It’s my chance.
Megan’s sitting with Breena, and her eyes are a little wistful. But there are others at the table, Sheena’s sister Fiona and a mate of hers. Breena will be alright for a minute.
I want that woman on my arm, and I want her now.
“Fancy a dance, Megan?” I ask her.
I don’t know what I’m thinking, what I’m doing. She’s the cousin of my Clan brothers, almost like family.
But she isn’t my family.
She stands and flushes again. “Would love a dance, thanks,” she says. I take her hand. It’s soft and smooth, delicate and small in my larger, rougher one.
It’s just a dance, I tell myself. No harm can come from a dance. And it’s what’s expected right now.
Everyone’s dancing.
But Jesus, it isn’t just a dance.
When I slide my hand along her lower back, easing her to step in time with the others, her warm, voluptuous curves are pressed against me. Her arms encircle my neck. She’s trembling.
“You alright?” I whisper in her ear.
She isn’t the timid type. Megan’s bold and determined, outspoken and brazen. But now… right now, as we’re waltzing to the sounds of music being filtered through speakers, when I’m holding her, and we’re thrust into the intimacy of the moment… right now, she actually seems a little nervous.
“Fine,” she says, her voice a husky whisper. “I just…” her voice trails off, and I realize she’s been drinking. She swoons a little. I draw her closer, holding her up to me.
I lean down and whisper in her ear. “Just what? Are you drunk, lass?”
She giggles, the cutest damn thing I’ve ever heard. “Wee bit.”
“Mmm,” I say with disapproval. “So you’ve been naughty, have you?”
What am I doing?
This isn’t me. I’m shamelessly flirting with my Clan brothers’ cousin, right here under their noses. But hell, I’ve been lost in months and months of misery following Eve’s death. I’ve pushed myself to be the father Breena deserves, the man of the Clan I’ve been taught to be.
For one damn night I want to forget my responsibilities, my jobs. For one night, I want to be a man with a beautiful woman on his arm.
I’m not the man set on vengeance, who’s given up damn near everything, who’s vowed to give up even more to set the world back to rights.
She isn’t the family cousin, protected by law and Clan code, her very role setting her apart from all others and dangerous as dynamite.
We aren’t two star-crossed lovers.
I’m just a bloke with a lovely woman, dancing in the garden.
Her eyes are closed and her cheek’s pressed to my chest. I dance her away from the others, to the outskirts of the dance floor, underneath the twinkling white fairy lights in the garden.
“I have,” she whispers back. “Naughty indeed.”
She’s much smaller than I am, so she has to look up to me. When she meets my gaze, there’s challenge in her eyes, tempered with a flirtatious grin. Christ, she’s stunning. “And what would you do about that?”
Something clicks then. It’s like the shutting of a door, the clanging of a gavel. It isn’t even a voluntary choice, as I press my palm against the sweet dip in her lower back, bend, and whisper in her ear.
“I’d teach you to behave yourself.”
She shivers, her voice a hoarse whisper. “How?”
I’m going all in. I’m diving off the cliff into the endless ocean below.
“I’d take you back to my place,” I tell her, whispering so it’s just the two of us, an outward dance to others but the dance of seduction between us. “And take you across my knee for being a naughty girl.”
She’s panting, her chest heaving against mine as I continue to draw the picture.
“I’d take down your knickers. Those would only get in the way, you see.”
It’s only one sound, one syllable, her low, seductive, mmm, but it’s a goddamn turn-on. She feels this, too. She wants this. Hell, maybe she even needs it, just like I do.
“Of—of what?” she whispers.
“The good, hard spanking you deserve.”
“I believe you could do that,” she whispers. “There’s a hardness about you, Carson.”
“Oh?”
“Aye,” she whispers, and when she shivers again at the chilly breeze off the water, I draw her closer. “And I… like it.”
The rest of the party passes in a blur of toasts and cocktails, food and dancing, but we’ve crossed a line. I know what’s going to happen tonight. She does, too.
I hear her telling Aileen she’ll help me with Breena tonight, as if she needs an alibi or something for not going back to the mansion.
Breena’s half asleep by the time we get back to my flat, and I carry her in on my shoulder. I open the door, bring her to her bedroom, and Megan helps her get into her jammies. Breena’s snoring before we even shut the door.
We’re still dressed in our formal clothes, but we’ve wilted from the day’s events. Still, even with her hair disheveled and her makeup faded, her dress a little wrinkled, standing barefoot in the vacant hallway because she kicked her heels off ages ago, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.