Page 35 of Callum
She stopped at the bar, curling her fingers around the wooden edge. Her chest heaved even as she felt she wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Then heat covered her back, and a large hand touched her shoulder.
“Dance with me.” Callum’s deep, raspy voice whispered over her cheek.
“I don’t know if I’m in the mood to dance.” Understatement of the century.
“Please.”
That one whispered word…it slid over her skin, making every inch of flesh pebble with awareness.
She swallowed. She wanted to say yes. Heck, she wanted this man to take her away from all of this.
It was only when his thumb grazed her skin that she got the words out. “Okay. One dance.” Because she couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out how to say no.
The hand moved down her arm, and his fingers slid into hers. Then he was pulling her to the dance floor. As she followed, she searched out her parents. They were laughing with her uncles and aunties. Clearly, news hadn’t traveled to them…yet. Hopefully Stacey would convince everyone to keep quiet about it, at least for tonight.
Callum stopped in the middle of the dance floor. She expected him to put one hand on her waist, keeping a thread of distance between them. When he curved both arms around her and pulled her entire body flush with his, the air left her lungs.
His mouth neared her ear. “Relax.”
“I can’t when it comes to her. I don’t know why she’s like that.” She blew out a long breath. “I didn’t want people to know.”
“Shut them out and don’t think about them.”
“What should I think about instead?”
His face brushed her hair, and a shudder raced down her spine. “How good I smell.”
She laughed. “You do smell nice.”
A crisp, fresh, outdoorsy smell. And all masculine.
“How right my arms feel around you,” he added.
The smile slipped. His armsdidfeel right around her.
“What we’re going to do when we get back to Cradle Mountain.”
Her heart thumped, her gaze shooting up. “What we’re going to do?”
“Yeah. Where I should take you for our first official date. How I should greet you when I go to the library.”
She laughed again. “You say hi.”
“With a kiss?”
Her breath caught. “We…we haven’t kissed yet.”
“That’s something we should remedy, isn’t it?”
Her lips parted. “You want to kiss me?”
One side of his mouth pulled up. “That’s like asking a starving man if he wants food.”
She shook her head. “You can’t kiss me here.”
“Why not?”
She wet her lips, and his gaze flicked down. “Because if we have a first kiss—”
