‘Will you please let me go?’ she demanded as if she had come round to discover she had been carelessly uninhibited on the dance floor, and now she was keen to restore some balance.
‘No, I won’t let you go,’ he said, dragging her close, reminding them both of how it had felt to be bound every inch of them skin to skin. He’d noticed Tiago circling the fringes of the crowd, and knew the signs. Tiago was hunting. ‘It’s not safe for me to let you go,’ he explained when Lizzie flashed him a look. ‘Wolves are prowling.’
‘And you’re seriously suggesting that I’m safer with you?’ she exclaimed incredulously.
‘I’m saying—you’re staying here, with me.’
Neither of them blinked as the band started up again, until, lifting his hands, he let her go. He’d felt her body yielding when he’d held her, and, as he could have predicted, Lizzie wasn’t going anywhere. Wound up like a spring, she had to have the fire of the music and the energy of the dance to stand any hope of releasing her tension.
‘I think you take pleasure in tormenting me,’ she said angrily as she came back into his arms.
‘You only think?’ he murmured, his lips slanting in a grin. ‘I think you love dancing with me, so why pretend?’
She huffed and raised a brow.
‘Some might call dancing with me an opportunity,’ he pointed out, tongue in cheek.
‘While I would simply call it a risk to my toes.’
‘We dance too well together for that,’ he said confidently.
‘Stop it!’ she warned him in an undertone. ‘Don’t you dare flirt with me.’
‘Or...?’ Pulling her close, he stared into her eyes, and then with every inch of them connected, body and mind, coaxed her back into the dance.
‘Don’t you care that we’re being stared at?’ she asked him after a couple of circuits of the floor.
‘I doubt anyone has any interest in us,’ he argued. ‘And if they do,’ he added, in a whisper in her ear, ‘I don’t care.’