Tango & Lace

by Misty Dietz

  His face heated, but Lilith discretely left the kitchen, saving him more disgrace. “Dammit, Mya.” He was at a loss.

  “Dammit, what? You’re always pissed at me, but I never really know why exactly. Unless you just can’t stand my face. Is that it?”

  She approached him, barefoot on the tile, those newly-painted red toes peeking out from under her flouncy skirt. Her eyes snapped a challenge he chomped at the bit to accept.

  Don’t. He was a man of logic. This trading of insults was merely a matter of heightened estrogen and testosterone. He could give into the sex hormones, haul Mya over her shoulder, fuck her senseless, Lil be damned…

  Or he could save professional face and take one more goddamn cold shower later.

  He raised his hand to rub his thumb across her generous lower lip, then immediately dropped his arm again. “If you sneak out of this house, I’ll find you and lock you in the next time.”

  He left her standing there and returned to Lil in his gramma’s cozy, outdated living room, knowing it had been the wrong thing to say.

  Wrong, wrong, wrong.

  But he meant every illogical word.

  Chapter Eight

  Jackson pivoted, then dipped Mya as the dark gray walls of the dance studio absorbed the final beat of the music. The dimmed crystal chandelier above them cast a golden hue on Mya’s neck where her pulse beat a staccato rhythm from the rigors of the dance routine. The tango—jealous lover that it was—had demanded intimacy between them for two weeks now. Ever since he’d threatened to lock her in the house, she’d been diligently ignoring him, their unavoidable interactions at Rosie’s house cool and professional.

  But once they stepped onto the dance floor, how quickly their bodies remembered one another.

  Before their very first hour back on the hardwood floor, Jack had made but a single request. Mya couldn’t use the song she’d intended to dance with Arturo. She went one step further by re-choreographing the entire routine extemporaneously that first night. She’d always been a brilliant, intuitive choreographer, but now she seemed to translate a song’s notes into kinetic artistry. A melding of body science and creativity that fascinated him beyond reason.

  The tango was a complicated, intricate dance that plunged him into the deep end of his emotions. Intense, sensual, hypnotic.

  Oh, and they were good together.

  He hauled her up to a standing position in the now-quiet space, and tried, for the thousandth time in the last fourteen days, to ignore the vivacious appeal in her eyes. Dancing was like making love. The anticipation of the act, the buildup, the meeting and melding of bodies as they communicated a language all their own. The extravagance of movement…lead, follow, draw together, oppose.

  The bonding and release.

  Mya sifted through his fingertips like the silk kaftans he’d admired in Moroccan markets, exotic and beautiful.

  She turned off the speakers and gracefully floated down to sit on the wooden bench to remove her strappy dancing shoes. The outer rooms beyond the studio were dark and silent. Everyone else had gone home.

  She glanced up at him, her sexy dimples peeking out to captivate him. “We’re ahead of my expectations. I’m so relieved. You remember all the combinations as though two years haven’t intervened. You sure you haven’t been dancing by the Dead Sea?”

  He smiled back, longing to lift the slightly damp hair at her neck to place his lips there. “No dancing. Not even much music. Working outside makes it tough, especially when everyone likes something different. Playing music just causes arguments.” And makes me think of you. Silence made it far easier not to remember.

  “I couldn’t imagine living without music.” She shivered and stood in front of the large studio mirrors, looking like she was working up the confidence to ask him something.

  He took a shallow breath. “What is it?”

  “A few of us are meeting at Catwalk in about a half hour if you’d like to join us. You’ve been spending every minute here with me or at school. Cutting loose is good for you. I dare say it’d make you even more successful in all your other pursuits.” She shoved her shoes in her bag, then sent him a sassy smile that made his heart flip-flop in his chest.

  He glanced at his watch because he couldn’t stare at her pretty red lips one more minute and expect to make good decisions. “I have to put together a course syllabus.”

  “Pfft! Classes don’t start for another month, so that’s no excuse. Come along, you’ll get to heckle the drunk co-eds if nothing else entertains you.”

  Just say no. He deserved a fucking medal for being around Mya as much as he already had these past two weeks without kissing her, much less hauling her off to bed. Her soft hand in his, trusting him to guide her from pivot to enrosque into lapiz. Her sinuous thigh curving around his planted leg in the gancho. The carnal slide of her body with every heartbeat… Heaven and Hell. “I’m tired. Maybe next time.”

  He nearly didn’t see her disappointment as she quickly leaned down to gather her sports bag. “Okay, but, if you change your mind, you know where we’ll be.”

  Yeah, at a bar, wearing those skin-tight pants and off-the shoulder top. “I’ll drop you off at the door.” She’d grown lax about her safety in the last week since no other incidents had occurred, and the police had all but ruled it a random attempted robbery.

  “I still have the keychain mace you gave me, and it’s always well-lit around Catwalk. Besides, if anyone’s been casing my place, they know by now I’m staying right next door. They’ve had plenty of time to put another nefarious plan into play, yet nothing’s happened. I can’t live my life in fear, Jack. I hope you understand that.”

  He did, but he wasn’t ready for her to return to her house when the remediation crew finished up on Monday. His palm tightened on the strap of his own bag as he looked where she stood in the shadows by the doorway. He admired the stubborn set of her jaw even as his chest tightened because of it. She always aroused two opposing feelings in him. How the hell did he deal with that?

  “Jack?” Her soft voice reached across the space, intimate and vulnerable suddenly.

  “I don’t like worrying about you.” It was out before he could stop the words.

  A small crease appeared between the wings of her black brows. “Then don’t. No one has ever been able to make you do anything you didn’t want to do. I can’t imagine that would change now.”

  She’d taken his words as an insult when he’d meant the exact opposite. A confession of his inability to remain immune to her. “I can’t help it, Mya,” he whispered, certain she had no idea what he was really telling her. You move me to act, to feel—deeply—even when I don’t want to.

  Then her mouth opened, her lips drawing apart, the only motion of her body. He felt her uncertainty at what she thought she’d heard—understood—in his quiet statement. Wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to translate it or not. Honesty had always been paramount. Honesty in his work, his relationships, his approach to seeing the world and the people who populated it.

  Honesty—truth—was the only way out of darkness.

  “Seems to me, all you need to do is remember how you walked away two years ago. You didn’t worry then, you needn’t worry now. I’m older, wiser…meaner.”

  One second she was there, the next she was gone, leaving him bereft in the middle of the dance floor.

  Chapter Nine

  Mya was ready to rabble rouse. Two excruciatingly long, sexually frustrating weeks of being in Jackson’s arms and waiting—just freakin’ waiting—for him to make a move.

  But just…nothin’.

  She’d seen his desire, had felt it radiating from every pore of his sun-kissed skin, and knew deep in her bones he was constantly riding the edge of something dark and hot. But his infernal control wouldn’t give either of them the satisfaction their bodies hungered for.

  How she craved that man. Hell, yes, craved, yearned…

  Coveted.

  She had to get rid of s
ome of this pent-up energy or she was either gonna crawl between Jackson’s sheets tonight or die.

  And damned if her pride would let her be the one to crumble. After all, he was the one who’d left. If he wanted her, he’d have to man up.

  Mya lifted her arms, snapped her fingers, and rolled her hips to the pumping beat coming out of the speakers at Catwalk, a gritty bar in Fort Collins’s famed downtown area, aptly named Old Town. The CSU crowd on Catwalk’s bar stools gazed up at her and whooped as she danced all-out on the concrete counter tops. Felt sooo good. She smiled at Catwalk’s owner, Brett Buck, who winked at her from behind the bar. Then she shimmied over to the stool where her best friend Jasmine was seated, wide-eyed, sipping her third, I’m-going-to-hate-myself-in-the-morning martini.

  Mya reached her hand toward the shy, stunning brunette who’d been her confidante since the first grade. “Jazzy, come. These fellas wanna see your long legs in action up here, too. Right, boys?”

  The rowdy group of men leered and hooted their agreement. Jasmine Bradley paled and shook her head vehemently. As usual, Mya wasn’t about to pay her reticence any mind. Jazzy never initiated hijinks, but she always copped to having fun afterwards. Mya slid Jasmine’s drink further down the bar with her foot, then twerked her way into a squat. “Jazzy, my gorgeous yoga master, you will get your very fine ass up here with me, or I’ll spill to your mom and dad you were sleazing it up with that heavy metal band’s drummer instead of attending that yoga retreat last month.”

  “You wouldn’t!” But the look in Jasmine’s chocolate brown eyes said she had no doubt Mya would.

  Mya raised an eyebrow, then stood to make room for Jazz.

  “I hate when you do shit like this,” Jasmine muttered.

  Mya smiled. “You’re not alone, cariño.”

  Jasmine grasped Mya’s hand in a death grip and climbed up to the bar, more graceful than she’d ever realize. Jazzy’s scars ran soul-deep, damaged by her poor excuse for biological parents before her foster family had literally saved her life when she was eight. If Mya ever met Jasmine’s biological family face to face, she’d end up in jail.

  Very likely prison.

  Maybe even the electric chair.

  Mya squeezed Jasmine’s hand, wishing for the thousandth time that she could erase every horrific memory that haunted Jazzy in the loneliest hours of the night.

  Mya eased slightly behind, slightly perpendicular to Jasmine, putting her hands on the taller woman’s slowly rolling hips. “That’s it, Jazz. You’re a natural, see?”

  The corners of Jasmine’s lips lifted. When a man tried to grab her ankle, she chuckled in her low-toned, sexy way until she teetered, gasped, and grabbed the cord of one of the exposed-bulb, industrial lamps that hung at intervals over the bar. “Whoa.” She hiccuped. “Those three martinis are starting to make the room spin.”

  Mya steadied her. “Let’s sit you down, sweetheart.” She kicked the arms of the wanna-be cowboy with a ten gallon hat who’d rattled Jasmine’s confidence, then looked back behind the bar. “Buck!”

  Brett Buck flipped a towel over his massive shoulder and stalked over, owning every bit of his ex-MMA fighter cred as his don’t-fuck-with-me-or-my-crib gaze narrowed on the blanching cowboy. “We got trouble over here?”

  Urban Cowboy’s eyes widened. “Nope. None at all. I’s just…I was…leaving—” His seat was vacated and immediately taken by a girl in short shorts and a mid-riff baring t-shirt with Greek symbols.

  Brett’s glower melted into the devilish grin that scored him more phone numbers than he could follow up in one lifetime. “We good?”

  Mya blew him a kiss, then lost herself in the next song, grinding with Jazzy until something in the murky darkness of the bar’s entryway made her belly flutter and the skin on the back of her neck tingle. She held her breath, but continued to move, all her senses honed in on the doorway.

  Jack emerged in the golden glow of the room, all tall and freshly-showered, but still five o’clock-shadowed and devastatingly masculine in a simple button-down shirt and jeans.

  His gaze locked on her immediately and didn’t let up until he took his seat at the very end of the bar. He’d changed his mind. Now what was she supposed to do? She moved and swayed and gave her body over to the song, knowing he was watching her with hungry eyes, making her skin tremble and heart thump dramatically.

  “Told you he’d come.” Jazzy’s brown eyes were finally relaxed.

  “Doesn’t mean anything,” Mya said.

  “Oh girl, you’re wrong. Now it’s your move.” Jazz wrapped her arms around Mya and rocked her back and forth. “I want you to be happy.”

  A brief commotion on the barstools registered moments before Mya went weightless. A male college student’s lap reared into her vision, then came a growl, a thud of knuckles meeting flesh-clad bones, and then Mya was grabbed and plopped back upon the counter on her ass. She pushed her hair out of her eyes. Jackson’s broad back partially blocked her view of some poor bastard now prone on the black concrete floor, his cowboy hat upside down near Jack’s boots.

  Jack grabbed the fresh-faced younger man by his CSU Rams shirt-front and hauled him to his feet as Brett came around the bar with a glower that didn’t bode well for anyone’s health. Mya scooted off the bar, ready to put herself in Brett’s path if he was planning to throw down with Jack for raising hell in his bar. The music seemed even louder than before, the bass beat pounding in her neck.

  Lordy, Jack smelled incredible, though. Bewitching notes of bergamot, neroli, warm Indonesian patchouli, persimmon, and green tangerine. A heavenly, masculine combination that he knew she’d always loved.

  He hadn’t worn it one time in the last two weeks. What it might mean that he did so tonight, made her weak in the knees.

  “What the f-f-fuck, man?” the student yelled. His hooked nose was bleeding, his eyes darting around the room. Anywhere but at Jack’s face.

  “You owe these ladies an apology. And you’d better get started right now.” Jack’s big hand twisted harder on the younger man’s shirt, the material constricting his throat.

  Brett frowned at Mya, then shook his head and brushed her aside to stand next to Jack, crossing his arms over his massive chest, adding a heaping dose of intimidation to Jack’s ready-to-kill stance. Looking at the burly, tattooed barkeep, the kid’s two preppy pals sat back down in their seats.

  Rams t-shirt guy coughed, then wheezed. Jack loosened his grip slightly so he could breathe.

  “Yeah, sorry, man. Sorry, I’ll never do it again!”

  “Don’t tell me, you imbecile.” Jack swiveled toward Mya and Jasmine, hauling the man around like he was a puppet. “Tell them.”

  “Sorry, lady.” His gaze moved rapidly from Mya to Jasmine. “Sorry. I’ll n-never do it again.”

  The man looked so humiliated and defeated Mya almost felt sorry for him. She put a hand on Jack’s back, his muscles like iron under her fingertips. “Jack, it’s okay. He didn’t hurt me or Jazz, and he probably didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Jack’s eyes burned briefly into hers. “You don’t have a Y chromosome, Mya. He sure as hell meant something by tumbling you into his lap.” He changed his hold on the man to the back of his shirt and pulled him toward the exit, the poor guy’s feet scrambling for purchase. Brett returned to his station behind the bar, but Mya ran after Jack in case he lost his shit outside.

  Jack dropped his hold on the man next to the curb. “Don’t you ever touch another woman without her permission.”

  “Yeah, okay, whatever,” the student cocked off now that Jack’s hands weren’t on him.

  “Que chingados! Besame el culo, pendejo!” Mya yelled as he ran toward Old Town Square’s pedestrian-only plaza, quickly disappearing in a sea of nighttime entertainment seekers, his chortling buddies close on his heels. “Mierda! Que un pinche idiota!” She looked back at the faces that were peering around Catwalk’s front door. “Go back inside, show’s over!” She sighed when the door finally
closed. She turned to find Jack much closer than before. His eyes were on her neck, and just like that her breath stalled. She rubbed at the goosebumps on her bare arms even though it was an eighty degree night. “Jack…”

  He eased another step toward her, a muscle ticking in his cheek. Again, his cologne drifted over her, making her insides lush with memory.

  He raised a hand to her neck and her head listed to the side, presenting itself shamelessly, even before his fingers made contact with her skin. One side of his lips quirked briefly before his gaze tracked back to her neck. He frowned. “You’re bleeding.” He seized her hand before she could touch it. “Don’t. It could get infected by any number of pathogens your hands picked up in that cesspool.”

  “I’m fine,” she murmured.

  He dropped her hand and reached into his pocket, pulling out a small, red, zippered pouch. When he ripped open an antiseptic wipe packet, she giggled. “Of course you’d have a pocket first aid kit.”

  He ignored her, intent on cleaning, then applying antibiotic ointment and a band aid to a cut she couldn’t even feel due to the super-charged emotions winging through her. Because of his closeness. His attention. She shivered. The man certainly knew how to focus.

  When he’d finished ministering to her neck, neither of them spoke. The streets in this section of Old Town were always busy, but tonight, people were everywhere. Still, she couldn’t concentrate on anything but him. His gaze moved up from her neck to snag on her lips. She watched his light blue-gray eyes go dark, her heart clutching, then releasing so forcefully it startled her. She couldn’t draw a full breath, her chest vised by his magnetism. Her hands wanted to roam that solid chest, slide down his flat ab-tastic belly, and untuck his very practical hiking shirt from his very simple blue jeans and freaking Go. To. Town.

  Breasts heavy, body tingly, she wrapped a hand around her hair and pulled the messy black mass to one side. Will not take no for an answer tonight. But the stubborn set of his chin and compressed lips made the let’s-go-back-to-grandmas-and-screw-like-animals approach unfeasible, so….