"They think we hate each other."
Shirley said quietly, fixated on yet another lurid tabloid headline in the papers spread across the table. The irony of it should have filled her with a smug amusement but instead it made her sad.
"Who? Oh let them darling. Fuck them!"
Darcey spoke over her shoulder from where she lay on the bed across the room, reclined against the itchy cotton bedsheets of the middling chain hotel they found themselves in.
She took the last drag from the post coital cigarette she had allowed herself and carelessly stubbed it out against the cheap vinyl covered bedside cabinet. Darcey had almost kicked the habit but cigarettes were the sole dietary component of many ballerinas and addictive as hell.
Recognising the upset in the older woman's voice, she draped the coarse sheet around herself and sidled up behind her.
"I must hate you so much."
Darcey teased, brushing aside Shirley's chestnut curls to attach her lips to her exposed neck. Shirley's eyes closed and she let her head fall back with a gentle moan, inviting further kisses. Darcey happily reciprocated, peppering the soft bare skin with her hot mouth.
Shirley almost forgot how sad she was when Darcey's roaming hands slipped down her shoulders and inside of her lightweight silk gown. She cupped a heavy breast with each hand and squeezed roughly, palming at her stiffened nipples.
"Come back to bed my love."
Darcey cooed, she was the younger and more subdued of the pair yet she had made the seduction of Shirley Ballas her private mission. She set the pace and it was fast.
"If I hated you would I do this?"
Darcey teased, pulling open the ties on Shirley's dressing down and drawing her thighs apart. Shirley's face flushed with the expectation and still moderate embarrassment at how wanton she behaved when under the spell of Darcey Bussell.
"Or this?"
Darcey dipped her head and went straight for her prize. She filled her mouth with Shirley, gripping her hands down against the mattress to prevent her interfering. She looked up with a smirk on her face to witness Shirley's big brown eyes roll to the back of her head.
For almost all of her life, Shirley had been a modest woman. Everything she had, she earned through her own hard work and it was for the love of it and never the recognition. Ballroom dancing was an unconventional choice of career granted and obviously there was a degree of the exotic about it but after she'd dance, she'd peel off glitter and sparkles and no one would second glance her in the street.
The glamour and spectacle of the public eye didn't sit well with her, in her heart she was still the little girl from Merseyside. Not this. Never this. Little Shirley Rich could never have imagined she'd be in a hotel room paid for by the BBC, on her back with the head of her female co-star buried between her thighs. Life had thrown a lot at Shirley and rewarded her too but this was inconceivable.
A little later when they lay together, damp bodies and sticky thighs entwined, Darcey pressed another slow kiss to the older woman's lips.
"Now Darling, tell me again about that feud?"