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After another few minutes, Colin slowed the car to parallel park next to a small store front. The sign above it readKatrina’s School of Dance. Switching off the engine, he beamed at Allison. “I think it’s time we learn something besides the Cowboy Hustle.”
Her mouth fell open. “Are you serious?” Dance lessons, especially ones they were destined to be incredibly bad at, seemed like the last thing they had time for right now.
Colin pressed a hand gently to her knee. She hadn’t realized how erratically she was bouncing it until he touched her. Man, she really was stressed out. “I think it would do us both some good to focus on something else. Even if it’s just for an hour.” Had she been like this all week and she hadn’t even noticed? So much so that Colin felt like he needed to find a remedy?
Her eyes swept back toward the dance studio. “Sure, but we could have gone to a movie.” Or better yet, gotten drunk or had sex (or, ideally, both). Something that would literally alter the chemicals of her brain and flip the panicked part off.
Unbuckling his seatbelt, Colin popped open his door. “I figuredwe needed something a little more active.” Before he climbed out, he took her hand and brought her knuckles to his mouth in that way that always left Allison boneless and loose. “Besides, that night we line-danced was…” With a shake of his head, he kissed her hand again.
Epic? Magical? Unforgettable? She wanted him to fill in the blank, but he only brushed his lips a third time to her fingers and then urged her to follow him inside.
A sudden surge of emotion caught in Allison’s chest. Whenever she thought of that night, she remembered how well they’d gotten along. Not only laughing and having fun, but working in tandem, as a team, Colin relying on his memory to know what came next, Allison keeping them in rhythm. It reminded her that, if they’d been smart enough to get out of their own way, they could have had something special, even back then. These last two years didn’t have to have been wasted.
Is that why Colin wanted to revisit that night? Was this his way of showing her they were a good team? That no matter what happened after this week, whatever Wendy decided, they could remain that way if they chose to? If they decided it was worth the work.
As she stepped through the doorway of the dance studio in his wake, Allison realized that, every day, she became more sure that it was.
For the next hour, a very patient, very kind Katrina did her best to guide the two least graceful people on earth through a simple waltz and a beginner’s samba.
Though there were a few crushed toes in the process, Allison and Colin managed to pick up most of the waltz’s box step.
The samba was another story. The music was too quick and staccato, and the routine too intricate, with partner work that extended far beyond holding each other’s hands at the correct height. Allison struggled not to collapse into giggles whenever Colin had to gyrate his hips, and she fell every time they tried to perform a dip.
There were a few counts in the middle of the dance, though, thatthey’d been able to master. Some cha-cha steps that transitioned into a series of hip rolls followed by Colin leading Allison in a twirl. Mostly, they fumbled around for an hour like newly born calves who didn’t understand their legs, but when they danced those moves, Allison felt competent. Sexy, even.
For the last fifteen minutes, Katrina left them alone on the floor to practice. As soon as she shut her office door, Colin drew Allison closer, so their thighs brushed and their hips met as they swayed with the cha-cha. When they stepped into the hip roll, Allison thrust her backside firmly against his groin. His hands grasped at her waist like he couldn’t hold her tight enough.
Colin burrowed his face into that sensitive spot between her shoulder and her neck. “I think we need to try that step again.” His breath rushed hot across her skin.
“You mean this one?” Allison’s voice was husky, half lost to the desire starting to burn at her center. She rocked her body against his. Almost like they were reenacting that first night they met, only with a completely different ending.
She had to swallow a gasp as his hands sketched hot paths up and down her thighs, his thumb venturing a little higher beneath her skirt’s hem each time.
The five-minute drive back to Allison’s was torture. Her body throbbed with want as Colin traced circles around her knee-cap with his thumb. She was seconds from grabbing his hand and shoving it between her legs when he pulled the car into her driveway.
Though all she wanted to do was sprint for the house, she waited as he came around to open her door. Cradling her face in his hands, he guided her mouth to his as he eased her up from the seat.
The kiss was hungry and alive, their mouths open, tongues pushing against each other as their limbs did the same.
There was no way they were making it all the way upstairs to her bedroom, but there was a table just inside the front door, beneath the stairs. Allison slid up on it as Colin wrestled off his pants. She wasso worked up, so primed and ready, that she almost broke apart the moment he was inside her.
As they gripped each other with a need that left them frenzied, a sense of closeness overwhelmed Allison. Colin’s arms felt like home, a promise of safety, even as her heart thudded like she’d just embarked somewhere new and unknown that she’d been dying to see.
An hour—and a second round—later, they lay in Allison’s bed, a rerun of some crime investigation show murmuring in the background as the TV’s soft glow spread over the twisted sheets, and their equally tangled limbs.
Colin curled a strand of Allison’s hair around his fingers as she pillowed her head on his shoulder.
“So,” he said softly. “Tell me the latest with your mom.”
Allison sat up with a screech, clutching a sheet to her bare chest. “Don’t bring up my mother when I’m naked.”
He laughed. “Sorry.” It took a second of coaxing (and quite a few soft kisses) to convince her to lie back down. “But since I’ve already summoned her, are things better? Has Mrs. Avery stopped bringing up your father constantly?”
With as much petulance as she could muster, Allison said, “You can call my mother Cassandra.”
Colin held his hands up. “Oh no. Maybe when we’re married, but until then, all significant others’ parents are strictly Mr. and Mrs. or the gender-neutral equivalent.”
Allison choked, flipping over on her stomach so she could see his face more clearly. Her bare legs kicked behind her in glee. “When we’re what?”
