A shiver rolled down my spine, and I kept backing away as he came closer.
Good lord, gorgeous was right.
Impossible, really.
So beautiful, I’d momentarily gone stupid when I’d glanced that way and saw him standing at the opposite end of the bar a few minutes ago. So obscenely sexy I’d thought I had to be hallucinating.
My mind conjuring a fantasy to make getting through the night a little less brutal.
He angled through the chaos of couples that swirled and spun and swayed.
Tux fitting that perfect body like he’d been sewn into it, shoulders wide and waist narrow, taller than any man had the right to be.
He stared at me from across the hazy glow of lights, making me fumble, the glittering light catching his eyes that were the color of cracked cinnamon and speckled with the sun.
Still wearing that sexy-as-sin grin, he roughed a hand through his brown hair that was cut short and styled impeccably.
Every line of his masculine face was chiseled and sharp, the guy carved of stone, a perfectly trimmed five o’clock shadow defining his strong jaw. I’d have said he was made of marble, all smooth and shiny and glossy, except there was something rough beneath that polished exterior.
Something raw and unbridled.
Dangerous in a way that made my stomach quake.
But after he’d opened that deliciously decadent mouth, I’d realized he was no fantasy.
He was nothing but a bad dream.
A delusion.
That pretty exterior nothing but an illusion of all the nastiness hidden underneath.
Problem was, I was held by that fantasy. Captured and entranced as he strode in my direction. I needed to up and run, and instead, I was standing in the middle of the dancefloor like a lamb that wanted to get eaten.
I’d finally just about come to my senses when he was suddenly right there, a tower of darkness that cast a shadow over me, so damned tall I had to tilt my head back to fully take him in.
But it wasn’t really me who was doing the taking.
He was devouring me with that potent gaze, exactly like I’d imagined.
“Dance with me.” It was a rough command.
A lure.
That energy moved.
A stir at my feet.
I tried not to get trapped by it, by the feeling of it crawling up my legs and spreading over my body. Chaining me to the spot.
I swallowed down the attraction. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
He came closer. Stealing the air and making me shiver.
His mouth was so close to my ear that I couldn’t tell if it was his breath or his lips that were sending tingles rushing as they brushed across my skin. “I think it’s a brilliant idea.”
“That’s because you don’t have anything to lose.”
“Don’t I?”
If I wasn’t watching him so closely, I might have missed the way he grimaced, the way something struck him deep.
It only lasted for a second before that smirk slipped into something seductive.
“Besides, what could one dance hurt?”
“Oh, I’m sure it could hurt plenty.”
I knew it in the way I’d started to move around him, attracted and repelled, as if this man was the gravity in the room. We were suddenly in a slow dance. Not even touching, and still, I could feel him everywhere.
As if those big hands were roaming over my body. Making me scream and shiver and quake.
And my body was already making the foolish decision for me, drawn toward him, compelled by the rhythm of the music as everything pitched into a mesmerized sway.
He leaned in, his mouth back at my ear. “You’re worried about being hurt, when the only thing I’m thinking about is how good I could make you feel. I’d make you lose your mind, beautiful.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
Not for a second.
“Everyone deserves a moment to forget,” he murmured, as if he already saw all the things bleeding inside me, and then I really was shivering because he looped an arm around my waist and pulled me close.
The two of us were instantly at one with the cadence of the slow, provocative beat. “Let me be the one to do it.”
I inhaled a trembling breath when I realized I was in his arms.
The man was so big. Tall and powerful in a way that should make me afraid, muscles hard and bursting with strength, but somehow, I was wanting to completely melt into the strength of his hold.
“I don’t even know you,” I whispered.
“Believe me, you don’t really want to. That’s what makes this a brilliant idea. A win-win. Tell me you don’t feel it.”
I was pretty sure he was no longer talking about a simple dance.
“I feel it. What I’m concerned about is the aftermath.” The admission was a slip of sound, swept up in the sway of our bodies as he led me around the floor like a pro.
A pro at stealing hearts. I was sure he left them scattered all over the floor, stomped on them with the sole of his expensive shoes after he’d held them in the palms of his hands.
Tossed away so carelessly after he’d had his fill.
His mouth barely grazed along my jaw. The hint of a kiss.
Need tumbled through me in a way I’d never before experienced.
Spikes of heat.
A flood of desire.
I wondered if I’d ever truly been seduced by a man. If this was what it was like.
Spellbound and needy and hot.
So caught up in a moment that I didn’t take the time to think through the consequences. In the moment, the cost didn’t matter.
Careless.
That was what it was.
“I’d make sure it was worth it.” Apparently, the man was the messenger of seduction with the way he was whispering promises at my skin. “I’d make you come again and again until the only thing you knew was the pleasure only I can give you. The feel of my hands and my cock and my skin and our bodies giving in. It’ll leave you with a memory you’ll never forget.”
Wow. I didn’t know whether to slap him or beg him to show me what that might be like.
A shiver of warning that ran through my veins.
“And what if that memory becomes a scar?”
“How could I hurt when we both know, in the end, I won’t matter?”
He twirled us around, and I didn’t know why, but my eyes peeled open at the second the opposite end of the massive room was directly in my line of sight.
It just about knocked me onto my ass.
What it did do was toss me right back into reality.
My reality.
To who I was and why I was there and exactly what I was fighting for.
A gasp ripped from my lungs, and my already thrumming pulse shot into overdrive.
Racing in fear and dread and hate.
A hate I knew all too well when my sight hooked on the man chatting with another guy dressed in a tux over near the bank of windows that made up the far wall.
My heart stopped beating. Or maybe it’d just crashed right out of my chest.
Reed was there.
Of course, he was there. Would I actually have thought he’d have missed an opportunity to toss around more of that bloated ego and his fake, shiny smiles?
Could I be any more naïve?
I stumbled back, trying to orient myself against the dizziness that swirled through my mind. To balance myself on the floor that was suddenly spinning.
Oh, God.
What was I doin’? What was I doin’?
Dancing with a man out in public when Reed was set on tearing my life to shreds?
My knees went weak, and the guy who I’d been about ten minutes from falling into bed with tried to hold me up. Confusion sliced across his gorgeous face as he struggled to catch up to what had sent me into a tailspin.
“Are you okay?” he asked in that gruff voice that spun through my senses like a rough caress.
Was I okay?
No.
Not even close.
“What’s wrong? Need you to tell me what’s happening, right now.” His voice had shifted, his demeanor instantly protective with a sharp edge of menace slipping into his tone. The kind of menace I’d first recognized. That polished exterior dropping to expose the raw severity of the man underneath.
I had no time to explain. No reason to give him. I didn’t even know his name.
I twisted myself out of his arms, this man that I somehow knew was just as dangerous as the one standing across the room. Maybe in a different way, but my guts screamed that the feeling he’d awoken in me was only gonna destroy me if I let this go on any farther.