She sat spellbound and speechless for five full seconds as the sound of his voice moved its way through her body like a seductive caress. She felt a slow blush creep over her cheeks and finally managed to get her voice to come out of her throat. It was a little mortifying it came out like a mouse squeak, but still… ‘Hi…erm…hello.’
Luiz Valquez’s eyes were even darker up close. She couldn’t find his pupils in that glinting sea of bottomless black. His mouth was even more tempting now she could see its contours so intimately. His philtrum running down from beneath his nose was so well defined she could have placed her pinkie fingertip in the dish between the stubble-coated lines. She curled her fingers into her hand to stop from actually doing so. The force field of his body was so strong she felt like a microscopic iron filing in front of an industrial strength magnet. Pull. Pull. Pull. It was all she could do to remain upright on the bar stool.
‘Would you like to dance?’ He asked the question in English but with that distinctive accent wrapped around every word it made her spine feel as if someone was unbolting each vertebra.
But the confidence and self-assurance she had admired just a moment before now began to annoy her. He expected her to say yes. Kate and Belinda expected her to say yes. The whole nightclub crowd expected her to say yes.
Physically she wanted to say yes, but her rational mind snapped back to attention like a soldier clicking his heels in front of a drill sergeant. The one thing she loathed in a potential date was cocksure arrogance. Who the hell did he think he was? He could go and crook his little finger someplace else. If and when she got involved with someone it would be with someone who had the decency to treat her as an equal, not like some desperate little sports star groupie looking for a quick trophy shag.
‘No.’ Daisy softened it with a brief smile that didn’t show her teeth. ‘Thanks anyway.’
Something in his pitch-black eyes sharpened. His nostrils widened as if taking up the challenge of getting her to change her mind privately excited him. His charming smile, however, didn’t falter. ‘You’re with someone?’
‘No…I mean yes. My friends from school. The school I teach at. We teach at. In London.’ Daisy pointed at her friends, only to find they weren’t there. They had slipped off the bar stools next to hers and were currently dancing on the dance floor with two men she’d seen them chatting to as she’d come in from shaking off her bodyguard.
Thanks a bunch, girls.
He followed the line of her gaze. ‘They look like they’re having fun.’
What did he mean? That she wasn’t? That she was too strait-laced and uptight to have a good time? She might not be used to colouring outside the lines but she had her crayons sharpened. But she was going to use them on someone a little less self-assured than him. ‘Yes, they are.’ Her chin went up. ‘So am I.’
The meshing of his brown-black gaze with her blue one felt like a taser shock to her system. Her whole body reacted with a zinging fizz that whizzed through her blood like a missile. ‘Is this your first time?’
Daisy felt her blush spread a little further until her whole body felt as if it was being engulfed by fire. How could he know that? How could he possibly know that? ‘Erm…in Vegas, you mean?’
His slow smile tilted the side of his mouth. It tilted her stomach as well, like a paper boat on a tidal wave. ‘Sí.’
Oh, God, please don’t keep speaking in Spanish or I will sleep with you. Here. On the floor right in front of everyone. ‘It’s my first time to the US, and yes, to Vegas as well.’