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Like he had collected his truck and his wife.
“Hey, Belle. Dance with me.” Jason Dugall, one of the Malone cowboys, stepped up to her as the music picked up its beat again. “Come on. You don’t wanna just sit here all night.”
His brown eyes sparkled with fun, his blond hair was sweat dampened and falling over his brow.
“One dance.” She picked up her beer, took a large drink, then rose to her feet and let him take her hand and lead her out to the dance floor.
She hadn’t danced in years, but the steps came back to her naturally. Within minutes she was laughing, twisting. Jason was a good dancer. A fun dancer. He didn’t touch below the waist, they laughed when she screwed up the steps and he would swing her around to get her back in step.
They finished the song and moved into another, then another. She let her mind drift, remembering the nights she and Nathan had spent dancing here when they went out with friends. And it was fun. It was something she hadn’t done since she and Nathan had been married, for one reason or another.
Finally, her legs weak and her mouth dry, she waved off another dance and headed for the table. From the corner of her eye she saw movement and turned.
A path opened to the door and Noah Blake came striding in like the biker bad boy from hell. Leather chaps over snug jeans. Kick-ass boots on his feet. A leather jacket over a black T-shirt. His blue eyes blazed like hell on fire in his dark face and his black hair was windblown, mussed, and lying to his shoulders in erotic disarray. As though the wind had loved his hair as he rode. Combed invisible fingers through it and left it lying in just the right way to reveal the rugged savagery of the re-formed bones and angles of his face.
And he was heading straight for her.
The music drifted away, a slow sensual tune heated up the dance floor, and she felt her breathing become harder, deeper.
Two days. She had been without him for two days. And it had been hell. How was she going to make it without him when he left to sort-things-out?
He strode to her, that loose-hipped dangerous swagger that made her mouth dry and her pulse pound. And before she realized his intention, his arms went around her and he pulled her into the softly swaying crowd.
It was like making love. Like long, slow sex.
His hands gripped her hips, hers pressed against his chest, fingers curling beneath the vest as they moved to the music.
“Having fun?” His eyes raged, his voice deepened, darkened.
“Of course.” She let her hands slide up his chest to his shoulders, moved in closer, and let herself feel him.
Oh God, how was she supposed to do without him again? How was she supposed to go on when he went off to sort his little things out?
She was married. She wasn’t a widow, she wasn’t a divorcee. She was married and she still loved her husband, even if somehow, somewhere, his love for her had died.
She let her head fall against his chest, her eyes close. A memory, she told herself. Something to hold on to when he was gone again. And his arms folded around her, held her close until her bare legs were sliding against the leather chaps, reminding her of the leather seats of the pickup and the scent of sex that infused it now.
She could feel her body warming, her breasts and clit swelling. Flesh became overly sensitized, and when his hands dipped beneath the short hem of her blouse and touched the bare flesh of her back, she drew in a hard, deep breath.
“I’ve missed you,” he breathed against her ear and she felt herself flinch at the admission.
Eyes closed, her face buried against him, she didn’t worry about anyone seeing the pain in her face, or her eyes. He hid her, sheltered her.
“There’s nothing to miss,” she finally answered, forcing herself to remember that he was going to leave her, walk away from her again.
He caressed the side of her head with his jaw.
“I want you, Sabella. I want back in that big bed with you. I want to feel you hot and wet beneath me.”
“For how long?” She shook her head against his chest. “How long, Noah? A night? Two? A week? What do you want from me? What makes you think you can just breeze into town, breeze into my bed, and then ride into the sunset and I’m just going to accept it?”
Noah could hear the hurt in her voice, he could feel it. Jealousy over the memory of the man who had spoiled her into seeing exactly how much she was worth, and the knowledge of what he was now, tearing through him.
She deserved so much better. Deserved a man who didn’t face those nights that, for whatever reason, pumped the remnants of the damned drug back into his senses. When the lust and the hunger consumed him to the point that he was terrified to be around any woman. Especially his Sabella.
And he couldn’t tell her that. He couldn’t tell her about the animal that raged inside him. He couldn’t tell her his agreement with Elite Ops, and he couldn’t forget that for eighteen months he had refused to let her know her husband was alive.
The truth would destroy her as surely as the lie eventually would. And at least with the lie, she would have that memory of her husband and what she had meant to him.
