Page 44 of An Inconvenient Marriage
The smile never left her lips. “Yes.”
Cielo ayúdame.
And just like that, we moved together again. Or at least tried to.The first time, Natalie forgot the direction, and I stepped on her toe. The second, third, and fourth time, she stepped on mine. It was becoming painfully obvious that she hadn’t lied when she’d said she couldn’t dance, but for reasons I didn’t understand, she was enjoying herself.
Every time she stepped on my toe, she tried to apologize. I say try because the only thing that ever came out of her mouth was laughter.
Big bouts of infectious laughter that had me smiling at her. Even though I hid it before she noticed, I couldn’t lie to myself.Iwas having fun. The most fun I’d had in a very long time.
And before we even realized it, we’d struggled our way through four songs. Natalie had thankfully moved on from having difficulty with the forward-and-backward steps to having difficulty with the side-to-side steps.
But her laughter remained. Even more infectious than it’d been the first time.
We were in the middle of the fifth song when she lifted onto her toes to speak close to my ear. “Can we try that next?”
Biting her lip, she pointed toward a couple not far from us. The man spun the woman out, then quickly pulled her back again. After they did that the second time, the woman hooked her leg around the man’s waist and threw her head so far back, her hair swept across the floor.
Natalie’s gaze shot to mine. “Uhm, never mind. Let’s not.”
I grinned at her. “Oh no, let’s.”
She worked down a swallow when my arm banded tighter around her waist. With her gaze trained on me, we stumbled through the moves she’d already learned. I didn’t give her too much time to think before I spun her out and drew her back the first time.
But when I dragged her body back to mine the second time, she stopped. With eyes taking up half of her face, she stood completely still and stared at me.
It was that innocent look that finally snapped the restraint I’d been holding on to so tightly.
Closing the little distance between us, I snaked both arms around her waist. One hand pressed into the small of her back, and the other slid down over her ass to grip her thigh. I paused for just a second, then smoothed my palm to the back of her knee and lifted her leg around my waist.
My hand on her back swept up her spine. Our gazes met and held, and I used her leg as a lever to slam her body flush against mine. This time, there was no way for me to hide how she was affecting me.
I’d been hard from the moment my hand had touched her silky soft skin. And now with her core pressed up against me, she knew it.
Those blues eyes darkened and grew all big and wide again.
“Zach.”
My name fell from her lips in a stuttering whisper, and I swear it took every ounce of restraint I had left to not press my mouth against hers right there and then. Hell, I was at the point where I didn’t even know if wanting her and needing her were two separate things.
But I couldn’t go there.
Not now.
And not with her.
Dropping her leg as if it had burned me, I took three deliberate steps back.
“I have to go,” I gritted out and then turned and walked away, leaving her alone on the dance floor.
14
Natalie
Ididn’tknowwhereup or down was anymore.
To be fair, I’d been in a daze ever since Zach had taken it upon himself to teach me how to dance. Or rather, to get me all hot and bothered just to leave me standing on the dance floor by my-freaking-self.
At least he didn’t go to the hotel without me.
