So, yes, it was good that the guy dancing with her wasn’t like that…Wasn’t it?
Of course it was.
He’d been coming on to her like crazy. And she’d tried her best to respond. Smiled. Laughed. Gone onto the dance floor and did her best to lose herself in the music, working off her frustrations to its insistent beat the way she’d have worked them off in the gym.
And then, suddenly, she’d felt a tingle, as if someone was watching her.
Well, of course, someone was watching her! People danced, other people watched.
Aimee had danced harder, throwing herself into the music with abandon, and the guy with her kept saying things like, “Wow, you’re good, baby,” and “That’s it, babe, way to go,” as if he were cheering her on.
Objectifying her, she’d thought with detached clarity—except, wasn’t that part of the deal tonight?
She’d come here to have fun, she’d thought grimly. To pick up a man. She was going to have a good time.
Except, she wasn’t.
She despised places like this. Not the club itself: it was, she had to admit, spectacular. It was what went with the place. The noise. The lights. The crowd. The desperate pickup lines.
And this was not the time to turn into an anthropologist studying the natives.
So she’d agreed when Jen said it was absolutely fantastic, laughed at what she assumed were jokes, let a nice-looking guy buy her a margarita, tell her she was the most beautiful woman in the place and lead her to the dance floor.
And tried not to cringe each time Ted or Tim or Tom called her “baby.”
And worked really, really hard at pretending she was having fun when the truth was, she didn’t belong here, didn’t want to be here, certainly didn’t want to go home with Ted-Tom-Tim or anybody else for a night of meaningless sex.
She’d never treated sex casually. Never had a one-night stand. Never, not once.
Why on earth had she thought she’d want to now?
Because, a sly voice inside her had whispered, you thought it just might make you forget the stranger. The one with the hard, beautiful face and the body that was all muscle.
The one who kissed you as if he had the right, as if he could kiss you, do anything to you that he wanted.
That you wanted.
And that was when Aimee felt the tingling, looked around…And saw him. The stranger from this afternoon. Watching her with what could only be fury in his eyes.
He was angry? At her? That was crazy. She was the one who was angry. And “angry” wasn’t the word. She’d been the one harassed by him. By his attitude. His arrogance. His unwanted kiss.
His eyes met hers. Everything faded. The insistent throb of the music, the people around her, everything.
Aimee stopped dancing.
It was all she could do not to run.
The look in his eyes terrified her…but the slow heat spreading through her veins terrified her even more.
She took a long, deep breath. Or tried to. For some reason, she couldn’t seem to get any air into her lungs.
Suddenly the rage in his expression changed. Something else glittered in his dark blue eyes. Something male that she despised.
The innate male determination to dominate.
To dominate, in bed and out.
With breathtaking swiftness, she felt a rush of heat sweep through her. Her nipples tightened; a honeyed warmth spread low in her belly.