Someone from behind bumped into her, nudging them so close Valentino almost groaned out loud as his cock hardened to stone.
‘Dio abbia pietà,’he muttered, praying for mercy, suppressing the urge togrind.
His low, throaty voice snapped her out of her prattle and she glanced at him, her eyes widening as if she, too, felt the sudden surge of heat between them. Their gazes locked and heknewshe felt it. Her pupils dilated, her lips parted slightly, and everything around them faded to black.
For several long lustful moments, it was just him and her on the dancefloor, moving to a rhythm as old as time. It was never destined to last long, of course. Even in a haze of frangipani and lust, Valentino wasn’t foolish enough to believe it would go on, but he intended to stay right here while it lasted.
He spotted the moment she came back to her surroundings and realised how close they were standing. Howpublicit was. He sensed the first coil of tension in her muscles as she opened her mouth to speak, as if there was something she could say that would erase those seconds.
‘Do you think,’ he asked, getting in before her, desire turning his voice silky, ‘putting words between us will really help you ignore what’s going on here?’
Her mouth clicked shut as a flair of panic stirred up whorls of grey mist in her eyes. ‘I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Peyton.’ Valentino ground out her name as he flattened his palm against her spine, bringing them even more intimately into contact. ‘I think you do.’
She swallowed then, Valentino’s gaze snagging on the bob of her slender throat before he lifted it again to see a fleeting flare of yearning in her eyes that reached hot hands inside his gut and squeezed. But then the music stopped and people were clapping and jostling and moving, providing just the cover she needed.
‘No. I don’t,’ she said, her chin tilted, her eyes steely and determined.
Then she stepped out of his arms, letting the momentum of the dance floor exodus sweep her all the way back to her table.
2
The next hour ground on excruciatingly as Peyton’s eyes followed Valentino around the dance floor, laughing and flirting with what seemed like every hot woman in the room. Not that she could blame any of them – Valentino in full flirt mode was hard to resist.
Relax, that’s what he’d said to her.Relax?With his body firm and hot andherbody lurching in areas that hadn’t lurched in a very long time?
He may as well have asked her to fly to the moon.
She remembered the moment she’d stumbled and had leaned into him to steady herself. How aware she’d been – too aware – of the muscles beneath his shirt, the strength in his arms, the heat of him, the power of him. Not to mention the ache of her taut nipples as they’d chafed against the fabric of her dressandhis shirt. The darts of heat radiating from fingers sitting low on her spine, shooting waves of sensation over her bottom and the backs of her thighs. The heat in her pelvis stoked by the heat in his.
The lust, theintentin his espresso gaze, was frighteningly compelling.
For a few seconds Peyton had wanted nothing more than to grind herself against him. It was an urge she’d had to suppress with an iron fist as she’d sought desperately for something – anything – to say to instil distance, to break the hypnotic pull of the music, the warmth of his breath at her temple, the sway of his body against hers.
Thank God for Harry. On so many levels.
She could have talked about her fabulous boss all night. And, curiously, Peyton found herself wanting to tell him more about McKenzie, about her fragile health and the long road they’d both been on, but as much as she was desperate for conversation to maintain distance, the ups and downs of her life were not for public consumption.
Certainly not for Valentino’s consumption. The less he knew about her the better.
The throb of her feet pulled Peyton out of her reverie. She wasn’t used to wearing fancy heels any more and frankly, she was weary down to her bones from all this socialising. It was time to call it a night.
She knew it was bad form to leave the wedding before the bride and groom, but she couldn’t take being sociable another second. Nor being in the same room as Valentino, watching him dance and flirt, for a second longer, although he seemed to have temporarily disappeared.
Probably doing furtive things in furtive places with one of the many women he’d been flirting with tonight. A hot wave of something Peyton didn’t even want to name flooded her veins.
Definitelytime to go.
Making her apologies to Nat, she assured her shewasstaying the night but pleaded a headache. When the lift arrived promptly she almost pressed a kiss to its cold metallic doors. The impulse, sadly, was short lived as they opened to reveal Valentino, hisjacket slung over his shoulder, his bow-tie undone, leaning against the back wall.
They stared at each other for what seemed an eternity. ‘Going up?’ he murmured.
Damn, damn, damn.
Peyton entered the lift after a brief hesitation during which an errant brain cell urged her to run. But she was damned if she was going to show this man he had any power over her in this maddening dynamic. She turned her back on him, keeping to the front of the spacious lift, and searched the buttons for floor twelve.
Of course it was already lit.
