And it made my heart want to burst wide open.
Except…
“They’re here.”
His voice sent jolts of electricity through me—in a bad way—even before I realized their meaning.
They were here. The people we were doing all of this for were here.
That’s right—I wasn’t out in a club, dancing with Dominic Dane, because we both wanted to be here. We were here because we were on a mission. Because it was our job.
My arms loosened from around his neck instantly. An invisible knife stabbed at my gut, but I did my best to ignore the pain. Of course, he wasn’t dancing with me because he wanted to. He’d just seen something, someone out there that I should have been looking for, too. And he didn’t ask me about my family or my clan because he cared. He asked me because he was doing his job, like I should have been doing.
Tears stung my eyes, and I spun around, pressing my back to him.
It was done. The whiskey and the music and the dancing had gotten to my head—I was sticking to that excuse. We were still pretending, and soon, when this was over, we’d go back home, and everything would go back to the way it always was.
I needed to remember that from now on.
My eyes searched the crowd on the dance floor while I swung my hips to the sides, moved up and down, my back still pressed to him, his hands still around me.
I don’t care.
So many people were down there, dancing, laughing, having the time of their lives.
And I saw one that was looking right at us.
I kept on moving, then spun around again. “Hold me up and spin around slowly,” I said to Dominic, never looking at his face. He leaned down without a word, wrapped an arm around my waist, and pulled me up so easily, I’d never felt smaller in my life. But my arms were around his neck, my chin right over his shoulder, and moving slowly, he began to spin around, holding me to him without trouble.
Our bodies were pressed together tightly like never before. I felt every hard muscle on him, the urgency with which his arms held me, his warm breath blowing on my naked shoulder.
I don’t care.
I kept my eyes half closed and my head raised, as if I was feeling the music, until I could see the dance floor again. One man held a beer bottle in his hand and stood in the middle of the dancing crowd, moving to the sides every once in a while, his dark eyes locked on us. About fifteen feet to his left was another, this one standing to the side, and every time he raised his head to drink his beer, his eyes would stop on us.
“Let me go,” I whispered when Dominic made a full circle, and I could no longer see the dance floor below us. He loosened his arms around me, and I slid down his body, feeling every inch of him in the process. No doubt he felt every inch of me, too, especially my boobs, that were threatening to burst from the pressure until I stepped back.
I don’t care.
I spun around again and stepped away from him, dancing slowly, and he followed, knowing what I was doing. I wanted to get closer to the glass wall, see the crowd better, and by the time he was close to me again, I had a much better view of the entire ground floor. I didn’t look at his face, didn’t shiver when he grabbed my waist again—I just focused on the many faces, and found two more men looking up at us—one close to the stairs of the VIP section, with shadows so deep around his legs, I couldn’t see them at all; the other was leaning against the opposite wall of the club. I moved around Dominic, keeping my hands on him as I went, and to my horror, the girls who were dancing a few feet away cheered. They screamed and called my fake name and threw their hands in the air. My cheeks were so hot, I was afraid they were going to melt off my face any second. But I smiled, and I waved, and I kept on dancing, pressing my back against Dominic because I wanted to see if someone up here was watching us, too.
“Four of them,” I whispered because nobody in the VIP section seemed to look at us suspiciously, and then I stepped in front of him again.
“Five,” he whispered, and I turned my back to him again. My eyes remained half closed, and I leaned my head back on his chest, and I kept on swinging my hips. I counted all the men looking at us, and Dominic was right. There was another standing back-to-back with the guy who only looked at us when he took a sip of his beer, and this one didn’t bother to hide his interest. His eyes scrolled over my body as I went up and down pressed to Dominic, exactly like a girlfriend would. Pretend girlfriend.
But then my eyes moved to the bar on the right of the club, and my eyes found a face I recognized.
My heart skipped a long beat.
“Six.”
The woman looked very different from the one I’d met earlier. Her dark hair was pulled up in a messy bun, her small eyes were rimmed with black eyeshadow, her boobs were on full display in her leather black dress, and when she smiled, I saw no braces on her teeth.
Lindsay, the girl who worked for Ford and liked high heeled sandals, was sitting at the bar, sipping her drink, and looking right at me. She also wasn’t alone.
“They must have heard us at the car show today,” Dominic whispered.
“It’s that girl,” I said. “The one who asked about my sandals. She’s here.”