The waitress came back with small plates of finger food and a bottle of champagne. Sidonie groaned softly. She hadn’t realised she was hungry and she stole a glance at Alexio, who was watching her with amusement.
‘My appetite is just one big joke to you, isn’t it?’
He shrugged and prepared some pitta bread and tzatziki, handing it to her. She ate it with relish and took a sip of the sparkling wine.
Joking, she said, ‘I could get used to this, you know.’
She missed Alexio’s enigmatic look as she plucked an olive from a bowl. When she did look at him he was lounging back, regarding her with an expression that had her blood heating up. It wasthatlook. The one that made him look hungry and made her feel hungry. But not for food.
‘I want to dance with you.’
Sidonie swallowed what she was eating. The mere thought of dancing with this man made any appetite she did have flee. A slow, sexy hip-hop song was playing, its beat sending tremors of sexual awareness through Sidonie’s body.
‘Okay...’
Moving out of the booth seat, Alexio stood and held out his hand. He looked so young in that moment, and so breathtakingly gorgeous, that Sidonie had to relegate it like a snapshot to the back of her mind because it was too much to deal with.
His hand in hers, Alexio led her to the dance floor, which was filling up with similarly minded couples. He drew her into his arms, close to his body, and it was the most natural thing to loop her hands and arms around his neck.
His hands were possessive on her, sexual. One hand rested over her buttocks. The other slid under the gaping hole at the side of her dress to splay across her naked back.Lord. How was she expected to stay standing when he touched her like that? As Sidonie looked into his eyes the infectious beat of the music throbbed through every vein and made her tingle. She realised, not for the first time, how far under her skin he’d sneaked.
There was something so...so up-front and unashamed about him. He was too confident to play games. Too assured. She knew exactly where she stood. And even though that brought misgivings about how cool she was with that—which was a lot less cool than she pretended—she couldn’t blame him for her growing confusing emotions. Her attachment.
The fact that she trusted him was huge. She’d never trusted anyone, really...not since those awful days when her mother had exposed a very ugly side of reality and herself. Sidonie suspected now that her highly developed reticence had influenced her experiences with her first two brief relationships. No wonder they’d been unsatisfactory; she hadn’t let either of them get too close.
But Alexio... Alexio had smashed through a wall she’d been barely aware of building around herself and now all that remained was rubble. And her exposed beating heart. It hit her then, as she looked up into those golden compelling eyes...she was falling for him. And it was too late to stop herself.
Her arms tightened around Alexio’s neck in automatic rejection of her thought, as if she could ward it off if she squashed it right away. But Alexio couldn’t read the stricken nature of her revelation. He saw only those wide aquamarine eyes and felt Sidonie’s arms tighten around him and he pulled her even closer.
Her breasts pressed against him, her hips welded to his, and his arousal was urgent and insistent. Damn her. Heneverlost it like this.
Wanting to punish her for something he wasn’t even sure of, Alexio cupped the back of her head and, as the throbbing beat of the music changed and got faster, bent his head and took her mouth in a bruising passionate kiss.
As if something was holding her back, Sidonie didn’t respond for a moment. Incensed by this, Alexio used every skill in his arsenal to make her respond—and when she did his blood ignited.
After long, drugging moments, Alexio struggled to drag himself away from Sidonie’s mouth. He felt dazed. The music was faster now. People were dancing around him. They were the only ones standing still. She was slow to open her eyes. They looked slumberous, filled with hidden depths. Filled with...emotion. Instantly Alexio waited for that cold feeling to infect him, but it didn’t.
Before he could feel any more disjointed he all but dragged Sidonie off the dance floor and back to the booth. The food had been cleared away. They sat down and Alexio took a swig of champagne. But it was no good. He couldn’t feel civilised sitting next to Sidonie with that provocative dress testing his control every time she moved.
He took her hand and she looked at him. Her mouth was swollen. Her eyes were huge, pupils dilated.
‘Let’s get out of here...’
She opened her mouth, paling slightly, as if she saw something in his expression that frightened her slightly. He felt feral.
‘But we only just got here.’
Alexio forced himself to calm down and tried not to think about the fact that when he usually came to a club with a woman it was a very different experience. He was usually a lot more in control.
Tightly he said, ‘If you don’t want to go we can stay...’
‘Why do you want to go?’ she asked, surprising him. Most women would have pouted or sidled up to him, trying to distract him, cajole him.
‘Because,’ he offered with brutal honesty, ‘I’m afraid if we don’t leave that I’ll get arrested for making love to you in front of an audience, and the last time I checked this wasn’t a sex club.’
‘Oh...’ Sidonie said, in a small voice barely audible above the music. She took a swift sip of her drink and then looked at him. She was all at once shy and confident—again that intriguing mix. ‘In that case maybe we should go...’
Relief and anticipation swept through Alexio as he grabbed for her hand and led her out of the booth—this time back to the VIP exit.
