The second her feet touched the polished surface of the parquet floor, panic slammed into her with the stunning force of a bullet. “Wait!” she blurted, suddenly drawing back. He stopped and turned so that he stood facing her, but she didn’t dare look him in the eye, careful to keep her wild gaze focused on the snowy-white front of his shirt. He’d removed his jacket and tie earlier in the night and undone the shirt’s top button, revealing just a hint of his smooth, burnished chest. “I’m sorry,” she said thickly, staring at that bare glimpse of skin, “but I don’t think I can do this.”
“Just a dance, Elise. That’s all I’m asking for.” Then he was taking her into his arms, and she had to bite her lip to keep from moaning at the sudden chaotic rush of emotion. It was such a consuming, overwhelming sensation, being held by a man again, and her breath caught with a sharp, audible gasp as he pulled her against the hardness and heat of his muscular body, her head spinning as her senses went into some kind of cataclysmic meltdown.
Trying to remember how to breathe, she placed her hands on his broad shoulders, the soft cotton of his shirt warm beneath her palms, and took a quick glance up at his face to find him watching her, his expression fierce...intense...and yet, somehow impossibly gentle. “I’m dizzy,” she whispered, her pulse racing, frenzied and out of control.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you,” he told her, his beautiful mouth shaping the words, making them sound like something seductive and wicked as he spun her in a sudden turn that pulled a soft, startled burst of shaky laughter from her lips. “See, it’s not so hard to have a little fun, is it?”
She blinked, dazed, too much going on inside her body and mind to focus on any one thing. “I didn’t...I don’t dance,” she explained in a strangled whisper, when what she meant was that she didn’t let men get this close to her. Ever.
“I know,” he replied, and the slightly rough cadence of his words made her shiver with awareness, at the same time something thick and hot began to slip through her veins. She had the strangest suspicion that he was responding more to her unspoken thought than the one she’d voiced aloud, and an uneasy feeling swept through her as she wondered just how much he knew about her. About her past and the things that had happened to her.
He pulled her a shade closer, until his strong thighs were brushing against hers, her breasts pressed to the firm surface of his chest, and Elise could have sworn she could feel the powerful beating of his heart. Her breasts felt heavy, swollen, the rise of desire like a hothouse flower unfurling inside her body, and there was a part of her—a strange, primal, frightening part—that wanted to stretch her arms and back in a sinuous arch and melt against him, languid and soft and hungry. That wanted to hold her face up to a warm spring shower and feel it misting against her skin, wetting their clothes, until steam rose from the heat of their flesh. That wanted to rip that crisp white shirt from his lean, hard-muscled physique and press her open mouth to the pounding, urgent beat of his heart. Push her fingers through the thick strands of his silky hair and pull his mouth to hers, unleashing the primitive, predatory hunger she knew lurked inside him.
God, she just wanted. Wanted so badly she could have screamed.
“But you’re enjoying yourself,” he murmured, jarring her back to reality with the deep, rich, slightly gritty tone of his voice as they swayed to the music. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t tell me no?”
Surprising herself, she snuffled another soft laugh under her breath. “You’re very sure of yourself, Pallaton.”
“Call me Wyatt.”
She shifted her gaze, staring over his left shoulder, feeling as if his dark, onyx-colored eyes could see straight into her. “I thought everyone called you Pallaton or Pall?”
“They do.” From the edge of her vision, Elise watched the corner of his mouth lift in a devastatingly sexy, purely male smile. “But I want you to call me Wyatt.”
“I’m going to call you desperate if you don’t stop,” she warned him, hoping like hell that her face wasn’t actually as red as it felt.
“Stop what?” he asked, angling his head slightly to the side as he tried to recapture her gaze.
“All of this,” she said, fully aware that she sounded like an idiot. “Trying to dazzle me with your manliness and charm.”
“Oh, yeah? Is it working?” He kept his expression carefully blank, though she could see the glitter of humor in his dark gaze.
She rolled her eyes. “Like I’d tell you if it was.”
His head went back as a low, rich chuckle rumbled up from his chest, and her toes curled in her heeled sandals at the pure carnality of the sound. How did he do it, make a laugh sound like some kind of insidious new form of seduction?
Though she tried so hard to fight it, everything that he did made her feel drunk on lust, the hunger heavy in her body, like a weighty thing inside of her. The flash of his smile. The smoldering intensity in his dark eyes and the way they did that sexy crinkle thing at the corners when he grinned. She’d heard he was considered the tamest of the Runners, at times even stoic. The most easygoing of a volatile bunch. But being close to him, talking to him, Elise couldn’t help but wonder if the people who held that opinion of Wyatt Pallaton knew him at all. Were they blind? Because from where she was standing, there wasn’t a safe, easygoing thing about the man.
Desperate to regain control of herself and the situation, Elise asked a question that had been playing in the back of her mind for the past hour, slowly driving her crazy. “I saw you and Michaela on the dance floor earlier. Doesn’t it bother Brody when you dance with his wife?”
His hands shifted, one resting against the small of her back, while the other stroked its way up her spine until it reached the edge of her bodice, his thumb brushing against her bare skin in a slow, sensual caress. Her gaze shot immediately back to his, and she watched the groove form between his dark brows as he asked, “Why should it bother him?”
Suddenly, she wished she’d just kept her big mouth shut. Thanks to her friendship with Max Doucet, Michaela’s younger brother, she knew that Brody and the fiery Cajun were madly in love with one another, as did anyone who had ever met the quiet Runner and his gorgeous human life mate. Still, she couldn’t help the jealousy she felt when she witnessed the closeness that Wyatt and Michaela shared. “I just thought that the two of you...that you were...”
He leaned forward, putting his silky words into the sensitive shell of her ear. “Despite what a few gossips seem to think, El, Mic and I are just friends. And that’s all we’ve ever been. She’s in love with her husband, and I... Let’s just say that I don’t think of her that way.”
There was something there, in his words...in the tone of his voice...but she couldn’t afford to look at it too closely. Not if she wanted to keep it together. Instead, she said, “Why haven’t you danced with Reyes?”
She didn’t know what to make of him when he lifted his head, staring down at her with a bemused expression, as if the thought of asking his beautiful partner to dance had never even occurred to him. “Carla? Hell, she’d probably stomp on my toes just to be ornery.”
“But