But with each step, her hips rock under my hands. They are small hips—everything about her is small—but undeniably feminine. And I have to grip them with more pressure than I normally would to keep her steps where they need to be.
So I feel everything.
Every sway and sashay. The strength in her muscles—she may be small, but she’s toned. I’d bet money she works out. A lot.
And I feel her heat.
As we move together, my hands on her hips, it’s not such a great leap to imagine—
I pull my mind from that precipice and focus on reinforcing her progress. Because, however small, this is progress. We haven’t tripped. We haven’t stalled. And no one’s broken a bone.
“Good. Good. You’re getting the hang of it.”
It’s only when she smiles up at me—a really brilliant, star-studded smile—that I realize I was already smiling at her. And this is her smiling back.
At me.
I feel the next several beats of my heart like I’ve just sucked down a Bang. Which I only do to combat jet lag. But that’s what this feels like. Dancing with Iris Adams makes me feel like I’ve crossed the ocean and landed in a new continent, disoriented and raw, but restless to explore.
Chapter Eleven
IRIS
“I needto talk to you about something.”
Two weeks after my first dance lesson with Beau, Sally surprises me with this announcement. It’s the end of the day, and we sit together on my lazy front porch swing. Mica is lying on his side, resting up after his nighttime walk and his round of Frisbee catching. Sally’s nursing an LA-31 Pale Ale while I’m sipping on a lime Perrier.
Yeah, not the same thing, but I can at least pretend.
Ramon usually sits with us at the end of the day, mooning over Sally, but, oddly, he’s gone inside.
“O-kay. Spill.”
“Ramon has the weekend off, and he wants to go to New Orleans.”
I was bummed to find out we’d missed JazzFest by a few weeks, but a day-trip to the Big Easy should still be awesome. My schedule has been brutal the last few weeks. Filming all day. Dance lessons most evenings. And then I lie in bed thinking about how I shouldn’t be thinking about Beau Landry and how it feels to be in his arms.
“Sure,” I say with a shrug. “Sounds like fun. We could go to the French Quarter and—”
“No…” My best friend eyes me with alarm and hesitates before continuing. “No, I meant, Ramon wants to takemeto New Orleans—”
Oh.
“For the night.”
Oh.
Well, that explains why Ramon is hiding out. The coward.
I sigh, weary of going through this conversation again. “Sally, you just don’t get it—”
“No, Iris.” Sally shakes her head. “I love you, honey, butyoudon’t get it.”
I open my mouth and close it again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that. You keep warning me against Ramon and warning Ramon against me, and it’s getting old.”
“So you don’t believe me when I say that you two hooking up would end in disaster?”
