thrust up from her chair, stood up, every muscle taut like a wire under impossible tension. She had to go—right now.
‘Do please excuse me. I really must …’
Her voice was high and clipped and breathless. Thoughts seared through her mind.
I can’t cope with this! It’s too flagrant, too overpowering, and it’s all far, far too impossible! Impossible to have anything to do with a man from my father’s world! Impossible to have anything to do with any man when my overwhelming responsibility is for my grandmother. So it doesn’t matter—doesn’t matter a jot what this ridiculous reaction to him is, I can’t let it go anywhere, and I have to stop it in its tracks now. Right now!
But he wasn’t to be evaded. Instead he matched her gesture, getting to his feet in a lithe, effortless movement, towering over her. Too close—much too close. She stepped back, trying not to bump into the empty chair beside her.
‘You know …’ he said, and his voice was a deep, dark drawl that set her nerve-endings vibrating at some weird, subliminal frequency. His eyes did not relinquish hers, did not allow her to tear her gaze away from his. ‘I don’t think I do excuse you, Ms Lassiter. Not two nights in a row.’ The dark glint in his eye was shot through with something that upped that strange subliminal frequency. ‘This time I think I will just do—this.’
He moved so fast she did not see it coming. His hand fastened around her wrist. Not tightly, not gripping it, but encircling it … imprisoning it.
He looked down at her, even taller somehow, his shoulders broader, his eyes darker.
‘I’d like to dance with you,’ he said.
He drew her hand into the crook of his arm so that her hand splayed involuntarily on the dark sleeve of his tuxedo jacket, her nails white against the smooth black cloth. She wanted to jerk free, tear herself away, but he was looking down at her still, a taunting smile playing on his lips.
‘You don’t want to make a scene, do you, Ms Lassiter?’ he said, and a saturnine eyebrow quirked. The dark eyes were glinting. Mocking.
Emotion flashed in her eyes. For a wild and impossible moment, she wanted to do exactly what he’d said she could not—tug her hand free of its imprisonment, push away from him, storm off in a swirl of skirts and leave him standing there.
But there were too many people around. This was a formal function, with people who knew him, knew her father, knew who she was. Too many eyes were coming their way. Heads were turning at other tables set too close by.
He saw her dilemma, mocked it, and started to draw her away, towards the dance floor beyond. He could feel the stiffness of her body, the anger in the set of her shoulders. Well, he had anger of his own. Anger because she had spent the entire meal as if he did not exist, blanking him out, doing her best to ignore him, refusing to see him, talk to him. Refusing to do anything except the one thing she could not refuse.
She could not refuse to react to him.
Satisfaction—shot with grimness—spiked through him. That was the one thing she could not do. She could not hide her body’s response to him. A response that shimmered from her just from his presence at her side, despite the tense straining of her body away from his.
They reached the dance floor. She resisted him every step of the way, but was helpless to do anything about it lest she break that unspoken code of her class—never make a scene, never draw attention to yourself, never break the rules of social engagement. And he would use that code ruthlessly for his own advantage—to get what he wanted. To draw her to him.
‘Shall we?’
The taunt was in his low voice even as he turned her towards him, slipping a hand around her waist. His other hand clasped hers and he started to move her into the dance.
Helpless, Flavia could do nothing—nothing at all—to stop him.
Inside her breast, emotions stormed.
It was like being in torment—a torment that was lacerating every nerve-ending in her body. Everything about her body seemed to be registering physical sensation at double—triple—the intensity. She could feel his hand at her waist as if it were a brand, her hand clasped in his as if it were encased in steel. Steel sheathed in smoothest velvet.
And he was too close to her! Far, far too close! He was holding her, guiding her, turning her into the movements of the dance so that his body was counterpoised to hers, and hers was encircling his. Around and around they moved to the lush rhythm of the music, weaving through the press of other dancers. He was bending her pliantly into the dance, though her body felt as stiff as wood, and she could feel every muscle in her body seeking to strain away from him. It was as if he was endlessly drawing her towards him and she was endlessly resisting him, yet pinioned at her waist by the heat and pressure of his hand against her spine, the velvet steel of his hand around hers.
He was holding her captive.
And there was nothing she could do about it! Unless she broke free by force, tore herself away from him and stormed from the dance floor. And she couldn’t do that. Couldn’t because it would make a fuss, make a scene, draw eyes to her …
Couldn’t because she didn’t want to …
For a second—one fatal moment as the knowledge knifed through her brain like the edge of a sword, cleaving through her consciousness—she felt the tension in her body dissolve. Felt her body become pliant, supple.
And he felt it, too. She knew that he felt it, too, by the sudden flaring of his eyes to which she had suddenly lifted hers instead of what she was supposed to be doing, which was to stare rigidly, stonily over his shoulder.
Shock was in her gaze, and then that too dissolved, and she could feel the weight of her body shift as his hand at her waist seemed to deepen its support of her suddenly relaxed body. His fingers splayed out and she could feel each one fanning across her back, the thin silky material of her dress no barrier at all. And now his dark eyes held hers as she gazed helplessly across at him, feeling the warmth of his hand at her back, the warmth of his clasp on her other hand.
‘You see …?’
His voice was low and intimate—disturbingly intimate, below the level of the music and the conversation all around them. There was a smile—knowing, satisfied—playing at his mouth as he spoke to her. He knew what she was doing, what she was feeling, how her body was reacting to his, how the rest of the world was disappearing, how there was nothing left except themselves, turning slowly together in each other’s arms.
Each other’s embrace.
Like a string jerking tight she strained away again, tensing all the lines of her body, maximising the distance between them, stiff and rigid once more. Her eyes cut away, gazed unseeingly out over the room; her lips compressed, hardening the contours of her face.
The music stopped, and she felt the tension racking her body lessen. Relief filled her that her torment was over. Impulsively she tugged her hand free, stepping away from him, not caring if the gesture was too abrupt for social usage. She couldn’t afford to care.
‘Do please excuse me.’ Her voice was clipped and she would not look at him. Would not do anything except escape from the dance floor.
She threaded her way as rapidly as she could towards the doors that led out to the foyer, where she knew the powder room was. The ballroom was a blur, her only focus on gaining the haven of the Ladies’. Inside, she collapsed down on a velvet-covered stool in the vanity section of the spacious facilities.
Her reflection dismayed her.
Even in demure aqua, the bias cut of the dress did its work—far too well! It sheathed her body with glistening watered silk, its narrow straps showing too much bare shoulder and arm and—for her—too much décolletage, modest though it was by Anita’s sultry standards.
But Anita’s damage was worse than the style of the dress. Letting