and that ache bloomed instantly into something darker. Thicker. Infinitely more dangerous. “I want to dance.”
“There must be hundreds of women here,” Lily replied, her eyes on the spectacle before her. It was overwhelming, yes—but he was worse. He was so much worse and infinitely more tempting. “I’m sure one of them would dance with you. If you asked nicely.”
His laughter was a dark and silvery thing, light against her ear and then, deep inside her, a tectonic shift that sent tendrils of need shooting off in all directions, and she couldn’t bring herself to jerk away from him the way she knew she should.
“I don’t want to dance with them, cara. I want to dance with you.”
Lily wanted to dance with him in this magical palace more than she could recall wanting anything, ever, which was precisely how she knew she shouldn’t do anything of the kind. She pulled her head away from that sweet brush of his mouth against her ear, though it took her much too long and hurt a bit too much to break that connection. When she turned to face him, his gaze was trained on the upper swells of her breasts where they rose above her bodice, where she could feel the goose bumps from his proximity prickling to life. The truth of her reaction to him. Obvious and unmistakable, no matter what she said.
Rafael took a long time raising that dark gold gaze to meet hers, and when he finally did, his expression was a molten, simmering thing that nearly made her moan out loud.
“I don’t dance,” she told him. Quickly, before she could betray herself by saying nothing at all—by letting him simply sweep her along with him. He stood there, tall and darkly beautiful and wearing black tie as if it had been crafted specifically as an homage to his perfect masculine form, and she wanted to cry. Sob. Scream. Anything to break that rising tension inside her. Anything to break the hold he had on her. Anything but what she felt called to do, down deep in her bones, and in that deep, lush throb between her legs. “I mean, I don’t think I know how.”
“You do.”
“I don’t know what good it will do to tell me that, if I can’t remember and trip all over your feet and make a terrible scene. I doubt that’s the kind of spectacle you want at a party like this.”
She only realized how snappish she sounded when he reached over and traced the lower edge of her mask with a single finger. It was pressure, not heat. He wasn’t touching her, not really, and there was absolutely no reason whatsoever that her pulse should speed up like that, or her breath should hitch. Noticeably.
More evidence against her, she knew.
“You don’t have to remember, Lily,” he said, his gaze much too bright and his voice a low, caressing thing that did everything his finger did and more, winding inside her and making her whole body clench tight and hot and needy. “You only need to follow where I lead.”
Rafael didn’t wait for her answer, which she supposed was some kind of blessing. Or more likely, it being the two of them, a curse. He simply reached down, took her hand and led her out on to the floor.
And Lily told herself she was blending in with the crowd here, nothing more. That she didn’t want to be recognized at all tonight, which meant she also didn’t want to draw any attention to herself by causing a scene. It was bad enough that Rafael was so gorgeous and so instantly recognizable—she could see heads turn as he cut through the crowd, something that was so commonplace to him, clearly, that he didn’t even seem to notice it as it happened. Lily told herself it was the right thing to do, to go along with him so obediently, so easily. That she was simply making sure she remained anonymous and unremarkable—just another well-dressed woman in a demimask, one of many here tonight.
But then he turned and took her in his arms, and Lily stopped thinking about anything but him.
Rafael.
His sensual mouth was a grim line, but she could see that searing intensity in his eyes, and it made her tremble deep inside. She had no defense against that hand that wrapped around hers, or the one that settled low on her back, as if she was naked, as if the sleek fall of her dress was no barrier at all. He could have pressed a burning coal to her bare skin and she thought that might have affected her less. She swallowed hard as she slid her own hand into place, over the taut, corded muscles of his sculpted shoulder, and felt the bright hot heat of him blaze into her as if he was a radiator.
Lily felt scalded. Turned pink and raw from even that much fully clothed contact—but all she could seem to do was stare up at him, her lips parting on a ragged breath, his own dark need like a physical presence she could feel as well as her own.
She knew she should have done something—anything—to lighten the moment, to wrench herself away or to conceal how she shook at his touch, at that predatory, possessive look in his dark eyes, but she didn’t.
She didn’t do a thing. And for a moment they only stood there, staring at each other. Stock-still as the dance wove and swirled around them, as if they were the center of a carousel, and the only thing Lily knew for that moment—that endless eternity—was that they were touching at last. After five long and lonely years, she was in his arms again.
Where you belong, some suicidal part of her whispered. Where you have always belonged and always will.
And then Rafael began to move.
Lily felt as if she was floating. She had no sense of him, of her, as separate entities—there was only the glory of the waltz and of his masterful touch, the way they flew across the floor as if they were all alone, the way his gaze wrecked her and remade her with every step. She forgot where she ended and he began. She was too close to him, her hand gripping his hand and her fingers digging deep into his shoulder, and his palm against her back was a revelation.
Around and around they went. And it was like falling. It was like flying.
It was all the poetry she’d never written, step by well-executed step, pooling in the white-hot space that was barely there between them.
And then the song blended into something else, something far more Christmas inspired than sweepingly romantic. Lily blinked as if a spell had been lifted. Rafael slowed, muttering out what sounded like one of his fanciful Italian curses beneath his breath.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, but she was too dazed still to worry overmuch. Besides, she felt everything. The press of her fine clothes against her heated skin. The warmth of the great room, of his hard, hot hand in the small of her back, flirting with the upper swell of her bottom. The way he held her against him, his strong thigh too close to that wild, wanton place that hungered for him the most.
She was molten and he was steel and she wanted. God help her, how she always wanted this man, no matter what.
Rafael didn’t respond to her halfhearted question, and Lily didn’t care. The look on his face was stark, almost pained, and she exulted in it. Because she knew exactly what it was—what had happened to him in the course of that waltz. It was the same thing that always happened, no matter what they did. It was this thing of theirs that had destroyed them so many times already it hardly bore tallying up any longer. But here, now, at a fanciful pageant of a Christmas party in the depths of December in this city of light and magic, she couldn’t manage to care about all that the way she knew she should.
It was as if that dance was inside them now, insistent and elegant, elemental and demanding.
He made a sound that was more
