Collide (The Barker Triplets 2)

For a long moment the two of them stared at each other, ignoring the jumbling crowd behind them as an uneasy silence grew.

“Okay, um, I need to,” Bobbi glanced down at the clipboard in her hands as her voice trailed off. Dammit. She needed to be doing something, but what?

Ike’s powerful vocals rose as he sang about the devil and her throat closed even more as she shuddered, suddenly cold.

“This isn’t going away,” Shane said softly.

Her head jerked up and she swore as someone knocked her from behind and she stumbled forward. Immediately Shane’s hands closed around her waist and he drew her aside, away from the group of hockey players and wives with fresh beer tickets in hand, anxious to get into the dance.

For a moment, Bobbi did nothing but lean into him. The feel of his large, warm hand on her arm sent shivers of desire rushing through her. She closed her eyes, inhaled his scent—which was the wrong thing to do—why the hell did he have to smell so damn good?

“What’s not going away?” she managed to say as she wiggled out of Shane’s embrace and faced him.

“This thing between us.”

“Oh.” Bobbi didn’t quite know how to respond to that. He’d always been so direct and normally she was on the ball and ready for a comeback. But tonight? Tonight she couldn’t think about anything other than how good it felt to be so close to him.

Shane grabbed her hand and at first she resisted but when he looked down at her, his dark eyes filled with sin, something broke inside her. After a gentle tug Bobbi let him lead her into the darkened room filled with a few hundred revelers. The band was kicking into the euphoric ending to Sympathy and the beat was intoxicating.

The clipboard was gone, taken out of her stiff fingers by Shane as he led her deeper into the shadows that blanketed the room. The stage was off to her left, the band rocking out as their singer led them to the climax. The beat thrummed in her chest. Her body was on fire and if Bobbi didn’t know better, she’d think she had been transported into another time and place.

One where the man next to her had been her world.

“Okay,” Ike shouted into the microphone. “We’re going to slow things down a bit so grab your lady and get your asses out on the dance floor for the first slow one of the night.” Loud cheers greeted his words as the band quieted, a soft, slow melody falling from the guitarist.

Bobbi’s knees went weak when she heard the opening chords. She glanced up quickly, into eyes so intense she felt as if she’d been scorched. No. Fucking. Way.

Had he planned this? Would Shane be that vindictive? Didn’t he know what this song did to her? What it had meant to her?

Her chest rose and fell. Her heart beat a rhythm all its own, and yet it was one that kept time with the pulse at the base of Shane’s neck.

“In keeping with our Stone’s theme, how about some Wild Horses?”

His arms slid around her and she let him pull her in close to his body as Ike began to sing, his voice hauntingly like Mick Jagger’s.

Bobbi closed her eyes and even though it was painful for her to be here with him, dancing with him to this song, she was helpless to do anything about it. Her arms slipped beneath his leather jacket until she was wrapped around him, her hips moving against him, her check tucked into the corner of his neck.

They were deep in the shadows with only the song and a host of memories to accompany them. Bobbi felt everything as if it were yesterday.

The excitement of a new love so intense it had colored her entire world in nothing but Shane. The way her heart used to beat out of her chest at just the thought of him and the way he used to….

She gasped when his hot mouth found its way to her neck, and there among the shadows, Shane held her so that there was no mistaking the state of things between his legs, and he nuzzled her in that spot that was his.

The spot that had always been his.

She groaned. Or sighed. Or she did a little of both, but when her hands crept up into this hair, she tugged on him until he tore his mouth from her skin and stared down at her.

“What are we doing?” she whispered, hating that the little sliver of hope—the one that had never completely gone away—was poking into her heart. It was that hope, that need for Shane, that should have had her running into the opposite direction. Instead, here she was in a dark corner of the dance floor, practically making out with the man who’d broken her heart.

It was sadly ironic that it was a heart that had deserved to be broken, after what she’d done to him.

His forefinger crept into the corner of her mouth and he leaned down to kiss her there, a soft whisper of a touch that had her aching for more.

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away.

Tears stung the corner of her eyes as she accepted his mouth and opened herself up to him fully. He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, as they continued to move together in a sensual dance meant only for them.

“Why did you leave last Friday?” he asked, his mouth hovering over hers, his dark eyes glistening in the darkness. “I didn’t like that.”