Doting aunts were not a topic she wished to discuss while in seduction mode for the first time in her life.
“How about one dance before we call it a night?” She extended her hand to him in yet another unprecedented move. Esme Giles, the woman who’d busted the grading curve in every class she’d ever taken, the college geek turned scholar for life, was asking the most gorgeous guy in the room to dance with her.
And as if her lucky stars were in perfect alignment over her head, the DJ changed the pace to a slow groove, a song that was sexy and danceable and just right for getting close to this man.
Either because of his chivalrous nature or else because he knew fate was conspiring against him, Hugh slid out of the booth and rose to his feet. Esme gulped as his arm slipped around her waist, the warm expanse of his palm connecting with the small of her back.
“How can I refuse a beautiful woman’s request?”
Oh my.
No one had ever called her beautiful before. Cute, maybe. And she knew better than to fall for idle flattery, but something about the way he looked at her when he said it made her feel beautiful. Strong. Confident.
As they made their way toward the floor, Esme revised her former opinion that she had been overdressed for tonight. Right now, with long masculine fingers applying light pressure to her spine, she felt as if she wore nothing at all. The thin silk of her dress seemed to scorch and vanish beneath that sure, possessive touch.
She scoped out the dance floor, hoping to find a place for them among the mob of other couples vying for space on the hardwood floor. But she needn’t have concerned herself. Before she’d analyzed all the options, Hugh twirled her toward him, somehow halting her midspin so that she ended up face to face with him, firmly in his arms.
Every schoolgirl fantasy she’d ever hoped for in vain was granted in that long minute as she stared up at him. It didn’t matter that she’d never been greatly noticed, fawned over or otherwise admired by a charismatic male in the course of her younger days because right now the forces of cosmic balance were finally tipping the scale in her favor.
And she was winning big.
She could have gazed into those dark brown eyes of his forever, but the subtle sway of their feet beneath them jolted her back to awareness. They were dancing.
Not the awkward one-two-three, one-two-three of stepping on one another’s feet that had been a staple in her personal repertoire. No, she wasn’t even sure how they were dancing or why her body knew just how to follow his, but they moved together in supple agreement as smoothly as if they’d been choreographed.
His body met hers—hip to hip, thigh to thigh—in a warm, sinuous connection. Her skin flamed right through her silken skirt as she realized how little a barrier her gypsy dress provided. And her breasts…
She didn’t dare move away from him now that her breasts grazed his chest. Her reaction—and attraction—would be immediately obvious.
The music enveloped them, folding her into the slow bass line as the dance floor lights all turned to a moody shade of blue. In the dimness, she could almost convince herself they were alone as they moved together in total accord.
“Thanks for sharing a drink with me tonight, Esme.” His voice emanated from above her, but she was close enough to hear the rumble of speech in his chest. Through the thin layer of black cotton that covered superb pecs. Through the faded pine scent of his aftershave that she only detected now that he was near.
“I hope your aunt didn’t have to twist your arm into coming tonight.” She kicked herself as soon as she said it because it sounded like the kind of paranoid comment an eighteen-year-old would make. Did she not only have to monitor all her actions but her speech now, too?
He didn’t look turned off by her insecure comment, however. He trailed a thumb over her cheek and tipped her face up to his.
“No one twisted my arm, Esme. You were a definite choice of my free will.”
Something inside her sighed with pleasure.
Gooseflesh popped out over her skin, a mix of shivery chills and tingly anticipation. His sure touch made her eyelids flutter, fall closed for one long moment.
When the kiss that she’d hoped for didn’t materialize, she pried her lids open again and decided the new Esme wasn’t a woman willing to wait. The new Esme wanted her kiss, by God, and she was determined to have it.
Now.
Confident that her bold decision fit in with her plan to take charge of her life, she pressed her body closer to his.
She hadn’t been prepared for the shock waves that kind of movement would send straight to the intimate heart of her. She was in way over her head with this man, but she found she didn’t care.
More than anything, she wanted this one chance to be daring, this one night to be bold and in control of her body, her actions.
He readjusted his hands to accommodate their new closeness, his hands on her waist while his fingertips dangled pleasantly down the curve of her backside. Esme wondered what it might be like to make love to him, to have him lower his hands even more to guide their bodies together…
Smoothing her hands up the hard planes of his chest, she inched her way closer to what she wanted. He stared down at her with steady dark eyes, fully alert to her every move yet letting her choose the pace of what was happening between them.
After those horrifying moments locked in her creepy former boss’s office, Esme appreciated Hugh’s willingness to let her take the lead.
And damn it, she was taking the lead.
Even though her senses were all keenly tuned to the moment, a small part of her rational brain stood aloof from the heated action on the dance floor and seemed to stare down at her from above, applauding her boldness.
You go, girl.
As the final strains of the slow song hummed through her, Esme reached for the prize she’d been dreaming of since she laid eyes on her sexy blind date. And with no more thought of the consequences, she touched her lips to his.
3
RENZO CESARE HAD kissed plenty of women in his day.
Not that he considered himself a connoisseur or anything, because that just sounded plain sleazy. But he had some experience to compare Esme Giles’s kiss against, and that tentative brush of her soft pink mouth over his completely obliterated all memory of holding anyone else in his arms.
He’d told himself he would let her set the pace tonight since he’d intercepted her from meeting her real date in the first place. According to his sister, no woman wanted to be insulated from life by a hulking Cesare male who would claim mob affiliation in a heartbeat if it would scare potential predators.
Yet here he was, doing his gentlemanly best to save Esme Giles from herself and all the while falling under the spell of her sweet pink lips.
Lips he found himself parting with the sweep of his tongue. Damn. Damn. Damn. He hadn’t meant to do that.
But man, she was sweet.
She tasted like rum and something more sugary. Sort of like the strawberry lip gloss girls in his junior high used to wear. All innocence. How had he gone his whole adult life without realizing strawberry lip gloss still turned him on nearly twenty years later?
Her body sank into his a little more, giving him all the more appreciation for the shape and feel of her bare breasts beneath her dress.
Goodbye all innocence. Hello sensual woman.
The hard beads of her nipples had his body answering hers in kind, encouraging him to do all the things to her they both wanted so badly….