“I’m glad we came with them.” Daniel’s face took on an immediate soft flush, as if aware he might have said something tactless. “Not that I wouldn’t have preferred an evening alone with you-”
Greer was running out of patience. Daniel’s palm was getting damp, annoying her. The left cup of her bra was also annoying her. Having a totally pleasant dinner was, for some unknown reason, also annoying her. She had removed her glasses at the table-she didn’t need them for the dance floor. But she couldn’t see over Daniel’s shoulder to Ryan and Leigh.
The number ended and an old-fashioned fox-trot began. Daniel smiled, automatically changing rhythms, when Ryan touched his shoulder.
“You don’t mind if we switch for a dance, do you?” Ryan asked. “I can see you know what you’re doing on the floor, and I thought I’d give Leigh a break.”
Which really wasn’t very flattering, Greer thought vaguely, but Daniel was already steering Leigh around the floor. She caught a quick glimpse of Ryan’s face before his arms came around her, but the dance floor was dark, and she could have misread that innocent expression.
A minute and a half into the dance, and she knew the devil should be so innocent. She also figured out rapidly that Ryan had never learned to dance the fox-trot and that his feet were size twenty. Actually, she was fairly amazed at his clumsiness.
Not that he didn’t compensate for his lack of expertise, and promptly. Very slowly, he slid his arms around her waist, which would have left her own waving in midair unless she put them around his neck. Just as slowly, he pulled her close and started shuffling. The combo was playing another fox-trot. Ryan was playing love songs. Lazily erotic love songs.
His muscled thigh nudged between her legs and simply moved back and forth in a rhythm that was slow, erotic and intimate. Deliberately intimate. Greer was strongly inclined to take him over her knee and certainly wished his mother had done so when he was younger, but for at least a few moments she couldn’t do much of anything. Rippling, sultry waves of desire were clogging her brain. The mold of hip to hip was bad enough, but he kept…rubbing. In rhythm. A primal mating rhythm. And his hands started making slow-moving circles somewhere low on her spine. Very low on her spine.
Daniel and Leigh seemed to be on the other side of the dance floor.
Greer’s throat was suddenly dry. “Ryan.” She tried to lift her head. His palm gently pushed her cheek back to his chest. Her eyes were on a level with the shadowed length of his throat. She could see the beat of blood in the veins just below that smooth flesh.
“Sssh, Greer.” Then he whispered with counterfeit nervousness, “For heaven’s sakes, don’t move. I don’t know how to do this kind of dance, and I don’t want to step on your feet.”
“Ryan.”
“Hmm?”
She whispered close to his ear, “I can be made a fool of once. Maybe even twice. But if you’re trying to pass this off as more neighborly affection, I just wanted to warn you up front that you’re very close to a kick in the shins.”
His eyes glittered down at her, full-of-nonsense blue. Dangerous blue. “Now, Greer. Don’t tell me simple affection isn’t possible between two people of opposite sex. Isn’t that what you were trying to tell me the night we met?”
“This is not the same thing.”
“Maybe not for you, but I’m feeling extremely affectionate right now. And since the song just ended, I’d appreciate it if you’d stick around for another. Walking back to the table in this particular physical condition wouldn’t bother me, but I’m afraid it might be obvious to your Daniel.” He shook his head gravely. “He might get the wrong impression. That I want you like hell, for instance.”
Greer flushed, tried to pull away but failed to escape from arms that suddenly held her with gentle but unmistakable firmness. “What are you trying to do to me?” she asked helplessly.
“Wake you up, love.” He said it so low he was almost certain she hadn’t heard it. She was fighting hard to keep her body a distance from his. So hard.
Ryan had felt a moment’s guilt where her Daniel was concerned, but not too much. He’d watched the two interact over dinner long enough to be certain he wasn’t poaching on another man’s territory, and long enough to evaluate Daniel as an intelligent man, not bad-looking and not unkind. But physically, he clearly stirred Greer about as much as used dishwater. Ryan wasn’t stealing anything that belonged to anyone else.
Greer’s heart, pressed against his shirt, seemed to be doing somersaults. Her nipples were hard and hot, and he could feel them through two layers of fabric-her clothes and his. She jumped every time his thigh touched just so between hers…and then she couldn’t jump, because he held her too close to give her the chance.
If she’d seriously argued, he would have released her. Maybe. He wanted to believe that a speck of honor was alive and well in him somewhere, but her closeness was having disastrous effects on his principles.
And when she suddenly and totally relaxed, he doubted very much that he could ever let her go. Her body went supple and pliant in his arms; her cheek rested in the furrow at the base of his throat; her fingers slowly climbed above his shirt collar and into his hair and then stiffened, as if she’d suddenly become aware of what she was doing.
“The dance is almost over,” he whispered casually. Tentatively, she relaxed again, as if reassured. He had the fleeting sensation of taming a wild creature. So unwilling, so wary, yet her body had turned warm, meltingly warm. One finger again traveled up into his hair. Just one. Very slowly, he caressed the curves of her back, down again to her hips, and he heard her let her breath out in a rush. Gently, he pressed a butterfly kiss on her temple.
She liked that. She murmured something. Not a word, more a helpless purr of pleasure. His hand roamed slowly up her side…and then-the devil made him do it- his thumb strayed to the underside of her breast. Her head jerked up instantly, her face flushed and her eyes sleepy with arousal, dark, almost wild.
“We have to sit down,” she said frantically.
He kept his voice calm, soothing. “Your Daniel’s nice.”
“Ryan, I-”
“And he’s certainly not your heavy breather. He couldn’t possibly have been making those phone calls.”
She looked startled. “I knew that.”
“I didn’t.” The dance was almost over; he knew she was determined to withdraw from him this time. “What the hell are you wearing?” he asked to divert her.
She stiffened. “Pardon?”
“Are you wired for sound?” He pressed her cheek back to his shoulder and continued to shuffle. “That kind of bra has to be uncomfortable. Why the hell do you wear it?”
“I beg your-”
“Now, Greer. We’re just neighbors. Friends. No need to be embarrassed around me. In fact, you were the first one to bring up the subject of underwear, weren’t you?”
The dance wasn’t over, but Greer had had enough. She pulled away from him and made her way back to the table, her cheeks so hot they felt on fire.
Daniel returned to the table equally flushed. Fifteen minutes later, they were driving home. The men talked the entire time, dialogue tossed from front seat to back, with Leigh occasionally joining in. Greer was far too unsettled to listen. Her body was sending out pre-flu messages, alternately hot and cold, oddly trembling. Only it wasn’t the flu season. And whatever had possessed her to respond to Ryan like that on the dance floor? She wasn’t certain whether she was embarrassed or ashamed of herself.
She was absolutely certain that she was furious with her neighbor.
Leigh had left her car near Ryan’s parking spot. As Daniel strolled with Greer up the walk, she could hear the other woman’s car door being closed, the engine starting over low, throaty laughter between Leigh and Ryan. Before Daniel had even pushed open the outside door, Ryan’s heels were clicking on the pavement behind them.