I’m not your girl.Her words repeated in my head, and I wasn’t going to dwell on just how much I didn’t like the sound of that.Mine. My girl!that possessive voice I didn’t recognize shouted inside my head.
“What about a dance?” I found myself asking. I wasn’t usually a dancer, but I knew my way around the floor.
“A dance,” she repeated, and I watched with rapt attention as her head turned slowly. “You want to dance?” The emphasis on the wordyoumade me sit a little straighter. Like she could see through all my bullshit and didn’t have any problems calling me out. But I nodded, and as the thought of her in my arms marinated even longer in my head, a smile grew on my lips.
Fuck, I wanted to slow dance every night for the rest of my life with her if she let me.What the hell is that?I wondered. I cleared my throat and tried to go for nonchalant. I shrugged.
“A dance never hurt anyone. But if you don’t want to?—“
“I didn’t say no,” she muttered and sighed. When she turned her incredible body towards me, I made sure my eyes stayed on hers even if the fuckers wanted to soak in every little curve and angle of her sinfully delicious body.
“Fine. One dance, then I gotta go.”
“Okay.” I winked, feeling like I had just won the goddamn lottery. “One slow dance,” I countered, hopping off the stool and extending my hand.
“I never said slow?—“
“But you already greedy, kitten,” I said just as her finger touched my palm.
“Oh no. See, we’re not doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Nicknames.” She pulled her hand from mine, or tried to.
“You said I could call you Liz,” I reminded her, and she rolled her eyes. Fuck, why was that attitude of hers so damn hot?
“I said that’s what my sisters call me, not that you could call me that,” she clarified, yet she still let me lead her to the makeshift dance floor.
When we got to the slightly busy floor, I turned back to look at her. She was tall for a woman but still just reached my shoulders, and for the first time in my thirty-six years, I wondered what it would be like to have her rest her head on my shoulders. I could picture the scene so easily: The two of us on a couch after a long day, her head tucked into my side, hand on my chest as she told me about her day. The image was so fucking innocent it shouldn’t have left me feeling like the breath had been kicked out of me. It was innocent but intimate.Real.I shook the thought away.
This is just a dance, I reminded myself. Dance with her, thank her for it, maybe kiss the top of her hand before making sure to pay hers and your tab, and get the hell back home. Maybe stop at Onyx’ place to see if he needed help painting his glittery-as-hell kitchen again. Or the gym. The gym could work. A hard workout would help whatever pent-up shit was swirling inside my head, making me think I wanted more from not just a woman but a local.
“We going to dance or—“ she started to sass, taking my momentary silence as me changing my mind. A grin grew on my face. I was a sick, sick man. I really fucking liked that spunk of hers.
“Okay, Elizabeth,” I drawled, my voice a low rumble. I pulled her body against mine. “Fine. No nicknames.”For now,I thought to myself. I wasn’t the kind to give women nicknames other than babe or sugar when I was serving at the brewery and trying to get the tip jar a little heavier.
Yet with Elizabeth in my arms, I wanted to have a mile-long list of nicknames just for her.
“No nicknames but two slow dances,” I found myself negotiating just as I lost sight of her face when I tucked her body against mine and we started to sway to the slow sultry beat of the song.
“Whatever.” Her mumbled response brushed against my neck, and my dick had a hard time staying down. “As long as you don’t step on my toes,” she muttered.
One song drifted into two then three. By the end of the night, when the dance floor was empty and Marie tapped me on the shoulder that it was last call, I knew I’d fucked up. Elizabeth, whoever she was, was going to be the end of me.
I was a goner.
Hook, line, and sinker.
The question was, what the hell was I going to do about it? I’d watched my older brother Merritt fall last year. I’d seen my best friend, Bash, pine for the girl and knew it was inevitable that he and Raven would end up together. Shit, how long had I been giving Onyx crap about finally making a move on Kandy?
But I was different.
The exception, not the rule.
I didn’t do love or shit like that. Yet as I walked Elizabeth to her car and gave her my phone number instead of my best lineto get her to ask me back to her place, I knew my life was never going to be the same.Life changing.
Fucking hell.
