.

lessons were out the window now.

      He wrinkled his nose and squinted against the sun, an oddly boyish gesture. It made her feel even warmer. “I don’t suppose. Though I have in the past.”

      “Have you?”

      “Sure. That’s how I ended up here. I spend a lot of my life floating.”

      She felt the layered meaning in his words. And in a strange way, felt like she’d heard more honest words from this stranger, this man she’d known all of five minutes, than she’d ever heard out of the man she was planning to marry.

      “So,” he said, “drink?”

      “Of course.”

      “Let me just get a shirt.” He tossed her a smile and climbed back up onto the boat. It took all of her willpower not to say “oh, no, please leave your chest bare.” She figured that would be pushing it. Especially since, no matter how much she might want him, she knew she’d never do anything about it.

      A drink was all it would ever be.

      They’d gone to the bar next and ordered a couple of sodas. She’d texted Alana to let her know everything was fine and that she wasn’t axe-murdered. But she didn’t send a text when she and Alex walked around town for hours, or when they ended up having dinner on the pier, laughing and talking over seafood and pasta. She didn’t text Alana about how he lifted his fork to her lips and let her taste his entrée, about the way their eyes had met in that moment and it had sent a snap of heat through her.

      Or when he took her to a club later that night.

      She hadn’t been to a club since she’d had to sneak in with a fake ID. Clubs like this were a hotbed of scandal and sex, and all sorts of things her father and Ajax would never have approved of. The sort of place the press would crucify her for going to.

      Alcohol, loud thumping music, sticky dance floors filled with bodies. There had been a time when she’d loved it. But not after she’d become aware of what she was inviting. Not since she realized the sort of trouble she could get herself into. Since she realized she’d been walking down a path that only had one ending, and it wasn’t a happy one.

      But just for now, she was going to put good behavior on hold. She felt secluded here, insulated by whatever magic spell Alex had cast on her the first moment she’d seen him. No one around was looking at her, expecting her to behave in a certain way. She didn’t think she was in any danger of exposing herself the way she’d done in the past.

      Somehow, with Alex, it felt exciting. It felt dangerous—a hit of adrenaline she used to crave. One she’d denied herself for far too long.

      It all did. The whole day. It was like being on a vacation from herself, and she loved it. Or maybe it was a vacation to herself, but that was a step further into the philosophical than she wanted to get.

      “This is so fun!” she shouted, trying to make her voice heard over the thumping bass.

      “You are enjoying yourself?” he asked.

      “Very.”

      He took her left hand and the touch of his skin against hers sent a lightning bolt shooting from her wrist to her core. “I have been meaning to ask about this,” he said, tilting her knuckles so that her engagement ring caught the light.

      Looking at it made her stomach crash into her toes. She didn’t want to think about that. About reality. Not at all.

      “I’m not married,” she said.

      A wicked smile curved his lips, blue eyes glittering in the dim light. “I wouldn’t have cared if you were. I would have maybe just asked how big your husband was. And if he was connected to organized crime in any way.”

      The thought of Ajax being connected to anything as sordid or exciting as organized crime was hysterically funny. He was far too staid for anything that outrageous. He was the calming, steadying influence in her life. Or at least that’s how her father saw him. And she couldn’t really imagine him mustering up any rage for Alex being here at the club with her.

      Ajax wasn’t really a club kind of guy. If she’d asked him, he would have probably waved his hands and said to have fun while he went back to sorting numbers into columns or whatever it was he did all night in his office that gave him such satisfaction.

      “Um...you don’t need to be concerned. Besides, we haven’t done anything we should be ashamed of,” she said. “I haven’t...violated any vows.”

      “Yet,” he said, his grin turning wicked. “It’s still early.”

      “So it is,” she said, her heart thundering hard.

      “Do you want to dance?”

      She looked at his outstretched hand and she felt an ache, a need, tighten in her belly. Ajax had never once danced with her. Had never even asked. And until that moment, she hadn’t realized that she’d been missing it.

      In that same moment, she realized that this wasn’t just a request for a simple dance.

      She knew that this was it. The deciding moment. That if she said yes to this, she wouldn’t say no again for the rest of the night.

      But maybe that had been true hours ago. Maybe from the moment she’d locked eyes with him, saying no had been an impossibility.

      “Yes,” she said, the word torn from her, scraping her throat raw and leaving in its place a sweet, light relief. She had decided. Tonight she was going to embrace life, whatever that meant. “Yes, Alex, I want to dance.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      HE KISSED HER for the first time out on the dance floor. There were people all around them, the crush of bodies intense. And she let them push her into him, let them drive her against him so that she could feel the hard heat of his muscles against her chest.

      When she was pressed against him, she looked up, angled her head toward his. She knew she was begging for it and she didn’t care. Because she needed this. More than air. It didn’t matter what happened tomorrow, or in the month leading up to her wedding, not if she didn’t survive this night.

      And it felt like she might not if he didn’t touch her. If she couldn’t taste him.

      But he didn’t make her beg for long.

      He dipped his head and claimed her mouth, his tongue forcing her lips apart. She opened to him, took him in deep, kissed him until she was dizzy. There had never been a kiss like this. Not for her, maybe not for anyone. One that stole her every thought, her every worry. One that reduced her to nothing more than need, nothing more than a deep, physical ache that demanded satisfaction.

      She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, her body moving against his, no longer in rhythm with the music, but in rhythm with her own desire. She forked her fingers through his thick, curly hair, held him against her, poured all of herself, all of the desire that had been building in her for so many years, into a kiss that she shouldn’t be having. A kiss that was forbidden to her.

      And that just made her angry. More determined to get what she needed tonight. What she would never have after tonight. This was her last chance.

      A secret thrill. A secret bit of adventure. No one ever had to know.

      “Come back to my hotel with me,” she said, against his mouth, unable to part from him for even a second.

      He didn’t answer—he only kissed her again, and she realized there was no way he’d heard her, not over the music.

      She pulled his head down and put her lips against his ear. “I have a hotel room. Come back with me.”

      That was all the encouragement he needed. Faster than she could change gears, Alex was dragging her off the dance floor and out into the warm summer night. He paused outside the club door, pushed her against the wall and kissed her, the motion and the kiss savage, explosive. Perfect.