I touched my chest when my heart fluttered. “And you didn’t leave the party with me.”
“I had no idea you were married. It never even occurred to me to look at your hand,” he glanced at my ring, currently pressed over the same spot the wine stain had been, “because when I saw you, I felt like . . . like I’d found something I’d been looking for. And life wouldn’t be sofuckingunfair that it was already taken.”
“Don’t say that,” I said, hearing the rasp in my voice.
“I warned you—I’m dangerously close to dropping the act,” David said. “It’s taking everything I have not to put you over my shoulder and drag you to my event so I can warn the whole world that you’remine.”
He walked away toward the mirror, leaving me trying to catch my breath and resist from melting into a puddle of need for him.
Jesus. He was wrong. He wasn’t pretending shit. Therewasno pretending. Not when we were alone.
I said the only thing I could think of that might knock some sense into each of us. “My husband is downstairs.”
“I don’t give a fuck,” he said, back in front of the mirror, fiddling with his sleeve, growing visibly irritated when he couldn’t get the cufflink in.
I walked over and took his wrist, my throat thickening. “This tuxedo, these cufflinks—they don’t belong to you,” I said. “They’re on loan. You can’t just walk out of here with them and never bring them back.”
“I can if I want,” he said levelly. “Lucy has my credit card.”
I pursed my lips. My fingers brushed the inside of his wrist as I slipped the cufflink through its hole. “So, you want something, you buy it. That’s how it works, Mr. Black Card?”
He flexed his hand, and I flinched as his fingertips nearly grazed the fabric over the scar on my stomach. “I want something, I find a way to get it,” he said.
If David could touch my scar, he was too close. Heat radiated from him, or maybe our chemistry warmed the space between us.We’re too close. “And if it belongs to someone else?”
“I doubt he’d miss it.”
“He would,” I said, keeping my eyes on David’s size fourteen-and-a-half shoes. “A lot.”
A deep breath filled my nostrils with his spicy aftershave. David’s stare followed me as I moved to the left cuff, then took a step back and admired him. Aside from wearing the wrong pants and the bowtie hanging loosely around his neck, he was ready for his gala.
With a determined furrow in his brow, he started to fix the tie.
“Let me.” I slipped between the mirror and him. The spicy scent mixed with fresh soap, intensifying as I leaned in. I quickly molded the fabric into a neat bow. With my mom no longer in the house as a kid, I’d helped my dad get ready for many black-tie events in Dallas.
As I pulled the bow taut, my fingers stilled and lingered. I could no longer avoid David’s penetrating gaze. I watched the rise and fall of his chest until my eyes traveled up his exposed neck. His Adam’s apple jumped as he swallowed. Even his hair obeyed, every strand in place, starkly black against his olive skin. His mouth slackened, creases fading. Finally, our eyes locked.
In one slow, measured movement, he wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me to him. His other hand rose and raked through my hair, tilting my mouth upward.
My eyes fluttered shut.
His lips touched mine, and everything else fell away. Warmth pulsed through me as he tested the new territory with a purposeful but tender kiss. My mouth parted, and he answered by opening it farther with his lips. An ache blossomed between my legs. My head swam with the hot breath and heady taste of another man after so many years.
He cupped my face and backed me against the mirror as the kiss became needier. His hands moved down my neck and over my collarbone. They covered my shoulders, pressing me into the glass. That throb grew painful, eager for relief.
I took his cheeks in my hands, his skin smooth over a sharp jaw, and moaned on his tongue.
He tore away suddenly and stepped back. “Fuck.”
My heart pounded as I gasped for air, but my throat constricted. Heat vanished, the mirror cooling my back in an instant. I couldn’t move. I could only watch David, waiting for his direction.
He turned his back to me, shoving his hands through his perfect hair. “Fuck,” he yelled so loudly, I jumped.
He pounded a fist against the wall, whipped open the door, and stalked out.
I covered my tingling mouth. The kiss had happened both fast and slow, the swell of a wave pulling me down into tranquility before it crashed over my head.
God. Oh, God.
