with me…please,” she said, letting her nails tickle the back of his neck, slide into his hair.
“Yes ma’am.”
He was responsive, her big rescuer. She had no idea where he’d come from or who he belonged to. But for one song, Gia’s addled mind told her it didn’t matter. He felt so solid. So real. The man knew how to move. He held her against his body with one hand on her back and the other in her hair and the longer they danced, the closer together they moved, the tighter he held her. She could make out the wide contours of his shoulders and the thick, round strength in his thighs.
A paradigm happy accident, she heard Luka say, and Gia grinned, drunk and a little lonely for a touch, for the recall of a body that would make her not feel so lost. She had one right here. He held her. He was solid. He was wide and thick, his hair was coarse; he seemed like the others, so similar, so responsive, just like she’d always liked, and it had been so long.
It had been five damn months.
She tested the waters, reminding herself that no one would know. Cat wouldn’t call her on any mistake she made. She had the woman’s solemn pinky vow. Gia turned her head, lowering it against this man’s neck, inhaling the sweet hint of cologne and sweat on his skin. Her body clenching, her nipples hardening, she brushed her lips over his neck, and he released a low, soft moan she felt vibrating against her mouth.
The music continued, the rhythm increasing, but still they danced, and Gia found herself being turned, spinning until the music was lower, the lights even darker and the man that held her leaned her against a column draped in red velvet. She could only make out a few of his features—the high arches of his cheekbones, the broad slope of his nose and the spread of his full bottom lip, but she couldn’t see his eyes, not even when he licked his lips and moved her face up, angling her mouth to his, and kissed her.
She only knew sensation then—the sharp, mewing surprise of his hot, thick tongue as he slipped it inside her mouth and the scrape of his teeth against her bottom lip. Her insides ached for a different reason now, and Gia forgot where she was, who she was and pulled on the man’s collar, gripping him close, smiling against his mouth when her small aggression made him gasp and that quick release of breath turned into a low growl of approval as she rubbed against him, scratching his back, tugging his hair.
“Shit,” he said, forehead against hers, breath fanning across her face. He tasted like whiskey and mint and Gia wanted to find out what else. “You are so damn beautiful.” He grabbed her leg, his grip lowering to cup her ass. “The most…beautiful woman I’ve seen in this city.” Then he lowered his mouth to her neck and Gia shuddered pushing her breast against him, rubbing her hardened nipples into his chest as he licked a hot, searing path from her collarbone to the shell of her ear. “I could take you right here, if I wasn’t a good man,” he said, lowering his hand to her rib, his thumb rubbing the underside of her breast. “God knows I want…” He groaned again, head shaking like it killed him to pull away from her. But he stopped kissing her neck, stopped teasing her breast, and held her cheek, seeming unable to keep from kissing her, sucking on her bottom lip one last time. “But I don’t take advantage of drunk women.”
“I’m not…”
He laughed, his mouth on hers again, leaning on one arm as he watched her. “I wish that weren’t true because I damn well know we’d be fucking combustible…”
Gia smiled, her eyes half lidded, wishing she could see all of his face.
“I…don’t mind, you know.” She ran a fingernail over his chest, grinning at the shiver that seemed to run through him when she tweaked his nipple. “We can pinky promise not to tell.”
He laughed, the sound sweet, genuine but he shook his head before he kissed her one last time. “Hell, if I’d known you’d be this…compliant, I would have kissed you first then asked about my extended vacation time.”
It took several minutes for his words to settle through the fog of drunkenness and dim realization. When they did, it seemed as though