He hadn’t told her what to do.If she dragged some guy off the dance floor and into a dark corner, he hadn’t told her not to.They didn’t have any ofthoserules.But he didn’t know what he’d do if she wanted someone else.Maybe he’d have to fight to get her back.Maybe that’s what she’d want.And maybe he’d enjoy the hell out of that too.
She looked at him, smiled with those ruby lips, making him ache with the need to feel them around his cock.Then another guy led her off to the dance floor, this one older, gray-haired, but in shape and up to dancing his ass off on the floor.But rather than looking at the dude, she was looking at Knox, making sure he was watching.He raised his glass to her.When her partner tried to keep her on the dance floor after the song ended, she held up her index finger, as if saying he would get only one dance.
Then she came back to Knox, smiling, her gaze flirty.He was sure he could smell her arousal.She loved stringing these guys along, loved stringing him along, loved flaunting her feminine power.
A succession of men seemed willing to do her bidding, but she was capable of turning them down flat too.Some guy who hadn’t even bothered to wash his hair before he came out for the evening got the thumbs down.When it seemed like he might protest and Knox thought he’d have to intervene, she said something that made the guy slink away.
He enjoyed watching her, the way she danced with abandon, sometimes twirling away from her partner and getting lost in the crowded floor.It was a crush out there, a mass of writhing bodies.What he missed was her voice.He should have made her put her earbuds in so he could talk to her.A tactical error.That’s what made last Saturday so good, when she’d strolled with his voice in her ear and her words in his.
Her phone was probably in the little clutch purse on the table.She probably hadn’t even put her earbuds in there.And he didn’t have his.
Her dance partner reached for her, tried to grab her hand, maybe to drag her away, and Knox almost rounded the table, ready to jump into that throng of thrashing bodies and rescue her as if she were a damsel in distress.But she laughed at the guy.Knox imagined he could hear her over the cacophony, that sexy musical laugh as she danced out of the man’s reach.
She floated back to Knox then, breathing hard.Looking at him, smiling, she leaned on the table and said, “Dancing makes me wet.”
Her teasing damn near made him lose control.
Then she flounced back out there, all by herself.In the crush of dancers, she didn’t even need a partner.As the lights flashed, one moment she was with that man, and the next she danced with a woman.It didn’t matter what sex they were or what they looked like.She zoomed in and out.One second he could see her, the next she was gone.At some point, she’d have to crash.She’d been going for over an hour, and he’d ordered another glass of champagne for her, along with water, half of which she’d finished.
“You want to dance?”
He’d been so focused on the dance floor, onher, that he’d neither seen nor heard the woman approach.She was attractive, though overly made-up.Still, she was drop-dead gorgeous, with burnished brunette hair cascading over her shoulders and breasts that could make a man salivate.
Any man but him.“Sorry, I’m waiting for a friend.”
She moved right into his line of sight, blocking his view of Summer.“But you’ve been waiting a long time,” she said.“Maybe your friend’s not coming.”
He moved in order to see the dance floor again, but she sidestepped with him, coming closer.Again, he cut her off.“I’m a very patient man, and I don’t mind waiting.Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
She didn’t take the hint.It made him think of how a woman felt when a man just wouldn’t leave her alone.“I bet you can spare one dance,” she said in a husky, seductive voice.“Maybe she’ll miraculously materialize when you return.”She raised one questioning eyebrow, which might have been sexy if she wasn’t blocking Summer.
Still, he remained polite.“Thanks, but no thanks.”
Suddenly she sneered at him.“What, do you think you’re too good for me?”
“No.”He tried to remain civil.“But I’m waiting for my friend.”His words came out clipped.
“Asshole,” she hissed at him and stalked away.Again, he thought of how women felt when men didn’t get the answer they liked.
He looked over the dance floor for Summer.The song ended and another began, and she didn’t come back.His heart began to pound.This was a stupid fucking idea.If something happened to her… If some guy actually cornered her or tried to take her outside, would he be fast enough to rescue her in this mob?
As he scanned the crowd, his pulse became a roar in his ears.He’d lost her in the short time the other woman had distracted him.Standing, he searched, his heart climbing into his throat, his mind descending into madness.
And then, there, he spotted her.Thank Christ.Maybe because he was already on his feet, or maybe because his heart was still pounding, he grabbed her clutch bag, shoved it into his pocket, took the three steps down into that twisting mass of humanity, and pushed his way to her.
An arm snakedaround her waist and pulled her against a hard body.Summer bent her elbow, ready to ram it back into the man’s ribs, but then she caught his scent.The scent from those meetings where she sat across from him, the scent from her office when he sat in the chair opposite.The scent she imagined every night.
And she relaxed into the warm body and the hard cock along her spine.
The voice in her ear was his nighttime phone-sex voice.“I can’t let you dance all alone out here.”
There were so many people, it was as if they no longer had faces, and after dancing with all those strangers, this was what she wanted.The thought of him was what made her wet.The way he watched her with predatory eyes, as if he were stalking her, waiting for the right moment.
He wrapped another muscled arm across her abdomen, right below her breasts, and they flowed with the music.With every slide of her body against his, he twitched and flexed at the base of her spine.
His voice in her ear seduced her.“You smell so fucking good.Like you’re wet and ready for me right now.Like you can’t wait for me to drag you into an alcove where I can fuck you.”
There was something in the throbbing energy of his body, the huskiness of his voice, the pulse of his wrist against her ribs.She’d dreamed about this so many nights that, for a moment, she didn’t realize this was the first time he’d touched her.The first time she’d felt the length and breadth and thickness of him against her.And it was so much better than that brief touch she’d stolen last weekend.As if her hand had a mind of its own, she placed it over his and guided him down.Until he could feel the heat and throb of her sex.The lights over them strobed on and off, on and off as they swirled over the crowd, and she pressed his fingers between her thighs, shuddering against him.Dancers jittered in abandon around them, and she closed her eyes, absorbing the beat of the music and the heat of his hand.His fingers slid away, across her hip, down her thigh, to the flared skirt of her dress.
