She raised her hands in a couples’ dance position. “Let’s do this right. Do you want me to be the guy, or do you want to be the guy?”
Still swaying to the beat of Bing’s holiday serenade, he stared at her for a second, then two.
She shook her head. “Sorry, I used to do this with my grandma Dasher or Lori, and somebody had to dance the guy part.”
He took her hand, then pressed his palm to the small of her back, drawing her into his embrace. And that buzz was back. The feeling he had the moment he’d laid eyes on her back at the hotel bar, which seemed like eons ago.
“I can handle being the guy,” he said, his voice taking on a gravelly edge as he pulled her in a fraction closer.
She rested her hand on his shoulder and gazed up at him as they swayed to the slow rhythm of Bing’s rich baritone.
“Do you have any moves?” she asked, rosy-cheeked with those dark chestnut tendrils framing her face.
He leaned in, allowing his lips to hover a breath away from her earlobe. “You know, I do.”
She blushed, and all that blood she had rushing to her cheeks, in his body, surged due south, straight to his cock.
“I mean on the dance floor,” she countered.
He suppressed a grin, then brought her flush against him as the hard planes of his chiseled body merged with her petite curves. He stared down at her petal-soft kissable lips and slid his hand down from the small of her back to allow his fingertips to graze the curve of her ass. Her eyes went wide, and just before she was about to protest, he spun her out of his arms only to catch her hand and reel her back in.
She gasped. “Holy moly! You can dance!” she replied, using the same stupidly adorable exclamation she’d used the night he’d brought her to his hotel suite. He’d known that she wasn’t a one-night stand kind of girl, and still, he’d pursued her.
Why? Why was he breaking all his rules?
He pushed the thought out of his mind.
“You can thank the Manhattan cotillion,” he answered, finally finding a use for the ridiculous dance and etiquette training he’d tolerated until he’d gone off to boarding school.
She scrunched her face in confusion. “I don’t know what that is. But if that’s fancy talk for dance lessons, then I’m all for it.”
He chuckled as she reached past him and snapped up a chocolate kiss from the table.
“Do you want one? My grandma used to always let me have one before the cookies were done baking.”
He glanced away. “I don’t do sweets.”
With Bing belting out “Silver Bells,” he was ready to change the lyrics to silver balls, or more like, blue balls.
He rubbed slow circles on the small of her back, his body aching for her as Bridget held the tiny bite of chocolate to her mouth. But she didn’t eat it right away. Instead, she drew the kiss across her bottom lip.
It was too much to bear, and Bridget Dasher was enemy number one. He should not kiss her—again.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Just eat it, Birdie.”
“Not yet, Scooter,” she purred.
“What are you waiting for?”
“I can only have one. It’s my grandma’s rule, and I want to make it last.”
With his hand on her back, he gripped her blouse, bunching the fabric in a feeble attempt to calm the hell down.
“If you don’t eat that damn piece of candy right now, I can’t be responsible for what I might do.”
She closed her eyes as the tip of her tongue brushed across the base of the kiss. “Too bad. I want to wait.”
A maddening spark snaked through his veins, prickling and taunting him. This woman made him, Soren Christopher Traeger Rudolph, the manwhore of Manhattan, fucking crazy.
“I’m done waiting,” he hissed.
In the space of a breath, he plucked the chocolate from her grip. “Open your mouth.”
Surrounded by holiday music and driven damn near insane from the chocolate peanut butter scented air laced with this infuriating woman’s cinnamon vanilla scent, she held his gaze, and without a word in protest, complied.
He slid the kiss past her lips, and she closed her eyes, humming a deliciously sexy sound that went straight to his raging hard-on.
“Want more?” he pressed.
Brimming with confidence and just the right amount of mischief, her lips curled into her one-night vixen smile. “I told you, I’m only allowed to have one, or do you