10:27
The first thing Ivan did upon Carrie’s departure was look to the women left on the banquette to determine if Carrie’s disappearance had caused any alarm. Those unengaged continued to eat popcorn, pick at their nails, uncross and recross their legs, stare at the men at the tables across the floor, and basically do exactly what they’d been doing when Ivan first approached Carrie.
It almost felt like they were on a loop. But maybe that was their life. Caught in a loop. Repeating the same things again and again as time ate away at them.
Shaking off that dreary thought, Ivan looked around and assessed the situation the remainder of his friends were in. Not because he needed time or the thought of approaching that banquette again made his knees lock up. Nope. Totally an assessment thing. That would keep his eyes and mind firmly off the banquette.
To his right Ben was slowly dancing with the girl in the catsuit, if slowly dancing could be defined as basically standing still. Ben had his arms loosely linked around the girl’s waist, a respectful distance between himself and her. When she tried to step in to press herself against him Ben took a short step back on to an adjacent tile, maintaining the space between them. Ben stared intently down into the girl’s face. The girl stared intently back.
Their lips weren’t moving, suggesting a lack of talking, but it was hard to tell with the soaring notes of My Heart Will Go On – seriously, would that song go on for eternity? And if it did was it possible this was the Plane of Punishment because seriously that song was progressing from irritating to torturous – deafening Ivan to any other sound. Seriously.
Near, far, wherever they were Ivan kinda wanted to bonk the writer of the song on the top of the head. Repeatedly. In the tempo of My Heart Will Go On.
Ben looked at the girl with a rare sobriety. Not a hint of slyness or humor or the spark of mischief lit his eyes. He gazed down at his girl with an intensity that spoke of rigidly controlled emotions. Or maybe that was just Ivan’s projection.
A small emotion ripple traveled over Ivan, its impact so light it might as well not have happened at all. Ivan tossed a look back over his shoulder at Gwen and the group of women clustered around her. Siobhan and Prairie remained curled up against Gwen. Gwen remained with her head down. And Kim stared intently at Ivan then lifted a hand to make a shooing motion at him.
Ivan acknowledged the wave with a lift of his brows then turned back to look at the others on the dance floor. Farther to the right Dan box-stepped with the girl in the pink hot pants. By the way her head was tilted up and his was tilted down, Ivan thought maybe they were talking? Maybe? Ivan tracked his gaze from the right of the dance floor towards the left.
His attention snagged on Abe sitting on the banquette. They were sharing a box of popcorn with a girl with bright turquoise hair. Not the girl they’d first sat down with. Ivan lifted a hand to the height of his shoulder and waved. The movement must have caught Abe’s eye as they tilted their head to give him a quick side-eye. Ivan waggled his finger between Abe and the girl then mouthed, “Where’s the other one?”
Abe shrugged, made a vague waving gesture with the hand not lifting popcorn to their mouth, then pointedly turned back to smile at the girl next to them and said something to her. She immediately leaned in and grabbed some popcorn from the box and shoved it in her mouth in a gesture that was more child than woman.
Abe’s grin grew. They reached into the box, pulled out a piece of popcorn and threw it towards the girl who snaked her head around to catch it in her mouth. Both she and Abe grinned at her feat then they each leaned in so they were close enough to share breath.
When the girl leaned in just a bit further, looking like she’d steal a kiss Abe shook their head slowly then booped the girl on the nose with a piece of popcorn. She reared back and gave Abe a pout. Abe just smiled and flicked the piece of popcorn at her. She darted her head, caught it, then grinned.
Over to Ivan’s right Dempsey was box-stepping in, well, a box, slowly steering a woman with twin ponytails tied up with white pom poms that matched her very brief skirt. The large man’s expression was stoic. His partner chirped up at him, clearly trying to engage, but Dempsey just kept plodding her in the square formation.
He slowly expanded the square, adding more tiles so their circuit widened. Each time the square turned him to face the opposite side of the floor Dempsey’s gaze lingered on Gwen huddled with her friends with her chin high and her gaze bleak. It was the only time the larger man’s features shifted from grim determination into something vaguely melancholy.
When Dempsey’s square shifted so he was looking over his partner’s head at Ivan, Ivan caught Dempsey’s eye and subtly tilted his head towards the opposite side of the floor. Dempsey frowned slightly and shook his head. The next box he lead his partner in he steered so it abutted the tile Ivan stood on.
“What am I doing wrong?”
Dempsey’s partner looked up and over Dempsey’s shoulder, gaze trained on Ivan. She didn’t say anything. But she seemed intently curious about his answer.
“Talk. Make a connection. Get her to the other side of the floor. When she disappears you’re done. Don’t come back. Stay over there.”
Dempsey looked confused. Ivan pressed. “Your heart isn’t in this.”
At that moment My Heart Will Go On soared to a crescendo again so Ivan had to strain to hear Dempsey’s reply.
“What if she doesn’t want my help?”
The direction of Dempsey’s gaze made it pretty clear the “she” was not the girl in his arms.
“What if?”
“What if she gets angry at me?”
Ivan pitched his voice to be heard over the swelling sound of My Heart Will Go On. “I think you need to consider less how she feels about you and more how she feels.”
Dempsey’s partner’s chin shifted as she followed this conversation. There was something in her intensity that said she was very invested in what they said. Hmm.
“But,” Dempsey looked down at his partner. She looked up at him with a genuine smile, whispered, “but,” and nudged him with her hip before taking a large step in the direction of the other side of the floor. Dempsey had to move with her or stumble. He moved with her then looked back at Ivan.
Ivan lifted his chin in Gwen’s direction. “What she is doing is at least as important as what we are. I don’t think we’d be this far if she wasn’t taking on all the burdens the ladies are pouring out. If you can help her with it there’s more merit in that then in what we are doing.”
“You should listen to your friend,” Dempsey’s partner said to him in a girlish voice that did not match the strength with which she forcibly moved him another three tiles towards the other side of the room.
Dempsey turned to give Ivan a wide-eyed look. Ivan raised his hand and tapped his ear then mouthed, “listen”.
It was pretty clear that Dempsey was not leading as the couple danced in a sharp straight line towards Gwen. By the time they reached the end of the floor they were practically at a run. Dempsey’s partner stopped short and Dempsey almost crashed into her. She turned him so they were facing each other along the edge of the floor. Then she reached up, smoothed a hand along his jaw, and gave a big shove that sent him shuffling sideways off the floor.
As he tottered over the line his partner turned and gave Ivan a sharp look then lifted her fingers to waggle a goodbye. She hadn’t furled them more than once before her form went transparent so Ivan could see Gwen, Siobhan, and Prairie through her. And then between one blink and the next she was gone.
Ivan watched as Dempsey hovered behind Gwen, staring at the top of her head. Then he sank down on the floor and pressed his hand to the floor beside her. She turned to look at him. Something passed between them that between the distance and the sound of My Heart Will Go On Ivan couldn’t determine. But whatever it was Dempsey leaned into his braced arm to reach across himself and lay his hand on the side of Gwen’s head.
Okay. That was probably good. Ivan dusted his hands together while he let his gaze linger on Prairie huddled against Gwen. From where he stood and with the dim lighting it was difficult to make out the details but he thought she looked paler. He firmed his jaw and turned back towards the banquette though his gaze far preferred lingering on her than looking at any of the brightly painted ladies awaiting his attention.
“No!”
The sharp retort carried over the music from Ivan’s left. He swiveled, fists instinctively rising as his gaze took in Patti with a woman on each arm slowly shuffling around the floor.
Both of her partners had soft brown hair; one with strands almost to her waist while the other had theirs cropped just above their jaw with the length tucked behind one ear. They each had gamine features with plush lips. The one with the long hair had her mouth painted a soft pink while the one with the shorter hair’s smile was a gash of blue matching the patent corset and hot pants she wore. The longer-haired woman wore a flowing pink dress of some light material that moved on an invisible breeze or possibly on the waves of emotion that continued to emit from the women.
Other than the dresses, the hair, and the color of their lips the women were identical. Some eyes, same nose. Same large breasts though the corset highlighted the blue lipped girl’s while the pink dress’ plunging neckline revealed only the inner curves of the pink girl’s. Even the shape of their mouths were the same, just highlighted by different colors.
Twins. Maybe that was why Patti had elected to ask both to dance? Or maybe they just came as a set and Patti had gone along with it. Who knew.
Each of the women was leaning in, pressing their lush breasts to Patti’s upper arms as the women sought to run their lips over Patti’s neck in the case of the blue-lipped girl or grab Patti’s earlobe between pink lips in the case of the other girl.
Patti stiffened her arms, pushing the girls away slightly. “I said no!”
Again her voice carried over, or maybe under, the soaring strains of My Heart Will Go On. Once the women were less shrink-wrapped and more resting against her she slanted a smile at the blue then the pink girl. “Ladies, there’s enough of me to go around!”
The look she cast at Ivan over the blue one’s head suggested there was, in fact, not enough of her to go around.
“Help me,” she mouthed.
“Talk to them!” Ivan called over.
Patti frowned and shook her head like she couldn’t hear. Considering the volume of My Heart Will Go On and the way it was drilling into Ivan’s brain, making it hard to hear anything else or even think that clearly, he suspected she actually could not hear him. So he lifted a hand and made a talky-talk gesture.
She frowned and then craned a look at him. “What?”
Of course, her voice carried to him. Probably part of her Magick.
“Talk!” He made the talky gesture again.
Again she gave him the confused face.
Ivan sighed and started mentally counting squares. Once he settled on the right pattern to get him right behind Patti he hopped the floor in an L-pattern.
Landing on the white square directly behind Patti he leaned in and said in her ear, “Talk to them.”
The twins instantly turned to him.
“Hello,” they said in unison. Okay, that wasn’t creepy. At all.
He offered them a vague smile and said in Patti’s ear again, “Talk to them.”
She turned to look at him. “I am?”
“About?”
“Uh. Stuff?”
“Are they telling you a story about their sick granny who they live with and they need money to keep the heat on?”
Patti eyed him. “Uh…”
Ivan grinned and shook his head. “They don’t have a granny.”
“Hey,” the blue one snapped, “we have a granny.”
Ivan drawled, “But she isn’t sick. And you don’t live with her. And she has plenty of heat.”
Blue pouted and gave him the stink eye.
Ivan leaned in to talk into Patti’s ear, pitching his voice to be heard over My Heart Will Go On while keeping it low enough that most of his words shouldn’t drift to Pinky and Blue. “Make a connection.”
Patti lifted her brows and indicated her armfuls. “I’m connecting.”
“Not like that. Talk to them.”
“I am.”
Sass, who somehow retained it’s seat on Patti’s shoulder despite the snuggle twins, poked Patti in the ear Ivan was leaning in to talk into. Patti snapped a look at the mouse. “What?”
Sass flailed both paws at Patti then looked at her partners then flailed its paws again.
Patti lifted her brows. “Seriously, Sass, if you sing Dance I am going to…”
“Someday, we’ll find it,” Sass sang, “the Rainbow Connection.”
Patti narrowed her eyes at Sass.
“You should listen to the mouse.” Ivan grinned. “And to your new friends.”
Understanding dawned on Patti’s features. “Oh.”
She turned back to her partners and smiled. “Ladies. Do you like music?”
As Pinky and Blue started answering Patti she guided them further onto the floor. Their voices trailed off beneath the strains of My Heart Will Go On.
Seriously. The song was going from hated to outright ‘set it on fire’. If you could set a song on fire.
Then a new song rippled under My Heart Will Go On. As Ivan watched Patti started belting out something about blaming someone named Brett. Pinky and Blue smiled brightly and then their voices joined Patti as they repeated something about blaming their ex, blaming their ex, blaming their ex.
Ivan might not know the song, it didn’t seem the kind of thing they played at fundraisers or the Balls of the elite, but it sure seemed like Pinky and Blue knew it. He shrugged. Wouldn’t be the way he connected but, hey, it seemed to be working.
Satisfied Patti had a direction to go in, Ivan hopped back to the edge of the floor, reversing his L-pattern. A woman stood at the edge of the floor. By her expression she was waiting for him. She brushed back waist-length hair with a slow lift of a hand. The motion caught Ivan’s attention. The color of her hair held it.
Every color he could imagine was represented in the long strands. Blonde in shades from platinum to dark ash. Dark brown, light brown, and every brown in between. Red from strawberry to claret. And then came the colors not found in nature. Turquoise. Teal. Purple. Violet. Pink from the softest pastel to the strongest and deepest rose. Blue. Green. Peacock. Orange. As it shifted under her hand the colors flexed and twisted along the lengths.
Ivan had a kaleidscope as a kid, a simple thing of glass beads and a cardboard tube with an ever-shifting world of color and shape that held young Ivan’s attention time and again. The woman’s hair reminded him of that, pulling him back to quiet afternoons pointing that cardboard tube at a light and spinning, spinning, spinning its cylinder as he traced patterns faster and more scintillating than thought.
“Hello.” Her low voice drew his attention from the kaleidoscope hair and up to a face that was hard for his gaze to parse. At first he thought her plain with skin of no particular shade and cheeks that were subtly smooth and eyes of a faded blue, but then he blinked and she had the most beautiful and refined features with skin a flawless porcelain, high cheekbones with a flush of pink at the crest of them, full pouting lips in a slightly deeper shade of blush, and eyes of sapphire that held stars at the pupil.
Those eyes held Ivan transfixed. He’d say it was hard to look away but, really, he wasn’t trying. If she was wearing clothes, and he was certain she was wearing clothes, he couldn’t say what they were because his gaze never drifted below her chin.
“Hello.”
“Would you like to dance?” she asked.
“I think that’s my question.”
She quirked a kaleidoscope brow. “Is it?”
“I would like to dance. Would you?”
“I would.”
She held out an exquisitely manicured hand to him. Without hesitation he took it and stepped back onto the floor, drawing her with him.
“I’m Ivan.”
“Aria.”
Her voice was lyrical; a compliment to the name.
My Heart Will Go On started up another cycle and Ivan winced. Aria’s gaze latched on the movement and she… well, Ivan wouldn’t say she frowned but her features shifted. Still beautiful. Mesmerizing. But shifted.
“Do you not like the song?”
Ivan considered lying but settled for the truth. “I didn’t hate it, specifically, before coming in here but, yeah, now? Not my favorite.”
“Oh.” Aria’s perfect mouth pouted and she looked down for a mikro. Then she looked up and the music stopped.
“Is that better?” Her voice rang like a bell, clear in the near silence punctuated only by the singing of Patti and her partners.
Ivan shook his head. “Not very good for dancing. Though I now feel very strongly about some guy named Brett.”
He gave a nod over to where Patti, Pinky, and Blue were singing. Aria followed the direction of his look. The corners of her mouth curved up and the look she gave the three felt very indulgent. Proud even?
She turned her gaze back to Ivan. As she did so the music shifted from the soaring notes of My Heart Will Go On to something that was all heavy bass and the sound of a saxophone. A man started singing about looking at, not looking at, someone gorgeous and dressed in blue.
Ivan looked down and saw Aria was, in fact, dressed in blue. Something soft, silken, with a subtle neckline that hinted at rather than flaunted her porcelain cleavage.
He found himself naturally falling into the rhythm of the song, leading Aria out onto the floor where they fell into easy rapport, gliding across the tiles like they were ice. The skirt of her blue dress drifted, sometimes falling away from a high side slit to reveal a single long thigh, sometimes drifting around to wash against Ivan’s legs.
She was the perfect height to be Ivan’s dance partner. The top of her head was in the region of his eyes, making her top out somewhere around six feet tall. He glanced down quickly to determine how much of that was heels and realized she was barefoot. Hmm.
Aria tilted her head back slightly so she could meet Ivan’s gaze. “Tell me, Ivan. Do you have a girl?”
Ivan cast a very quick look back at Prairie. It was instinctual and he thought pretty subtle but when he looked down to meet Aria’s gaze her lips curved on a smile that said she’d caught the look.
As her lips parted on more words that were likely questions Ivan really didn’t want to answer, he lifted his brows and pulled on all his politician’s charm to ask in a sly tone that begged her to play along. “Do you?”
She lifted her multi-hued brows and then gave him a smile that started at her slightly lifted shoulders. “Maybe?”
“Then maybe me too.”
He lifted his arm to twirl her under it. She went effortlessly with the movement, all liquid grace. Ivan thought that many, if not most, of the women he’d danced with at the social functions his profession required of him could have only hoped for the finesse this woman displayed.
Don’t worry I’m not looking at you, the singer crooned.
But, oh, was Aria looking at him. The singer trailed off and the saxophone poured in. Aria smoothly glided along with the slinky sound and Ivan followed. Her movements and the music and the moment commanded the rhythm of his body and the rhythm of his heart.
The singer repeated and repeated and repeated Don’t worry I’m not looking at you.
Ivan lost count of how much of the echo was the rhythm of the song and how much of it was the song looping on itself until it became a constant, mesmerizing flow. He was lost in Aria’s sapphire eyes, lulled by the low thrum of the song and the repeating lyrics from the singer. The rest of the room faded away, lost in the power of the moment.
Aria cocked her head delicately to the side. “Are you here to save me, Ivan?”
Ivan didn’t consider where the question came from. It felt as much an extension of the moment as the answer that came to his lips. “Do you want to be saved?”
Aria’s head tilted a bit more, enough so she was now contemplating the space beyond Ivan’s shoulder; her expression placid, the spark in her sapphire eyes anything but. “Want?”
Instantly the next word came, almost unbidden, from Ivan. “Need?”
Aria righted her gaze, snagging Ivan’s in its sapphire and stars hue.
“Perhaps.” She paused a moment, her eyes searching his. “Are you going to save me?”
Ivan didn’t hesitate. “I will.”
“Even if it’s dangerous?”
The corner of Ivan’s mouth kicked up. “It hasn’t been yet?”
Aria’s limpid gaze didn’t shift and yet Ivan read a hard determination deep, deep in the depths; way back where instinct drove.
“What about impossible?” Ivan had no trouble hearing Aria over the bass and the saxophone and the waves of the singer’s voice reassuring he wasn’t looking at him. Nor did he have any trouble hearing all that she didn’t say. “What if saving me alters everything?”
Holding her gaze, Ivan lifted his brows and held her steady in his gaze just as he held her firm and safe in his arms. “Maybe everything needs altering.”
Aria searched his eyes for a moment more then she gave him an enigmatic smile and went intangible in his arms. One moment he was holding a beautiful woman, drifting over the floor; the next he stood alone with empty arms and a heart that felt half a size bigger and so very raw.
The room faded with Aria. Ivan didn’t even have time to stare down at his empty hands, clasping air. One moment there was dim light, tiled floor, smoke and popcorn and memory; the next there was nothing.
The last thing to remain was the sound of bass and saxophone and a male voice crooning, “Don’t worry I’m not looking at you.”
Enter The Woods 