CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CECI #2
All that hot, sweaty, and violent passion.
The women hiking up their skirts and swiveling their hips while casting seductive looks with those catlike dark espresso-colored eyes.
And the men with their thick and powerful thighs.
She expected their pants to split with every thrust of the pelvis and each earthshaking stomp.
She felt her heart begin to echo the tapping of their feet.
More than once, she snuck a look at Clarke.
She couldn’t make him out. She thought about him bringing Holly to Montana, the Pawsome race, the Krispy Kreme burgers and deep-fried s’mores.
Riding that bull. Even eating those ribs—what he did eat of them.
Coming to her father’s and kissing her in front of him, and driving over an hour just to take her karting.
But then that led her to thinking of him and Tilney so caught up in their alpha bullshit, they’d left no room for her, and she wanted to be up on that stage with those dancers, stomping her own feet.
Once the show was over, Ceci and Clarke got up from their table and the other people did the same. But none of them were leaving. They had either gone to one side of the courtyard or to a small bar that was tucked into one corner.
Heading toward the alleyway, Ceci was about to ask Clarke why they were just standing around, when he slipped his hand around her arm and pulled her to the side to stand alongside some of the others.
Suddenly the waiters began removing chairs and tables.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“We’re going to dance.”
“But I don’t know how to dance flamenco.”
He chuckled. “No, a new group of musicians is taking the stage. They’re going to play the Argentine tango.”
When Ceci looked back at the courtyard it was empty.
Crossing her arms, she stared back at Clarke with a stubborn look in her eye. “I’m not going to dance. I don’t want to.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re just being difficult.”
“Do you ever listen to yourself? You sound like an adult reprimanding a child.”
He shrugged. “Sounds about right.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I suppose you think I deserve a spanking.”
A sudden glint in his eyes made her blink. His lip curled. “I’ll admit it’s tempting.”
She almost gasped, but she quickly shut her mouth and clenched her jaw to stop it. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Not unless you wanted me to.” He leaned forward. She could smell anisette on his breath. “Do you?” He leaned further and she smelled cinnamon. “Want me to?”
Now it was her pussy that clenched as she felt a sudden surge of heat rage through her body.
She tossed her head, determined to douse that fire. “Don’t be absurd,” she said, cursing her jagged, halting breath.
“You’re the one who brought it up. I wonder why that is. Do you feel like you’ve done something bad you need to be punished for?”
His eyes looked almost black as they drifted lazily over her body. When they landed there, she seriously wondered if he could see and hear that humming between her thighs.
She did her best to adopt a cool tone. “I suppose you think if I’ve been a bad girl, it’s up to the ever-perfect Sir Galahad to set things right and make me a good girl.”
He leaned in so close, his breath laced with brandy scorched her cheeks. “Are you asking me to make you a good girl?”
Gothic, she heard her Aunt Delilah saying.
He looks Gothic.
Gritting her teeth, she corrected that part of her brain that clearly had a Heathcliff fetish.
He. Does. Not. Look. Gothic.
“Of course not,” she scowled.
“I suppose that’s a relief. Because you, Ceci Rivers, treat this world like a kind of hourglass that you turn over at will whenever it pleases you.
So, I can’t even say what a good girl is where you’re concerned.
” He paused and leaned in. This time his breath made her shiver. “Or a bad one, for that matter.”
She tossed her head and shook her shoulders to shatter that shiver. “This is such a stupid conversation,” she huffed. “And you are not behaving like yourself.”
“Who am I behaving like?”
“I don’t know. But not you.”
“You were the one who said I was speaking to you as though you were a child. And as I told you, given you’re acting like one, my tone was completely appropriate.”
She thrust her index finger at him. “There he is! Sir Stick Up His Ass! That is you!”
He sighed. “You seem to think you know me better than myself.”
Crossing his arms, he looked up at the stage.
The musicians had started playing, and a slow and haunting melody drifted across the courtyard as couples began to dance.
After a moment, he drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. He slipped his hand in hers. “So, will you dance?”
“I can’t. I don’t know how to tango.”
“I’ll show you.”
He pulled her toward him and she stumbled, unprepared.
There was a sliver of space between them. She stiffened, pulling against him and gravity. But in one swift and smooth motion with his arm wrapped around her and his hand on the small of her back, he made that sliver disappear and she could feel him—all of him.
She wished she could will her heart to slow down. She didn’t like what it might be telling him. He was acting so cocky.
Yes, cocky. That’s it, she thought, trying to ignore what she felt south of the equator. It was kind of difficult when it was so noticeable.
Couples moved across the courtyard while they stood still on the outer edge of it.
“Well,” she said, “are we going to dance, or what? I told you I don’t know how to tango, so don’t blame me if I stomp on your feet.”
“Just follow me,” he said, suddenly stepping back and pulling her with him out to the center like they’d been stuck together with crazy glue.
At first, she was hesitant and stiff. But he was so smooth, she discovered she could rely on him to do the right thing and lead her to the right place. And at just the right moment.
The only other time she’d danced with a man this good was when she danced with the Man in the Iron Mask, so … him.
She suddenly realized the music had stopped. She opened her fingers and made a move to pull away, but he didn’t release her.
“You need more practice,” he said.
The music started up again, and he pulled her along as if she were merely an extension of him. That annoyed her. It more than annoyed her. It made her angry.
“I suppose you’re enjoying this, given you get to lead and all I can do is follow.”
“You can take over if you like.”
“No, I can’t.”
“With the Argentine tango you can. A woman can initiate moves. That’s why I thought—”
“What?” she asked with avid curiosity.
He pulled her off the dance floor. “Watch,” he said, pointing at a couple.
He pointed out various moments when the woman initiated moves. Flicking her foot or leg between the man’s legs, suddenly turning a shoulder and shifting their direction.
“But how do they know? I mean, if the man’s leading, how does he know when the woman’s going to take over?”
“It’s why I have to hold you so close.”
Without warning, he pulled her to him and pressed his body into hers. He looked down. “See what I mean?”
She swallowed, trying to ignore the tingling between her thighs. “But you’re not doing anything.”
He lifted his right leg and pushed it forward, in between her legs and right through that slit in her skirt, forcing her leg back. He’d lifted it high enough that his thigh not only brushed her inner thigh, it grazed her pussy.
She gasped.
“Are you okay?” he asked, with a curve in his lip that told her he wanted to laugh or at least grin.
Motherfucker.
“Of course I’m okay. You just caught me by surprise.”
He swiftly swung her round, disengaging his leg, only to do it. Again.
Okay, Sir Stick Up His Ass, it’s one thing to forage the coastline down under, but you’re coming dangerously close to venturing into the bush.
He shifted direction and did it.
Again?
She held her breath as that area between her thighs was hit with a downpour.
If he does it even one more time, they’re going to have to issue a tsunami warning.
“You have to feel your partner’s body with your own.”
Say something. Anything.
“But if you haven’t rehearsed in advance—” She paused, swallowing and cursing that tremble in her voice.
Still, anything was better than silence.
“Even if your bodies are close, you might feel something but not know what it’s telling you, which way to move or whatever.
At least not at that moment. And after that it’s too late. ”
“It requires trust.”
They weren’t moving. They were just standing in one place, his arms wrapped around her, and his thigh oh-so-strategically placed between hers.
She swallowed. “I don’t see how that answers my question.”
“You have to trust what your body is telling you. You just need to let go and go where the music, your partner, and your own body tells you to. Just move and don’t think.
I would have thought that was something you would be good at, given it seems to be the way you live your life. I would think you’d be a natural.”
“And I would have thought that was something you would not be good at—in fact something you’d be very, very, very bad at, given the way you live your life.”
She wasn’t sure what response she expected. She only knew it wasn’t the one she got.
“Perhaps that means you don’t know everything there is to know about me. Now, do you want to go out there and try?”