What was a little dancing compared to that?
They reached the crowded floor. Without the discipline and structure of a waltz, he wasn’t sure what he should do. He stood, hands on his hips, as he studied the movements of the other dancers. Some of them looked like they had been tasered and were shuddering just before they collapsed.
That, he would not do. Could not.
Pia touched his biceps. When he looked down at her, her face brimmed with… Okay, that was more than just joy. That was laughter, too.
“Just move.” She put her hands on his hips. “Don’t overthink it. Listen to the music, do what you want and be natural.”
Do what you want. Those instructions were easy enough to follow.
He tugged her close, and she came readily to him, wrapping her arms around his waist. However, she did more than just hug him. She rubbed her slender, curvy body against his rhythmically, twisting and swaying in time to the music, and Dragos’s opinion about dancing underwent a drastic change.
He stared at the sinfully gorgeous woman in his arms. She slid along his body with such sensuous grace she set his skin smoldering.
“You know, Dragos,” she said with an upward glance and a twinkle, “when two people are dancing, it usually requires both of them to do something.”
At her words, his attention snapped to the music. The song was a popular one, bright, quirky and with a strong, tribal beat. He caught the rhythm of it and began to move, and it wiped the laughter off Pia’s face.
Holding her gaze, he set his hands on her hips and guided her to move with him. They swayed and undulated together. After a year of living as mates, he was so attuned to her, he could anticipate what she did. Ever the aggressor, he bent forward, and she bowed back. She draped one arm around his neck, her gaze never leaving his.
The music changed, and the next song was darker, smokier. It wormed its way into his blood, and the rest of the world fell away. Their movements together, hip to hip and thigh to thigh, were as necessary and as elemental as sex. The connection between them was always present, but now it grew bright and taut like a bridge of fire.
Sometimes he grew afraid that he burned too hot, that the roar he felt in his blood for her would overwhelm or frighten her, but she never turned from him or backed away. Instead she met his fire with a fierce passion of her own, her cooler, moonlit energy burnishing under the force of his attention until she shone.
She straightened and tugged at the same time, and he bent his head. She whispered in his ear, “If you don’t take me out of here, I’m going to come right on the dance floor.”
Each word caressed his ear. Her lips were trembling.
It doused him in a sheet of flame. He took her arm and led her off the floor. Everything happened from a distance, on the other side of the urgency that pounded in his body.
To the exit. Someone came and bleated at him. Their server. He dug in his pocket and shoved cash at her without counting it. The server stepped back, beaming.
Away from the beach, toward the car.
The sun had set while they ate their dinner. White light from halogen street lamps threw pools of light along the streets and the beach, heightening the darkness beyond. Pia almost stumbled, but his tight hold wouldn’t let her. She looked etched, the contours of her face marked with tension. His sharp predator’s eye caught the subtle shift of her slender throat muscles as she swallowed. Her scent was feminine and musky at once, and he listened to the tiny friction of her silk dress against her skin.
They reached the Mercedes. As he looked at it he thought of the myriad, complex movements it would take to drive the machine. How mundane. How human. The dragon rebelled at the thought.
He wrapped them in a cloak of invisibility and picked her up. A muffled noise came out of her. It sounded stark and needy. She hooked her arm around his neck as he strode to the edge of the parking lot. A waist-high stone wall separated the asphalt from the sand. He leaped it and ran down the beach, faster and faster until the wind whipped through their hair.
Within moments they left behind the bright lights of the dockyard and the incessant chatter of humanity. The ocean murmured against the sand in a rhythm far older than any music. Lights dotted the dark shoreline, and a slice of moon curved in the dark blue, starred night, but the place he found was deep with shadows.
He walked into the deepest of the shadows, where the line of trees and bushes met the beach. Only then did he set her on her feet. Now her whole body trembled. He could hear her heart racing.
He did that. He caused her body to shake and cry out. He set her heart racing, made her laugh, created her happiness. He reached past the bone and sinew of her body and touched the invisible, mysterious core of her, the place that defined her.
That place. That invisible, mysterious place was his home.