Page 39 of Hold the Line

I puffed a frustrated breath. “If you don’t want to dance with me, you can say it.”

His hold on me tightened, and he pulled me against him. “You like it, I want to do it. I just don’t want to let you down or demolish your feet.”

I smiled, wiggling my toes on top of his. “We’re both in our socks. I think we’ll be okay. I’m not expecting fancy moves. Let’s just sway and take it from there.”

“I think I can do that.”

I hooked my arms around his neck, and he held me around the waist. So close I felt him breathing. We moved in slow circles in the center of my kitchen floor. Too slow for the music, but it didn’t matter, not with Deacon holding me close.

“Why do you like dancing when it’s warm?” he asked.

“So I can wear my sundresses.”

His head cocked. “You can’t wear them in winter?”

“No, they’re for sunny days and hot nights.” I grinned at his perplexed expression. “I promise it makes sense. If I wore a sundress and had to put a coat on top of it to go outside, I’d fall into a deep depression.”

His fingers splayed on my back. “We can’t have that.”

“No, we can’t.”

“I guess I’ll have to wait a couple more months to see these sundresses.”

“You’ll need to stick around.”

“There’s no danger of me not sticking.”

My heart leaped. It was too early for those promises, but from Deacon, it sounded more like a statement of fact. I liked to think of myself as pragmatic in most ways, but my whimsical side seemed to always emerge around him. That he was holding me so sweetly and trying his hardest not to step on my toes as we danced didn’t hurt.

Leaning in, I touched my lips to his. Just a graze, letting him know I liked him very much. He responded by palming the back of my head and molding his lips to mine. Not a graze but a collision. His mouth moved over mine, his tongue sweeping along my lips. They parted, letting him in, and he went deep, tasting me, lapping at my tongue like it was covered in nectar.

I clung to his shirt, and his fingers tangled in my hair as he kissed me and kissed me. Through it all, we kept dancing our uneven circles, swaying to the beat, matching our hearts instead of our movements.

The hand he’d braced on my back slid upward along my spine then trailed down again, lower, stopping right at the top of my ass. He could’ve kept going, and I wouldn’t have objected, but he stilled, flattening his palm at the cusp.

“Deke,” I murmured into his mouth.

“Sugar,” he murmured back, the tip of his tongue tracing the line of my lips. “Just like sugar.”

My eyelids fluttered. “I’m spinning.”

His forehead rolled on mine. “No, you’re not.” Then he let go of my hair to take my hands in his. Before I knew what he was going to do, he pushed me away from him then pulled me back. “Now you’re spinning.”

I laughed, pushing off his chest. “Again. Until I’m dizzy.”

Holding my hand above our heads, he spun me like a top. Each flash I caught of him, his grin widened, until he was laughing with me. When he finally took hold of me and wrapped me in his arms, I was dizzy, so dizzy.

My smiling face fit in the crook of his arm and neck. “Dancing isn’t so bad, is it?”

He dragged his nose back and forth in my hair. “With you? No, not bad at all.”

Chapter Seventeen

Deacon

“Weneedtogodancing.”

Chris whipped his head in my direction, his brow dipped so low his eyes were nearly hidden. “What’d you say?”

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