I was just Remi. Flirting with a handsome stranger who made my pulse race.
And it feltgood.
My hands fisted in my lap as he pulled back and kept his intense stare on me.
“I don’t even know your name,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure he could hear it, not with the music. I could feel the throb of the bass between my legs.
“And I don’t know yours.” On Vanessa’s insistence, I’d left my hair in loose waves down my back. He shifted his arm forward, letting his wrist drape over the back of my stool. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, but in the really pleasant,I might die from sexual tensionway, simply because of how he’d so effectively caged me in. He wrapped a few tendrils around his pointer finger and tugged. “But I’m not sure it matters.”
Danger!
Something screamed in the back of my head, a survival instinct that I’d be stupid to ignore. It wasn’t physical danger, like he’d hurt me, but something far, far worse.
A part of me, the one that had held the reins of my self-control for the last decade, gave one last violent heave and tried to break, gasping, through the surface. But I held that bitch down and let her drown. Just for tonight.
Tomorrow,I promised. Tomorrow, she could be in control again. When everything was normal and I wasn’t this fantasy version of myself.
“I can’t leave,” I said slowly.
Disappointment filled his eyes. “Why not?”
It was my turn to stare at his mouth. “My friend. She ... she made me promise I had to do something before I could go.”
“Then fucking do it,” he growled near my ear, dragging his nose over my cheek.
I exhaled a quiet laugh, willing the thrashing of my heart to slow so I wouldn’t pass out from sexual tension. “She told me I needed to dance with someone.”
“What?”
I bit down on my bottom lip, and he clenched his jaw, not even attempting to hide the feral flash in his eyes when I did. “She wants me to prove that I’m trying to have a good time. I don’t ... I don’t ever go out.”
“Why not?”
With his eyes steady on mine, his hand was sliding underneath my hair now, calloused fingers wrapping around the back of my neck in a proprietary squeeze that almost made me groan.
“Like I said earlier, I have a son.” His thumb dragged over my pulse point, and I sucked in a gasping breath. “I take care of my grandfather. And I’m always working so I can afford to do both of those things, and I can hardly do that. A twenty-five-dollar shot is not in the monthly budget, I can promise you that.”
The second the truths came out of my mouth, I wondered if that was it. If the reality of my day-to-day would break the spell that hung heavy over this small corner of the bar.
But it didn’t. His attention never lessened, never wavered.
He nodded slowly. “So tonight is ... what?”
I exhaled through my nose. “A break in reality that willneverhappen again.”
There was a flicker in his expression that I couldn’t define, but whatever I’d said seemed to make his decision for him.
Slowly, he stood, unfolding his body from the seat, and I swear to every deity in existence, I almost came on the spot when I saw how tall he was. Easily six four. The broad expanse of his chest and shoulders was all sculpted muscle, the simple T-shirt and flickering lights making him look dangerous in a way that he hadn’t when we were seated eye to eye.
He wasn’t pretty. Nothing about him was sleek or refined. This was rugged, manly hotness, and I was a fan.
And it was all for me. If I wanted him.
Then he held out his hand.
A knot wedged in my throat, and I tried to swallow it down while I stared at that outstretched hand.
“Come on, Red. Let’s make it count, then.”