“That’s better.”
He rolled his eyes toward mine, and with our eyes locked, he ripped the rest of the tie off his shirt and undid another button.
“Happy?” he asked.
I was too lost in the ways he was scanning my face to answer. His expression had been playful, but now it was hardened, and a familiar heat was bubbling inside me. He looked away first.
We finished the bottle, with Garrett insisting on picking up the tab, and none of us objecting.
“Let’s go dancing,” I said as we stood up.
Garrett winced, looking down at his watch. “I have a nine a.m. flight,” he said.
“Good news: that’s twelve hours away.”
Garrett shook his head at me with a grin.
* * *
JUST AS MY VOICE WAS meant to give life to lyrics, my tiny frame was made to move to a beat, especially a few drinks in. Tequila and lime danced on my gums and sweat dripped down my chest as a blissful buzz swirled in the back of my head, my feet and hips owning this dark, packed dance floor. The exact opposite was happening in front of me. Like a lone giraffe in a crowd of humans, Summer stiffly used her neck muscles to move her body, clutching her glass of wine, eyes darting around the room like it was a crime scene. While she had the body of the kind of woman who you’d picture gliding around a pop song like melted butter, she was too in control of a situation to let go—Summer Groves couldn’t dance worth shit. I laughed to myself, tempering the urge to take a video and play it back for her in a sober light.
Summer took the empty tequila drink from my hand and slung her purse over her shoulder.
“THIS IS MY HELL,” she yelled over the music, flatly pointing up to the mirrorball on the ceiling. “I HATE THIS, I’M LEAVING. BYEEEEE.”
I grabbed her arm, tugging her back.
“C’MON! IT’S TOO EARLY!”
Summer raised her perfect thick brows in my direction, implying that I should understand something that my second tequila was keeping me from understanding. After a moment of blank stares, she cupped my sweaty cheeks and put her mouth up to my ear.
“YOU’RE WELCOME,” she said.
Summer whirled me around, putting me face-to-face with Garrett’s wide smile. He spun on his wingtip shoes, his sweat-soaked shirt now unbuttoned halfway, revealing his bare, ripped torso. He moved the same way I did, to the beat as if the bass was inside his veins—which only made me want him more. We had been dancing around each other for an hour, both of us flirtatious, but the only parts of our bodies that dared touch were our hands. He kept his eyes on me, getting low to the ground, as a gorgeous dark-haired woman moved her shoulders alongside him, waiting for Garrett to discover her hips—but he never did. With a piercing one-sided grin, he took my hand and spun me around. His other hand slipped around my waist, tugging my back to his moving body. Goose bumps enveloped my arms as his hips moved against my spine, his fingers tightening around me and pulling me flush against the heat of his body. I turned my hips with his, my eyes closing as his hand landed dangerously on the open space between my jeans and my barely-there silk crop top.
The air thickened with the velvety doo-wop of Rihanna’s “Love on the Brain,” and his fingers clenched around the right side of my waist, spinning me around, with two firm grips catching my body in front of his. My eyes met the veins tightening in his reddened neck, and I inhaled the vanilla musk radiating from his glistening torso. The mirrorball overhead dusted dark red and blue lights all over our bodies as my hand found the back of his neck, the other loosely around his waist. We moved with and against each other, bodies learning each other’s edges as our gazes brushed past each other, but our eyes refused to intertwine. We knew what would happen if they did. Garrett Scholl went from dancing around me like a teenager at prom with a chaperone watching to dancing with me like a teenager at the prom’s unsanctioned after-party. I could feel the warmth of his quickened breath above me, see his throat quivering. And then, I dared to look up.
His blue eyes swallowed me whole, hardened and hungry.
His grip loosened around me. I was still, he was still—our insides doing all the dancing. My throat went dry, my lips parting and my body melting with the light touch of his fingertips on the stretch of bare skin above my hip. His hand clenched around my side, tugging my weakened body tight against his hardened stance, while his other hand traced a line up my back, from the base of my spine, sliding under my shirt, up between my damp shoulder blades. His fingers moved slowly with the music, back down to my waist, sending a shiver all over my skin. All my senses were tied up in the way he was touching me—my hips and neck gliding with the heat of his hold. We danced against each other, and as I moved down and up his body, I felt him harden against me. I couldn’t remember how to breathe, and he held me close to him, his throbbing dick against my hip. I was turning him on, and it unraveled every tightened muscle inside me. My mouth searched for air as my bottom lip brushed against the salty smooth curve on his neck, and Garrett tilted his head down, dancing his forehead against mine. The intoxicating heat of his mouth was just an inch from mine, and with a hand gripped tight on my hip bone, he led the rhythm of our bodies off the dance floor.
I closed my eyes, feeling Garrett’s thumb on the curve of my neck, my spine landing against a cool wall, his sculpted body pressed hard against my heaving chest. One hand slid up my rib cage, over the side of my breast, settling on the right side of my face, as his other hand cupped my left cheek. I swallowed hard, my face in his hands, my eyes opening to find his breathless gaze scanning me like a realized dream. And all at once, his hungry open mouth collided with mine, two scorching-hot, tequila-soaked tongues lighting matches all over my body.
My chest engulfed the mirrorball above us—slippery, shining, bliss reflected everywhere. His body trembled against mine, sent me quivering in the same places the dream of Garrett had always sent me. It was like living inside my favorite line of my favorite song—a fantasy come to life. I gripped my hand in his wavy blond hair, my lips drowning on his, as his strong arm lifted my weight, my feet barely touching the ground, his hips pinning my swelling body between him and the wall. I felt him hard against my pelvic bone, and I clenched my hand rough around the back of his damp shirt, tugging him tighter against my limbs, bringing a wet, pulsing heat between my legs. His teeth softly tugged at my bottom lip, and he kissed me up my jawline, up to my ear, with the warmth of his tongue on my earlobe sending my eyes up to the ceiling with a moan. My chin came back down, just as he arched his head back to take me in. Garrett’s large, firm body pressing me against this wall was all that was keeping my legs from buckling.
Eyes locked on his, adrenaline splintering my veins, I gripped my hand over his erection. Garrett swallowed hard, his chest thumping in front of my eyes, his stunned eyes watching as my hand moved upward, over his belt loop, sliding inside the opening of his shirt, my fingers tracing the sweaty lines of his ripped abs, my palm landing firmly over his chest. I kept my hand there, steady—my touch moving his insides like a racehorse. My eyes widened in the glory of it all, as his primal gaze blazed onto mine.
“I want to take you home, right now,” he said, in a voice so low and husky that I almost dropped to the floor.