Page 47 of Captivated

“Is that so?” she dared to ask.

“Very much so, yeah.”

“Maybe that’s why I didn’t know if I wanted to get out of bed to eat or not, Joe.”

He cocked his head to the side, considering her words. “Fair enough. Are you getting up, or what?”

“How long until the food gets here?”

“About twenty, now.”

Liliana nodded. “Lots of time.”

“For what?”

“Stretches,” she told him. “Preps me for the day, and gets me loosened up before I go into the studio. It’s like a fucking warm up for their warm up.”

Joe scowled.

“What is that for?” she asked, pressing her thumb into the furrow between his brows.

“You don’t even get a break after a show, huh?”

Liliana shrugged. “That show is one of three this week for that ballet. All sold out, too.”

“Huh.”

“I like it, though.”

“Stretches, then?” he asked.

Liliana nodded, and let him pull her out of the bed. “Stretches.”

Shame, though, as it seemed he had gotten up long enough to pull on his pants, and shirt. She was still naked, and felt that was incredibly unfair.

Although, the way Joe watched her as she passed him by was enough to make her grin at him. “Now who’s found something they like?”

His laughter followed her out of the bedroom as she snagged a pair of leggings, and a sports bra on the chair next to the door. After freshening up and dressing in the bathroom, Liliana moved to the living room to the barre she had gotten installed in the studio apartment along the floor to ceiling windows overlooking the street down below. She could have put on her pointe shoes, which she sometimes did, but she just needed to wake up her muscles. Not get en pointe for the whole time.

Peering out the window, Liliana lost time as she did a quick fifteen minute warmup that included basic stretches, and some moves that were meant to test her flexibility after a hard day like yesterday. One included having her right leg resting along the barre, and then letting her back and left arm fall as far backwards as it could go before she quickly came back up. She could just about fold her body entirely in half doing that move.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she heard.

Liliana dropped her leg, and found Joe staring at her from the kitchen island. The ease of his body leaning against the counter belied the intensity in his gaze as he watched her. “What?”

“You just bent in half. Backwards.”

“And?”

Joe swallowed thickly as he pulled out a phone that buzzed in his hand from his pocket. “You know what—nothing, babe. Just know I’m going to remember that you are limber enough to bend in half.”

She only laughed at him, but quickly went back to her exercises. Although, a part of her was listening to his conversation on the phone, too.

“Rossi here,” she heard him say.

Liliana switched to another move that allowed her to face him, but she only watched Joe from the corner of her eye as she began the set of stretches. With nothing more than a reply to his name, she watched Joe’s entirely demeanor change.

Like when made men were around.