At Your Most Beautiful by Harper Bliss (best free ereader .TXT) 📗

The slightest puff of air emanated from Maya’s lips, as though she was a touch perplexed but didn’t want to show it. “I was going to ask you whether Rach had seduced you, but I think I know the answer to that question already.”

“She was my teacher. Making the first move wasn’t really an option for her, although she had little trouble with the second move.” Quinn knew she sounded a touch conceited, but it was all part of the game. And wasn’t that what this had turned into now? A flirting game with her neighbor? Quinn didn’t have anything to lose. Maya hadn’t chased her from her garden just yet.

Maya chuckled. “How did you go about it?” She reached for her cocktail again. Before knocking back the last of it, she peered deep into Quinn’s eyes.

“Lingering after class. Asking some photography questions, followed by some non-photography questions. Inviting her for a drink with the group, then without the group. Things like that.”

Maya nodded slowly, but didn’t say anything. With a soft thud, she deposited her empty glass on the table.

“Can I fix you another?” Quinn asked.

“I think I’ve had enough.” Maya looked as though she was thinking very deeply about what to say next. “But thank you.”

“My absolute pleasure.”

Maya blinked slowly, then gave the slightest shake of the head. “I’m going to get started on dinner. Feel free to have another swim before you go.”

Before you go? Ouch. But what had Quinn expected? A dinner invitation? “Thank you for having me over, Maya. It was really lovely to get to know you all over again.”

“It’s been enlightening to say the least.” Maya pushed her chair back. “See you around.”

“I sure hope so.”

Maya collected the glasses from the table and, without looking back, headed inside the house.

Quinn stared at the open door. There was always tomorrow. It was only Friday. Her parents wouldn’t be back until late on Sunday. Quinn had all weekend for another dip in Maya’s pool.

Chapter 3

Maya hadn’t slept well. But she had nothing to do today except hope for a call from Tommy. She’d be happy with a brief text, just so she knew he was doing okay and getting along with Heidi and her teenage daughter.

Because there were no students around to teach during the height of summer, her dance studio was closed until the middle of August. Thinking about dance made her muscles tense up. A restlessness had taken hold of her flesh. She wanted to move her body. She wanted a strong partner who knew what he was doing to take her for a satisfying spin around the floor.

As she took a cup of tea into the garden, Maya admitted to herself that the reason she hadn’t slept well was Quinn Hathaway. Her boldness had shaken her. She had flirted with Maya and there had been nothing covert about it. Unsure how to respond, Maya had left the scene of the flirting. She had fled inside her own house. Quinn hadn’t taken her up on her invitation to use the pool again but Maya hadn’t been able to draw a proper breath until she had heard Quinn rustle back through the bushes—apparently taking the driveway wasn’t an option—and leave her property.

Maya couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at her the way Quinn had done last night. So brazen. So self-assured. Where did a girl—a girl who had very recently had her heart trampled on, for that matter—get such confidence to unashamedly flirt with a woman twenty years her senior? It was uncanny. Almost arrogant and perhaps a touch sordid. Whatever Quinn was implying was unthinkable. And yet, Maya had thought about it. As she lay sweating under her bedroom ceiling fan, she had given in to the thought. Briefly, but not without consequence.

What if Maya let Quinn seduce her, as she had seduced her photography teacher? Part of the thought was thrilling enough to allow another to follow. A snapshot of Quinn kissing her. The image of Quinn eyeing her, her gaze so hot, Maya would open her lips to her instantly and automatically. That was as far as Maya had allowed her thoughts to drift. She had to shut them down, even though they were, in the end, only thoughts. But still. They were wicked thoughts.

Maya had never really imagined kissing or felt any kind of sexual attraction to a woman before. But somehow, the fact that Quinn was a woman was not fazing her in any way. She’d been mesmerized by Quinn’s forwardness. By what she’d said about Maya being at her most beautiful. That’s what had struck her most of all. Because Maya had believed for years now that her most beautiful years were long behind her. The years when she was the belle of the ball no matter where she danced. The years when she trained more hours than any other dancer she knew because of the rewards that lay on the other side of the pain and the sacrifice. The years before Drew and Tommy that, sometimes, felt like another life.

Maya stared at the pool. She didn’t have to close her eyes to imagine Quinn sitting on the edge again, fat drops of water rolling down her gleaming skin. Maybe she was drawn to her merely because she reminded Maya of a version of herself she hadn’t been in decades—although Maya’s life at twenty-four had been the opposite of Quinn’s. She’d traveled the country from competition to competition. She lived for what she did, for her passion. There was only ever dance and the occasional man to have some fun with, until Maya needed help with a complex tax issue and she’d met Drew, the most handsome accountant on the face of the planet.

But if it was Quinn’s youth she was drawn to, that made her thoughts even more impure and sinful. Or maybe it was just a matter of how she spun it