Page 30 of Reclaimed By His Billion-Dollar Ring

Sensation washed through him.

To hold her again...have her in his arms...

With an effort that cost him more than he wanted to exert, he kept his touch as light as he could, resisting the overpowering temptation to draw her to him, feel the soft length of her body moulded against his.

She was far, far too tense for that.

And she was pulling away from him. Oh, not obviously, but her spine was arching back, her feet moving back the maximum distance they could, given he was holding her and dancing.

For a second she looked at him, her eyes wide with shock. Then she yanked her gaze past him.

‘Let me go,’ she said.

Her voice was as tight as the drawstring of a bow.

‘Dance with me,’ he said.

His voice was low in pitch, for her ears alone.

He felt her straining back and thought she would pull free of him—which she could easily do, for his hands were barely touching her waist. Yet she did not.

‘I won’t make a scene,’ she said, her voice still bowstring-tight, still looking straight past him. ‘That’s the only reason.’

‘That’s good enough for me,’ Nikos murmured, his voice relaxing, his stance relaxing.

Carefully, he started to move, picking up on the slow, familiar melody from the band as the singer started to croon the lyrics of an old sentimental song.

They danced, but hardly moved. To his side, almost out of his sightline, Nikos could see the divorced blonde draping herself over a very willing Bastian, whose hands were now freely running up and down her back. He wished them well. Wished everyone in the entire world well.

For one reason only.

Calanthe was in his arms.

The only place he wanted her to be.

How she got through the dance she didn’t know. It seemed to go on for an eternity. Or perhaps eternity was being in Nikos’s arms...

Yet he was barely touching her, his hands hardly skimming the fabric of her gown, and her own hands were barely skimming the fabric of his jacket. Nor was she looking at him. She could not. Dared not.

Yet her consciousness of what she was doing—what he was doing—was like an enveloping flame...a flame that licked at her senses, flickered along her nerves, grazed her bare skin.

A line from the Ancient Greek, old and familiar, came to her:

...subtle fire runs like a thief through my body...

The poetess Sappho, whose lost verses remained only in shattered fragments.

As my love for Nikos was shattered.

But she could not think of that—could not feel that now. Could only feel what it was to be here, in his arms, in an embrace that was barely there. Yet she could catch the scent of his aftershave, the scent of his body, and knew that all she had to do was step closer to him, fold her hands over his strong shoulders, let his hands fasten around her pliant waist, bend her to him, turn her head so that his mouth could catch at hers...

Fire and faintness...faintness and fire...yearning and wanting...wanting and yearning.

There was nothing else...nothing in all the world, all the universe. Only this slow eternal dance.

And then it ended. The music stopped. Though the pulse in her veins did not. Nor did the fire still running through her body like the thief it was...

She felt his hands drop from her...let her own hands fall...let her eyes finally meet his.

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