“Why are you sitting over here on your own?” the lion asked. “Don’t you have a man to take care of you?”
Almost by accident—I don’t remember doing it—I had picked up my glass of wine. My earlier promise cast aside, I lifted my mask and took a large swig, and another, until the glass was drained. The wine swam in my head, and slowed my heart, and made the situation just a touch less daunting. I turned to the lion, my mask now back in place, and shook my head slowly. “What makes you think I need a man to take care of me?” I asked. It would have sounded sassy coming from someone else, but my voice trembled, as it always did when talking to strangers. Jessica Wright, Socialite Extraordinaire! (Not.)
The lion laughed softly. He jumped to his feet and offered me his hand, the hand with the dagger tattoo on it. This close, I saw that the blade of the dagger was dark red, the hilt light blue, and the wings white fringed with black. Drops of blood dripped from the dagger; no, the entire blade was blood. I looked up from the tattoo into his lion’s face, waiting for him to speak.
“Dance with me,” he said. “Dance with me, wolf.”
“Dance, lion?” I answered, rising to my feet as though I were a thousand miles away. I felt distant, like I was watching this happen, like I wasn’t there at all. This was so far away from my usual life that I struggled to reconcile it with the Jess I knew. I thought this was how ordinary people felt when extraordinary things happened to them: disoriented.
My hand quivered when I reached out to take his hand, but if the lion noticed, he didn’t say anything. I placed my hand in his, and he tightened his arm on mine, closing it with the dagger.
“I don’t mind if I do,” I whispered, as he led me to the dance floor.
Jessica
Though the little vicious animal in first grade had dissuaded me from joining dance club, I still knew my way around a dance floor. When Dad’s firm had become more popular, he had been able to pay for private lessons, where no little vicious first-graders could do anything about it. The lion, too, knew what he was doing. They played some fast jazz, and the lion and I both knew the Lindy Hop, where you move like there’s something wicked in your body trying to jump out, and you basically swivel until you can’t swivel any more. The music rose around us, and before I really knew what was going on (the wine still swirling in my mind) a small crowd had gathered around us.
My limbs were aching, and my ribcage was thumping. I leaned into the lion. “What’s going on?” I asked him.
“How drunk are you?” he laughed.
“Pretty drunk!”
“We’re Lindy Hopping and half the hall is watching.”
“Oh.”
It was happening. I could feel my body going through the moves. I could feel the wide grin on my face. But it was so unlike me that I still struggled to believe it. I was not the kind of girl who danced with a crowd around her. I was not the type of girl who was dragged onto the dance floor by a lion and started Lindy Hopping for everybody to see. Again I had that disorienting feeling, like I was watching instead of doing. I saw a muscular lion-masked man in a tuxedo who was very graceful for his height and size, and a slight, wolf-masked woman with shoulder-length sun-colored hair and thin white legs jiving around the dance floor. That’s me, I thought. That woman is me.
Ha! Yeah right! Jessica Wright doing the Lindy Hop in the middle of a ballroom!
The lion led me to the edge of the dance floor. His chest rose and fell quickly. Mine rose and fell in unison. I leaned forward and put my hands on my knees, breathing heavily, and then looked up when I’d caught my breath. My heart still beat fast, but it was from dancing as well as nerves now. The lion tilted his head at me. I looked up at him, waiting. I don’t know what I was waiting for. I sensed that something was going to happen. There was an atmosphere, like something almost physical. My bare arms goose-bumped as I looked up and down his muscular body, and to his hand. That tattoo got me. I don’t know what it was exactly that attracted me so much about it. Maybe it was because it made him look dangerous. Or because it was so unusual.
“Come for a walk with me,” the lion said. He stepped forward and touched my arm with his fingertips, brushing his hand up and down my skin. The goose bumps grew larger, and a tingling sensation moved over my body. I shivered. The tingling sensation reached down my belly to my pussy, to my clit. He touched my arm, and yet my clit ached. What was this guy, some kind of wizard? He trailed his finger along my skin some more. “Come on,” he said, calmly. “Come with me.”