She grinned again. “Not bad. That’s not bad.”
He crossed to her, hooked an arm around her waist, yanked her against him. When she linked hers around him, prepared to drop to the floor with him, he circled her into a dance.
“Damn it.” She let out a sigh. “That’s really not bad at all.”
It might have been dreamy—the music, the lights, the man—then she remembered she was dancing in her underwear, while wearing her weapon.
She tipped her head back, started to make some snarky comment about just that. He stopped the words with his mouth.
Circling, swaying, with a long, long kiss, deep and lush with body pressed to body in a perfect fit. It topped dreamy by several points. What he brought her in a room built for glamour, for crowds? The simple and the intimate.
He felt her slide into the moment with him, the just us, anytime and anywhere. And always. He couldn’t say why the fun and the foolishness she’d begun had struck such a strong, clear romantic chord in him.
Now he could take that moment, this moment, their moment, to show her both.
“I like your dress,” he murmured.
“Oh, it’s just a really little something I pulled on.”
His lips curved against her hair. “It suits you. Not everyone wears white so well, or with such powerful accessories.”
“Yeah, it’s a stunner,” she said, making him laugh.
“So’s my wife.”
Again, she angled her head back. “So you’re married?”
“I am, yes. Right down to the marrow. You?”
“I got talked into it. It’s working out pretty well.” She laid a hand on his cheek. “He’s got this way of making me feel I’m the only person in the world.”
“When I’m with my wife, when I’m holding her, she is.”
She pressed her cheek against his, closed her eyes as they danced. “No one ever made me the reason before him. No one else ever made me the one.”
“She changed my life the moment she walked into it. She’s the reason, and the one.”
“I don’t know if I believed in love before, but I know I didn’t understand it. And now …”
“And now.”
This time, she tipped back her head, took his lips. And gave herself to the now.
He hit the release on her weapon harness, slipped it off, letting it slide to the floor before he circled her back to the center of the room, of the moment.
Together, they lowered to the floor while the music beat, the lights shimmered, the fire snapped.
He let his hands roam—that long back, the narrow torso—over smooth skin under thin white cotton. The tough, disciplined muscles never failed to arouse. His woman was a fighter, a brawler, a tireless warrior, and still could offer him the soft and the sweet.
Her hands roamed as his did, the short, unpainted nails digging in, letting him know his body, his touch, his needs pleased her.
She smelled of soap and winter wind, tasted of woman and warmth.
He tugged the tank away to cup her breast—small, firm, lovely—in his hand. Her heart bumped beneath his fingers.
She tangled her legs with his, let herself float on the gentle surf of rising senses. The feel of his hands—always clever, now patient—on her skin, his scent, one she’d recognize among thousands, the taste of him as her lips skimmed along his jaw.
All coalesced into one, into him, while the fire sizzled and snapped, while the music drifted through the air.