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“Oh, Gage,” Penny said when she saw him. “I didn’t know you were here.” She turned to her girlfriends to offer introductions. “Gage, this is Liza Moretti and Keeley Gallo.” Then she told her friends, “This is my boss, Gage Russo.”
Gage didn’t miss the slight narrowing of Liza’s eyes when she heard his name, but unlike her male relatives, she managed not to scowl or give him the evil eye.
“I was wondering if I could steal Beaumont from you for a few minutes,” he said to the other women.
Keeley nodded. “Sure. We’ll get you a drink and meet you back at our table, Penny. Probably shouldn’t have left our stuff there for so long, but that music was kicking.”
“Back in a flash.” Penny accepted his outstretched hand without hesitation, the two of them completely at ease with each other after a week of evenings spent together.
He guided her back to the dance floor, resisting the urge to glance toward the table he’d just vacated. He didn’t have to look in that direction to feel the heat of his brother’s glare.
“Missing a girlfriend?” He recalled her mentioning three names.
“Gianna has a boyfriend and apparently tonight was date night,” she explained.
A club remix of Ludacris’s “Stand Up” was playing, the perfect beat for this lesson.
He gripped her hips, keeping her close, splitting their legs, so one of his feet was between hers.
Penny stiffened, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. “What are you doing?”
“We’re dancing.”
“I…um…I don’t know how to dance like this.”
It sounded as if she was confessing she’d never danced with a guy before…then he recalled her admitting a few nights earlier that she’d never gone to prom in high school.
He’d learned countless things about her this week, each new tidbit drawing the picture of an awkward, lonely girl who’d grown up to be an awkward, lonely woman. She’d come to him for help breaking the mold, convinced that by doing so, she’d find some Mario to fawn over her newly discovered Princess Peach side.
“Just follow my lead, okay?”
He started to roll his body, swaying in time to the beat, and she mimicked the motion. Penny was a quick learner.
“I’m afraid I haven’t had much luck on the guy front,” she admitted. “But I’m having a blast. This place is great.”
“I should have explained club dancing to you. That’s my fault.”
She tilted her head as if confused, then her eyes traveled around the dance floor. He recognized the second the light went on. “Oh. Shit.”
“You’re a good dancer, Beaumont, but I need you to repeat after me. Sexy at the club. Not silly. You can pull out all those moves you were just doing at a family wedding, okay?”
She crinkled her nose. “I made an ass of myself, didn’t I?”
He shook his head. “No. This is on me. I made an assumption. I won’t do that again.” He lowered his hands, skirting the line between gripping her hips and her ass, pulling her closer until her breasts were flush against his chest. Her hands were landing everywhere and nowhere all at once, as she tried to figure out where they were supposed to be.
“Put your hands on my thighs,” he instructed. “Just loose. Let your fingers glide in time with the motion.”
She did as he asked, her touch sensual enough that he had to start doing multiplication tables in his head to keep his cock from getting hard.
Or, well,harder.
He hadn’t had sex since Marjorie. That hadn’t been a conscious decision—just something that happened. He’d been too busy with other things—okay, the nerd circle and Penny’s favor—to date.
Fuck. No. He wasn’t calling them the nerd circle anymore. He was calling them what they were. His friends.
He stopped swaying, changing to a hip thrust so he could lean closer, his lips brushing the shell of her ear.
“This is how you dance in a club,” he said. “You and your girlfriends in a circle, but not too tight. You’re dancing slow, sexy, shaking that hot ass of yours.”
