Unlike earlier, no crush of cameras clamored to capture their every move, but there were still plenty of eyes on them, which meant they had to make it look good. It helped that she moved in sync with him as they danced, a shocking turn of events. If anything, he’d have expected her to try to lead, to boss him around—anything other than the fluidity they fell into instantly, as if they’d danced before.
She peered up at him from under her lashes and smiled, which hit him with the approximate force of a fighter jet at Mach 5. Apparently she wasn’t on board with the respectable distance he’d put between them, because she scooted closer, deliberately brushing his body with hers as she swayed.
It took far too long to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. He was thirty-five years old, for crying out loud, and had certainly bedded a few hot women. Of course that had been a fair number of years ago, before he started looking for the future Mrs. McLaughlin.
“So,” he said inanely. “Here we are.”
One of the pitfalls of a fake relationship—they had to pretend they actually had things to talk about.
“Mmm, yes, we are here,” she agreed easily.
Her hands meandered under his tux jacket to cup his butt, which she then fingered suggestively. Every drop of blood in his body drained into his groin, and his brain fuzzed.
“Um, what are you doing?” he choked out. “Are there cameras on us that I can’t see?”
“Nope. I’m just naturally handsy. And curious.” Her blue eyes glowed in the low ballroom light. “How can I fake being hot and heavy with you if I don’t actually know what your butt feels like when I grab it?”
He groaned as he envisioned the scenario under which she might be grabbing his butt—as she cried his name in her throaty voice, urging him on as he drove her to a blistering climax, for example. Or maybe as he pinned her to the wall and took her standing up. Or, his personal favorite, as she knelt before him and pleasured him with her hot mouth, sliding that tongue piercing across his flesh.
His vision grayed for a second, and he might have lost the feeling in his legs.
“Do I get the same courtesy?” he muttered, thoroughly impressed with himself that he wasn’t laid out on the floor. “Because there’s a lot of you I haven’t grabbed yet, either.”
They were so close, her laugh vibrated through his tight groin.
“What are you going to do if I say yes?”
“This.” It was close enough to a dare that he locked gazes with her and slid two fingers under the fabric of her dress to caress one bare globe of her rounded bottom. No panties, as he’d guessed.
The temperature shot up as heat flushed through his body.
And then it was no longer a point to be proven, but an exploration of the woman he’d been angling to get his hands on all night.
God, she felt amazing, like warm silk. Heat flared in her expression, winnowing through his blood until he couldn’t stop himself from pressing closer, desperately seeking more of her, questing for relief from the needy ache she’d induced.
“I don’t recall actually saying yes,” she said. Instantly he withdrew, a millisecond from spitting out an apology, when she grinned. “But I wasn’t saying no, either.”
“Make up your mind, woman,” he growled.
“I’m not the one who laid down the ground rules. Wasn’t there something about none of this being real?” She shimmied her hips in a practiced rhythm against his painful erection. “That feels pretty real to me. Are you sure I’m the one who can’t make up her mind?”
She’d baited him on purpose. Probably had deliberately worn this dress with the easily accessible butt cheeks to drive him insane. This was exactly the reason he should have said no to this ridiculous fake relationship. Trinity Forrester was too bold, too exotic, too...sensual for a man who just wanted a nice girl to come home to at the end of a long day.
Nice girls didn’t constantly make him think about getting naked.
“Why do you have to make everything about sex?” he grumbled. “Can’t we just dance?”
And now he sounded exactly like what she’d accused him of: a Goody Two-shoes. A ninety-year-old. A stickler for rules.
That was not who he was. This woman had been manipulating him all night, and he was done with it. He’d agreed to this fake relationship but he hadn’t agreed to let her run roughshod over him.
That stopped now.
“Me?” She had the audacity to feign surprise. “I’ve never so much as uttered the word sex one time.”
“You don’t have to. It wafts from your pores.” Eyes narrowed, he spun her around until he could dance her off the marble floor and into the shadows at the back of the room.