Page 93 of Fated Exile

Instead of answering, Roarke dips down to sweep me into a searing kiss. It stretches from my mouth to my hips, his body presses tightly against mine, his warmth and desire sinking into me. He licks inside my mouth and nips gently at my lips, then drops me back onto the porch again breathless.

Behind me, Finn makes a whooping sound of glee. I stare, and Roarke just grins.

"See ya."

* * *

"So this was what you planned to use to get me into bed again," I tease Finn as he takes my hand and twirls me around, our bodies coming together and our feet moving through simple salsa dancing moves. "You should've warned me before we showed up that you have two left feet."

"I didn't know until I arrived." His eyes dip down to the floor then back up again, trying very hard not to watch his own feet. In a helpless voice he asks, "Is the instructor watching me again?"

"Very closely. In fact..."

A moment later she shows up, takes her long black cane, and slides it behind Finn's shoulders. He straightens his posture as she tsks at him, pacing around to judge his form. "Elbows up and out. Show me The Suave again—that one, Enrique is doing it. Watch him in the mirror."

All the moves have names that suggest their sexiness, and when Finn draws me into the rolling dance, his hips definitely deliver more than enough. It's his feet that don't seem to want to flow easily, scuffing instead on the shiny ballroom floor and nearly tipping him over when he flawlessly executes the twirl around the dance floor. But he manages it, though Enrique and his partner Sasha, visible in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, do it far better than we do.

"Hmph. Good enough." The instructor claps her hands, and her assistant starts the music over again, a light and airy beat filling the room. "Now, do the sequence again. From the start!"

There are three other couples in the class with us, and by the end, we're managing to at least hold our own. I'm still glad when the class ends, and we file out, the only werewolves in a room full of humans who somehow have more grace than either one of us. Strength and honed senses, we have in spades—but the "regular" people could still salsa circles around each of us.

"That," Finn declares as we reach his car, "was an exercise in shame."

I laugh at him. "C'mon, it wasn't that bad!"

"It was." He groans, rolling his head to crack his neck on either side, and shuddering as he slides into the driver's seat of the car. "I'll feel Madam Sierra watching me every time I slouch at the dinner table or trip on the stairs. I think she had it out for me. That, or I really was the worst in class."

"You weren't that bad." He eyes me with a raised brow. "Okay, you weren'tgreat,but..."

"I have to make this up," he swears, turning on the car and pulling down the road, "or I'll never live it down. After dinner, I'm going to show you that I can do things with my hips besidesswivel."

"That would be nice," I tell him, though I can't help but look at the dashboard clock, mentally calculating how much time we spent on the date so far. Time that could be spent out on patrol instead, searching for Delphine... I shake her out of my head, determined to be present. "Really, the class wasn't so bad. And I'm sure after four or five lessons we'll be doing just as well as Enrique and Sasha."

"You want to go back?" He groans. "Wow. That's... hard to believe. Are yousurewe're fated mates?"

"Positive."

"Then I guess I'll just have to get this second left foot of mine chopped off, so I can have it replaced with a working foot and dance you around the ballroom to your heart's desire."

I wrinkle my nose. "No thanks. I will, however, accept an apology for stepping on my toes, in the form of takeout from my favorite ramen place."

"Done! To the town square it is."

* * *

Warm chicken brother flavored with miso and seaweed slides down my throat, along with the final mouthful of thick, shoyu noodles. I sigh in contentment, stretching back on Finn's sofa and surveying his apartment once more.

Thinking on it, it's strange that I'm only just now seeing where each of my mates live. But it makes a certain amount of sense that the house was always our meeting place. Even after the repairs were done, it's the one place we could all go to that was in the central part of town, capable of holding all five of us. It's only now that we're officially mated, tied together by fate and our own choices, that I find myself getting to know them each individually and one-on-one.

Well, one-on-one when I have the time for it. And I'llmakethe time for it. I can't let Delphine take everything from me.

"I hope you don't want dessert, because I don't have any," Finn says, leaning out of the freezer as I take my bowl to the sink. "I thought there was some of that high protein ice cream in here, but I forgot that I ate it after my last patrol. Spending hours in wolf form really wrings the calories out of you."

"That's alright. I'm full." Winding my arms around his waist, I tug him back against me. "Though nottoofull."

"That's good, because we didn't come back here to play board games and run the dishwasher." He twirls me around and steps up towards me, grinding his hips in a very un-salsa move as the freezer door shuts behind him. "You've seen my living room, but have you seen my bedroom?"

I raise my brows at him. "That's all you got?"

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