Tarnished
Page 14
Nathan clinked his against hers. “Cheers.”
“À la vôtre.”
They clinked their glasses together again as Nathan attempted to repeat Selina’s French version. She laughed at his weak attempt, and Nate blushed. In an effort to conceal it, Nathan took a sip of the drink Selina had ordered for them. He was pleasantly surprised. It was sweet and tangy. Nathan actually thought it was delicious. He was a little jealous that he wouldn’t feel comfortable ordering this himself at a bar.
“You like?”
Nathan caught her gaze and nodded slowly. “I do.” He maintained their eye contact through another sip.
“It’s sexy, no?” She took another sip of her drink, and he watched her closely. He realized just then that she was even more beautiful now than he remembered her being earlier. He wouldn’t have thought it possible.
“Very.” Nathan’s voice had fallen a few octaves. He found himself looking at her in an unabashedly hungry way.
Selina responded by biting her lip and turning her head away from him.
“Here you go.” The waitress came back, setting a stack of tiny bowls down with the basket of freshly made chips and a small pitcher of salsa.
“Thank you.” Selina smiled and grabbed two tiny bowls from the stack and poured her and Nathan each their own bowl of salsa. “Here. Try this.” She slid the bowl toward him. “So good.”
Nathan watched Selina scoop some salsa on a chip and hold it out for him. He leaned forward, opened his mouth, and took a bite. It crumbled from her hand, and some of the salsa spilled onto his lip. He chewed what was in his mouth, but he couldn’t concentrate on the taste because Selina was wiping the spilled salsa from his chin and lip with her thumb. She brought to her mouth what she’d caught from his lip. Selina licked the salsa from her thumb, closing her eyes on a small moan. Nathan tried not to look too surprised, but everything this woman did turned him on.
Selina opened her eyes to find him slowly chewing. She shrugged while she took a sip of her sangria, eyeing him over the rim of the glass. “Too good to waste on a chin spill.”
Nathan swallowed before he let out a laugh. His head spun with this one. One second she seemed reluctant and reserved, and then the next she was saying their drinks were sexy and licking salsa from his chin. Nathan didn’t usually mess with confusing, complex women, but Selina seemed worth it. Besides that, he was completely intrigued by her and incredibly turned on.
He looked down at Selina, whose shoulders were exposed by a wide neckline that dipped to a low scoop-front. The back of her shirt was completely open except for the lacing of the corset. Her jeans hugged tightly to her thighs. Inches of her skin all over her body played peek-a-boo with his eyes. She was beautiful, outspoken, and brazen, and he wanted to get his hands on her.
“Dance with me.” He motioned with a nod of his head toward the dance floor. He didn’t usually do this, but he was desperate to get closer to her, and dancing was the perfect excuse to do so.
“All right.” She finished her glass quickly and so did he before she allowed him to pull her out onto the floor. They passed Charlie and his dance partner as they were headed back to the table. Charlie had been stopping to chat, but Nathan reached out and patted him on the shoulder and just kept dragging Selina farther out onto the crowded dance floor.
The D.J. had been playing soulful R&B with a great bass line. It wasn’t slow enough to slow-dance to, but it was perfect for holding onto one another and taking slow, long dips with your hips. That’s how the other people were dancing. As for Nathan and Selina, they weren’t even touching each other. The other girls all moved in the same way. They all popped their bodies to the beat of the song, but Selina’s arms found their way above her head. Her hips swayed side-to-side.
He realized, watching Selina dance, that he’d never truly understood it until then. The other women who Nathan had thought were dancing were just going through the motions. Now, watching Selina move like she was, he understood dancing wasn’t just swaying in step or grinding your hips with the beat, but it was exactly what Selina was doing. It was obvious she was feeling it with her soul. Nathan wasn’t the only one who had noticed. Lots of other people’s heads had turned to watch Selina move. He couldn’t blame them; he was swept up in it too. Nathan wasn’t even shuffling his feet to and fro any more.
If Selina noticed that she’d drawn attention to herself, she didn’t react to it. She was a mystery to him. She seemed complicated in the greatest fashion. She was beautiful, bright, and sexy. She was lithe, and her movements were sleek and circuitous. She was like a sexy, French-speaking panther of a woman. Every layer that he pulled away from her, instead of bringing her into focus, just left him even more mystified.
The dance floor was crowded. A drunk woman toppled, and before recapturing her balance, fell against Nathan’s back. The contact forced him into Selina.
She welcomed his chest against her back. The arms that had been dancing in the air above her head fell behind her to land on either side of his face. Her fingertips brushed against his ears before they dropped and ran down his arms. Her hands found his, and she picked his up and placed them at her waist.
It didn’t take long for them to find a rhythm that was theirs. Nathan’s nose nuzzled just below Selina’s ear. He breathed her in, smelling the intimate scent of her flesh there. Selina embedded her fingers into his, forcing his palms to run over her hips and her belly. She led his hands to the tiny gap of hot, smooth skin left exposed between her pants and her shirt.
The way she moved against him, and the way he moved against her, had created a slow, burning ache inside him. The scent of her drove a heady rush to his brain. It felt a little like being drunk, but on her—not on the sangria. She guided his hands over the slight curves of her body, bringing them just under the rise of her breasts and then down again over her jeans.
The smooth circling of her hips against his had him feeling his arousal in every part of him. His hands itched to go farther. Instead of just sliding over the itching fabric of her shirt, he wanted to be going up and under it. Instead of his hands riding over the faded denim of her pants, he wished they were sliding beneath her waistband.
Nathan let a slow moan slip from his lips and land against the smooth, honeyed skin of her neck. He figured the club to be loud enough that he could get away with it.
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Table of Contents
Blurb
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
About the Author
Heart of a Warrior by Theodora Lane
Chapter One
Chasing Dreams by Kelli Evans
Chapter One