“I don’t even know you,” I whispered.
“Believe me, you don’t really want to. That’s what makes this a brilliant idea. A win-win. Tell me you don’t feel it.”
I was pretty sure he was no longer talking about a simple dance.
“I feel it. What I’m concerned about is the aftermath.” The admission was a slip of sound, swept up in the sway of our bodies as he led me around the floor like a pro.
A pro at stealing hearts. I was sure he left them scattered all over the floor, stomped on them with the sole of his expensive shoes after he’d held them in the palms of his hands.
Tossed away so carelessly after he’d had his fill.
His mouth barely grazed along my jaw. The hint of a kiss.
Need tumbled through me in a way I’d never before experienced.
Spikes of heat.
A flood of desire.
I wondered if I’d ever truly been seduced by a man. If this was what it was like.
Spellbound and needy and hot.
So caught up in a moment that I didn’t take the time to think through the consequences. In the moment, the cost didn’t matter.
Careless.
That was what it was.
“I’d make sure it was worth it.” Apparently, the man was the messenger of seduction with the way he was whispering promises at my skin. “I’d make you come again and again until the only thing you knew was the pleasure only I can give you. The feel of my hands and my cock and my skin and our bodies giving in. It’ll leave you with a memory you’ll never forget.”
Wow. I didn’t know whether to slap him or beg him to show me what that might be like.
A shiver of warning that ran through my veins.
“And what if that memory becomes a scar?”
“How could I hurt when we both know, in the end, I won’t matter?”
He twirled us around, and I didn’t know why, but my eyes peeled open at the second the opposite end of the massive room was directly in my line of sight.
It just about knocked me onto my ass.
What it did do was toss me right back into reality.
My reality.
To who I was and why I was there and exactly what I was fighting for.
A gasp ripped from my lungs, and my already thrumming pulse shot into overdrive.
Racing in fear and dread and hate.
A hate I knew all too well when my sight hooked on the man chatting with another guy dressed in a tux over near the bank of windows that made up the far wall.
My heart stopped beating. Or maybe it’d just crashed right out of my chest.
Reed was there.
Of course, he was there. Would I actually have thought he’d have missed an opportunity to toss around more of that bloated ego and his fake, shiny smiles?
Could I be any more naïve?
I stumbled back, trying to orient myself against the dizziness that swirled through my mind. To balance myself on the floor that was suddenly spinning.
Oh, God.
What was I doin’? What was I doin’?
Dancing with a man out in public when Reed was set on tearing my life to shreds?
My knees went weak, and the guy who I’d been about ten minutes from falling into bed with tried to hold me up. Confusion sliced across his gorgeous face as he struggled to catch up to what had sent me into a tailspin.
“Are you okay?” he asked in that gruff voice that spun through my senses like a rough caress.
Was I okay?
No.
Not even close.
“What’s wrong? Need you to tell me what’s happening, right now.” His voice had shifted, his demeanor instantly protective with a sharp edge of menace slipping into his tone. The kind of menace I’d first recognized. That polished exterior dropping to expose the raw severity of the man underneath.
I had no time to explain. No reason to give him. I didn’t even know his name.
I twisted myself out of his arms, this man that I somehow knew was just as dangerous as the one standing across the room. Maybe in a different way, but my guts screamed that the feeling he’d awoken in me was only gonna destroy me if I let this go on any farther.
So, I did what I should have done fifteen minutes ago.
I ran.
Three
Ian
I felt her go cold in my arms, her knees going weak and panic piercing her like a stake of a red-hot iron.
“Are you okay?” I whispered, trying to keep the aggression that slammed me locked down.
Last thing I needed to do was throw down in the middle of Charleston’s elite. Might be a bit of a detriment to my image for these people to get a good look at the seedy darkness that writhed inside me.
Didn’t matter.
My eyes were darting all over the place, searching for a threat while I tried to gather her closer, having the intense urge to wrap her up and whisper in her ear. Promise that it would be okay.