A Night in a Year: 45. Three

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Jeroen blinks, and she realises that he hadn’t noticed Orhan attached to her. His expression sours, and he starts to slide away. She grips his hand tighter, steps towards him, Orhan in sync with her. She looks back at Orhan – his teeth are bright white in the flashes of light, and his eyes are open, accepting, while Jereon’s face is hard, irritated.

“More fun with three,” she says, adding a chuckle to make it seem the most obvious thing in the world.

But Jereon doesn’t respond directly.

She watches as the instinctive unwillingness to share flash across his face. His eyes looking on her greedily, possessively, and flicking with annoyance back at Orhan. But she keeps Orhan’s hand close to herself, holding it near the top of her thigh, and she looks up at Jeroen, unable to keep the begging from her eyes, but steely enough to let him know that this is all or nothing.

Orhan shuffles closer to her, and she can sense from how near he is that he will not need convincing. Jeroen purses his lips, and looks between her and Orhan. But he hasn’t let go of her hand, so she ducks her head a little bit, her eyes casting down, and she peers back up through her eye lashes, demure, pliant, and her body almost shudders when Jeroen drops her hand, and grabs her shoulders, pulling him to her with Orhan pressing in behind her.

“You’re too kind,” she says, teasing, not to let him know she was ever worried that he might say no.

“Just shut up and dance,” he says, wry, a fraction perturbed, as if his pride has taken a tiny blow.

Not because he’s had to share her, but because, in the battle of wills, she won.

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Next: 46. Sway

Image found on flickr, by Dr Stephen Dann, used under the Creative Commons License.

Mirrored from jacquelinebrocker.esquinx.net.