Page 5 of Devil in Disguise
He wasn’t saying, so she got out of her sandals, which involved some acrobatics—he’d rented an SUV, but it wasn’t all that big—and got the boots on over her bare feet. He said, “I should have thought of socks.” But he was really watching her, because her dress had ridden all the way up her thighs. She kept her feet up on the dash for the moment and admired the boots, which she suspected hadn’t come from Payless, and Owen cleared his throat and said, “You should take your feet down before I start driving. Dangerous to have them up there. Accidents.”
“Why?” she asked. “Because I’m too heart-stoppingly sexy, and you’re going to crash looking at my legs?”
A ghost of a smile. “Maybe. And also because of physics. The airbag can drive your knees straight into your eye sockets.”
“Wow. Thanks for the attractive image.” She put her feet down, but she also said, “You realize that I’m not old enough to drink, and the only good place to go dancing around here is the Silver Spur, which is a bar. Also that I don’t really know how to dance.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I thought of all that. Wait and see.” And started the car.
He hadn’t even kissed her, though. She’d sat through that whole dinner, tingling with the awareness of his body beside her, the knowledge that she wasn’t in high school, and she was nineteen, and his scruples had to be put to rest now, and he didn’t even need to kiss her? She wanted to say something, but she’d said so many things already.
Holding back wasn’t her best thing, but she was going to do it anyway. She was going to wait and see.
Also not her best thing.
* * *
He’d about hada heart attack when she’d put her feet up like that in those silly, pretty boots and the skirt of the deceptively innocent little dress had dropped to the tops of her thighs. Pale blonde hair and piercings—he still didn’t know what other piercings she had, besides her eyebrow and her ears and her navel, and you could say he wanted to find out—and a tattoo of Bernoulli’s Equation around her bicep. He’d bet she had another tattoo somewhere, and he wanted to know about that, too.
And then she put her hand on his thigh.
You wouldn’t think he’d even feel it. Her hand wasn’t that big, and his thigh definitely was. All the same—he felt it.
He cleared his throat and said, “Another thing that isn’t smart to do.”
“Why?” she asked. “You clearly have absolute self-control.”
He sighed. “Dyma …” After that, he couldn’t think what to say, so he shut up and tried to ignore the fact that he was already hard. Not an easy thing to ignore. She’d see it, too, because there was no hiding that, not in Wranglers. So he just drove.
Eventually, though, he was slowing for the turnoff to the Silver Spur, which was hopping some at nearly ten o’clock Friday night, and pulled into a parking spot.
Kiss her now? No. If he kissed her now, they wouldn’t make it out of the car for a good long time, and he needed to do this. Besides, it gave him a charge to tell her no. It was probably sick of him, but it did. Dyma getting excited, and him telling her no? It gave him a charge.
He’d have said that he was a pretty vanilla guy between the sheets, compared to the stuff you heard about. Ashley had mentioned it, and not in a good way. You could call her comments on the subject a parting shot, and they’d landed. But what could you do? When you went around hurting people for a living, you didn’t have much taste for torture, or whatever it was you were supposed to do. You just wanted to touch and kiss and love up on a woman for a good long time, preferably with some music playing and a couple of candles burning, and enjoy all that … softness. At least, that was how it worked for him.
Now, though, he was starting to get the idea. Maybe the girl just had to tease you until the top of your head was about to blow off to put you in the mood.
Dyma hopped out before he could open her door, of course, the way she always did. He’d mentioned it in the past, and she’d said, “Why? I can open a door, Owen. I have opposable thumbs and everything.” Now, she came sashaying around the car, still looking just fine in those boots, which he was pretty sure she liked, pulled her hair out of her eyes with one hand, which was a sexy little look all its own, and said, “You can tell the bouncer here about the NFL, I guess. He might be super impressed and ask for a selfie with you, but he still isn’t going to let me in. Wild Horse takes its liquor licenses seriously. I know you probably had a fake ID, or maybe nobody ever checked, being the hometown hero and also huge, which makes you look older, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’mnothuge, and I don’t exactly look thirty, either. They’re going to card me.”
He said, “Shut up. I’m being romantic,” and pulled something else from the back of the car.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Bluetooth speaker. Never mind.” He took her hand and led her down to the dock by the public wharf. Tiny wavelets slapped against the piers, and a few boats bobbed gently where they were tied, folks who’d boated across the lake for the evening, then would head back across the water again after dark.
Huh. That would be romantic. If he knew anything about boats, anyway. Not a whole lot of boats in Wyoming. If the boat sank or you banged it into the dock, possibly not so romantic. He’d go with what he knew.
Up by the road, the door to the bar opened and released a burst of music and laughter, but out here, the shadows were getting longer, the light getting pinker, the breeze lifting the edge of Dyma’s skirt, and he knew this was right. This was perfect.
He set his speaker down carefully by the edge of the dock and said, “We’ll use this after a bit. For now, here’s the deal. I’m teaching you to dance, Wyoming style.” He smiled down at her, feeling that same surge of rightness he always got, then pulled her up close with one hand around her waist, heard her catch her breath, and realized why she killed him the way she did. Because there was no way Dyma could fake anything. He took her hand in his and said, “Other hand on my shoulder, then it’s just quick-quick slow-slow, over and over, plus a few … patterns. That’s it. You go backward and I go forward, except when I spin you around so you’re going forward with me for a little while. Don’t worry, I’ll be letting you know exactly what to do. All you have to do is remember to start on your left foot and follow me. You’re kind of dancing on the toes of your boots, and if I’m going to lead a turn, it’ll be on the quick-quick. I’ll let you know when I’m going to spin you. Ready to try?”
She said, “This is your romantic gesture? All right, it’s pretty cool, and I wouldn’t have guessed it, but tell me we take turns doing the, uh, leading, at least. That I get to go forward sometimes.”
He smiled. Nice and slow. “Nope. Not the way this deal works. The leading’s all me, all the time. You’re going where I put you. Get used to it.”
“I think I object,” she said, but you bet she was breathless now. “Dancing is incredibly sexist. Relic of the patriarchy. Probably why I never learned.”
“Yep. That’s why it’s hot. Call it role playing.” Which gave him a major charge. Maybe that tended to happen when you deprived yourself for months on end. Or maybe it was Dyma.
