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A small cry escaped her throat when Dante rubbed against her. He was shameless. This wasn’t a quiet, safe man. He never had been. Dante’s expression was knowing and mocking as he led her in the dance. He could prove so easily how much she still wanted him, just allowing her to feel the hard proof of his desire. And then the band struck up a sexy samba. She should go...
‘You can’t pretend you don’t know the steps,’ Dante insisted, murmuring the words against her ear. ‘There are only three.’
There was too much laughter in his eyes for her to ignore his insistence that they have this one last dance, and willing his hands to stay where they were, and for her body to behave, she kept on dancing. Her body did the rest, with Dante’s lightest, safest touch egging her on. He felt so good as they danced that she even began to relax. He felt so hard and sure, while she was so yielding and soft...
But not in the head, hopefully, she concluded, pulling away.
With a laugh Dante caught her back again. ‘You’re not so prim on the dance floor, are you, Senhorita Marcelos?’
‘I’m doing this as a courtesy to a client and nothing more,’ she said, living up to her prim tag.
‘Of course you are,’ Dante agreed dryly.
‘And now I really do have to go,’ she insisted, peeling herself away from him when the number ended.
He looked at her from beneath his brow. ‘And our discussions?’
‘Will be continued.’ If there had been even a hint of business in his eyes she would have made an appointment with him there and then. But as it was... ‘I’ll get my secretary to call yours.’
He laughed at this. ‘How about you call me?’
Not a chance. She had almost slipped from the straight and narrow and had no intention of risking it again. She was going to keep things formal between them from now on. ‘Someone will call you,’ she confirmed.
‘It had better be you,’ Dante warned.
She shivered involuntarily at the tone of his voice, and then gasped when he caught hold of her arm, but he was only delaying her so he could shrug off his jacket to put it around her shoulders.
‘You don’t need to do that—I’ve got my shawl.’ She was wearing the shawl he’d bought her like a scarf, and had tossed it around her neck when they’d begun to dance.
‘You can give the jacket back to me when you see me next,’ Dante told her with a smile. Drawing it close around her, he enfolded her in his heat. ‘Take your time with those notes. I want you up and running when we arrive at my fazenda.’
His ranch. His kingdom. His power to wield and enforce...
‘You’re shivering again, Karina.’
Stop fretting, or you’ll make him more suspicious that ever. You can do this, she added to that instruction as she lifted her chin to stare Dante in the eyes. Deciding that making light of it was her best defence, she curved a smile. ‘You’ve already given me your jacket. Shall I take your shirt next?’
She didn’t stay to watch as Dante teased her with a wicked grin as his fingers toyed with the buttons on the front of his shirt.
She remembered those hands... She remembered those fingers...
She cursed silently, remembering what lay beneath that shirt.
It was time to forget all that and concentrate on business.
Turning on her heel, she walked away, and was more than relieved when she reached the bank of elevators and one opened for her right on cue. Once inside she hit the button for her floor with a sigh of relief.
* * *
Dante was frustrated and pacing his bedroom with Karina on his mind. What a day it had been. Seeing her again was a thunderbolt. He could never have anticipated the way she made him feel. He had thought the attraction between them would have faded by now, but instead it had grown.
Yet she had catapulted away from the most innocent of kisses.
Why?
Admittedly, the kiss hadn’t been all that innocent—it had been a trial, a test, an exploratory mission with motive behind it. She was hot. He was hungry. A kiss had seemed inevitable to him. He should have remembered that women harboured memories like sacred vows, while he, like most men, responded to the moment.
That insight couldn’t help him now. Other woman shrank into insignificance by comparison with Karina. And she was a woman now, not a teenage siren who didn’t know her own mind. She was a very beautiful woman and he wanted her. Her feelings towards him were tantalisingly ambiguous. There was the same heat between them, but there was a new reserve in her manner that he couldn’t see his way past.
