The Rules Regarding Gray (3 page)

“I’ll rub yours first when you spend eight hours on them during a day.”

He scoffed. “Not like anyone forced you to be a dancer.”

She sighed. She was almost regretting asking him over. Maybe a quiet night at home was what she’d needed, and she’d mistaken that need for veggie fajita’s and the world’s biggest example of spoiled-only-child-syndrome in the flesh. But when she looked up at him again, he was grinning at her. He winked and then let his leg trail up the inside of hers as a warm tremor radiated out into her body.

* * * *

Gray woke up to Ian’s naked skin surrounding her. He wasn’t overly large at six foot tall, but he was sure as hell larger than her small frame, and when she woke up, she was sweating and uncomfortable.

She walked into the bathroom, closing the door before she turned the light on, and then she yawned as she wandered to the sink, turned the faucet on, and flushed her face in cold water. She peered up at herself in the mirror, and she stared. Even stooped over, her breasts had no fullness to them. They weren’t mosquito bites, but they were little more than that. She was judging her breasts as she stood in the bathroom in the middle of the night. Odd… The thing was, she’d always liked her smaller tits just fine.

When she stood upright she stared at them, and when she covered one with the palm of her hand, she squeezed. She didn’t even fill her own palm, and she let out a huff of breath as she released her hold on herself. Her pale skin instantly flushed pink where her hand had been gripping her breast. “Small tits are dancer’s tits,” she commented quietly to herself. It wasn’t really her comment though. She’d heard it more times than she could recall—largely from dancers who had, well … small tits. A convenient expression.

When she wandered back out to the kitchen to get a drink, she left the lights out. Her loft was large and open with incredibly high ceilings and expansive arched windows that let in a yellowish-pink light from the city streetlamps below. There was nothing at all but open space separating her from Ian who was snoring softly in her bed, sprawled out in the middle.

When Ian’s cell phone vibrated across the kitchen counter, she picked it up, glancing at it. “JAS” flashed on the screen, and she set it down for a moment before picking it up again.

“What the fuck do you want?” she asked dryly as she answered.

Jasper’s warm chuckle returned to her, and she smiled. He had a deep voice, and his quiet laughter sent that warmth straight through the phone and into her body.

“Well, if it isn’t my new friend Gray. You have a thing for Ian’s phone, I see.”

“He’s asleep. You realize it’s two-thirty in the morning?”

“I do. I just closed up for the night, and I wanted to see if he was still up.”

“I’m afraid he’s not.”

“Hmm… So, since you’re dating my best friend, I feel like I should know something about you.”

She imagined his eyes watching her as she listened to his voice. He not only had beautiful eyes, but she’d noticed instantly he had this expression that suggested his brows were permanently arched in this rather cool, cocky sort of way. The look seemed to imply the world was nothing more than a thing to be smirked at. And she couldn’t help but wonder if it was exactly that to him.

“Well, what would you like to know?” She was talking quietly.

“Where do you come from? What’s your story?”

She sighed, collapsing onto the barstool that sat at the kitchen island. “Umm… I’m from Boise, Idaho originally. My parents moved to Austin when I was eight when my dad’s job was transferred, and I started taking dance lessons through the Ballet Austin Academy. I eventually moved into their apprentice program and was then contracted through the Ballet Austin Company. I made principal a few years ago. My father was transferred back to Idaho for his job around the same time, and I stayed behind. They work hard. They’re a few years from retiring now, and they’re getting ready to take their first overseas vacation.” She shrugged her shoulders as though he could see her. “My family is about as run-of-the-mill normal as you can get. Not much more to say than that.”

“Oh, I bet there’s plenty to say.” He was silent for a moment, and she didn’t push the conversation any. “I have to say, I don’t think about professional ballet when I think about Austin, Texas.”

She chuckled. “We’re a small company in comparison to New York or Chicago. But we’re a good company, and in truth, I have more opportunities here. Besides, I love Austin. It’s home now—even if my voice doesn’t have quite the requisite twang to it.”

She stood, wandering over to her practice area. She had a large twenty foot by twenty foot square of pristinely polished wood floors that sat in the back corner of her loft, and the two exterior walls that framed the space were lined in mirrors with a rail mounted to them.

She let her fingers brush gently over the wooden rail as she watched herself in the mirror. She was naked as a jaybird, and the soft pink from the street lamps outside the front of her building illuminated the side of her body that was closest to the front of her loft.

Jasper laughed again. “Well, I have no twang either, so don’t feel bad. I thought you were plenty good today.” He cleared his throat. “Your dancing, I mean.”

“Didn’t you hear the choreographer? My attitude is shit.” She gripped the bar with her free hand, and she turned out her left foot, bending her knee slightly as she lifted her right leg behind her. It was nearly mindless at this point, and she bent her right leg in a ninety-degree angle from her body as she lifted it higher behind her. She pulled up her chest and dropped her shoulders to elongate her neck, and she studied herself.

“I heard the choreographer plenty, and if you ask me,
his
attitude is shit.”

She busted out laughing loudly then, losing her position for a moment as her leg fell, but she regained control, lifting her leg again and studying her body. Ian moaned, snorted, and then started snoring again from the opposite front corner of the loft. “It’s a dance position. Not attitude as in behavior. Attitude as in a modified … arabesque I suppose you could say.”

“I see. Well the choreographer’s
attitude
still sucked.”

“Oh, he has his moments.” She reached back with her free hand, pulling her leg up behind her back, her foot over her head. It wasn’t an easy position when her other hand was holding a phone to her ear, but she focused, and she stretched her body. “They all do. This is actually off-season for us, and we’re just getting into rehearsing our repertoire now for the start of our fall season.”

“Interesting. So, tell me, what is it you love about dancing?”

She dropped her leg and then lifted it to rest on the bar. It was ridiculously lewd given her nakedness. It opened up the space between her legs, and the cool air around her tickled and taunted her skin. “Umm…” She reached to her breast, letting her hand glide over the small swell. “There’s something incredibly… I don’t know… Arousing in some way. It’s like—”

“Fucking?”

Her breath left her gasping out a nervous laugh. “Uh… I suppose they have their similarities.” Her hand dropped from her breast, and she lowered her leg, staring at her body straight on.

“Well, then, how lucky you are.”

She laughed as she wandered over to one of the large arched windows that sat in the front corner of her loft, and she stared down at the streetlamps below. “So, you grew up with Ian in San Diego, right?” She’d been silent too long by the time she spoke.

“Mm-hmm. From the time I was in middle school. I was new to the area. No one much liked me, and after I got in more fights than I could keep track of in my first month there and got suspended twice, Ian apparently thought I was cool enough to hang out with.”

“Why didn’t anyone like you?”

He hummed for a moment. “I was a bit rough for Torrey Highlands. I was only there because my mom split and my dad and I couldn’t get along. He shipped me off to live with my grandmother. She fit in to her upper class neighborhood perfectly. Me … not so much. My mother was Samoan enough that not even my dad’s genetic contribution to my DNA could help me fit in there.”

“I’m sorry,” she offered quietly.

“Don’t be. Kids are just kids. They don’t know how to deal with what they’ve never had to deal with before. And I had one hell of a chip on my shoulder too.” He chuckled for a second, but it wasn’t humor she was hearing in his voice. “I’d grown up dirt poor. My grandmother had cut my father off financially when he started … oh … let’s say getting in some
legal
trouble. My father could never hold down a job because he was too hung over to function most days, and my mom was no better. My grandmother tried to help out with me financially, but she knew full well any money she gave my parents would go to either drugs or alcohol. Then my mom split, and my dad dumped me off on my grandmother. It should have been my saving grace, but … you toss me into Torrey Highlands yuppy-ville public schools, and I’m not sure it’s so surprising I struggled to make friends.”

“So you beat the shit out of people instead of playing nice,” she chided.

“Something like that.” He took a deep breath, and he sighed.

She wasn’t sure if that meant he was getting bored with this conversation or not. “Was your dad an alcoholic?” She cringed at how personal that question was—not to mention the fact she’d been willing to ask it of a man who was little more than a stranger to her.

He hummed for a second. “He was an addict period. Not a very nice one, either. Though, I can’t say he was any nicer when he was sober.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s twice now you’ve apologized about my life. You’re starting to make me feel sorry for
myself
.”

She laughed quietly.

“So… what should I bring to Ian’s for dinner on Saturday?”

She smiled. “You cook?”

“If I didn’t, I’d have starved long ago.”

She
was humming that time. “Don’t worry about bringing anything. We’ll handle it.”

Ian started murmuring in his sleep, moaning out her name as she listened to the bedding being rustled around.

“Listen, I better go.” She wandered back over to the kitchen, standing at the counter. “I’ll let Ian know you called tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah. Have a good night, Gray.”

“You too.”

She disconnected and then crept back to her bed, squeezing in beside Ian as his sleepy subconscious refused to move from his place in the middle of the bed. She sighed, turning away from him and trying to get comfortable. She definitely should have opted for a night alone.

Chapter Three

Jasper watched as Gray’s eyes bulged when he entered the kitchen at Ian’s house that Saturday night. She was standing at the stove, and as she turned, her eyes took in the six bottle wine carrier he’d gotten from the liquor store.

“Wow. You must think I can hold my alcohol,” she commented.

“I asked Ian what you liked. He said red. I said what kind, and he said—”

“He didn’t have a clue did he?”

“Nope.”

She wiped her hands on a dishtowel, and as she approached him, he inhaled slowly and deeply. She smelled amazing. It was citrusy, but sweet, and as she stood up on her tiptoes to peer at the bottles he held, it brought that scent straight into his nostrils. She twisted and lifted the bottles one by one, checking out the labels, and when she found one she liked, she smiled up at him.

“Malbec. Good choice.”

“I’m not sure one good pick out of six makes me much of a sommelier, but I’m glad that’ll work for you,” he commented as he moved to the drawer where he knew he’d find the wine bottle opener. He left the remaining five bottles in the carrier on the counter, and as he turned around and leaned against the counter, he started on the bottle and she watched him. Her lips pulled up sweetly moments before she turned back to the stove.

“Where’s Ian?” he asked casually as he started twisting the corkscrew into the top.

She cocked her head toward him. “He just jumped in the shower.”

“You don’t mind that I let myself in?” He’d never bothered to knock before, but he was suddenly questioning whether this was a single man’s home anymore or not.

She more than cocked her head back to him then. “It’s not my home to mind, but if it were, no, I wouldn’t.”

There was something radiant about her smile. It was exceptionally sweet and innocent to look at, more so than he was used to seeing. He nearly felt like he was looking at a virginal young woman, rather than a woman who “liked her sex” as Ian had described her. She was just too—

“What has Ian said about me?” She didn’t look at him at all when she asked that rather loaded question.

“I thought we took care of our own introductions the other day with our two-thirty A.M. phone chat,” he remarked sarcastically.

“That’s not what I’m talking about. I mean, what did
he
say to
you
about
me
?”

He watched her for a moment. “I’m not sure it’s appropriate for us to discuss this.”

She finally did turn fully around to him. “That’s precisely why we should talk about it now, before he gets out of the shower.” The side of her lip pulled up as she focused on him, and there was a mischievous glint in her eyes.