Page 18 of Bite Marks

When he took her home, she was a lot tipsier than she’d anticipated, and Nunzio helped her into the elevator.

“I don’t get it. You had three or four drinks.” He chuckled, but his worry tinged his smile.

She grinned up at him, full of fun and glee. “It wasn’t the drinks, twinkle toes.” She led him back to her apartment, and when she opened the door, she turned, but the word goodnight died in her throat.

His shoulders took up the whole door frame, and yet those gray eyes, a wolf on the prowl, took up everything.

She lost herself in those stormy eyes, the crackle of lightning running through them, the danger, the risk. She grabbed his tie and pulled him in. “Come on. Make me some coffee before I fall over.”

Nunzio shut the door behind him and followed her to the kitchen. She sat at the island on a bar stool while Nunzio went to work, searching her kitchen but finding next to nothing.

She watched for a few minutes, giggling and outright laughing as he fumbled around the kitchen, looking for what he needed. He found the mugs on his own, but Vanessa took pity on him and pointed him to the rest.

“Ya like seeing me mook around, eh?” he asked in English.

She shook her head. “You’re so much better in Italian.”

Nunzio raised a thick eyebrow. “Are you saying my English is bad?” The smoothness of the words in his first language made her sway in her seat.

“Ah. So much better. You sound like a gorilla that only watched Noir movies to learn your English.”

He barked a laugh. “A gorilla! Jesus. You’re a mean drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” she corrected before swaying like a plant in the ocean. “I’m … swaying in the moment.”

Nunzio walked around the island and picked her up like a prince lifting his princess. “Well, I don’t want you swaying off that stool in the moment.” He placed her on the living room sofa. The plush white cushions enveloping her. He stood and eyed her, but his lip dipped into a frown for the briefest moment before he turned to go back to the kitchen.

Vanessa closed her eyes, indulging her body’s natural high. The music still swirled in her like autumn leaves caught in the wind, Nunzio’s hands still slid over her body with little tingles trailing in their wake, and his smell still clouded her mind. That last one may not have been a residual effect as much as the first two, given he was still there with her.

He came back with the coffee and sat. “Are you sure you’re all right? I’d die if some guy slipped something into one of your drinks, and I didn’t catch it.”

She rolled her eyes and sat up, shrugging off the powerful euphoria as if it were a big, warm snow coat. “It’s nothing. I wasn’t drugged. I promise. I get like this when I dance and have fun.”And get super horny.She left that last bit out. No need to tell him that.

“I’m glad to hear you had so much fun, little butterfly. I love being next to that fire. You dance like a real woman, letting her feelings come through her movements, letting the music flow in you.”

“Oh, you liked that?” She slipped back into that euphoria, only a touch, as she sipped her coffee.

“I said I loved it.” Those eyes weighed on Vanessa’s. So serious and unrelenting, they made his words real, as if she could reach out and touch them.

She’d normally turn from such an intense gaze, but his eyes had a grip on her that wouldn’t allow that. “It turns you on to see a woman dance?”

“When she dances like you do. Then again, I’m not so sure I’ve seen anyone dance quite like you.”

“Oh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s like you weren’t just a person. You were a force of nature.”

She rolled her eyes, finally able to break his spell over her.

He leaned forward to place his mug on the coffee table, putting one of the coasters down first.Oh, points to him.

“No, I’m serious.” He resituated himself on the couch, one arm on the back behind Vanessa’s head, his thigh touching hers. “It was like watching the sunlight dance underwater. The way you’d flip your hair back sometimes, it was in slow motion. You flit around on the floor as if you owned it, going from one song to the next, and always coming back to me.”

Her chest leaned toward him as if a magnet had grabbed hold of her heart. “Worried I wouldn’t come back to my dance partner?”

“I was fighting men off all night.”

She giggled. “You were not.”

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