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He raised an eyebrow. ‘No one told me you were in charge,’ he murmured, and the small smile on his lips goose-bumped a little shiver over her skin.
Right now the attraction was a welcome distraction from her grief. For a second she wondered if he somehow knew that.
‘So what do you want to do now?’ he asked. ‘If you like I can drive you back to the hotel.’
For a second temptation beckoned, but she knocked it back. This was a work assignment and she would see it through.
‘I appreciate your concern but I am fine. Really. I want to go back in.’
‘Then that is what we will do.’
Grateful for his acceptance of her decision, she followed him back down the corridor, re-entering the ballroom as Rafael announced that the dancing would now commence.
‘Shall we?’ Marcus asked.
For a second she gaped at him. ‘Shall we what?’
‘Dance?’
Refusal would be the sensible option—she knew that—yet the simple word No refused to materialise on her lips.
‘I’m sure your readers will be interested in how I acquit myself on the dance floor.’
He had a point, but deep down she knew that wasn’t the true motivation for her desire to dance with him. Right now the pull of attraction was moving her away from the cusp of despair. She wanted to be held in his arms...wanted to be up close and cocooned by his strength and powerful aura.
Dammit. When there was so much heartache in the world, so much tragedy and grief, right here and now it felt important to acknowledge the sheer life-giving force of physical attraction.
‘You’re right.’
What harm could there be in one dance? Especially when she could kid herself it was for research purposes...
But from the second he placed an arm around her waist and they stepped onto the dance floor research went out of the window. It seemed nonsensical that his touch could burn though the lacy material of her dress, ridiculous that desire should strum her body with a riff causing a fever of combustible proportions.
Her head spun as if she had gone through a portal into a more rarefied atmosphere—a world where she could somehow manage to shut out everything but the here and now. Memories, guilt and despair were all still out there, but they couldn’t get into this insulated bubble where all she could be aware of was Marcus.
The beat of his heart under her fingers, the strength of his chest, the feel of his arm around her waist, his clasp light yet firm and somehow full of promise, the smell of him, his proximity...
She looked up at him, fascinated by every molecule of his skin. Instinct dared her to move her hand and brush the nape of his neck. She heard his intake of breath as he pulled her closer—so close she knew he was as aroused as she...
Then memory sheared through her insulation, superimposed an image of the past...ten years before...a college dance...a different time, a different man. A man who had seemed to empower her but in fact had enslaved her, had somehow made her dance to his every tune. Dean. She had fallen for him, sucked in by his looks, his charisma, by the arrogance that she had mistaken for confidence. In that dance, that evening, she had believed herself to be on top of the world—whereas in reality she had been on the brink of ruin.
Never again would she let desire shut out all else.
Somehow she managed not to wrest herself from Marcus’s grasp. Instead she dropped her hand from his neck to his shoulder and unglued her body from his—there was no other word for it. Shame swathed her. Somehow she focused on a point over his shoulder and tried to suppress the seething sensation inside her.
‘April...?’
His voice tested her resolve but didn’t break it. All she had to do was conjure up a vision of Dean—not the Dean she’d first danced with, but the man he’d turned out to be and the horrific chain of events that dance had precipitated.
‘You OK?’
‘Yes. Actually, no.’ To her horror, she could hear the anger in her voice, the frustration and the sheer emotion. ‘This attraction is wrong. Unless, of course, I’m imagining it?’
Right now she would almost prefer the humiliation of being told it was all one-sided.
‘You aren’t imagining it and it isn’t wrong. It’s just unfortunate.’
Unfortunate? Ouch.
