Marya Petrova's Ballet Academy was directly across the street from Abe's Auto Shop. The contrast in the frequenters of the two could not have been more different: willowy girls with pastel sweaters walked on the right side of the street while men with scuffed boots and grease embedded in the lines of their hands walked on the left.
Jake Rosetti, king of cigarettes and bar fights and bottles of whiskey, worked at Abe's. He watched the prim, shiny-haired little princess mince in and out of the Academy every day. Their eyes were like mirrors: smooth and shiny and empty. They walked with their noses tilted up and their arms crossed and their toes perfectly pointed. All of them, that is, except one.
Her name was McKinley, McKinley Night, and Jake was obsessed with her. He knew girls who were truly frigid, and he knew girls who were only pretending to be. McKinley fell solidly into the second category. Beneath her perfect chignon and rose petal ballet tights, he knew there was a real live person trying to get out. He wanted to see it happen.
That cool September day, he watched the ballet class warm up, their long legs perfectly arced, their necks curving gracefully, calligraphy incarnate. As always, he only had eyes for his McKinley. She was tiny and glowing and perfect: her skin was a sheet of snow-covered silk that shone like candlelight. She had a high, regal forehead, enormous violet eyes, and a pair of soft rosy lips that turned down at the corners. She was so thin she looked implausible: a creature made of spring breezes and golden thread that might blow away at any moment. She was a little marble statue, a delicate china doll. Or so it seemed.
But Jake saw something in her eyes. Something wild and fierce. When she danced, her lithe little body moved with the sensual fluidity of a goddess. Not one of the other girls could match her passion.
When he passed her on the street, she was just another unobtainable bitch in Chanel boots. But in the studio, she was a girl. Sexual. Alive. Passionate. Beautiful. Jake wanted her. Alone in the shower, beneath the sheets with a pretty girl from a bar or a party or a run-in at the grocery store, Jake thought of her. He pictured her naked body: little pink nipples on her tiny tits, the hard concave line of her miniscule waist, the heart-shaped lines of her perfect little ass. He pictured her writhing on his sheets, her milky skin flushed, her rigid hair mussed and rumpled, her pink-nailed hands clawing at the mattress, at his back. God, he wanted her. He pictured her glossed pink lips closing over his cock, her twilight-colored eyes sparkling up at him. He imagined tossing her around and spanking her until rosy handprints shone up at him from her perfect pearly skin. He wanted to tear down the walls of her icy castle and melt her cold exterior away. He wanted her in his bed, against the wall, around his body. He wanted his rough edges and tattooed muscles and monumental size to scuff against her polished contours and velvet skin.
He smiled at her as she left her class every day. She stared back, apathetic and untouchable. He said hello. She shrugged a creamy shoulder. He asked her name, and she turned away. Her coldness was deeper than he thought.
It was late when he was leaving the shop one day. There was a single light on at the studio, a single figure turning pirouettes in the large empty room. He knew at once it was McKinley: her grace and talent were unmatched. He waited until she turned off the light and walked outside. Her cheeks were pink and a single lock of white-blonde hair hand tumbled down her back. She was wearing a pair of tight black shorts and a loose gray sweater over a flimsy camisole. He could see her nipples pressing against the tissue-thin cotton; he could see he pulse fluttering below her jaw.
"Hey," he said.
"Fuck off," she whined, leaning away from him.
"I'm Jake."
"Like I care." She put a hand on her hip, raising one perfect blonde eyebrow.
"You're gonna care," he told her. She heard the sudden anger in his voice and had the good sense to look worried. He grabbed her around the waist and threw her over his shoulder, hauling her across the street to the garage. He had the door shut before she realized she could scream; he cut her off easily, pressing one hand over her smooth, strawberry-scented mouth. He held her thin wrists together in his other hand.
"I think I need to teach you a lesson," he growled. "Girls shouldn't walk around thinking they're better than everyone else. You're not untouchable, you know."
Wide-eyed and frozen, McKinley stared up at him. Her heart was racing. She didn't know how to explain that she didn't mean to act so prim and aloof: she had grown up in a glass case, admired but unloved. She had been taught to be polite and cold and distant. She could do a perfect arabesque, but she didn't know how to laugh at a joke or talk to the cute mechanic across the street. She was a tiny golden bird in a tiny golden cage—and she hated it.
"Do you know what I'm going to teach you?" Jake's voice was slow and sweet and low: thunder in the distance. McKinley shook her head. "I'm going to teach you to come alive, baby." He leaned in, whispering these words so close to her hear that she felt the warmth of his breath and the roughness of his stubbled cheek. "I know you want it, baby. I've seen how you stare out the window. I've seen how you don't belong with those other girls. You don't, do you?"
McKinley shook her head slowly, gears churning frantically in her head. He was going to fuck her. She couldn't possibly let him fuck her. He had dirty fingernails and arms full of tattoos and a sweatshirt with holes and stains and god-knew-what on it.
"Don't scream," he cautioned. "No one will hear you." He pulled his hand away.
"Don't touch me!" she spat out.
He ran a hand down her cheek, letting his thumb stroke her perfect lower lip. His skin looked impossibly tanned and strong beside her delicate paleness.
"I'm going to touch you. I'm going to touch you all over," he purred back, so calm, so cool. He was making her be the wild one, the angry one. She didn't know how to feel about that. She glared up at him, beautiful even in her anger, in her uncertainty.
"You certainly are not," she snapped back. "I have a boyfriend, you know."
Jake did know. He had seen McKinley's boyfriend, Winthrop Kenzington III, a dozen or more times. He was tall and bony and looked quite a bit like a beached trout.
"Does he satisfy you, baby?"
"What?"
"Does he make you cum?" He grinned inwardly as McKinley's eyebrows twitched. "Does he know how to make you feel good, baby? Does he know what you like?"
McKinley was silent. Below her icy veneer, he could practically see her blood beginning to stir in her veins.
"What do you like?" He ran his free hand down the side of her throat. "Where do you like to be kissed, love? Where do you like to be touched?"
McKinley swallowed hard. "Stop it."
