Page 130 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

Chapter 27

You know that you lose what few wits you have when you have your hands on him, the voice of reminded her.

Stacia did not care. Earlier she had told Lord Shelton that it was near enough to Christmas that he should indulge.

Well. She would indulge, too. If she did not, she suspected she would regret it for the rest of her life.

“Very well,” Stacia said, getting to her feet.

Lord Shelton held out his arms and Stacia swallowed and took her position.

He stared down at her, his face unsmiling and his blue eyes glittering beneath lowered lids. Stacia wasn’t just indulging herself, she was courting danger.

She did not care.

He did not bother to hum, and neither of them seemed to need it. Stacia kept pace with him easily.

He was so much taller than her that it should have been uncomfortable to look up at him—and it certainly should have been awkward gazing into his eyes without talking—and yet she had never felt more at ease with him. The sheer physicality of the dance—his moves more daring and demanding the longer they danced—would have made talking difficult in any case.

Only when she noticed the sheen of perspiration on his forehead did she realize her own skin was hot and damp, the air in the room more like a summer day than the end of December.

“Tired?” he asked her in a voice that was a little breathless.

“No,” she lied, cocking an eyebrow. “You?”

He laughed. “No.”

Now that Stacia had both the measure of the dance and also knew what it was like to have a superlative partner, she could read his body well enough to anticipate his moves.

Or so she’d believed.

Then he spun her into a turn and allowed the momentum to carry her into a twirl, only his fingers lightly holding hers.

Stacia laughed with delight as he smoothly captured her free hand and resumed the dance. “I have never done that!”

He smiled. “There are a number of other starting positions—would you like to try them?”

“Of course.”

For the next half hour he demonstrated variations, some quite scandalous. But none quite so enjoyable as the one they adopted last, where Stacia’s hands rested on his shoulders, near his neck, and both his hands were on her waist. Their rather significant height difference meant their bodies were close together, far too close for a ton ballroom.

“This is my favorite,” he murmured, his eyes glinting down at her as he slowed their pace, their perfectly synchronized movements taking on a dangerously sensual feel when his leg brushed against the inside of her thigh as he turned her.

Stacia swallowed, her heart pounding and her breasts tightening.

His lips curled into one of his lazy, mischievous smiles and she just knew that he knew what she was feeling.

It was difficult to breathe, even though they were not moving fast. Indeed, they were moving so slowly they certainly would have attracted the wrong sort of attention on a normal dance floor.

The next time he turned her, he slid to a halt, and she found her back pressed up against the room’s only door.

His eyes blazed down at her, hungry and hot, his smile of only seconds earlier nowhere in sight.

They stared, frozen. And then his grip on her waist loosened.

He was stepping away from her!

Stacia yanked him down while standing on her toes, all but thrusting herself at him.