EL Diablo's Bride

His Rules

I should have walked away.

The second I turned around and saw him, I should have removed his hand, said something smart, and gone back to Cass.

I did not do that.

Because the man looking down at me was,

Holy.

Absolute.

Hell.

Tall. Dark eyes that didn’t rush. A jaw that could have ended careers. He was dressed simply, dark shirt, sleeves pushed up, and that somehow made it worse. He wasn’t trying.

He didn’t need to.

His hand was still on my waist.

Get yourself together, Isla, I thought desperately. He is just a man. You have seen men before.

Not like this.

Never even close to like this.

The music shifted.

Something slower. Heavier. A bass line that crawled up through the floor and settled somewhere low in my stomach like it had found a home.

And I was no longer facing him.

I don’t know when that happened.

My back was against his chest. His hands were at my waist. And we were moving with the music like this was something we had done before, like our bodies had a history my brain hadn’t been informed of.

This is fine, I told myself. This is just dancing. Normal dancing. People do this all the time.

His hands tightened on my waist.

We rolled together, slow and deep, his body pressed completely against mine.

Every single thought I had disappeared.

Completely, entirely, embarrassingly gone.

Then his hands started to move.

Slowly.

God, so slowly.

Up from my waist. Tracing the sides of my body through the thin fabric of my dress like he had all night and intended to use every second of it.

One hand spread flat across my stomach.

And then it started to move in slow, deliberate circles and I,

I forgot what breathing was.

What is he,

Why is he,

I need to,

I could not finish a single thought. Not one. My brain had completely abandoned me and gone somewhere tropical to recover and I was alone up here with nothing but sensation and this man’s hands and the absolute destruction they were causing.

His other hand stayed at my hip. Guiding. Unhurried. We were pressed so completely together that I could feel every point of contact between us.

The drinks were not helping.

Or maybe they were helping too much.

Everything felt warm and golden and slightly inevitable, like resistance was a concept that belonged to a different version of me. A version that hadn’t had three drinks and hadn’t been told three days ago that her life was being handed to a stranger and hadn’t decided that these three months were hers.

His thumb traced a slow line just below my ribs.

I bit down hard on my lower lip.

Do not make a sound, I told myself desperately. Whatever you do, do not make a sound.

Then he lowered his head.

His lips brushed my neck.

Barely.

The softest, most deliberately light contact in the history of human existence.

I felt it everywhere.

Every. Where.

Down my spine. Through my stomach. All the way to my toes and back up again, settling somewhere that had absolutely no business being involved in a public dance floor situation.

My knees did something that I will never speak of again.

His breath was warm against my skin.

His hands were still moving.

And I was gone. Completely, utterly, unrecoverably gone. Standing on a dance floor in a club I had never been to before, being taken apart piece by piece by a man whose last name I didn’t know, and I could not bring myself to do a single thing about it.

This is not dancing, the last remaining functioning cell in my brain noted.

I know, I told it.

Are we going to stop?

…No.

I don’t know when I turned around.

One moment, his chest was against my back.

The next thing I knew, I was facing him.

My hands were on his chest. We were still moving, still tangled in the music, but now I could see his face and,

He was looking at me like I was the only thing in the room.

Like everything else had blurred out, and I was the only thing in focus.

And he was still so calm.

That was the thing that was going to finish me off completely. I was falling apart at every seam, and he looked like a man who had simply decided how this night was going to go and was patiently waiting for me to arrive at the same conclusion.

Infuriating.

Devastating.

Both at the same time.

We were so close.

His forehead dropped to mine.

We breathed the same air.

One second.

Two.

Three,

His mouth found mine.

It was not gentle.

It was not slow.

It was immediate and deep and certain, his hand sliding up to cup my jaw like he had been thinking about this exact moment since I walked through that door, and I made a sound.

I’m not proud of it.

His other hand pressed against the small of my back and pulled me closer, and I forgot every single thing. The contract. The three months. All of it, gone. Replaced entirely by his mouth and his hands and the way he kissed me.

My fingers curled into his shirt.

I kissed him back.

We were moving again.

One moment the dance floor. The next he was steering me through the crowd, one hand at my back, and I was following him without question into the darker edges of the club. Where the lights didn’t reach. Where the music was a low pulse instead of a roar.

Where no one could see us.

My back hit the wall.

Cool and solid.

Him in front of me, both hands on either side of my head, caging me in. He looked at me for one long, charged second.

Checking.

Making sure.

I looked straight back at him and did not move.

He kissed me again.

And if the first kiss was certain,

This one was possession.

His hand slid into my hair. The other pressed flat against the wall. He kissed me like the rest of the club had ceased to exist, like we were the only two people in the building.

I stopped thinking.

I just felt.

His mouth. His hands. The wall cold against my back and him warm against my front and the music a distant heartbeat and everything, everything, everything.

When he finally pulled back I was breathing hard.

He looked at me. Dark eyes that made me want things I shouldn’t

And I said the only words my entire brain could produce.

“Take me home.”

His eyes held mine.

A pause that lasted exactly long enough to make my heart rate do something illegal.

Then that mouth curved.

Slow.

“I thought,” he said quietly, his thumb brushing my jaw one single time, “you’d never ask.”

He took my hand.

And I followed him out of the dark and into the night, and I did not look back, and I did not think about what came next.