Page 71 of Made in Love and Blood

No, he disagreed entirely.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And you’re just perfect. With or without the shoes.”

His arm slid across her back, and before she could argue, he had her picked up in a cradle hold. She laughed as he walked her off the floor to the closest chair he could find to plop her down. Kneeling, he untied the cords of pink leather twisting up her exposed calves. Silken warmth kissed his fingertips every time he touched her skin. One heel hit the floor, and he moved onto the other.

He tried not to notice.

He tried to consider—

“They don’t hurt!” She playfully kicked at him, but he easily dodged it. “Do you know how much shorter I’m going to be now?”

“You don’t know that they hurt. That’s the problem.”

“Well—”

He glanced up, his sharp eyes silencing her instantly. “Well, nothing.”

Her lips pressed together, all but forcing out the word, “Fine.”

Nico resisted the sudden urge to slide his hand higher on her leg as his other pulled off the heel. He could smell the way her perfume had deepened to a honeyed vanilla scent with the heat of her body from dancing. He bet she knew all the spots to dab that scent, like the backs of her knees and under her ears. It was driving him crazy because he kept thinking about finding all those spots with his mouth.

Her father had been right.

He was fucked. So totally fucked.

“Drinks?”

Nico stood from the floor, moving Frankie’s heels under a nearby table as she took a drink from an offered tray by a passing server. He refused. She practically downed the flute in one go. The bitter pull of her face after she did so had him reaching for the glass to take a sniff of what remained at the bottom.

“The fuck,” he muttered, stunned, “there’s liquor in this?”

“I think someone’s spiking it.”

He put the flute to the table and pulled her up from the chair. She immediately began pulling him back toward the dance floor. “I can tell you what you’re not doing after this now.”

“Huh?”

Her cute little blink over her shoulder made him want to kiss her. Somehow, he stopped himself to say instead, “Well, you’re not driving home. Larkin took my car back, so I guess I get to drive the Rolls tonight after all.”

Her nose scrunched up, and she pouted. “It’s two drinks, Nico.”

“Fight me,” he murmured, mostly joking.

She would not be getting those keys and he was the only one between them with pockets.

A popular male singer filtered through the room, then, crooning about losing control to a woman he loved. He recognized the song immediately. Next to the kind of dance music someone would hear at a rave, a soulful jazz or something similar was Nico’s next best choice.

“Come here,” he told Frankie as he pulled her close with one arm and wove their fingers together with his other. Her fingers found his jaw with the softest touch, and those heart-shaped lips of hers caught his attention with their soft pink gleam under the lights. He pulled her closer still, practically flattening her body against his as she lifted on her tiptoes like she was trying to taunt him. “That’s how you dance to something like this.”

“Is it?”

“It’s how I do.”

All he saw was her, then. Her and her mouth, and those dark eyes that matched a man Nico could only hope to be. Maybe he didn’t measure up; maybe he couldn’t.

“Are you ever gonna do it?” she asked him.

Nico wet his lips. “Do what?”