Ellis Parker is a lucky man: he escaped his persecuting family, survived his tour of duty, and met Maxwell Clark in the city of New Amsterdam. Clark showed Ellis more than the ropes: Clark helped Ellis figure out who he is -- a gay submissive with a massive fixation on a beautiful, mysterious ballet dancer named Bryn Rothe. Ellis knows a Good Man when he sees one, and he wants nothing more than to score a first date with Bryn.<br><br>Little does Ellis know that Bryn has a violent past that is crawling out of shallow graves to haunt him. Even his hectic schedule and beloved stage aren’t enough to distract him. It’s impossible for Bryn to figure out how he feels about Ellis with his demons between them, but when Ellis saves Bryn not once but twice, Bryn is forced to admit that there’s something about Ellis that Bryn might not merely want but need.<br><br>Together, they journey to the scene of Bryn’s original crime -- Charles Towne, South Carolina. There they will dig up secrets that might explain Bryn’s tortured life but might also be his -- and Ellis’s -- undoing.

Earthquakes

By the time he was stretching forward after the ronde de jambes, there were rivers of sweat running along the lines of his body. He shed a layer, tossing the clothes onto his bag as the class moved the barres out of the way to make room for center work. Bryn had a chat with his body, soothing it and encouraging it. The jumping now would help the jumping later, he knew. He never wanted to do his real warming up on stage. The stage was reserved for out-of-body experiences. The classroom was where the work happened.


Chapter 12