if ice-skating, they skimmed across
the floor, their steps sometimes recognizable as belonging to a specific dance,
sometimes the movements of a dance all their own. When Xander lead her in steps
she’d known for ages, each set ended pregnant with a pause. The pause they
filled with a pose, hungry eye contact, or the final movements of a turn as
they spun together. His deep blue eyes bored into hers, undaunted by the
intensity of making contact in a dance as passionate as this dance that was
sometimes the tango of American ballroom schools, sometimes the tango of Buenos
Aires, and sometimes a tango that transcended labels. For a brief moment as she
matched his stare, she was tempted to laugh. The temptation passed quickly.
Hero gazed as far into him as he seemed to be gazing into her.

Xander opened to a promenade, a move thousands of playful pairs
knew and mimicked whenever they imagined what it meant to tango. As Hero and
her lead glided past a couple dancing in their West Coast slot, he drew her
left hand across her face. She snapped into a tight turn within the circle of
his right arm and his fingers trailed across her ribs as she spun. As she came
out of the turn, he caught her again with the back of his palm against the
curve of her shoulder blade. The narrow space between them almost crackled with
the tension and passion the dance awakened with every slide, turn, and
footfall. Hero could feel it as if it were a physical thing. She marvelled at
the gentle, firm strength of his frame. He never forced her through any of the
steps. His hands, his arms, his chest simply moved, shifted, and as they did,
so did she. It reminded her of having someone whisper a foreign language in her
ear in dark corners and she swallowed at the thought. They had gone beyond
dancing, ascended movement and combined it with unspoken conversation. If she
hadn’t been dancing for so long she would have sworn their communication was
psychic instead of physical.
This
is body language,
Hero
thought.

The Coven watched as Xander and Hero wound across the floor in
their tango, gracefully, sensually weaving through the other dancers as if they
weren’t even there.

“What do you call THAT?” Evan asked.

“Tango, silly,” Leana said.

“Foreplay,” Jeremy remarked, no snideness in his voice.

Jaimie, who had been watching with a rapt expression of mild
irritation broken only by the occasional suspicious sideways glance at Brian,
nodded. “For once, I think Jeremy’s right.”

Jeremy smirked and stood, offering a hand to Leana. “Would you
like to dance?”

Leana looked surprised. Jeremy had been coming to Hellespont for
ages and rarely, if ever, left the table. “Sure!” she agreed as they went to
the floor.

Jaimie looked at Evan, “You, me, now.” She turned to Brian, “Sorry
to abandon you.”

“Go ahead. I’ll just enjoy the show,” Brian encouraged her with a wink.

Hero and Xander stalked a languid circle around each other, right
palm to right palm. Xander grinned at a thought and said, “You know, palm to
palm is holy palmer’s kiss.”

Hero pressed her teeth into her lip for a second before saying
with a smile, “Just dance, Romeo.”

Xander nodded, twirling her to the outside before spinning her
back into an inside turn and a dip, one arm threading hers around the back of
his neck while the other supported her waist. She arched her back as he brought
her out, her skirt flaring high as he sent her out and away from him. He
twirled her in again without letting go of her arm, twisting it gently around
her back and pulled her into him in a variation of a lunge called a corté. Her
free hand pressed against his bicep and her knee slid up until her thigh locked
into place on his hip. She leaned into him with her entire body, and everywhere
their two bodies could make contact, they did. Xander didn’t move, looking down
at Hero while she lifted her chin to meet his eyes. He watched her thoughts
spill across her face, so caught up in the moment that she was an open book.
Hero bit her lower lip yet again and swallowed while they held the pose for a
moment. Someone on the sidelines whistled and she realized the song was over.

They separated like the last drop of water from a rainstorm
clinging to the tip of a leaf. They parted as if the air had become molasses,
slowly melting away from each other as if it was impossible to move faster.
Hero spun out one last time to unwind her arm from behind her. Xander watched
as her dress swirled gently, rose and settled as if it were going to take all
the time in the world to rediscover the law of gravity.

Around them, the world hadn’t stopped, though a few couples who
had come to the floor for the next song, which had already begun to play, eyed
them strangely. When time resumed its normal flow, Xander offered Hero his arm.
She took it, slipping her through his until her shoulder almost touched his
arm.