He knew rhythms, the pull and push of tides, the motion of water as it flowed around a hull. Dance was not so different after all. She could feel his understanding of such things as she stepped into his arms and let him sweep her away like so much flotsam on the tide. She should not have been surprised. Even so this grace confused her, unsettled her, therefore it should have been expected. Wasn’t that how Jax always was? A focus of intense confusion and a morass of annoyance and strange magnetism for her?

She hadn’t wanted to slide into his arms, but just as she’d put her arm through his, she hadn’t any good reason not to. No reason she’d admit to. She did not lie but for the life of her she would not tell the truth here. So she bit her tongue and her awareness of him and the way he moved against her intensified as she struggled to keep her mind away from what he wasn’t wearing and onto the task at hand. 

While she did not know rhythm the way he did, she had been trained in dance from a young age and later, through worth with her former lover Yàn, she had come to know the workings of her body, the feel of muscles and tendons working in concert. This knowledge only added to the grace she’d had cultivated. Combined with her understanding of courtly dance, (she’d danced at the king’s palace after all) it worked well with Jax’s innate understanding of motion and rhythm and they fell into step with shocking ease, the music flowing around them like water or the scent of Night Blooms. 

She did not look at him as they danced, but down and off to the side because she did not want him to see the softening of the ice in her eyes, she did not want him to have an opening to hurt her and with her loss of control she was quite open and vulnerable. Briefly she missed the swirl and flow of skirts around her legs, a bewitching aspect of dance. She could not regret it fully, for the lack allowed her better view of the way his legs moved, the splay of motion of his muscles under his skin, all encased in just one layer of fabric. 

She shivered in his arms and looked up, pulling her eyes to the crowd, passed his well-formed shoulder as well as to their fellow dancers as they moved about. She could see that eyes were on them as she had expected and it helped her to recall her purpose in being there, in this place, her reasons for being in his arms in the first place.

“Have you seen them?” she asked, her honeyed voice a sweet breath of air across his cheek. “Or any likely place to move to overhear something of interest. I am not good at this sneaking and spying.”