Hale pauses a foot away from me. “Are you sure? Those heels are very high. You’re basically asking for a sprained ankle by wearing them.”
“Yes, but they look good.” For some idiotic reason, I feel the need to drive this point home by lifting my hem again, accidentally showing a flash of thigh in the process. What is wrong with me? Have I turned into a can-can dancer?
“They do look nice on you,” he agrees.
When I peer at his face, his eyes are on my mouth. A half-second later, they drop down to my chest, then drag up to my neck. Back down to my chest. All the way up to my mouth again.
Finally, he meets my gaze.
“Uh,” I say, rather eloquently.
“Thank you for coming tonight, Lila.” He pauses for a moment, as if searching for the right words. “It’s clear that you care a lot about your job.”
“Likewise.”
“So, we have something in common.”
“We have plenty in common,” I find myself arguing lightly.
He tilts his head to the side. “Do we?”
“Like punctuality.”
“That’s true.”
“And we both have really great butts.”
I want to smack my head against the brick behind me as soon as the words slip out, but Hale surprises me by actuallylaughing.
He stops almost as soon as he starts, as if it’s such an unfamiliar thing to him that he startled himself out of it, but I feel a rush of victory nonetheless.
I grin at him. “Finally. I made you smile.”
Something shifts in his eyes. A strange darkening, and an odd sort of wide-eyed frankness that catches me off guard.
“You’re ridiculous,” he whispers.
My grin only widens. He makes a strangled sound, and then he’s reaching for me.
His mouth crashes against mine, and I don’t even hesitate to answer in kind. I throw my arms around his neck and curve into his body, moaning when his hands glide around my hips and slip lower to cup my allegedly great butt.
I gasp at the delicious force behind that touch, so unlike the gentleness he showed me during our dance, and he takes the opportunity to deepen the kiss. His tongue slides against mine, causing heat to blaze across my skin. I feel like I’ve accidentally touched a live wire, simultaneously overwhelmed and craving more.
He presses me back into the brick, and my mind is already racing several steps ahead. To the part where he lifts me off the ground and I wrap my arms around his waist. To the part where he pushes aside the flimsy fabric of my underwear and takes me right here against the wall.
We could do it like that, fast and dirty. Iwantto do it, even though I don’t exactly make a habit out of hooking up with men I barely know.
But then a distant voice floats toward us.
Lou.
“Lila? Did I see you come down this way?”
A curse slips out of Hale, so sharp that I can taste it like ice on my tongue, and then he’s stumbling away from me.
Just like that, the spell is broken.
Chapter six
