What the hell was going on?
Moving into step with the contact, James Herndon, she let his arm wrap around her waist. He pulled her to him, swaying, twirling her once, twice. She landed against his chest laughing as his lips moved directly to her ear. “Later.”
The word, a distinct warning that would have had her tensing if he hadn’t swung her around again, laughed at her as she caught herself against his chest, then glanced over her shoulder.
His expression stilled. All laughter, all humor wiping away.
Releasing her, he stepped back quickly.
Another arm came around her, twirled her around until she was staring into Rule’s brooding, narrowed gaze.
He didn’t look happy, and he didn’t look in the mood to be teased.
In that instant the music moved from the hard, pulsing throb she was used to, to a slow, sensuous ballad that crooned the singer’s hunger, her aching loss and need.
“You don’t want to do that,” he growled when she moved to push away from him. “Not here. Not now.”
The warning in his voice was firm, dominant, and pushed some feminine button she hadn’t known she possessed that urged her to just relent. To obey him, just this once, just in case he had a way of enforcing it in some erotic manner she couldn’t fight.
“I don’t slow dance,” she bit out from between her teeth, her body longing to relax and melt against him even as she fought to remain stiff and unyielding. “Slow dancing with you will imply a relationship that doesn’t exist.”
She didn’t want that. It would change the dynamic of who she was and the information to be gained in the circles she moved in.
“A relationship that doesn’t exist? Who are you lying to, Gypsy? Because I sure as hell know better and you do as well,” he informed her warningly as he moved against her, cajoling her, seducing her into sharing the dance, to share the intimacy he was inviting.
“You’re taking far too much for granted,” she retorted furiously, yet she wasn’t fighting him either.
She was breathless.
She could feel the blood heating, pounding through her veins, the sensual side of her nature weakening far too quickly.
She ached for him. The flesh between her thighs became hotter, wetter, her clit throbbing as her sex melted and creamed for him.
It was impossible to deny she wanted him when her body refused to cooperate and remain cool and unresponsive.
“I haven’t yet,” he said softly as she tilted her head back to stare up at him. “But I’m certain I will before the night’s out, Gypsy Rum. I’m very certain of it.”
Before she could argue the statement or tell him to go to hell, he brushed his lips against hers, his tongue flicking in a quick little lick against her lips before he pulled back no more than a breath of distance.
The pleasure was shocking.
It held her in his arms, staring up at him in confusion as impulses, hungers and needs began firing through her body with a heat she hadn’t expected.
It surprised her.
Shocked her.
His lips had lifted just far enough from hers to tease her, to make her wonder if he would speak, and when he did, if his lips would stroke against her again.
His gaze was locked on hers, unblinking, the blue of his eyes deeper than Cassandra’s, more mesmerizing, holding her, making her wonder at what she saw reflected back at her.