In that same moment, she realized that this wasn’t just a request for a simple dance.
She knew that this was it. The deciding moment. That if she said yes to this, she wouldn’t say no again for the rest of the night.
But maybe that had been true hours ago. Maybe from the moment she’d locked eyes with him, saying no had been an impossibility.
“Yes,” she said, the word torn from her, scraping her throat raw and leaving in its place a sweet, light relief. She had decided. Tonight she was going to embrace life, whatever that meant. “Yes, Alex, I want to dance.”
CHAPTER TWO
HE KISSED HER for the first time out on the dance floor. There were people all around them, the crush of bodies intense. And she let them push her into him, let them drive her against him so that she could feel the hard heat of his muscles against her chest.
When she was pressed against him, she looked up, angled her head toward his. She knew she was begging for it and she didn’t care. Because she needed this. More than air. It didn’t matter what happened tomorrow, or in the month leading up to her wedding, not if she didn’t survive this night.
And it felt like she might not if he didn’t touch her. If she couldn’t taste him.
But he didn’t make her beg for long.
He dipped his head and claimed her mouth, his tongue forcing her lips apart. She opened to him, took him in deep, kissed him until she was dizzy. There had never been a kiss like this. Not for her, maybe not for anyone. One that stole her every thought, her every worry. One that reduced her to nothing more than need, nothing more than a deep, physical ache that demanded satisfaction.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, her body moving against his, no longer in rhythm with the music, but in rhythm with her own desire. She forked her fingers through his thick, curly hair, held him against her, poured all of herself, all of the desire that had been building in her for so many years, into a kiss that she shouldn’t be having. A kiss that was forbidden to her.
And that just made her angry. More determined to get what she needed tonight. What she would never have after tonight. This was her last chance.
A secret thrill. A secret bit of adventure. No one ever had to know.
“Come back to my hotel with me,” she said, against his mouth, unable to part from him for even a second.
He didn’t answer—he only kissed her again, and she realized there was no way he’d heard her, not over the music.
She pulled his head down and put her lips against his ear. “I have a hotel room. Come back with me.”
That was all the encouragement he needed. Faster than she could change gears, Alex was dragging her off the dance floor and out into the warm summer night. He paused outside the club door, pushed her against the wall and kissed her, the motion and the kiss savage, explosive. Perfect. She arched into him, rubbing her breasts against the hard wall of his chest, trying to find some satisfaction for the need that was tearing through her like a beast.
“Now,” she said, her eyes closed tight. “We have to go back now. I need... I can’t...”
“I agree.”
“It’s close. I think it’s close. I’m dizzy, actually. The city is sideways. It’s hard to tell where the hell we are.”