They stared at each other unblinking for a moment. He wanted her, while Lizzie was equally determined not to succumb to his somewhat less than respectable charms again, and was determined to prove it by remaining stiff and unresponsive in his arms. She held him as the dance required, but there was no intimacy in her touch. She was like a block of ice, moving in time to the music, while only paying lip service to the hot South American beat.
‘This is like dancing with a nun,’ he remarked.
‘You think?’ she queried. ‘That’s strange, when I feel as if I’m dancing with an international polo player who’s hitting on one of his trainees for the second time in one night.’
‘You’re not just one of my trainees, Lizzie.’
‘Just the most available,’ she said, tight-lipped.
‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’
She was keeping as much distance between them as she could. ‘What’s wrong with you, Lizzie?’
‘Are you serious?’ she demanded.
‘Yeah, I’m serious. Less than an hour ago you were moaning with pleasure in my arms.’
‘Everyone makes mistakes.’
‘You didn’t seem to think it was a mistake at the time.’
‘Only because I’m not as sophisticated as you.’
She wasn’t sophisticated at all, which was Lizzie’s appeal. She was straight down the line, with her heart boldly emblazoned on her sleeve. ‘And where are you going now?’ He reached for her when she pulled away.
She stared with affront at his hand on her arm. ‘For a drink—for a walk—for a rest—for a chat—for just about anything that I can do away from you.’
‘Relax, Lizzie.’ He frowned, seeing her eyes were glittering with anger. ‘We’re only dancing.’
‘Like we were only having sex up there in your bedroom?’ She glanced towards the house. ‘Let me go!’ she demanded as he tightened his hold on her. ‘I suppose you think you can have sex with me and then casually come back to the party as if nothing had happened, because of who you are.’
‘What are you talking about?’ He could never remember being brought to account like this before.
‘First you stop me drinking with Tiago,’ she elaborated, ‘and now you stop me dancing with him.’
‘Because you’re with me.’
‘Really?’ With an incredulous huff, she shook her head. ‘What gave you that idea?’
‘You, Lizzie. You gave me that idea.’
‘Me? You couldn’t wait to leave back there.’ She glanced up at the house.
‘I thought that what happened in my bedroom was by mutual consent. Please forgive me if I was in any way mistaken.’
Chico wasn’t mistaken, but she was angry with herself for giving in to him—for even allowing herself to be hurt, because she was still harbouring a romantic daydream, while all Chico wanted was sex.
‘Lizzie?’
Decision time, she thought as Chico put his hand on her cheek and made her look at him. She had to decide what was important now: pursuing a pipe dream, or achieving a goal. Gathering herself, she refocused on Chico’s face. ‘I made a mistake, but I won’t repeat it. I just want to graduate and go home with my diploma, and for that I need your help, but—’
‘Dios, Lizzie, what are you saying?’ Chico’s expression was thunderous.
They had stopped dancing, and all the other couples, sensing a drama, were giving them a wide berth. ‘If you think for one moment I would penalise you unless you agree to sleep with me, you have not only disappointed me, you have insulted me.’
‘Then I apologise. That was not my intention.’
‘Perhaps you need to think more carefully before you say these things.’
‘What am I supposed to think when you can switch off your feelings so easily?’
‘Says the woman who makes passionate love with me, and who then takes to the dance floor with my friend.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘You didn’t dance with Tiago?’
‘Yes, but that was because—’
‘Because you wanted to show me how I must fall into line?’ Chico suggested. ‘I don’t do falling into line, Lizzie. You either accept me as I am, or—’
‘Or I stick around until you select your next victim from the available pool?’
A muscle flexed in Chico’s jaw, but to his credit he remained silent, but nothing could hold back all the years of pent-up longing and hurt inside Lizzie now.
‘And when you’ve had sex with them, you cast them off, while they look at you adoringly, thinking how lucky they were to have come to the notice of the Chico Fernandez for all of ten seconds—’
‘I’ve noticed you for a lot longer than that, Lizzie. And we both know that this is the hurt of a fifteen-year-old girl talking, not the woman I made love to.’
‘You didn’t make love to me,’ she flared, getting it straight in her head. ‘You had sex with me.’
‘I think I know what happened.’
‘Then know this: I’m not a victim, and I won’t be pushed around. Nor am I one of those sophisticated women who knows the score.’
‘No,’ Chico agreed calmly. ‘You’re my childhood friend.’
‘I used to think I was your friend—’
‘And now you’re a complex woman I’m getting to know all over again.’
‘Maybe that’s true,’ Lizzie agreed as she shook Chico’s hand from her arm. ‘But you’ve changed so much I don’t know you. You’re closed off.
You show your feelings to no one, not even to me.’
‘That’s hardly surprising as it’s twelve years since we last met.’
‘Yes. Twelve long years,’ she agreed. ‘I was a child then, and I’m a woman now—who isn’t so easily impressed. I’ve let go of the past, Chico, but can you?’
‘You’ve let go of the past?’ Chico demanded with a harsh laugh as he brought her close. ‘Do you remember how your parents made you feel? How they neglected you—ignored you, put you last? Have you really forgotten that, Lizzie?’
As he spoke the music segued into a sizzling Argentine tango in honour of Nero Caracas, one of Chico’s closest friends, and before she knew it their heated discussion had somehow moved seamlessly into the fiery dance.
He already knew Lizzie could dance like a dream when she wanted to, and moving to music was in his blood, but this second time around, after hot sex and hotter tempers, was electric. Their dancing was more heated, tense and fierce. If he’d been aware of her before sex, he was hyper-aware of her now. Lizzie’s fire insisted she respond to the music, and though she made as if she could resist him she anticipated his every move, just as she had in his bed. Her version of the heated Latin American dance might not be strictly authentic, but she brought something distinctly Lizzie to the dance that reminded him of what that lush body could do. She brought more sex per step to all the required precision and intensity to the dance than was safe and decent, forcing him to tell himself sternly that he couldn’t have her at his own party in the shadows in full sight of the dance floor. Thankfully, the tune came to an end, and so did Lizzie’s performance. It was almost a relief when she reverted to being safely buttoned up.
‘Will you please let me go?’ she demanded as if she had come round to discover she had been carelessly uninhibited on the dance floor, and now she was keen to restore some balance.
‘No, I won’t let you go,’ he said, dragging her close, reminding them both of how it had felt to be bound every inch of them skin to skin. He’d noticed Tiago circling the fringes of the crowd, and knew the signs. Tiago was hunting. ‘It’s not safe for me to let you go,’ he explained when Lizzie flashed him a look. ‘Wolves are prowling.’