Almost Like Love(9)

Pass muster? Pass muster for what?

Oh, God—she’d completely forgotten what this was about.

She was supposed to be finding a bad boy to go with her to Jessica’s wedding. Ian had offered to find one for her, and now he was standing there, looking like . . . that.

Simone poked her in the ribs. “What’s the verdict, Kate?”

Her mouth had gone dry. “I . . . um . . .”

For the life of her, she couldn’t think of a way to finish that sentence.

“You said your date for this wedding had to be smoking,” Ian reminded her.

Her brain had forgotten how to form words. “Uh . . .”

He grinned at her, and an electric rush tightened the muscles low in her belly.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said, as though she’d produced a reasoned argument instead of a wordless mumble. “You can’t be expected to make a decision without dancing with me first.”

One of her hands was on the bar; the other was in her lap. He reached for the one on her lap.

“Let’s go,” he said, his warm, strong fingers closing over hers.

Before she knew what was happening, he’d pulled her off the barstool and was leading her towards the dance floor. She cast a panicked glance over her shoulder at Simone, who grinned and waved.

No help there.

He turned and stopped at the same time, and she bumped into that broad expanse of chest.

With the front of her bustier.

Heat flooded her face. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. This thing makes me more, um, convex than usual.”

“No problem,” he said.

She risked a glance at him. He was looking at her with a curious kind of intentness, as though she were a knot he was trying to unravel.

“I didn’t know your eyes were hazel,” she heard herself say. “I always thought they were green. But they’re hazel, aren’t they? Did you know that hazel eyes are a combination of Rayleigh scattering, which is the same principle that makes the sky look blue, and melanin, which is the pigment that makes brown eyes brown?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I did not, in fact, know that.”

“Oh. Did you know—”

He put his hands on her waist and said her name. “Kate.”

Between the bottom of her bustier and the top of her leather skirt was a strip of bare skin. It was there that Ian’s palms settled, the contact sending warmth piercing through her like shafts of sunlight.

She forgot whatever she’d been about to say. “Yes?”

“To everything there is a season. A time to talk, and a time to dance. Right now it’s time to give your incandescent verbal plumage a rest.”

A well-turned phrase always got Kate’s attention. “ ‘Incandescent verbal plumage,’ ” she repeated. “That’s good.”

“Thank you. Now shut up.”

If she couldn’t talk, the only thing left to do was dance—and she hadn’t been out dancing since college.

Where should she put her hands? And how much space could she leave between the two of them without looking like she was at a seventh-grade formal? She didn’t want to risk another chest bump.

But the answers to those questions weren’t left up to her.

Ian took her hands and lifted them to his shoulders. The action brought her flush against him, and a thousand tiny pinpricks shivered her skin.

When he put his hands back on her body, they went a little lower—to her hips instead of her waist.

Then he started to move.

Until that moment, she wouldn’t have said there was anything particularly sexy about the music playing in the club, which was fast with a techno beat. But Ian picked up on the bass line underneath, and he translated that slower, sexier rhythm into the sway of their bodies.

In her high heels she was only an inch or so shorter than he was. They fit together with unexpected perfection, his rock-hard contours eliciting a subtle pliancy in her body.

There was an unfamiliar ache in her breasts. They felt heavy and soft and voluptuous, but at the same time her nipples hardened into tight little buds.

Could he feel that?

If she met his eyes, she might find out. She might see a satisfied smirk or a knowing grin.

So she didn’t look at him. Instead, she closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder.

Mmmmmmm.

He smelled like clean male skin with a faint undernote of musk. She’d sat next to him at a meeting once and gotten a whiff of expensive cologne, but he wasn’t wearing that tonight.

His shoulder was so broad and strong. She was a tall woman, but next to Ian she felt fragile and feminine—another unfamiliar sensation.

“Mmmmmmm.”

Ian’s hands tightened on her hips, and she realized she’d voiced her pleasure out loud this time.