“You cannot possibly wish to dance with me in front of so many people,” he said as if they had all the time in the world to have this conversation. As if her parents weren’t bearing down on them even now. And what was the matter with him that he vastly preferred her family troubles to his own? “How will you possibly extricate yourself from this marriage when there will be so many witnesses to our romantic waltz on this, our first night in society since my return?”
“That is a sacrifice I’m willing to make,” she replied sweetly. “Because you love dancing so much, and of course I want to help you return to the life you were denied all this time.”
Leonidas eyed her, and tried to keep his lips from twitching. “You are too good to me. Especially when you have so little experience with formal dancing. To think, you could make a fool of yourself so easily.”
Her sweet smile took on an edge. “I know how to dance, thank you.”
“You can’t possibly have practiced since you were in school. What if you’ve forgotten all you learned?”
“I don’t know why you imagine yourself an expert on my dancing prowess,” Susannah said loftily, “but for all you know I danced all night and day while you were gone.”
“While draped in black shrouds to honor my memory? I doubt it.” He smiled at her then, a bit lazily, and was astonished to realize that he was enjoying himself for the first time since he’d entered this ballroom and started wading through too many vipers to count. “As far as I can tell, that means the only real dance partner you have ever had is me. At our wedding.”
He didn’t know why he said it that way—as if he was staking a claim on her where they stood. Or why she took his simple statement of fact so seriously, her blue eyes turning solemn as she regarded him. That odd electricity that had nearly been his undoing in the car earlier, then again at the ballroom doors, coursed through him again then. Making him think that if he didn’t touch her right now he might char himself from the inside out.
But he managed to keep his hands to himself.
“I said you love to dance,” she said after a moment, and the smile she aimed at him then wasn’t a fake one, all polite savagery. It was real. Wry and teasing and real. And all theirs, here in a ballroom that might as well have been a goldfish bowl. “I didn’t say I enjoyed it, only that I could. You know how it is. A single bad experience can ruin the whole thing and then you’re left with a lifetime aversion.”
“I’ll assume we’re still talking about dancing,” Leonidas said mildly.
She laughed then, and Leonidas couldn’t help himself. He told himself he was indulging her, but he had the sinking suspicion that really, he was indulging himself.
He took her hand in his and he led her out into the middle of the crowded dance floor, ignoring the couples who parted to let them through—as much to gawk at them as to show them any consideration, he knew. He didn’t care. Just as he didn’t care that she was melting into him and holding on to him not because she was as wild with need as he was—or not only because of that—but because she wanted to avoid unpleasant conversations with her own parents.
She was doing this only because it was easier. He understood that. It was a way to hide in plain sight, right out there in the middle of the dance floor, looking for all the world like a fairy tale come to life. The Lazarus Betancur and his lovely bride, at last. It provided the damned optics she loved so much, and in as perfect a form as possible.
But when Leonidas pulled her into his arms, bent his head to meet and hold her gaze, and then began to move—none of that seemed to matter.
There was nothing but the music, then. The music and the woman in his arms, the whisper of her rich green gown and those blue eyes of hers like whole summers in the sort of simpler times he’d never known. There was nothing but Susannah and the way she gazed up at him, the same way she had that day in the compound when he’d been so deep inside her he hadn’t cared what his name was.
It was almost too much to bear.
He was used to waking up in the middle of the night with wildfire dreams of those delirious, delicious moments in the compound storming all over him like some kind of attack. She’d touched him a thousand times since then in those dreams, glutting herself on the hardest part of him, and even better, letting him take his time with her. Again and again, until she fell apart the way she had then.
And he woke every time to find himself alone.
He was used to handling his hunger as best he could, with his hand in the shower and the ferocity of his self-control throughout all the hours they spent together every day. But the scent of her skin was imprinted on him now. The sound her legs made when she slid one over the other to cross them. The sweetness of her breath against his neck when she leaned in to whisper something to him in a meeting.