(A companion story to Careful what you ask for)
Chapter 1.
Steve Haslam winced as he bent his bruised and aching body to unlace his mud-caked football boots and ease them off his swollen feet. He felt exhausted but well satisfied having scored an injury time equaliser in a hard fought two-all draw with their neighbouring local league rivals who were only a point behind them in the battle for promotion to the top division. He smiled as he received back-slapping congratulations from several of his mud-spattered team mates as they headed for the showers. He smiled even more as he thought about Lorna.
She would be finishing her pointe class about now. He pictured her perfect little bottom - gorgeously moulded within her white leotard and tights impregnated and darkened with the sweat of her pale skin now in the afterglow of her extreme exertions - cushioning her body as she sat on the wooden floor of the dance studio. He imagined her bending and stretching her slender legs snow-white pure in her tights as she loosened the ribbons of her beautiful white satin ballet shoes from around her tiny ankles and slipped her shoes from her perfect little feet. He thought of the blessed relief and satisfaction she must be feeling as she rubbed her tired and sore feet through the smooth sheerness of her tights, just as he was rubbing his through his football socks.
He imagined her then slipping her lovely little feet into her pretty pale-pink ankle socks that she had chosen to wear instead of her usual white ones and then easing her feet into her white plimsolls. Then for a few minutes she would wander around the studio chatting to her friends while she looked a picture of sensual gamine loveliness in her white leotard, tights and plimsolls with her pink ankle socks giving an eye-catching blush of colour. Finally she would pull on her grey hooded sweatshirt and pink jogging bottoms over her elfin-lithe body and coltish legs before going home to shower and put something on at least as sexy to await his return. He towelled his damp face and hair, imagining her dabbing with her soft white fluffy towel at the sweat beading her lovely face. Then she would gently pat the smooth porcelain skin above her cleavage, on her slender shoulders tightly traversed by the thin straps of her leotard, and on the taut nape of her neck bare below her hair. He pictured the little wisps of her hair that would have escaped the tight confinement of her ballet bun to curl down and dip their ends in her sweat as they lightly caressed her neck.
His mind filled with such happy thoughts, he was about to slip off his shirt, now more brown than the scarlet it had started the match as, when he heard the less-than-welcome backhanded compliment of Bryn Tyler, the team full back and well up on the list of Steve's least-favourite people.
"Nice one Ace. Better late than never, I guess."
"I'm with you, so far. "Steve preferred to keep any conversation with Bryn Tyler to the necessary minimum. But Bryn never gave up easily.
"How's things with you and that posh bird."
"Fine thanks. Her name's Lorna." Steve managed to stay coolly to the point. Bryn switched to another axis of attack.
"A mate of mine's a cabbie round your way and he tells me he often sees you and her going in and out of that dance studio place in Benfield Road on a Tuesday night. He also tells me that Tuesday's the night they have evening classes for ballet. Is she turning you into a poof or something?"
Steve might have been struggling not to lose his rag and thump him at this point. But since his life-changing experience of meeting Lorna and the amazing circumstances in which he had met her, he had become much more secure and settled in himself and much more self-assured and controlled. Now he sat back on the slatted bench and looked Bryn straight in the eye.
"It's a pity you keep forgetting to shift your brain out of neutral and think about what you're about to say before you open your mouth. In the first place, what's Lorna going to get out of changing my sexual orientation? And since when did what you do show what your sexual orientation is anyway? Lots of girls play football now but no-one automatically assumes they must therefore be lesbians. Secondly, have you ever stopped to think about how incredibly sexy ballet is? Every Tuesday night for two hours I get to see the most beautiful, sexy girl I've ever met show off her stuff in a skin-tight leotard and tights. Not only that, I can get hot and sweaty with her and thirty other great looking girls all wearing leotards, tee-shirts, tights and leggings."
"I wouldn't mind a bit of that," chipped in Paul Radcliffe, the team's goalkeeper, who would do almost anything if there was a chance to chase a bit of skirt. Encouraged, Steve warmed to his theme.
"Thirdly, have you ever bothered to think through the prejudice that dancers are weak and effeminate and realise just how strong and single-minded a dancer has to be. We ache for a bit after each game but they live with pain and discomfort all through their careers. We do a bit of training now and then, but they spend almost their whole waking lives either performing, rehearsing, practising every day or maintaining their fitness. Have you ever thought about how much strength it takes to lift a girl right up above your head and keep her up there even as she's constantly moving and changing her centre of balance?"
He was aware that everyone had stopped to listen to him. He decided to go for the clincher.
"And fourthly, doing ballet has made me a better footballer. It gives my whole body a fantastic workout, much better than the training we do. I'm far more aware of my body and how it moves. My balance and agility have improved. And have you noticed how many more goals I've been scoring lately, including the one that's saved us a point today? Some ballet training would improve your defending. Their striker left you for dead for their first goal."
"Too right mate," piped up Tunde Adewala, Bryn's partner in defence. Bryn, silenced and head shaking, stomped off to the showers to an accompaniment of jeers and good-natured ribbing from his team mates.
Steve showered thoroughly and when he was dressed he chatted for a few minutes with some of his mates before heading off for his next appointment. He carried two bags to his red BMW sports convertible, one containing his mud-caked football gear, the other his ballet outfit.
**********
He had been having special one-to-one ballet tuition with Irina Kopcek since Lorna had introduced him to her many months previously. He had first gone to her dancewear shop to buy some ballet shoes and clothing for the ballet fetish games that he and Lorna loved to play together on their "quiet nights in". He had spent a couple of hours with her, fascinated by her stories of life as a ballerina with the Czech National Ballet, and they had become friends there and then. He went with Lorna to a regular adult ballet class on Tuesday evenings to learn and build up his basic ballet technique. But his special sessions with Irina were intended to help him achieve a desire he had had for many years, to dance on pointe in real ballet shoes with blocked toes and ribbons around his ankles.
She greeted him warmly as he walked into her shop. She was a tall, lean, blonde, classically Slavic beauty in her early 50's. As usual she was already dressed for their lesson. She wore a long white blouse with a pretty lace collar, a flowing dark blue skirt with a pattern of little white polka dots, which showed just the right length of bare legs below her knees, and red leather soft-soled ballet slippers. Her long hair was gathered tightly on the back of her head and her piercing blue eyes contrasted with her bright red lipstick that matched her immaculately groomed nails. She spoke perfect English with an attractive mezzo tone and a wonderful singsong Czech intonation.
"So lovely to see you Steve. On time as usual."
"Would I ever dare be late for one of your classes?" he asked rhetorically.
She asked her assistant, a young and very pretty dance student named Emily who worked there during her college vacations, to mind the shop while she and Steve went to her studio at the back of building. She made strong dark coffee for them while he changed into his ballet outfit in the little changing room at the side. He experienced the thrill, as he always did, of pulling on his tights and enjoying the way they felt on his legs and how they moulded and shaped them. And he loved holding his leotard by its shoulder straps as he stepped into and through the leg holes in the gusset and then pulled and stretched the figure-hugging Nylon/Lycra material over his body until he could insert his arms under the straps. He always loved the feel through his tights as he slipped his feet into his ballet slippers. He looked at himself in a full-length mirror and rested his hands on the smooth curves of his hips as he turned and flexed his feet and legs to start warming them up. He smoothed his hands over his bottom and gave his buttocks a little squeeze just for the pleasure of feeling them through the clingy smoothness of his leotard and tights.
When he was ready he joined Irina in the studio and after he had amused her as they drank their coffee with his story of his conversation with Bryn Tyler, they began the lesson. For the next hour and a half, with only a short break in the middle, she put him through a gruellingly challenging programme of exercises designed to test and increase the strength of his feet and leg muscles in preparation for going up on pointe. He was now able confidently to dance on demi-pointe, balancing on the bottoms of his toes as he lifted his heels.
At each stage of his programme, she would carefully feel his ankles and legs where his muscles were being worked and tested by the exercises he was performing. They had always enjoyed a playfully flirtatious friendship. He loved the feel through his tights of her firm, probing, testing grip on his ankles, calves, thighs and hips. She relished the feel of his strong, firm leg muscles flexing under her touch through his tights but, being totally professional in her desire to teach him all she knew of ballet, she only betrayed her pleasure with hint of a smile and a gleam in her eyes.
At the end of his lesson, after spending an extra long time feeling his ankles with particularly scrupulous attention, she beamed up at him and said what he had longed to hear her say for many months.
