He didn’t shake it but brought it to his lips and pressed a soft kiss on my knuckles. “Encantado conocerte.”
My Spanish was a little rusty, so I said, “Thank you.”
He dropped my fingers, and I resisted the urge to rub them on my dress. Something about him grated on my senses. Too beautiful, too polished, too damn smooth.
“May I have this dance?” The Spanish man asked.
I copied the giggle of the girl I’d passed earlier. “Won’t your date be upset if she sees you dancing with another woman?”
“Sadly, I am my own company tonight. Where is your date?”
I waved absently toward the bar. “Oh, he’s around here somewhere. He hasn’t given me much attention since we arrived, though.”
I pouted to add weight to my words.
I didn’t want to dance with this asshole, but I couldn’t leave him alone until I knew more about him. Checked him off my mental list as innocuous.
“Then dance with me. I’ll give you all the attention you crave. Trust me.”
Intriguing that I wanted to trust him, even while my brain screamed not to do it. Interesting. I scanned the crowd, looking for Fin. He blended right in here. I caught sight of him by the bar chatting with a big beefy man in a black tux.
“Why don’t we get a drink instead?” I said. “I’m thirsty and dancing would only make it worse.”
He tugged my hand toward him gently. “Or we could dance first and get a drink second. I confess, I want to feel you in my arms.”
Woah. Maybe it was a cultural thing, or a rich-man-can-get-whatever-he-wants thing, but he was laying it on thick. I searched for Fin again and we locked eyes.
He straightened, his shoulders hitching back. He said something to the man he’d been speaking to and took a step forward.
If I so much as twitched, Fin would rescue me. Charge over, sweep me from this man’s embrace, and break our cover.
I gestured at him to stand down and let the stranger pull me onto the dance floor. “One dance, then a drink.”
He gently placed his hand on my lower back and cupped my other with his own. “Of course, mi reina. I appreciate how fierce you are.”
I giggled again as he spun me around.
“I don’t think anyone has ever described me as fierce,” I lied. “I can stand up for myself, sure, but I try to be a good girl, make people happy.”
Fin’s snort broke through my earpiece. He’d moved closer and could hear us talking. I ignored the acid in my stomach as he spun a tiny blonde closer to us.
“You haven’t told me your name.” I reminded him.
He held me tighter,
right up against his long body, towering over me by almost a foot. “My apologies. You can call me Esteban.”
“Oh, this is your party. I’m so sorry. I’m a plus one. I didn’t realize.”
“Think nothing of it, Sydney.” He said my name, so I knew he remembered it. I bet girls all over the world dropped their panties with that move. Men with money like his didn’t need to remember women’s names.
“Are we celebrating something tonight?”
He smiled, a slick smooth grin that flashed his white teeth. “Life. We celebrate being alive tonight.”
Something I always appreciated. “Then we will drink to life once we finish this dance.”
He gazed down at me, his pretty brown eyes roving over my face and then back up to my eyes in a circuit. Bonus points for not staring at my chest. As small as it looked in this dress, I should have let the shop lady sell me some of those chicken cutlet things. It was hard to seduce information out of men without cleavage.