The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2)(50)

“It’s a new dance. I don’t know the steps.”

“No steps. You always need rules,” he complained. “Just listen to the music. Close your eyes.”

“They’re closed. I’m listening.”

“Listen to the drums. That’s the part you listen to. Feel it.”

“I’m feeling it.”

“No. Feel it like a heartbeat. Like life. You want it to be a love song, hear the sex in it. Hold me like I hold you.” He jerked her tighter against him as he said it, forcing her breasts to crush against his chest and her dress to ride higher up on her thighs. “Like you need me.”

She sucked in a hard breath and ran her hand up from his shoulder to his neck. The lust made her languid against her will, and when he moved this time, she followed because she didn’t have a choice.

“You’re not supposed to think when you dance. Supposed to just feel. To move the way I tell you to move.” He ran his hand up her back, pushing at the center of it until she arched into him, allowing her head to fall back and forcing her hips tightly against his. “Yeah, like that. Better. I step hard. You step—”

“Soft,” she finished for him.

“That’s right. Follow my hand. Hard, soft, together we fit.” He loosened his hold on her waist, and she stepped back to the beat and then allowed him to pull her into his arms again. They did it a few times, the push and pull, stepping away from the heat and moving back together like they needed each other to keep breathing. Then he pulled her to the right and stepped to the left at the same time. When he used his hold on her waist to force her back, she stepped so that her feet were between his. He fit the two of them back together like a puzzle piece again, with his leg pressed so intimately between her thighs it was making her ache. She arched her hips on instinct, and he hummed in approval. “Bueno, asi mismo. Move them like God made you to move them. That’s good, mami.”

Before now, they’d been dancing salsa, not this hybrid, more sensual form of moving that felt like a guilty pleasure. The beat was the same, the steps were sometimes the same, but this was so much more intimate. A tease. A candy-coated sin that wasn’t a sin because it was labeled dancing instead.

Alaine loved it.

She let herself be completely soft in his arms, moving where he wanted her to move, because it felt so damn good to let go of everything else and just be with Chuito. All she had to do was feel the drums throbbing and listen to the erotic, lulling sound of a man singing in Spanish about dancing with his woman.

All night.

They danced until the sun came up.





Chapter Eighteen


Garnet County


October 2014

Present day

The night she graduated felt like the first step to something bigger, but Alaine didn’t know it would take three more years and too much tequila before she would find out what it felt like to have Chuito lead her body where he wanted it to go without the music.

She waited the full length of law school, with nothing but dancing to sustain her. At one point she even gave up and started dating other men, but she and Chuito always danced and not the arm’s-length salsa dancing he taught her when he got home from winning his title. She made him hold her close like he did the night she graduated, forcing her to be soft, because Alaine liked her candy-coated sin too much to let it go.

Now where was she?

Lost, angry, and extremely frustrated.

The headache probably didn’t help.

She’d been cranky all morning, and Jules wasn’t one to let things like that go.

“We got a subpoena for the Thompson case,” Jules called, obviously thumbing through the mail the postman had just dropped off. “Can you hand me their file?”

Alaine set down her coffee and started looking through the stacks of files on her desk. Of course she was drowning in work today of all days, when all she could think about was the way Chuito looked last night with his face between her thighs. Just the thought of it was enough to cause a thrill of desire to make all the fine hairs on her arms stand on end.

“Hello?”

“I’m looking!” Alaine snapped as she made louder work of sorting through the files so Jules could hear her. She thumped another file against her desk. “Can’t you hear me? Looking.”

Except, quite unfortunately, the Thompson file wasn’t on her desk. She glanced up to see Jules leaning against the door frame to her office, her arms folded over her chest as she stared at Alaine with an arched eyebrow.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Jules asked.

“I’m just tired.” She shrugged. “Everyone’s allowed to have bad days. You had a perpetual bad day after the twins were born.”

“Do you have two wailing, Italian infants keeping you up all night?”

“No, just one confusing Puerto Rican,” Alaine mumbled under her breath.

Before Jules could answer, the front door to the office opened, and Alaine’s father walked in, looking pressed and refined in a business suit, with his red hair pushed away from his face.

Which, really…just made her morning perfect.

“Reverend,” Jules greeted, her voice icy as usual when it came to her dealings with Alaine’s father. “Can we help you?”

“Mrs. Wellings.” Her father inclined his head at Jules. “How’s the family?”