Consolation Prize (Forbidden Men 9)

“Here, take mine.” Colton extended a fluted glass across the table, nearly full of the bubbly stuff.

I stared at it a moment before taking it hesitantly—hey, he was underage, it wasn’t as if he needed it—and then I gulped down his glass too.

He watched me with a pleased glint in his gaze before murmuring, “So, about those earrings...?”

I cleared my throat and glanced away. I didn’t realize I’d started to play with them again until I said, “What about them?” and quickly dropped my hand.

“They’re dream catchers.”

I arched him a dry glance. “Wow, you’re quick.”

Grinning, he said, “I am. Do you have some Native American ancestry in you?”

“Nope,” I answered in a bored voice, keeping my attention on the dance floor.

“Then why dream catchers?”

I veered my gaze back to him. “Because they’re my thing. Is that all right with you?”

He grinned. “Perfectly all right. Did you used to have bad dreams?”

I blinked, not expecting him to ask me that. People usually just assumed I thought they were neat and left it at that. But the way he was looking at me, as if he really wanted to know, made me mumble, “Yeah, when I was little.”

I clamped my lips shut and swallowed.

Why had I just told him that?

He kept watching me, his gaze doing that intense crawling-into-my-head thing again. “What did you dream about?”

The hushed, intense question made me shiver.

I began to play with my dream catcher earring again. “Nothing.”

“Oh, come on, baby doll.” He leaned in across the table and flashed his cajoling grin that had probably won him whatever he wanted in the past. “You can tell me.”

As my mouth opened to confess all, I realized something. Colton Gamble was nothing but a facade. He wasn’t the lazy, brainless flirt who cared about no one but himself that he appeared to be. The boy was deceptive, calculating and canny, hiding under a layer of shallow whimsy to learn about his prey. He craftily used his intel to build his web without anyone even being aware of it, and then bam, he pounced.

Almost feeling the silken, deadly strands of his trap tightening around me, I tried desperately to think up a way to escape. After clearing my throat, I evasively answered, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Which means it matters a lot,” Colton murmured intuitively.

I gulped, afraid he’d pick at it more. But he appeared to be lost in his own head a moment before he opened his mouth and took a breath as if he had something deep to say. When no words came, I tilted my head to let him know I was ready to hear it.

Except he closed his mouth, took another breath—through his nose this time because his nostrils flared—and then he asked, “Do you want to dance?”

I pulled back in surprise, totally unprepared for such a turn in the conversation. My gaze strayed to the right where other people were laughing and lumbering around on the dance floor.

The emcee was playing “The Cupid Shuffle,” and if I knew more than a handful of people in attendance, I probably would’ve been out there with my girls, getting down to the beat that very second. But my friends weren’t here, and I didn’t feel nearly comfortable enough to go anywhere near the dance floor.

So I said, “No.”

“What? You don’t like to dance?”

“I just don’t want to dance with you.” There. Nothing made a person back off quicker than a little bit of rude. And I could wield rude as if it were a deadly weapon if I did say so myself. I found it was the most direct, effective defense when someone threatened to get too close, exactly like the way he was nudging his business right into my emotional space.

But apparently, Colton Gamble was rude-retardant.

“Well, technically, being that this song is one of those group dance things, you’d be dancing beside me, not with me.”