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4
Natalia
It wasn’t a request.
The stranger costumed as a brooding calavera sugar skull wasn’t asking for a dance. There was more than simple bass and gravel weighing down his words—he spoke the way a lion growled, with a snarl and a gaze as powerful as the muscles rippling under what appeared to be an expensive custom suit.
May I have this dance?
No. Neither my gut nor my brain left any room for argument, but my body drew toward his, as if he were the sun pulling me into its orbit. I forced myself to step back. He wasn’t security; he wasn’t here to protect me, but the opposite. He was the danger my father had warned me of. This was a man who walked into a room and left with what he wanted—revenge, money, women . . .
Me.
No one in the room matched his obvious strength. It would take a bullet to stop him.
He’d asked my permission, and though I declined in a whisper, he put a large hand on my waist anyway, drawing me in, towering over me like a threat.
The dancers gave him a wide berth, staying just outside the span of his long arms—as if he might reach out and snatch one of them. He placed my hand on his solid bicep and engulfed my other with a gentleness that contradicted his hold on my side and the severity of his costume.
“I don’t know how to tango,” I said as a Gotan Project song started.
“You’ve been away from Latin men too long,” he said. “Follow my lead, mariposa.”
What made him think I’d been away at all? I’d lived in North America eight years, but the Latina in me would never fade. I did, in fact, have some basic knowledge of the dance and fell into step with him.
“We’re a match,” he said, his eyes drifting over the butterflies in my hair.
“I’m sorry?”
“Our costumes.”
There was no obvious correlation between a sugar skull and a butterfly, but I didn’t dare contradict him.
“Why the monarch?” he asked.
I turned my cheek. Beside us, a minotaur and a French maid danced a beat faster. I wasn’t going to tell this calavera what monarchs meant to me, so I resorted to facts. “It feeds on poison.”
“Milkweed—to render itself unpalatable to predators,” he said, sliding his hand to the center of my back where my leotard dipped. I stiffened as he dug his fingertips under the straps of my wings, into my exposed flesh. “One bitter taste, and the hunter backs off.”
His skin touched mine and stole my focus, just like that. It had taken Diego years to make his first move. Against my will, my nipples hardened between us. “I—I think it’s clever that they do that.”
“It’s just nature,” he said. “Monarchs also represent the souls of the departed. Like me.”
I looked up at him, unnerved at the way his black eyes drank me in. “You’re very much alive.”
Leaning in, he lowered his voice. “It’s said if you whisper your desire to one, it can deliver your wish to the gods on quick and soundless wings.”
I realized he was dancing me farther from the other partygoers. “I should get back,” I said.
“To?”
“My . . . fiancé,” I said, hoping it would fizzle his interest in me.
He stopped dancing. “Your fiancé? What about California?”
My mouth fell open, but I quickly closed it. I should’ve known better than to look caught off guard, having been raised by masters of schooling their emotions. “Do I know you?”
He hesitated before resuming our tango. He danced with precision and a peculiar grace, like a hunting lion. “I detect an American accent.”
Somehow, that didn’t give me any relief. “I have to go,” I said, trying to pull away.
He tightened his grip on me, and with what I suspected was hardly any effort on his part, kept me where I was. “But I haven’t whispered my wish in your ear yet.”
I swallowed dryly, wondering where Diego had gone. Surely, he wouldn’t like to find me pressed against another man. “People are waiting for me.”
His roughened hand constricted around mine. I followed his gaze to the diamond ring on my finger. “Which people?” he asked.
Would my father’s wrath be safer than where I stood now? The mystery around this man stopped me from telling him who I was. “People who would not like me to go missing.”
“Then perhaps they shouldn’t have left you all alone, mariposita.”
“Don’t call me that.” Sometimes, my parents had called me their little butterfly. Even my father knew better than to use that nickname anymore. I looked around the man, panic rising the more tightly he held me.
He drew me flush to him, the warmth of his body contradicting his cold stare. “Then what should I call you?”
My gaze locked onto Diego as he separated from my father and scanned the room.
