Eyes of Ice (Eyes of Ice Erotica Series) (2 page)

             
“I’ve found that skill at dancing correlates to other activities,” he answered simply, and reaching forward to take the champagne glass from the table in front of her, he drained its remaining contents in one long sip.

             
Cecelia’s jaw dropped.

             
“I’m sorry, have I offended you?” he asked, and some measure of concern actually edged into his tone and features.

             
“No.” Cecelia lied stubbornly.
Offended, no. Shocked, maybe.

             
“Then dance with me?” he invited, reaching a hand out. Cecelia stared, her emotions a tumultuous mixture of disbelief and fear. “Just a dance. I promise.”

             
Hardly believing her daring, she took his hand. And then before she knew it, they were at the dance floor, and her heart was in her throat. The stranger pulled Cecelia close to him, and for some reason his arms felt safe as they slipped from her shoulders to her waist, gently guiding her body close to his. Instantly, Cecelia was overwhelmed, surrounded by the crush of other bodies, the smell of sweat and the heat from the other moving dancers, her senses dulled by so much input, and she laid her head on his chest to try and catch her breath.

             
The stranger – for that’s all she knew him as, the stranger – was now clearly a full foot and a half taller than she, and he had to lean down to murmur in her ear: “It’s all right.”

The music was still deafening as he continued to guide her, swaying backwards and forwards, closer and closer, until his body was hard against hers.
While Cecelia attempted to keep up, the stranger’s movements appeared to be second nature; his fingers traced up her spine, across her shoulder blades, and down, slowly and smoothly in contrast to the quickening tempo of the music’s beat. Now even more overwhelmed by the new sensations, Cecelia’s breaths started to come fast and irregular, and she lowered her eyes to his chest in further shock, fearful he would see the desire there. Too much desire for someone she had just met. Again, his face moved to her ear, and, their bodies still moving, his lips brushed against her skin. Cecelia shivered.

“It’s all right,” he whispered once more.

Oddly enough, it started to be
.
The movements started to be familiar, and they danced for what could have been minutes or hours, until Cecelia felt sweat running down to the small of her back and knew that her cheeks must be flushed with the exertion.
This is dancing
, she thought, feeling his hands run over her hips once more, and then:
Skill at dancing correlates to other activities.
A searing lightning bolt of desire stabbed her at the lowest part of her stomach, and she looked up to meet the stranger’s eyes, only to see his face inclined closer to hers. In that instant, Cecelia wanted him with a longing she’d thought herself incapable of.

But he lowered his head
further, avoiding what she thought was sure to be a kiss, his lips once more brushing her ear, and then her neck, and – as cold as the lightning had been hot, a shiver rippled through Cecelia – his teeth skimmed her throat.

Cecelia let out a small moan then,
and though she knew he probably couldn’t hear the noise over the music, she knew that he likely felt her hands were balling into fists around the fabric of his shirt collar, pulling his body closer still to hers. When he lifted his head to look into her eyes, his eyebrows were raised, a question playing across his gaze, and Cecelia was sure that her answer to whatever it was would be yes, a thousand times yes, but –

“Ceecee!”

Mags’ voice snapped Cecelia back to reality so fast she could have sworn she felt whiplash. Suddenly, Cecelia was conscious of her limbs feeling heavy, of her dance partner slowing his movements and drawing back, while her own body screamed for him to stay where he was. Mags cut between Cecelia and the man, exclaiming “Ceecee!” again.

“Huh?” was all Cecelia could manage.
The music had stopped, and the now crowd milling around the club was unbearably loud and close.

“We have to go
, it’s closing. Is this guy bothering you?” Mags asked, glaring over her shoulder at Cecelia’s dance partner and somehow keeping a vice-like grip on Cecelia’s shoulders at the same time.

“No…?”
Cecelia answered.

“I was
n’t bothering her. She likes me,” the stranger declared, hands raised in mock-innocence. He was joined, Cecelia realized, by another handsome man of about the same age, with the same piercing sapphire eyes and impeccable dress.

“I don’t like him,” Cecelia mumbled in protest, partially just because she felt like she had
to. Her dance partner raised an eyebrow, smirking.

“
Listen, Devon and I, we were going to … go back to the room. Is that okay?” Mags asked, her voice a few octaves lower – probably to make the question sound secretive, but Cecelia was sure that no one could hear much of anything over the crowd’s noise anyway. Then the substance of the question reached her.

Is Mags going back to our room to…. With…?
Cecelia glanced up at the man who must be Devon, who now had his arm slung around her dance partner’s shoulders. They looked so alike that they could be brothers – maybe that’s how the stranger had gotten into the club in the first place, she reasoned. She saw in the slightly raised lights that he didn’t look much older than eighteen, himself.

“Uh,” Cecelia stuttered
, dragging her eyes away from the pair of men and back to her roommate, “That’s – yeah, that’s fine. Go for it?”

“Okay, let’s get out of here.” Mags said decisively.

“What?”

“What? You think I’m going to let you stay
in here
?” she glared at Cecelia’s dance partner once more. “It’s
closing
, Cecelia. Let’s go.”

             
And with that, she clasped Cecelia’s arm and led her out of the building, while Cecelia struggled to maintain her footing in her heels. Looking back, Cecelia saw that they were being trailed by Devon, and … and her dance partner, who was laughing at something that Devon had said. His smile was genuine and warm, and she saw that he was following her movement still with his eyes. Watching him as well, something like her former excitement returned to her.

             
Outside in the freezing cold once again, Devon must have said something that reassured Mags that his friend was a good enough person to be trusted alone with Cecelia, for a few seconds after stepping into the snow, Mags was giggling her way into a shining yellow cab after Devon, leaving Cecelia behind. Cecelia was now alone, except for the presence of the handsome, dark-haired, blue-eyed stranger.

             
Cecelia swallowed, hard, and then looked into her dance partner’s eyes once again. The heat from the dance had vanished as soon as they had emerged from the club, leaving Cecelia’s sweat icy on her exposed skin. When she looked into those glacial eyes, she told herself that it was the shift in temperature that caused her shiver.

             
“Hi,” he said softly, and Cecelia was once more aware of the silence of the street. A few flakes of snow fell to the stranger’s his coal-black hair, and he shook his head impatiently to dislodge them, his easy, wry smile returning.

             
“Hi,” Cecelia replied, brushing her own hair back from her face. She wondered, self-consciously, how tired she looked.
I looked only okay when I got here, and after dancing, I bet I look even worse
, she mourned.
He
must
be playing with me.

             
“My name is Andrew,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself.” And he inclined his head slightly, as if in an rueful bow.

             
“I’m Cecelia, but I guess my friends call me Ceecee,” she told him, pretending to adjust her mittens in order to cover her anxiety.

             
“Then Cecelia it is, for now. Would you like to walk?”

             
Cecelia looked up and down the street. There were no cabs in sight, and, truth be told, she wasn’t all that eager to get away from the stranger – Andrew.
Anyway, what’s the fun of wandering around at night, in Chicago, and waiting for your roommate to get done having sex all on your lonesome?
Cecelia asked herself acerbically.

             
“It will be warmer,” Andrew said.

             
“Sure.”

             
So they walked for a while. Two blocks, then three, then four, passed away under their slow pace, with neither of them saying a single word. Cecelia felt like the awkwardness of the situation was suffocating her, and when she peeked over at Andrew, who walked a respectful distance to her left, she saw that his brow was furrowed as if in thought. Cecelia was mystified as to what the stranger could possibly be thinking about, and began to long for the passion of twenty minutes ago. Her fingers twisted in her coat pockets. She jumped, startled, when Andrew spoke.

             
“You’re a good dancer.”

             
Oh, God. Is he thinking about how dance correlates to “other things”? Is he thinking about … me… that way?

             
“Thanks,” was all Cecelia could at first choke out. “I mean, I really never danced before.” Somehow, that sounded incredibly embarrassing given the context that dancing had taken on, but Andrew was – or pretended to be – oblivious.

             
“Is that so? I wouldn’t have known that.”

             
They both had to take a broad step over a puddle, and this allowed Cecelia to put his hand on his shoulder to steady herself before they continued their walking.

             
Cecelia blurted what she’d been thinking all night: “You’re messing with me.”

             
He laughed, a hearty and pleasant sound that echoed through the empty street. He let it do so, clearly unashamed.

             
“Not at all,” was all he responded, and Cecelia once more couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. Compliments were unsettling, and she was already so unsettled. Instead, she stared at the snowy ground before her and listened to their footsteps crunching along, her face growing warm. When she finally spoke, she knew from watching the ground that another block had gone by.

             
“What do you think of me, then?” she asked, almost shocked to hear such a self-obsessed question come from her mouth.

             
She heard his footsteps stop, and she halted, too, and as she stared at the ground before her still, he spoke:

             
“I think you’re beautiful. And young. And shy, which doesn’t make sense because you seem intelligent. And attractive. I’ve known you a short while, and I am attracted to you. That never happens to me. I’m what people call ‘slow to warm.’ Yet I think you know all of this, especially the part about attraction, and for some reason that makes you more shy. Which is why you won’t look at me.”

             
If her face was warm before, it was burning now. Turmoil wracked Cecelia’s brain.
If I don’t look at him, then I’m admitting how much he’s right
, she realized, and she made herself look up. When she met his eyes, he was smiling again. Or maybe he had never stopped. He tilted his head toward the street to indicate that they continue on their route, and they began walking again.

             
“Thank you,” she said, suddenly. “People don’t ever say that sort of thing to me. I mean, about me being … attractive?”

             
He was quiet for another block, and spoke again when Cecelia thought she was about to die of embarrassment. “I don’t know that I believe that, either,” he murmured. “If Devon hadn’t taken your friend, then I would be tempted to ask you if….”

              Cecelia now felt as if her skin was on fire.
How can he not see how this affects me?
she wondered.
Maybe he does, and he likes that. Maybe that’s part of what makes me “attractive.”

             
“If what?” she asked.

             
“I would be tempted, after more dancing, to ask to spend more time with you. I mean, more time with … less clothes.”

             
“I can’t,” Cecelia replied abruptly, and then almost clapped her hands over her mouth in horror.
Did I really just do that?

             
She heard him laughing quietly – not cruelly, just in an open, amused sort of way. “I didn’t ask you to, yet.”

             
“Well … I … well, you were going to,” she stuttered. “And I can’t.” Just as abruptly as she had protested Andrew’s supposed advances, she changed her direction, turning to cross the street to her left when for the past ten blocks or so they had been charting a perfectly straight path through the darkened and snowy streets. She heard his footsteps follow her turn smoothly.