Page 14 of Out of Control

I clench my jaw.

The music starts up again, yet another song in an endless stream that’s played here. They both sway to the beat from their place on the fringe of the crowd. It’s innocent enough—at first—but the minute the fucker does what I’d do if I were him, move in closer, hands on her hips, his body against hers, every muscle in my body tenses.

“Grrr,” I say to no one in particular.

Every second of their interaction is like a snapshot of time unfolding before me between the pulse of the lasers lighting the sky.

As his hands cling to her hips, with her back pressed against his front, she raises her hands to the sky.

He whispers something in her ear, and when she smiles, my stomach twists.

And as she runs her hands down the front of her body, her neck, her breasts, her hips, making every part of me want, she looks across the distance, locks eyes with me, and smirks.

My balls draw up. Ache.

These two nights have been like a long, extended foreplay. A taunt and a temptation that’s right in front of me, that’s tangible, but that I haven’t touched. And this, her smirk, her hands touching herself like I want to, is just one more douse of kerosene on a low, smoldering flame.

She knows I’m here.

She’s playing the game.

And that makes me want to drag her against me and take from her lips even more.

I chuckle. How can I not? And then I do something that every part of me rages against—I make a show of pushing off the wall, of nodding at her so she knows I see her, and of walking away.

The startled look on her face is all I need to see. Game fucking on.

And as much as I want to look again, to see if her head is craning after me, I don’t.

Instead, I wander the grounds, moving from stage to stage. I’m physically there, but my mind is on Sofia and all the reasons I shouldn’t act on what I know I’m going to act on.

It’s not like I’ve ever cared what’s right or wrong before. Why start now?

• • •

I hear her before I see her. The soft purr of the engine as it comes to a stop followed shortly thereafter by her murmured thank you that cuts through the early morning silence. Then there’s the door on the rideshare slamming closed and then the click of her boots on the pavement as she draws near.

“You may have been dancing with him, but you know you were dancing for me.”

She yelps as I step out of the shadows and then just as quickly chuckles while lifting her eyebrows. “You’re here. How charming that you know where I’m staying.”

“Someone has to make sure you get home safe every night.”

Her head jostles at the revelation. There’s surprise there but she locks that shit down quickly as if I didn’t already see it. “And you took it upon yourself to assume I wanted that person to be you?”

My smirk is my only response. The fact that she’s standing here, squaring off with me when she can walk through her door is answer enough.

“What if I had brought him home with me right now?”

“You wouldn’t have.”

“So sure of yourself, huh?”

I step closer and love that her breath hitches and her pupils widen. Yeah. The attraction? The desire? It’s most definitely mutual. “When that whole show was for me? You can deny it all you want, Bellissima, but you know it, I know it, and I sure as fuck am certain that he knew it.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She steps even closer, to add challenge to her words. My body goes into overdrive, my restraint not far behind.

“I don’t? Now, why would you say that?” Jesus. Her lips were made to be kissed.