her around and then brought her right up next to his body with both hands on her waist.
The crowd had circled in on them again, the music changing now that they were no longer showing off. Elliott slid his thigh between hers, rocking her against him. His hands slid lower to grip her ass. He looked down at her, eyes narrowed, without a smile.
Simone linked her hands behind his neck, tipping her face to his. She was far from drunk but felt loose and giddy with the dancing. With his body against hers. “You’re a good dancer.”
“Yeah,” Elliott said. “I know.”
No more room now to move, not really, with people bouncing and thrusting and twisting all around them. The crowd had become a massive living thing, taking up all the air. Elliott shifted when someone bumped into them, then put an arm around her to keep her from getting knocked over by a shit-faced girl wobbling on a pair of ankle-breaker stillettos.
“Let’s get out of here,” Elliott said into her ear so he didn’t have to shout, and Simone followed.
* * *
He hadn’t meant to go anywhere with her. Simone had cornered him in the lobby, and what could he say but that he’d been weak. Too long without a woman, too long without release, and Simone had a way about her that Elliott simply could not seem to shake.
Since that first meeting, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. The way she moved. The flavor of her mouth. And most of all, the way she reacted to him taking her flesh in his teeth. Pulling her hair. Other women squirmed or cringed, some even scolded or shouted or cried.
Simone had pushed into those hard caresses. Embraced them. There’d been a reason why he dated women who didn’t like the dark and secret part of him Elliott tried to keep hidden. It was easier to pretend he didn’t want to pinch and bite, to leave his mark on sleek, soft skin. To hear a woman cry out in pain as much as pleasure. It was easier to push all of that aside, to tell himself a life lived without being entirely satisfied was the way it worked for most people.
He hadn’t meant to go anywhere with Simone ever again, but he’d let her take him dancing. He hadn’t meant to dance with her either, but the years of lessons with Molly had paid off in a way he’d never have anticipated. He and Simone had moved together like she could read his mind, and for that time, those three or five minutes, he’d felt something he hadn’t experienced in so long that he wasn’t sure he ever had.
Happiness.
So here he was in the living room of Simone’s small and cluttered apartment, watching her pour him a glass of whiskey from a bottle she’d taken from what looked like an antique tea cart in the corner. The glass she handed him was equally vintage. Not antique. Just old. He hoped it was clean.
“I should leave,” he told her.
“You don’t want to leave.” She tossed the words at him over her shoulder, giving him a sly smile that should’ve infuriated him but instead worked some sort of magic on his cock. “If you really wanted to leave, you’d never have agreed to come home with me in the first place.”
He watched her slip out of her shoes and toss them without ceremony in the corner. She ran a hand upward along the back of her sweat damp hair, spiking it. She’d poured herself a glass of ice water in an insulated cup and now she sucked gently on the straw.
“You’re not drinking?” He asked.
“I know my limits.” Simone leaned against the counter separating her kitchen from the living room.
Elliott knew his, too. He drained the glass and walked it to the sink, where he rinsed it and put it in the drainer on the counter. When he turned, she was still watching him.
“I’m going to go,” he said. “It’s late.”
“Why’d you dance with me?”
This stopped him.
She put her cup down. Moved toward him on silent feet. She was so tiny he could almost span her waist with his hands. He could certainly circle her throat with one
Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain