Amour Amour (Aerial Ethereal #1)(14)

Badly.

What am I willing to do then? Barking like a dog isn’t that horrible, in comparison to other things he could’ve said. Okay. Okay, Thora. When his hand falls, he waits for me to do something more. We’re only a foot apart now, and I look up at him, silently hoping he’ll give me a reprieve, an out at the last minute.

He doesn’t.

I clear my throat. “Woof woof,” I say, sounding as awkward as I feel.

Nikolai stares without a single ounce of humor. No one laughs. He just says, “A dog that has rabies.”

I bite my tongue, hopefully suppressing a scowl. Then I think for a second. “Grrr…arh arrhhhh…” I find myself actually crinkling my nose too. I wonder if this is being videotaped. In the back of my head, I hear Shay laughing hysterically at me.

“Now,” he says, not missing a beat, “crawl on the mat and pretend you’re a cat in heat.”

Kneejerk reaction, I shake my head.

“No?” he questions with a deadly stare. “You’re going to quit.” It’s a statement. An assumption. I don’t want him to be right.

I swallow a lump. “I meant yes.”

“Get on your knees then,” he commands.

The older man observing the audition suddenly points at me and speaks in rapid, hasty Russian. It flies in one ear and out the other.

Nikolai replies back gruffly, gesticulating with his hands as he talks.

The older man waves him off, his thick brows pulled together in a giant one. My stomach twists as I stare between them. The way the older man jabs his stubby finger in my direction—it makes me think he’s not pleased by me. That he hasn’t been on my side since the start.

To rectify this, I drop quickly to all fours, and their argument ceases like I chopped through it with my movement. I tilt my chin up. A cat in heat. I channel the most lustful look I can muster, my mouth partially open as a heady breath escapes. And I slowly crawl on my hands and knees, slinking around his shins.

I circle languidly, licking the side of my palm. And then I rub my hip against his calf, all the while a swelter boils in my body. But I do it again. And again, my arm brushing up against his skin.

His quads tighten in response. I tense just as much, and I catch a peek of his features, which haven’t changed since the beginning.

“Purr,” he tells me.

I freeze at the new command. Purr? How does one even purr? I’m going to try to attempt it. I have to. As soon as I open my mouth, the sound that leaves is nothing short of a moan, one that happens in private—not during an audition. A job interview. That’s what this is. With directors in sight.

The other gymnasts are most likely crossing me off their lists. One competitor down.

Nikolai appraises me but makes no statement whether I’m succeeding or failing at being a horny cat. “Stop,” he says.

A pit wedges in my ribcage, and I slowly stand to my feet, hot all over. I brush my hair into a tight ponytail. I can feel him scrutinizing my actions, and what’s worse—he won’t fill the empty air with talk. Not until I snap the band and plant my hands on my hips.

He has to stare down at me as he speaks. “I’m a marble statue,” he declares. “You’re obsessed with it. You dream about it, erotic fantasies that make you come at night. You see this statue, what do you do?”

Holy.

Shit.

He said all of that without balking.

I open my mouth, about to play into this pretend, weird scenario. The girl would probably grind against the statue. Right?

He cuts me off, “Show me.”

I hesitate for one second.

And then the other man yells again in Russian, spitting as gruff words pour from his mouth. Nikolai shakes his head at him, and he shouts back, making another hostile hand gesture that I read as: wait a minute.

I inhale, about to go into girl-obsessed-with-statute mode, but the moment I near Nikolai, the Russian man charges onto the mat and physically separates us. He wedges his short, stalky body between me and him, and he spews Russian words straight to my face. Like I understand.

I don’t.

Not one word.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I tell him softly, my stomach practically convulsing with nausea. I have no idea what’s going on. Maybe he’s upset with Nikolai for putting me through a strange audition. By the snarl on his wrinkled face, he clearly hates me.

And if my hunch is correct, he’s the choreographer for the aerial silk act.

He gestures to me and then to the mat with all the other girls. Nikolai tries to talk above him, but this only sparks another verbal shouting match.

Helen struts to the mats, approaching from a safe distance. “Thora, that’s it for you,” she says. “You can take a seat and wait for the other girls to audition. We’re making the first round of cuts at the end of the day.”

Her words knock me backwards a bit. She might as well have said: you failed so much that we only gave you five minutes instead of fifteen. My legs feel heavy as I trudge over to the girls. They shift nervously and none make snide comments or laugh and jeer about my cat-in-heat routine.

I plop down beside Kaitlin, who remains quiet. And I watch Nikolai and the choreographer come to a somewhat peace, their hands raised like let’s end this and move on.

When they separate, Nikolai rubs his jaw and takes a few extra paces behind Helen. The older man stays on the sidelines of the blue mats. And it’s Helen who calls the next girl forward.