She sucked in a sharp breath, and he shuddered at the painfully good feel of her brushing against him.Fuck, fuck, fuck.He eased his grip on her, giving them both a little space.
Her eyes had widened, and she rubbed her lips together, looking nervous but also way too intrigued. That combo of curiosity and want was what Lennox had been talking about. It was fucking irresistible. She was triggering fantasies inside him that he hadn’t been aware he had.
Without a word, O’Neal held the eye contact for a moment as if debating something and then adjusted her arms around his neck and got close again, their bodies now touching everywhere. Bold. Brave.
He was going to lose his mind.
She closed her eyes and danced.
They stayed that way for song after song, losing themselves to the beat of the music and the feel of each other until he was so hard against her, he thought he might explode right there on the dance floor. He breathed deeply through his nose, reminding himself that she was drunk, that he needed to be the responsible one.
He lost track of time. Of how many songs. At some point, Lennox brought them bottles of water and danced with Quyen nearby. The redheaded guy had found a new partner, and before long, he was sloppily sucking on that girl’s neck in the middle of the dance floor. But Auden barely noticed. He didn’t want to break the spell of the moment. O’Neal was getting what she wanted. She’d let go of her nerves and was enjoying herself, being free. And Auden had never seen her look sexier.
When the DJ started playing “Late at Night” by Buffalo Tom on repeat, Auden realized they’d danced all the way until closing time. O’Neal lifted her head as if just noticing that the song was playing for the third time. Her hair was clinging to her neck, and her skin was damp with exertion. This was what she’d look like after a night with him in bed. Flushed and sweaty and undone. He wanted to lick the salt off her skin, taste how turned on she was. But he kept his thoughts and tongue to himself. He was supposed to be the sober, responsible one tonight.
She met his stare. Her gaze was as clear as he’d seen it all night. She’d sobered up. The carriage was about to turn into a pumpkin. Reality was going to creep in.
“We should probably go,” he said softly. “It’s past last call.”
She nodded and opened her mouth to respond but then shut it again. She pressed her lips together.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. He braced for her to tell him he was a jackass for interrupting her night with her friend, for breaking in on the dance with the redhead, for holding her closer than a friend should, for—
“Why do you put it aside?”
The question threw him, and he tried to find which thread of this conversation he’d missed. “What?”
Her throat bobbed. “If I turn you on, why do you put that aside? You know I…like you. I’m not great at hiding that. I mean, stuff got pretty personal on movie night. But ever since, you’ve avoided acknowledging anything happened.” Her gaze shifted off to some spot over his left shoulder. “Is it because you’d think I’d be terrible at…everything?”
He stopped swaying to the music. “Are you being serious?”
Her gaze darted back to his briefly, and she gave him a look that told him all he needed to know. Even with the slightly smeared mascara and the exhaustion of hours on the dance floor, he could see the vulnerability there, the insecurity.
He cupped her jaw, tilting her face toward him, making her look at him. “O’Neal, that’s not it at all. I have no doubt that it’d be amazing to touch you, to show you things, to see you come apart. I haven’t thought about much else tonight…or honestly, since movie night,” he admitted. “But it’s not a deficit in you. It’s a deficit in me. I put it aside because you deserve better than what I could give you.”
She held his gaze this time, brave. “What if what you could give me,” she said so quietly he barely heard her over the music, “could be exactly what I need?”
He stopped breathing for a moment, searching her face. “What do you mean?”
“You assume I want a boyfriend.” A flush was darkening her cheeks. “Maybe I just want a”—she swallowed hard like she wasn’t quite sure which word she wanted—“teacherI can trust.”
His muscles tightened, his blood flashing hot.
“I’m tired of being in the dark,” she said, her courage obviously gaining steam. “And I’m tired of being scared of the unknown. In my life, when I wanted to know about a topic, I always knew where to go—how to research, how to learn. But with this…physical stuff, there’s no easy way to do that. I mean, I’m not dumb. I know I could find porn on the internet, but that’s not going to give me what I need to know. I want to know what things are like. To feel what they’re like.” She slid her hands to his waist, tentatively slipping her fingers beneath the hem of his T-shirt, her fingertips grazing his skin. “To touch. To be touched.”
His stomach dipped, and his cock flexed. “O’Neal…”
“And I want to do that with someone who’s a…trusted friend, someone who isn’t going to make me feel stupid if I do something wrong or don’t know the right way. The guy who, when he got a drunk text from me, came all the way out here to make sure I was all right.” She slid her hands back up to his shoulders as if the skin-to-skin contact had been too much, and he already missed the feel of her hands on him. “You keep trying to save me from bumbling freshmen and drunken frat boys. But if you don’t want my first experiences to be bad, then why not guarantee that—by being the person who gives them to me?”
He closed his eyes, breathed. She was going to kill him. Outcome: death on the dance floor. Weapon: words.
“If you know anything about me, you know I’m one hell of a student,” she said, a smile in her voice. “I always get an A plus.”
Fucking hell.He had strong willpower, but every man had his limits. She was flipping switches in him left and right.Show me. Touch me. Teach me. I’ll get an A, and you can tell me what a good girl I am.The erotic pictures she was painting for him without even knowing it were melting his brain.
“You’re killing me, Shaq,” he said, one last-ditch effort to keep him from jumping off the cliff. “I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“Maybe that’s overrated.” She visibly swallowed but her chin tipped upward. “You want me to beg?”