Page 110 of Jaded

He chuckles, and I catch a whiff of alcohol on his breath. “No such luck, Mouse. You ain’t that good.”

I smile. I feel like I’ve been doing that a lot more lately—at least around him. “Oh, trust me. I’m very good.”

“Is that a euphemism?” Olli bumps my shoulder, wriggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Because, like, yes please. Or wait, no, were you actually talking about nicknames? Cause you didn’t make that up.”

His gaze tilts up to mine, and I fall into those fucking eyes. So many words rise to my tongue. Lines. Things I’d say if he were someone else—a girl I was trying to pick up.

But he’s not.

So I don’t.

“Good game tonight,” are the first words to tumble off my tongue instead, and I hold back a cringe. I sound like a bro looking for a fist bump over a shot of tequila, and the way his teeth pinch at his lower lip, he agrees—is trying not to laugh at me.

Shit, when did I become this unsuave, this awkward? Since I started talking to a beautiful boy with a shot like a sniper and eyes like the sun and a smile radiant enough to set the world afire.

I’m making a royal fucking mess of this.

“You want to dance?” His head tilts back towards the half-cramped dance floor at the back of the bar. “Show those losers how it’s done?”

“I am a little afraid of the dance floor,” I admit, watching Everton grind up on Skyler like they aren’t both heterosexual men in their early thirties.

“Me too.” Olli pushes back from the bar. “Let’s go face our fears.”

The open floor space is a press of hot bodies. I half wonder if we’re melting the snow around the building with all our heat and energy and movement, dancing away the ice age.

Maybe it’s just another way we’re going to break down all the frigid cold in this town.

The music throbs through my feet, through my head and maybe my blood. I’d never claim to listen to all music, because I have my definite preferences, but music always affects me, like it slinks under my skin and weaves into my flesh. Forces its way into my nerves, my brain cells.

Not unlike the man at my side.

My chin bobs to the beat as we sidle into the crowded space. We keep to the side, and my hand ghosts over his shoulderblade to guide him along the wall. In the corner, I stop, turn. I’m not drunk enough to give myself to the music in the violent, pulsing throb of those around us. Instead, I let my hips sway, grin at Olli.

He smiles back, clearly at that same intersection of awkward and drunk, but that’s the thing about dancing. To do it right, you’ve got to submit—utterly—to that beat, to the music, to the beast that wants to dig its claws in and take hold.

So I do. It’s like skating; my body simply understands. Instead of letting the awkwardness and uncertainty catch me, I let the beat guide me.

Olli’s grin widens, and I realize we’re standing two feet apart and a little diagonal—at another intersection—and he’s letting me decide which way to go. Do I make a move?

My heart races, completely separate from the pulsing beat, the booze, the lingering high of the game. I don’t know what I’m going to do until my hands are on his hips and I’m pulling him in. Close.

“Is this okay?” I ask, guiding him against me.

“You tell me.” His breath whispers against my cheek, and his mouth pulls into a soft smile, a little uncertain, but his body’s relaxed beneath my touch. He steps closer, so we’re almost touching.

Almost chest to chest, hip to hip.

My heart races, but my breath flows steady, like the music under my shoes. Except, we’re not dancing anymore. My hands and his hips have stopped moving. We’re both swaying with that pulse of people, but we’re separate, in a bubble all our own.

Everyone else outside, and us alone, here. Together.

I tilt my head.

And I whisper against the shell of his ear. “You want to get out of here?”

“I got a room here for the night,” he whispers back, and it’s all the confirmation I need.

I find his hand, a little clammy from the heat of all the bodies, and twine my fingers through his; it feels right, my hand in his, entangled in our own little sphere, while the rest of the world goes on without us.

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