I shoved him off, finally turning toface him. “I already have a hundred thousand likes. It hasn’t even been two minutes. So someone thinks it looks good.”
He clicked his tongue. “I don’t know, I remember someone commanding a lot of attention at a school dance.”
My mind flashed back to ten years ago, to the only school dance I’d ever gone to. The rare time Abby and I weren’t at each other’s throats. Trauma bonded through the shitty school our grandfather forced on us. We’d gotten drunk in my room and decided,fuck it.
It was supposed to be a joke, a way for us to laugh at townies. My mother put me in dance as soon as I could walk. I didn’t dance for fun; it was just another facet of my carefully orchestrated persona. Gemma Crowne can waltzandshake it like Britney.
But then a stupid, silly song from our childhood came on and Abby dragged me to the dance floor. Abby was always the best at rebelling. My heart thrummed at the memory. It was one of the only good ones I’d had as a kid.
“Oh my God!” I said. “I was fifteen.”
Grim’s lip twitched. “You almost took out a rib.”
The beat of the club pounded in my blood as what he’d said, what he’dmeant, washed over me. Grim had watched me, even back then.
“So this is how you want me to dance?” I threw my arms in the air, dancing like I was with Abby again. “To look like a fool?”
I shook my arms and head, spinning and twirling and not giving a shit if my dance was cringe or had good angles. For a moment I actually was fifteen again. Then the song changed, and reality slapped me in the face. I stopped abruptly, feeling all at once stupid and vulnerable. Like my skin had been stripped to only raw nerves.
Except, Grim didn’t look at me like I was a joke.
His stare was lethal.
Hungry.
“I’m all sweaty and gross now. Happy?” I pushed past him to get space between him and that look in his eyes when he gripped my wrist, dragging me back.
Againsthim.
My back to his chest. Flush.
“Wha—”
He captured my hair, moving it to the other side and exposing my neck.
He slid one hand down the side of me, my curves, and we moved. In the dark of the club, where no one was watching, he moved us together. It was more than a dance. It was a memory inside a promise.
Of when he’d moved inside me on that beach.
“You can’t touch me like this,” I breathed.
The Horsemen don’t trade in sex.
The Horsemennevertouch their contracts, let alone fuck them.
Whatever was happening between Grim and me was off the books. Tomorrow we would pretend none of this happened.
His open palm slid over my belly, stopping just above my pussy, holding me closer against him. His cock grew hard on my ass. I sucked in a breath I knew he could feel.
As if to prove me wrong, he dragged me closer. Moved me. Commanded me.
“I like you sweaty, Gemma,” he rasped against my neck. “Dirty. Ugly. Messy.”
I closed my eyes, sinking into him—but he was gone.
TEN
GRIM
