His hands felt like heaters against the cool of my skin as his fingertips gently slipped beneath the half-shirt and caressed me. Goose bumps danced across my stomach like glitter.
His voice was rough, so close to the edge of control I had to close my eyes tight against the onslaught of arousal as he whispered in my ear, "I couldn't let sexy little Harley Quinn dance by herself."
He grabbed my hand, spinning me out away from his body and then pulling me back to him so that we were chest-to-chest, gazes locked, and hips still moving seductively together.
The corners of his lips curled so completely that they grazed the corners of his eyes. Open and free, Wes Lancaster looked at me like I was everything. Not everything he'd been looking for or known he wanted, but like I was everything. Happiness and pain, love and hate, all the words he'd ever spoken and all the ones he never would.
I was lost after that.
Completely consumed by him.
It was just Wes and Winnie. Robin Thicke and Harley Quinn.
There weren't any questions about what we were or recriminations from the complicated answers those questions might mean.
As we danced there, the music switched over to a sexy, electronic remix of a Disclosure song I loved, "You & Me," and everything seemed simple.
I wanted him. Now and again and over and over after that.
My hands went to his shoulders without a conscious command, my fingertips brushing at the soft hair of his neckline, and our locked gazes intensified. Heated. Moved from maybes to definites and then some-wanting. Begging. Pleading.
"I want you," I whispered when the ache in my abdomen became unbearable, and our breaths mingled so completely it felt like there was only one.
Wes sank his hands into my hair and tilted my head to the side, his soft lips brushing back and forth at the sensitive spot behind my ear. "I need you, Win," he said there, his ardor consuming my entire body and soul.
Moving quickly, he grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the dance floor, through the crowd, and down a darkened hallway, back into the corner where absolutely no light touched any surface. My legs churned in their effort to keep up with him, but I didn't say a word.
Hidden there, just out of plain sight, I wrapped myself around him like a second skin, and our mouths attacked one another, kissing and licking and biting and sucking frantically until nothing else mattered anymore.
"Leave it," I whispered as her phone rang from her tiny purse that lay discarded on the floor, groaning and pushing her deeper into the wall before sucking the peak of her nipple into my mouth.
We were in the trenches of my favorite two-person activity, and I had absolutely no desire to add a third-especially knowing whoever was on the other end of her phone wasn't a model for Victoria's Secret.
Relax. I'm mostly joking.
I'd been working diligently at the removal of each and every piece of her clothing for the last five or so minutes, but we were so desperate to keep our mouths on one another, the process had been slow going and she'd yet to have the chance to reciprocate.
I couldn't help it, though, and I didn't mind that I still wore my clothes. Her skin was like a flavor, one I swore had been specifically designed for me by Baskin Robbins, and her nipples were like the cherries on top. Deep red from my attention and perfectly delicious.
But the bleating of her phone threatened to pop my flawless pleasure bubble.
And I was in no way ready to stop.
"Wes," she whispered as it continued to ring, and I shook my head, my lips skimming the skin of her throat as I did.
"No, sweetheart. Leave it," I reiterated.
I was frantic-desperate to get inside, to go further, deeper, harder-and her skin felt electric in my hands.
"God, Win," I breathed into the space between her breasts as her thighs clenched me even tighter at the hips and she started to shake. I wasn't even inside her yet, but the friction of my body on hers and the danger of being found were enough to make anyone go crazy.
Her nails dug into the skin of my neck as she squeezed, needy and greedy and trying to figure out how to get my mouth to be everywhere at once.
That was a lot to glean from the hold of her hands on my neck, but trust me, it was all there and then some. The shift of her hips, the catch in her breath, the way her chest vibrated with the effort it was taking to control her breathing.
My ears roared the way they always did when I was trying to be quiet, so the harsh reminder of her cell phone as it rang a second time pierced painfully into my brain.
Goddammit.
I ached in other places too, but the pain was entirely different. Nagging, unsatisfied, and, if I had to assign a color to it, I'd have no other choice than a hue of very deep blue.
"Wes," she whispered urgently. I dropped her feet to the floor obediently and pulled my body back, unmolding it from hers, but not before sinking my fingers more tightly into the flesh of her bare ass one more time.
"I know," I told her. She had to answer it. She has a kid. "Go ahead."
She practically dove for her purse, unzipping it and wildly brushing the contents out of the way until she came to the offending device.
"Hello?" she answered, reaching down to grab the tiny shorts of her Harley Quinn costume at the same time. She didn't bother with the fishnets that lay discarded haphazardly on the floor, but the time to be naked had apparently passed.
I felt like crying.
"What?" she asked, the tone of her voice changing as she hopped on one foot, the phone between her shoulder and her cheek, and struggled to get the shorts on and pull the material of her shirt back down over her breasts at the same time.
I grabbed her hip to still her frantic movements and slid my hand down the outside of her thigh as I sank slowly to my knees and grabbed the fabric from her hands. She looked down at me, but the dark hall made it hard to see what was on her face.
All I knew was that I wanted her to feel better-to alleviate her frenzy.
Slowly, gently, I eased her shorts back into place, skimming the skin and breathing all that she was in before kissing the inside of her hip and settling the waistband there.
"How many?" she questioned sharply into the dark.
As much as I knew I should move, I couldn't. It didn't make any sense, but something about staying there in front of her, my hands at her hips and my thumbs soothing the exposed skin as she spoke, settled something inside of me.
Normally rushing from one activity to the next, I didn't spend much time like this-with nothing on my mind other than the sensation of her skin under mine and my ability to slow her breathing and quell the shake in her voice with something as simple as helping her get dressed and a gentle caress.
I'd never in my life felt like I was missing anything. Not the absence of a mother figure or the lack of a real romantic relationship or the unconditional love of a child or a pet.
But this, right now, the peace and satisfaction I felt from a simple exchange with a woman I hardly knew, felt overwhelmingly, unmistakably, like something I'd very much been missing.
"Okay, okay. I'm not panicking," she told the caller as I pushed to my feet. "Do I sound like I'm panicking?"
She was asking him, but when her eyes met mine, the distant light glowing off the brilliant blue of them now that I towered above her, I knew she was asking me too.
I shook my head softly.
"Exactly," she said, and this time, with the backing of my confirmation, it was more confident.
"How is she?"
Lamely and dumbly, I cringed at the fact that I honestly hadn't put anything together until that moment. Her daughter.
I grabbed her elbow to call her eyes back to mine and raised my brows in question. Her face melted into a small smile before she mouthed, "She's okay. Stitches."
The knot in my stomach unfurled slightly at her silent words, but another, different one formed just as quickly. One that had more to do with the insecurities of a commitment-phobic man than worry over the health and safety of a child.
"Thanks, Rem. Just tell her I'll be there as soon as I can. And get her a donut; she loves donuts. Not cake. A donut." She let her head fall back and sank into the wall, covering her eyes with the hand free of the burden of her phone. "I know you know."
Reaching out, I gathered her into my embrace, hugging tightly until I felt her relax in my hold. It took a few seconds for the tension to melt from each muscle, but when she finally did, everything felt right.
Her voice muffled in my chest, she spoke again. "I'll be there soon." She nodded there, the movement scraping the fabric of my shirt across the nerves, and I squeezed her tighter on reflex.
"Thanks, Remy." She paused. "I love you, too."
She pushed against my chest lightly, and reluctantly, I let her go and looked down into her upset-but-handling-it eyes.
"Where are we headed?" I asked. The skin of her jaw felt like butter under my thumbs.