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“They didn’t mean anything. They were just being stupid,” I say to Santos—only to Santos. “And they were leaving.”
He turns his gaze to me, the green dangerously bright. “Were they? It didn’t look like that to me.”
“Santos,” Caius says cautiously to his brother. “We’re drawing attention.” I notice how much quieter the room has grown. How, even though the orchestra is still playing, conversation has died down.
Santos’s jaw tenses, and his eyes narrow. It takes him a full minute to draw in a slow, deep breath before smiling a smile that I can only describe as terrifying, more so than anything Leo Cummings and his friend could threaten me with. He steps backward, and Caius’s shoulders relax.
Santos takes out his wallet and looks at the man who’s wearing my wine. He pulls several hundred-dollar bills out and shoves them into the man’s chest. “That should cover the cost of a new shirt and then some,” he says.
The man closes his hand over the bills I think more out of instinct than anything else, and I have Santos’s full attention again when Caius puts an arm around each of the men and walks them away, leaving us alone.
My heart hammers against my chest. Santos’s eyes remain locked on mine and there’s a palpable shift in the air around us, the dangerous zapping of an electrical current that can’t be denied. I’ve never felt so drawn to any man as I do him. It’s as though there’s an invisible thread tying me to him, binding us. It’s impossible to ignore, and I know how dangerous this attraction is.
“You seem to find trouble, Little Kitty,” he says.
Little Kitty. “I think it finds me. I don’t like that nickname.”
“No?”
I shake my head, and we stand staring at one another. I swear the scar on my palm throbs, as if sensing he’s near.
“That’s too bad,” he says.
I’m the first to break eye contact. I’d like to say it’s because I see Odin across the room, but the truth is, he makes me nervous and I can’t hold his gaze.
Odin is standing beside my father, who is glaring at me or Santos or, most likely, both of us.
The music picks up pace as if the orchestra was just told to distract the crowd. The noise level rises again as people return to their conversations.
“I need a drink,” I say and attempt to walk past Santos, but I trip over nothing. He catches me and quickly positions me so that it looks like we’re about to join the dancers—one arm around my waist, the other holding my hand, my body against his.
The racing of my heart intensifies. I feel like it’s going to beat right out of my chest. My skin burns where he’s touching me and it takes all I have to look up at him.
“I think you’ve had more than you can handle,” he says as if he was giving me time to muster up the courage to look at him.
I snort, wanting to sound casual and unaffected although I’m pretty sure I’m not fooling him. “I don’t think you know what I can handle.”
“Not to mention the pills,” he adds. Before I can begin to wonder how he knows, he drops the façade of the dance and releases me as he takes my clutch and opens it.
“That’s mine,” I say, trying to take it back.
He holds it just out of reach. “Be still,” he commands, and I swallow as my body obeys. It fucking obeys.
But what am I going to do, run?
From inside my clutch, he lifts out my flask. He’s got his back to the room so no one but I will see. He lets go of that and takes out the small, now empty bottle where I’d kept the pills. No label.
“What were they?” he asks, focusing on my eyes. Is he checking my pupils? Is that why he’s been looking at me so intensely?
“Just painkillers. I had a headache.” It’s only half a lie.
“Headache? Hmm.” He puts the bottle back before closing the clutch and handing it to me. “Let’s go.” He wraps a possessive arm around my lower back, his big hand curling around my waist and turning me toward the curtained exit I’d been hoping to make my way out of earlier.
I move because I don’t have much choice, but being this close to him, touching him, it’s got my insides knotted up. We walk down the corridor and toward the front entrance, where a large reception desk stands. The ballroom is housed in the old mansion and behind it is a more modern building of about twenty luxury residences. People mill about, and I don’t miss the looks they give us as we cross to the elevators. We bypass the ones that lead to the apartments on all but the top floors, and I watch him take a key card out of his wallet and scan it.
The elevator doors slide open, and with just the slightest pressure at my lower back, he signals for me to enter. I do and stand as far away from him as possible, clutch tucked under my arm, arms crossed over my chest. He scans his card again and pushes the button for the top floor where the most luxurious residence is. There are two, and they take up the uppermost floors. I’ve never been to them, but they’re supposed to be stunning. I have no doubt they are.
Santos types out a text as we ride up, and I watch the back of his head.
