Summer Seduction Read online

  CLASS HAD BEEN complete crap.

  Who was I kidding? It wasn’t going to get any better because I was refusing to allow myself to look at the dance choreography as more than just steps with numbers.

  And every time I would try to teach a new move, it was as if I felt the ghost of Marlo all over my body, as if my skin couldn’t help but recount how his heat had felt against it. I was so emotional that by the time the class was over, I didn’t even say goodbye to the students. I just ran out of the studio and let my legs lead me.

  I stopped when I made it to the dock on the lake.

  It was a hot, peaceful day, hardly any ripples in the water. I inhaled through my nose, exhaled through my mouth, and watched.

  I watched the wild ducks quack at one another.

  And I felt a buildup of tears when a few little tiny ducks fell in a row behind their mama, and I wondered what had brought me to such a horrible place that I was jealous of such an innocent tiny animal.

  What I wouldn’t give, I thought, to be in that little line without a care in the world.

  I’d believed that high school had been the deep black sea.

  And then college taught me to dream.

  And camp… well, camp was supposed to be a stepping stone to that dream. Instead, it felt like everywhere I looked I was given nothing but reminders that I was alone and always would be.

  That the universe for one reason or another didn’t want to play fair when it came to Ray De Lato.

  “So, the great mystery’s solved,” came a familiar voice. “Ducks make you cry.”

  I snorted out a stupid laugh and didn’t turn around. “What do you want, Jackson?”

  “Not just Jackson,” came another voice I recognized as Brax.

  “Ah, fantastic.” I hung my head. “You guys here to shove me in the lake and hold my head under water? I’m taking volunteers. So far the ducks have it…”

  They both walked up to me, flanking me on each side. Without looking at me, Brax handed me my T-shirt from the bathroom, while Jackson dropped the caddy at my feet.

  “It’s peaceful out here” was all I could manage to get out.

  “Water always looks peaceful…” Jackson said in a rough voice. “…until you see what lurks underneath. Who’s to say we don’t have a giant-ass shark out there just waiting to chomp on a camper who never learned the breast stroke?”

  Brax crossed his arms. “It’s always wild beneath water. We just like to pretend that it’s peaceful so that we have peace. Most of nature’s a smokescreen.”

  “Bees…” Jackson let out a sigh. “They make honey, they’re fuzzy, and they sting the shit out of you if you aren’t careful.”

  “Geese eat their young,” Brax pointed out. “And swan dads drown theirs.”

  “Is this conversation supposed to make me feel better?” I muttered.

  “The real question is, why do you feel bad?” Jackson asked.

  I gulped and looked down. “Why ask a question you know the answer to?”

  A hand touched my shoulder. I wanted to slap it away. It was Brax, and as much as I wanted to shove him into the water for what he’d said, part of me knew that it had been based in truth, however bad it hurt.

  “Ray…” Brax gripped my shoulder. “…I fucked up. I’m sorry. Had I known you were in there…”

  I jerked away from him. “You did me a favor. At least now I know.”

  “But I don’t think you do. I mean, maybe in the beginning it was this revenge—”

  “I can’t talk about this,” I said with a wobbly voice. “Thanks for my shirt.”

  His sigh was heavy, and then footsteps thumped on the wooden dock.

  Jackson, however, was still there.

  I looked up into his green eyes. “You should go too.”

  “I know.” He shrugged. “But I figured you already had the girl talk with Jen this morning, at least if my suspicions are correct, so now it’s time for phase two.”

  “Phase two?” I asked dumbly.

  He moved before I could stop him.

  He wrapped his bulky arms around me and squeezed tight.

  I had no fight left. I let him hold me.

  And then I started to cry.

  He kissed the top of my head and whispered, “Take it from a manwhore who knows his faults. Marlo may get caught up in bad intentions but it’s because he feels… everything.”

  “So that excuses him for using me?”

  “Nah, I’m not saying it’s ever okay for a guy to use sex as a way to gain revenge, and I’m not saying that I haven’t done my fair share of shitty things when it comes to the opposite sex. What I am saying is that Marlo isn’t the type of guy who has sex to have sex. He has to feel. If my one-night stands are to get off, his are to create a symphony. It was like that all through college. He’d date girls, get bored, move on, and it was never them he fell in love with. It was their talent. It was the way they sang, danced… It was the way they created.”

  I pulled back and narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you saying I was a pity-lay?”

  He smirked. “You mean because you refuse to feel the music and suck at dancing?”

  I swatted him with my hand, but at least I was smiling again.

  And then he did something unexpected, and it unarmed me. He smiled as if he had a secret he wanted to tell.

  I waited.

  Pondering with expectation.

  Tell me I’m different.

  Tell me something.

  Anything.

  “With you…” he started, paused for a beat, then continued. “…it’s never been about the talent, has it?” He leaned in. “It’s you he fell for first. Not what you could offer the world through your acting, your dancing, your voice — but through what you could offer the world by simply being you.”

  I stumbled backward.

  He nodded once as if his job was done and then started walking off. When he got about halfway down the dock, he stopped and called over his shoulder. “Use it, Ray.”

  “Use what?”

  “Your pain.” And off he went, in his tight blue staff shirt and his skinny jeans and Air Jordans.

  I wasn’t sure how long I watched the empty dock.

  How long I listened to the ducks.

  Or how long I tossed around what Brax and Jackson had both said. They’d made me rethink what I didn’t want to question. Because it was easier to hurt. It was easier to be angry at Marlo than to believe there was another reason other than his ultimate revenge on my coldhearted soul.

  And as if the universe was still against me, the wind picked up, and Marlo started walking toward the lake.

  I NEEDED SPACE.

  I needed to think.

  I needed to dance.

  And every damn studio was taken.

  I needed the music. I needed it to consume me, so she wouldn’t. The more I thought about her, the more it hurt, the more I felt like this rope was choking my neck, threatening to pop my head off.

  I hated feeling out of control.

  I hated that every fucking second I was wondering if she was still crying, if she was still pissed, while still trying to control my own anger that history was repeating itself. As if I stood up in front of God and everyone and said, “I choose her.”

  She would laugh.

  Wouldn’t she?

  I’d grabbed one of the extra iPads from the office and made it down to one of the beaches on the lake, then peeled my shirt over my head. I kicked the sand and sank to my haunches. The water was too quiet.

  I needed something loud.

  I needed an escape so damn bad.

  How did it take one incident to bring me back to all the fears of not having food on the table? The fears of going to school in the morning and wondering if I would get bullied again. If I’d get texts from random numbers saying I should just kill myself and get it over with.

  Or worse, the online chat room for our high school that almost always had something to say about my claiming to be wit
h Ray the night after we were together. As if I was a lying piece of shit who didn’t deserve life.

  I squeezed my eyes closed as memories surfaced. Memories of prom night, where all I’d wanted was to just go and be a part of something.

  Where I’d watched her dance as prom queen.

  Where I had watched him kiss her as the prom king.

  Where I’d wished I had something more to give her than a name that had been given to me by a stranger.

  And a wallet with exactly ten dollars in it.

  I loathed her in that moment.

  With her glittering crown and sparkly dress. With her fake smile and fake friends, and the fake fan club that clapped and shouted for her.

  Where had they been on graduation day?

  Where had they been on her birthday?

  Nonexistent.

  Smokescreens.

  Shadows.

  And yet, I’d been pushed away. The only real thing.

  I stood and kicked the sand again.

  With a sigh, I grabbed the iPad, hit one of the first songs, slipped off my shoes, and closed my eyes.

  I HID BEHIND one of the trees.

  I watched him kick dirt.

  I watched a war rage on his face, a battle in his muscles, flexing all around his body as he turned in a small circle.

  And then his shoes went flying.

  His shirt was gone.

  I sucked in a shallow breath at the sight of him.

  Of his beauty.

  Marlo was like this barely restrained animal; every muscle flexed without warning, even his jaw seemed to be cut from steel. He clenched it as if he needed to feel physical pain.

  And then he turned on some music. It only took a second before I recognized “Zombie” by Bad Wolves. He blared it loud enough to consume my thoughts and scare every animal within a five-mile radius.

  He moved his hands, so slight, so purposeful that it drew me in, sucked me away from my pity party and invited me to watch.

  And I lost all sense of reality as I followed him on a journey I knew there would be no coming back from.

  Contemporary dance was my favorite to watch. I knew the biggest fault I had with dancing was the obvious — I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t trust the audience to see my pain, to feel it with me, to experience it again and again with its crippling agony.

  I wasn’t that brave.

  Marlo was.

  He thrust his right foot into the air and twisted his entire body then came down and kicked up more dirt, the movement so natural it was hard to tell if the plume of dirt was accidental or part of his performance. He flipped back onto his hands and then collapsed to his knees as sand flew around his body. His hands sank into the grains, and he gripped the earth as if it was his only tether, as if it was both fighting him and grounding him. When he pulled his hands back, he roughly rubbed the sand up and down his arms and stood. Grit now coated his face, his entire body as the music slowed. He lifted his hands into the air and let them hang as though in suspension. His fists clenched. Then he brought his hands down and beat his chest. Another spin had him flying in the air, the dirt coming with him, and he landed again on his knees in the sand. Sand exploded around him, covering his face and body again as he moved with the music, swaying back and forth, gripping his head like the melody was torturing him, as if it threatened to release his demons — as if he wanted it to.

  Mouth dry, I stood watching as tears welled in my eyes. On the next verse, he stood, his body trembling as the music slowed. Each line he made with his body was perfection.

  Another spin, and he was on the ground again, rolling around with the sand, one with both the earth and the music.

  I couldn’t see where he began, where the beach ended.

  All I saw was music.

  All I heard was his body crying out with the feel of it, with the need to tell a story in such a violent way that he couldn’t hold back even if he’d tried.

  And as the song neared its end, he collapsed onto his knees, hands uplifted, then he jumped to his feet and did an aerial before falling back onto the beach and bouncing into a backflip. Sand spun around and around his body until it was like a tornado of grit and emotion.

  And like that, it was over. The song ended. Only the gentle lapping of waves on the shore broke the silence. Marlo’s chest heaved, but otherwise he didn’t move.

  And I knew.

  I had seen not just a dance.

  But a man expressing his emotions in a way I’d never experienced before.

  He hadn’t held back.

  Because men like Marlo didn’t know how.

  And as I quietly walked back to the privacy of my cabin, I wondered if what Brax and Jackson had shared was true.

  Had he fallen for the woman first?

  I DIDN’T NECESSARILY want to go to the late-night staff get-together, mainly because I imagined it would be about as uncomfortable as showing up at a party naked.

  But Jen had convinced me.

  Plus, apparently, it was Greased Lightning night.

  Who knew?

  I hadn’t brought a ton, but I did still have my leather leggings, so I threw them on with a pair of flat sandals — so I didn’t trip on a tree branch and meet my untimely death — and then grabbed a white crop tank. My hair was a raging mess on account of this morning I’d been under the shower without conditioner and hadn’t had time to really do anything with it except stare at the tangles in the mirror and be reminded of what it had felt like to have Marlo pull it.

  Great.

  By the time Jen knocked on my cabin door with a giant grin on her face, I was hot and bothered and pissed all at the same time. How dare he still have control over me hours later!

  How dare you spy on his special dance and imagine another nighttime routine.

  Right.

  I was going to lose my mind before the summer was over.

  The soundtrack to Grease filled the night air as we walked in silence toward the giant bonfire.

  Campers were supposed to be in their cabins by nine.

  It was our only time to decompress, to be stupid college kids before joining the work force by taking on three jobs at three different restaurants while trying to support ourselves as starving artists.

  Jackson was standing on one of the stumps combing his hair back, jiggling his leg. “I got chills, they’re multiplying, and I’m losing control…” He winked over at us.

  “He can sing,” I said dumbly, a bit awestruck.

  Jen sighed in annoyance. “It’s how he gets so much ass. He’s like a black widow that lures you into his Justin-Timberlake-themed web only to wrap you like a fly with each verse.”

  “Graphic.” I nodded with a small smile. “Does that mean he Justin Timberlaked you right into bed?”

  She scrunched up her nose. “That, paired with his ability to talk any human out of all clothing… yup, pretty much!”

  Jackson held out his hands as a few of the guys jumped behind him and started dancing. That was the thing about theater camp — we were all cut from the same cloth. We lived to perform, to act, to sing. Most of the staff members were triple threats. Broadway? No problem. Choreography? Easy. Golden Globe? Nailed it.

  We couldn’t be hired for this camp and not have talent.

  Nerves erupted in my belly.

  I had to make this work.

  Then again, it wasn’t like my parents were supportive anyway. What if I just did it? What if I just moved without the agent? Without any sort of security from them?

  All they had to offer me was money.

  And even that was given only when they deemed it reasonable or felt guilty.

  I let out a sigh, not realizing I’d walked all the way up to Jackson until he grabbed my arm and pulled me up on the stump with him. “You got second verse.”

  That was all he said before wrapping me around his arms and thrusting me into a dance — body roll, body roll, hip swivel.

  My eyes widened as Jen grinned and lifted her hand
s into the air. “Justin Timberlake web!”

  Hmm.

  I hopped off the log and shoved Jen toward Jackson. His smile fell a bit as he pulled her onto the log and repeated his movements, but this time… this time I noticed something.

  When I’d been up there, he had touched my hips.

  With Jen up there — it was like he was afraid to touch.

  Interesting.

  His movements slowed as she sang, and then with a laugh, she finished the second verse and shoved him off the log. “Where my pink ladies at?”

  A few of the girls ran over to me and suddenly I was in my own version of hell as the girls started snapping their fingers and then falling into choreography around me.

  I either had to join or run.

  I eyed Marlo on the other side of the fire, watching the dancing, watching us.

  His look made my decision easy.

  I fell into step with the rest of the girls and let myself believe nobody was noticing as we danced around Jen and sang the rest of “Summer Lovin’” while the guys circled us, snapping their fingers and twirling around, and then someone grabbed me by the waist and flipped me 180.

  Every girl was paired off.

  Unfortunately, my other half was Marlo.

  And he was touching me again.

  He twirled me and then picked me up and swung me around his back.

  I didn’t want to crack my neck, so I let him lead and prayed I could remember how to swing dance without meeting an untimely death against the campfire or nearest rock.

  He flipped me backward over his arm.

  He gave me no choice but to trust him.

  And as the music ended, and everyone erupted into cheers, his hand lingered on my waist, pretending to belong there.

  His eyes locked on mine as if they couldn’t look away.

  This morning, he’d been moving inside me.

  And right now, we couldn’t even use words.

  I was afraid if I spoke, I’d yell.

  I was afraid I would scream my truth.

  Afraid I would cry.

  Worried the last parts of me that I kept safe would be unlocked, and he’d throw away the key, laughing.

  Revenge sex, revenge sex.