“Wait,” he calls out to me, and I turn back. He slowly closes the distance between us, hands in his dress pants pockets. “I saw you wincing on the dance floor.”
“Yes,” I admit, stepping back into the room and closing the door behind me. “I came to hide from more crushed toes. Were you also hiding?”
He snorts. “I wasn’t hiding.”
He’s still mostly in shadows, but I glimpse a hard jaw, a fuller lower lip than the top, and the glimmer of a brilliant, bright green gaze.
“You’re tucked in the darkest part of the library with the overhead lights off. It feels a little like hiding to me.” I tease.
“Okay, so maybe I was hiding a little,” he concedes reluctantly.
As I step out of my shoes, I nudge them against the wall by the door. The relief isincredible. I curl my bare toes a few times on the thick carpets to chase away the cramped feeling from stuffing my feet into too-narrow heels. I learned to walk and dance in four-inch heels. The teachers didn’t think to prepare us for alphas with two left feet.
“Better,” I breathe with a blissful sigh.
His eyes dip, and his mouth turns up in a half-smile. “Why did you let those alphas stamp on your feet? And why are you removing your shoes? Making a break for freedom.”
Big shoulders and an unshakable confidence mean I’m dealing with an alpha, even if I can’t smell him just yet. The alphas on the dance floor weren’t interesting. This one is, if only because I have never known an alpha to hide from anything.
“My feet hurt.” I wander away from him, just a couple of steps, toward a forest landscape painting in a gold gilt frame near a wall sconce. Secretly, I continue to observe him out of the corner of my eye, wanting to see more of him. “I’m hoping to find a prince among all these frogs. The occasional stamp is preferable to kissing alphas with wandering hands.”
“You should slap those hands away.” He snorts as he walks toward me. His eyes rove over me, hungry and possessive. Even if I weren’t subtly watching him, I’d still feel the heat of his gaze lingering on my hips, the curve of my breasts, and my bare throat. Alphas like to bite, and I know that’s what he wants to doto me when he lifts one hand from his pocket and drags the back of it across his mouth.
I shrug. “I do my fair share of stamping when those hands wander too far. A stiletto heel does wonders for correcting bad behavior.”
His chuckle is dark and delicious. “I think I like you.”
“For my violent nature?” I raise my eyebrow and wander to the next painting I have no interest in. “The teachers here would faint.”
We move around the room together in a subtle dance. As I wander to the next painting, clutching the skirt of my floor-length dress to keep the hem from tripping me, he slowly pursues me. For every step he takes toward me, I take two away.
If he had wanted to catch up to me, he would have done it already. But I think he likes this slow game of cat-and-mouse almost as much as I do.
He’s younger than I initially thought. Closer to mid-twenties than the late twenties I assumed when I first walked in. His black tie is looser than it should be, as if he slipped out of the ballroom and tugged at it impatiently the moment he was alone.
I’m not the only one who felt trapped tonight.
“All the alphas are here to meet omegas,” I say. “Why are you hiding in here?”
“This was the only hiding place left.” He glances down.
I look down, but can’t see what he’s focused on. “What are you looking for?”
“Checking to make sure you don’t have a secret stiletto under that dress,” he admits with wry amusement. “After what you just admitted, I want them nowhere near my toes before I come any closer. I’m Torin.”
“Juniper. Juniper Edith Alicia Mabel Harrington.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Does a person need that many names?”
I let out a sigh. “No Harrington is safe from ridiculous names. Figured I’d let you know now rather than have a teacher loudly introduce us on the dance floor the way they have all night. I prefer June.”
“It’s not—” He jerks his head to the closed door as the sharprat-a-tatof efficient footsteps moves down the hallway and toward the library. “Is this for you or me?”
“Probably me.” I’m supposed to be on the dance floor or introducing myself to every alpha in the ballroom.
I quickly look around, then squeeze into the space between the wall and bookcase, where we can't be seen from the door. Torin ducks in a second later, and if someone opens the door, I never hear them.
Amber and cinnamon.
