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“Dance with me, Laney.”
Her look jerked to him. “What?”
Wes took a step toward her, his boots crunching on the gravel of the wide pathway. “Dance with me. We are in a truce. We have music. It’s all we ever needed.”
No.Her head screamed the word, while her mouth did nothing to actually form sound.
No, she didn’t want to dance, didn’t want to give him a second of time in which he thought to lift her only so he could crush her.
She had to remember what his goal was. To see pain in her eyes, to watch her crumble under his cruelty.
So, no, she didn’t want to dance.
He extended his palm to her, his eyes hooded under the shadows of the night. But she could feel it—the heat as he looked at her. “Dance with me.”
Her hand lifted to his, drawn to the warmth of his touch, to the moment when his fingers would collapse around hers, just as they had at her townhouse.
Come with me, Laney. It is safe.His hand whispered to her.
When she knew quite well it wasn’t.
Her fingers twitched and, before she could control her own blasted body, she set the box onto the ground and her hand was in his, her feet shuffling forward as his right hand drifted down, sliding about her waist.
He gently started forward and it took her ten steps before her feet found the rhythm of the music from above, before they moved in lockstep with him.
And she was back. Back in time. Back seven years when it was only her and Wes and music and their bodies moving in unison and no one else in the world.
The scent of peonies mixed with the heat of Wes—spice and wood and salt—making her head light with every swirl he swung her through.
Her eyes lifted to his face to find he was staring down at her, his dark eyes intense as they met her look. No words, but she could see the hunger in his gaze. How he wanted to devour her. This very particular look had always sent her knees shaking, her limbs grasping for the strength that had suddenly left them.
Her look shifted to the right, to their entwined hands, his swallowing hers.
Damn him.
Damn him for making her feel. For jabbing awake all that she had been determined to leave dead in the past. For complicating the hate she had for him. The hate he had for her.
There had been a very specific line drawn in the ground between them and he continued to step over it, to grind away at that line with the heel of his boot.
“Why are you crying, Laney?”
Her look jerked up to him. “Crying? I’m not crying.” Her fingers left his shoulder and touched her cheeks only to feel wet droplets trailing down her skin. Her gaze dropped to the loose white cravat he had dangling about his neck as she scrubbed them away.
“Laney?”
She inhaled a deep breath and shrugged, her voice not nearly as solid as she’d like it. “It makes me think of that night.”
“Which night?” He didn’t halt his steps, their legs moving in rhythm of their own accord.
“The night before…” She forced her gaze up to him, overriding how much she wanted to rip herself from his arms and hide away from him. “The night before everything was ruined.”
His dark eyes went even darker in the shadows of the crescent moon.
It took several breaths before he replied. “That was a night.” His voice had notched down, the deep bass drifting even lower, but his words weren’t laced with ire as she assumed they would be.
She blinked with a slight nod. “Before everything changed.”
“When I touched you here.” His hand about her waist drifted inward, dragging across her belly and making her tense.
