Page 16 of Beautiful Savage
My breath catches sometimes when he enters, just a small hitch I can't control. His cedar scent fills the apartment, and my body responds before my mind can stop it. My responses are more real than anything Jarrod ever squeezed out of me, even though I am a prisoner.
I need to understand what he is. The only test I know is the one he's refusing to give me. If I can make him look, really look at me, I'll see what kind of man has me locked in this tower above a club. If he keeps refusing, I stay suspended in this strange purgatory of careful meals and unacknowledged proximity.
The mission crystallizes as I stand at the counter, pressing my thumb to the inside of my left wrist where I've painted a delicate line of leaves. Small marks I've been adding when the urge strikes, keeping Papa's garden on my skin while I'm trapped here.
I'm going to make him look at me. Whatever it takes.
Three nights later, the cabaret music drifts up louder than usual. I'm alone. He's been gone since dinner, down in whatever office he manages security from. The bass thrums through the floorboards, punctuated by applause that suggests something special is happening below.
I follow the sound down the back hallway, past the laundry room where I've been washing my few clothes, toward the service stairs. At the top landing, I discover a small balcony overlooking the main floor, a service vantage point tucked behind the upper architecture where nobody can see me.
La Sirena spreads below me in all its art deco glory. My breath catches at the sight. Warm golden light bathes hundreds of guests. Crystal chandeliers cast dancing shadows across walls of burgundy and brass. The crowd glitters with diamonds and silk, Miami's elite in their element.
A woman commands the stage, tall, statuesque in a black gown that pools at her feet, her hair a vivid green. Her voice fills the space without effort, something torch-song slow that makes the room hold its breath. She must be the club's headline performer, the one who draws people back night after night.
Movement below catches my eye. Adrian, who brings me food occasionally when Gunner is busy, works the floor with fluid grace. He touches a shoulder here, shares a laugh there, his attention completely present for whoever stands before him. Even from up here, I can see how he makes each person feel like the only one in the room. His white shirt sleeves peek from under his dark jacket, his hair just disheveled enough to seem approachable rather than perfect.
Then the music shifts. The singer's song ends, the lights dim slightly, and a new figure steps onto the dance floor.
The woman wears deep red, beaded along the bodice and hem, the dress ending just above her knees. Her dark hair is swept up, her feet bare against the polished wood. She stands alone in the center of three hundred watching eyes.
What follows isn't burlesque, isn't strip-tease, isn't anything crude. It's sophisticated and sensual, living in the space between art and seduction. She moves slowly, using the floor, her own body, the air itself as partners. Every gesture deliberate butnever crude. She knows exactly what she's doing, commanding the room's attention while maintaining complete control of how much she reveals.
My whole body recognizes what she's doing. She's dancing, owning every eye in the room. This is the kind of dance I got expelled from the academy for, and this woman is doing it to adulation.
The hunger that follows the recognition makes me grip the balcony railing. My nipples tighten against my sleep shirt. I press my thighs together, but it only makes the ache worse.
I want to be her. Want those eyes on me as I move through the choreography I've been perfecting in private. Want to peel away layers while three hundred strangers watch, to register their desire in my own body, to know I'm the source of the room's held breath.
This is why the conservatory expelled me. Not for being too sexual, but for enjoying being watched while I was.
This hunger to exhibit myself, to be witnessed in my most raw and sensual form, it's what I've been hiding behind wrap skirts and teacher smiles. The good girl Papa raised shouldn't want this. But I do. God help me, I've always wanted this.
Seeing it performed, claimed, celebrated, seeing this woman turn her body into art while the audience pays rapt attention, it transforms from shame into possibility.
And underneath the general hunger, a specific face surfaces. Not three hundred strangers. Him. The man who refuses to look at me is the audience I've been imagining without admitting it to myself. Every time I dance alone in his apartment while he's gone, every small adjustment I make to catch light from the window, every moment I spend aware of where he is in our shared space, I've been rehearsing for his eyes.
The realization makes heat pool low in my belly, wetness gathering between my thighs that I don't want to acknowledgebut can't ignore. This exhibitionist need isn't new. I've carried it since the conservatory, maybe before. But naming it, claiming it, wanting him specifically to witness it, that's the revelation that changes everything.
I stay through the rest of her performance, memorizing how she uses the space, how she balances revelation with restraint. When she finishes, the applause is thunderous. She doesn't bow, just walks off with the same control she maintained throughout.
I return to the apartment, my body still humming with recognition. The exhibitionist hunger I've been hiding has a shape now, a stage, an audience of one who won't even look at my face.
That's going to change.
The next morning, I sit at the desk with my book as sunrise paints the apartment gold. The breakfast plate holds the usual: toast, berries, another orange in five perfect strips. I've eaten half the toast standing at the counter.
I'm ten pages from finishingPersuasion's third read when awareness prickles along my spine. Not alarm. Something else. The sensation of being watched.
My peripheral vision confirms it. He's leaning against the wall, watching me.
Actually watching me. His eyes on my face for the first time.
My body responds before I can think. The adjustments surface automatically. Chin tilting to catch the light better, shoulders rotating back, the soft expression that makes me look approachable. These protocols of performance, the choreography of being looked at that I've been running since adolescence. Making myself pretty for the male gaze that's finally landed.
Then Papa's voice cuts through from decades ago, gentle and instructive:"Don't arrange yourself for me, ma belle. The truth is always more beautiful than the performance."
I must have been six, maybe seven, sitting in the garden while he painted. Fidgeting, trying to arrange myself into something worth painting. His hand on my shoulder, steadying me. Teaching me the difference between performing and being.
