I make my way back to the dance floor, but not before grabbing another syringe of mostly vodka from the helpful twink in gold lamé booty shorts. I spy the two guys who’d danced up against me earlier, and they open up a spot, waving me over.
The taller one greets me with a kiss while the shorter one begins a grind against my ass. I gyrate my hips, coordinating my shoulders and arms in a slow roll against the two bodies. It’s been too long since I’ve danced like this, and I lose myself in the liquid sensuality of it.
A few songs later, the tempo changes, and so does my dance partner. The new man at my back is a little more muscled, a little more aggressive, and he’s wearing a cologne that smells like sex and leather.
He puts his hands on my hips, and I melt in his possessive grip as I dip and roll. His beard scrapes my neck, and his lips graze my ear. I raise my arms and increase the shimmy, letting my hands fall back onto his head, making sure I don’t lose the delicious scrape and velvet of his beard and lips.
From my hips, his hands wander up my body, under my geeky science officer’s shirt. Only…nothing about the way he’s touching me is geeky in the slightest. Half a song in and this man’s whole vibe is setting my body aflame. If he’s even as attractive as a Post-it note, one of us is getting fucked into the mattress tonight.
That plan goes to hell the second he opens his mouth.
“God, your hips are fucking magic,” he growls into my ear.
That sexy accent can only belong to one man.
Anders. Fucking. Bash.
He’s been a splinter in my heel for weeks now, and I hate that he affects me like this. The first time I saw him, he was shirtless and armed, and simultaneously the most beautiful and frustrating man I’ve ever met.
He has not gotten any uglier.
Or any less frustrating.
He spins me around andfuck me…he’s dressed like a goddamn Viking in leather boy shorts. His kissed-by-the-sun hair is braided back into a Mohawk, a fierce look fixed on his painted face. Beyond the boy shorts, he’s wearing thigh-high leather boots and an actual pelt over his naked shoulders.
Everysculpted and tattooed muscle is on display. The thick muscular thighs, the impossibly firm ass, the strong arms, and the shredded torso…kill me now. I rub my irritated eyes, pushing a contact half out of place, which reminds me that I’m wearing a fucking Spock costume. With a torn contact and a burning eye that won’t stop watering.
“You look familiar,” he says, scratching his beard with an amused expression on his face.
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, imitating a flat American accent as I strategize my exit.
“Yeah, can’t quite place you.”
His mouth quirks as I give up and rip the offending lens from my eyeball.
Fuck, sweet relief.
“The things we do for this holiday, amiright? I mean, I had to kill a wild boar to get this outfit togeth—”
He stops midsentence, tilting his head at my squinty-eyed discomfort.
“Hey, now, hey,” he says in that lazy East Texas drawl of his, putting his hand on my shoulder. “You all right? I’m a doctor. Want me to take a look at your eye?”
Yes.
No.
Fuck my life.
I plaster on my best blank look and raise a Spock eyebrow at him.
He smiles broadly, never once having to fake his heart-stopping combination of lips, teeth, and dimples. “No, seriously. I’m a doctor.”
I shake my head and grab a few napkins off a passing tray, holding them to my eye. His puzzled look, the dangerous one that lets him home in on my every weakness, remains.
He gently touches my arm again. “Please. Let me at least just make sure you haven’t scratched your cornea.”
I let out a breath and nod. We move over to the crowded hallway by the bathrooms, and he pulls out his phone. “Sorry, this is gonna blind you a little bit,” he says gently as he turns on the flashlight.
