Chapter 9 #2
Crossing the threshold, I scan the room for Maisy because if she sees us, we’ll have some explaining to do.
Thankfully, she’s nowhere in sight, and anyway, our linked hands are hidden in the darkness and the crowd of people we weave through.
Cash leads me into the living room, where a group of girls—and a few guys thrown in—are dancing.
In a private corner near the stairs, he releases my hand and turns to me.
“Tell you what. Give me one song, and if you hate dancing with me, I’ll let you go and never ask again. Swear.” He crosses himself, which only draws my attention to his broad chest.
“I don’t even know how to dance.”
“Babies know how to dance, honey. You just let it happen.”
I cut my eyes away to assess the people nearby in the living room. Nobody looks remotely self-conscious.
“You know you don’t have to worry about what other people think. No one’s paying attention—it’s too crowded to see anything, and everybody’s drunk.”
“You’re not.”
“True. But I’m not gonna watch you dance, Georgia.” He directs my gaze back to him with two fingers on my cheek. “I’m gonna feel you.”
Desire grips me from my toes to the ends of my hair, stealing the breath from my lungs. Oh god. “Okay.”
He flashes a triumphant grin that tells me, for all his charm and persuasive ability, he didn’t expect to get a yes out of me.
Only once we’re moving to the music do I realize looking stupid was my second biggest worry.
My first was that I’d lose control. That the heat of his body and the feel of him sliding against me would turn me on so much I would do something stupid: kiss him, put my hands where I shouldn’t, look at him with such unguarded desire he and everyone else would understand how badly I want him.
That the dancing would be sexy to the point of no return.
And it is sexy—his body is all heat and hard contours that he controls masterfully—but Cash knows exactly when to change the flavor from sexy to fun, when and how to make me laugh.
That’s when I know he didn’t bring me onto the dance floor so he could have an excuse to grind his body against mine—at least not entirely. He brought me out here to show me a good time.
Just when I thought I couldn’t want him more.
I lose track of how many songs we dance to.
Soon enough, they all sound the same, alive and pulsing and beautiful, the background noise that keeps our bodies moving but is never louder than our laughter or the deep sound of his voice at my ear when he tells me how beautifully I dance.
For the first time in my life, I know what it’s like to be in a room full of other people with complete freedom and not a shadow of self-consciousness.
I’m pulling my hair off my sweaty neck and tying it into a ponytail when I catch sight of Maisy a few feet away.
She’s dancing with a beautiful dark-skinned girl—Willow, presumably—their fingers laced together, but she’s watching me and Cash with what I hope is amusement.
I don’t have it in me to worry what she thinks, though, pumped too full of fluttery feelings.
Whatever dark, hungry desire for Cash’s body that I might have buried inside me is safely covered, insulated by the innocence of laughing and dancing, similar to everyone around us.
I wave at Maisy and raise an eyebrow in Willow’s direction to tell her I’m impressed, and she smiles and turns back to her date.
After what feels like hours since I walked into the house, Cash pulls me away from the dance floor.
“You as thirsty as I am?” he yells over the music.
I nod. I’m thirsty as hell, just not in the way he means. Before I can tell him I’m not drinking tonight, he takes my hand and pulls me past the bar and into a tiny room beyond it.
“From my private collection,” he says as he bends to pop open the lid of a cooler and produces two dripping, ice-cold bottles of water, twisting the cap off mine before handing it to me.
I suck down the water and then catch my breath. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
His eyes flash with humor and drop to my lips. “Oh yeah?”
I smother the words I want to say with the remainder of my drink, then study the tiny space we’re stuffed into.
It must have been a closet in a former lifetime, but the shelves hold only liquor bottles and a vintage-looking stereo, its bright-blue lights dancing in time with the music.
A pass-through is cut into the wall, on the other side of which is the bar and, beyond it, the dance floor.
Rope lights outline the space, the deep indigo blue insulating me from the brighter dance floor a few feet away.
“Cozy little space you’ve got here,” I remark.
Plastic crinkles as Cash crushes the empty bottle in his hand and grabs another. “Like it? We call it our DJ booth.” Drops of water darken his gray T-shirt as he raises the dripping bottle to his face and glides it over his forehead, a move that bulges his tattooed bicep.
Heat zaps through me, and I fight to breathe normally. “Is that what you do in here? DJ?”
“That and try to cozy up to the only girl I ever want to dance with again.” He leans back against the pass-through window.
His arms, usually covered, are shredded to hell, and the way he holds them makes his muscles pop and the veins running from his arms down the backs of his hands stand out.
“So how much did you hate dancing with me? Because I gotta be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you having a bad time, so I have no idea what you look like when you’re hating life. ”
“It pains me to admit this, but I wasn’t having a bad time out there.”
“Oh?” He feigns surprise. “What kind of time were you having?”
“The kind you might describe as the best night of my life.”