Limerence (Famous Young Things #2)

by Scarlett Drake

“Can I get you anything else?” the waiter with the magnificent arse asks with the sort of look I understand implicitly. I turn my most charming smile on him. “Oh, that really depends.” He smirks, dark eyes glinting in the low light. He’s got the body of a footballer, not a dancer, lean and tight. “On?” “On what time your shift ends. See, it’s my birthday and my father didn’t make it again, so now I sort of want to get roughly fucked by someone who’ll let me call them daddy.”

In fact, there was only one other dancer in the world who, in the safety of my own soul, I would call better than me. And he had gone on hiatus.

It’s just that I don’t do well with sharing, and that applies to most things—I don’t do threesomes for exactly this reason. I’m the main event, the headline act. And I’m certainly not going to share the fucking spotlight with Nicoló Savini.

Because in all of the realities where I’m better and I’m healed and I’m allowed to have the life I want, it’s him who’s there next to me. It’s Felix Taylor-Brooke holding my fucking hand and looking into my fucking eyes and telling me how I’m his and he’s mine. He’s not getting cream-pied by twinks he meets in Ibiza. He’s mine. And I fucking hate him for it. I hate that I’ll never get to fucking have it. But mostly, I hate myself—for being infatuated with my biggest fucking rival since I was fifteen years old. For being so embarrassingly and stupidly in love with him all these years.

“This must be a walk in the part for you,” he says. I blink, then raise an eyebrow speculatively. He goes on, “Posing, having people tell you how good you look, being stared at.” “A walk in the park,” I say. “It’s a walk in the park not a walk in the part.” I have to fight against some weird urge to find that cute. He looks faintly embarrassed. Which, to my absolute horror, is also sort of cute. “Yeah, I suppose. I like being told how good I look. Who doesn’t?” “A little vain, no?” “What’s not to be vain about?” I indicate myself. “I’m talented, a delight to be around, and extremely fucking hot.”

This is, in fact, the truth. I do hate people. I hate Felix, too, it just so happens that I’m in love with him at the same time. Which isn’t something I’d recommend to anyone who likes being sane.

Why are you just sitting there… watching me?” He sits back on his hands, a flicker of amusement on his face. “I told you, I like watching you dance. I always have.” He says this like it’s the most normal, most obvious thing in the world. “Yeah, well, it’s weird.” He laughs at this. All teeth and charm. “Is it?” “Yeah, it is.” “You dance on stage for a living, I fail to see why it’s weird.” “I’m not on stage, though.” “Oh? I thought your whole life was a stage, Felix?”

“Do you like spice?” I ask him. When he doesn’t answer, I turn to find a perfectly shaped eyebrow raised suggestively at me. He says, “You spat in my mouth earlier and had me warm your cock, that was pretty spicy, Savini.”

He can hate me all he wants. I’ll fuck him however he wants. Then, when his defences are low and he’s grown complacent, I’ll get him to fall in love with me.

“We have named it ‘Song of The Iliad’ and it will centre around the much-rumoured love between Achilles and Patroclus.” Benedict settles his gaze on Felix and then me. “It will be the first queer ballet to be performed at any of the Big Five.

“You know I’m always up for it, but it’s just that I ate almost a whole duck, and then half a cheese board, and about a ton of celebrations and there’s no fucking way I can put any more solids inside me tonight.” He turns his head just in time as he spits champagne all over the kitchen instead of over me.

It’s always been a dream of mine to dance with you, and I’m happy I get to do just that, but if you want me—I mean, if you want more from me, then you got it. Just… tell me what you want, Felix, and it’s yours.”

I want you to want me the way I can’t seem to stop myself wanting you. I want you to want something real with me. I want whatever a real relationship looks like with you. I want to go to the ruins of Pompeii and take sickening couple photos with you and post them on Instagram.