His Unlikely Lover (Unwanted #3) (2 page)

“No,” she groused. “You’re supposed to dance with me.”

“I am?” He was?

“You brought me here,” she pointed out, enunciating her words carefully, the way inebriated people tended to do when they were trying to convince others of their sobriety. “You’re my date. You should dance with me.”

“I’m your
date
, am I?”

“Stop talking to me like I’m a child.” Her words threw him. He
did
tend to speak to her in the indulgent, paternal tone her dad or older brothers used on her. It was easy for all of them to lose sight of the fact that she was a woman of twenty-six with her own business.

“I’m sorry.” Her pretty eyes reflected her surprise at his apology. She shrugged awkwardly, grabbing yet another glass from a passing waiter and downing it in almost one gulp. She swayed and he reached out to steady her, placing his hands on her slight shoulders.

“Whoa, Bobbi . . . how many of those have you had?”

“How many of whats?” she asked with a frown, and he grinned at her butchering of the language before elaborating.

“Of those glasses of champagne?”

“They’re called flutes . . . like a flute . . . like music. You know?”

“I get it,” he said, keeping his tone somber to match the earnestness in her voice. “So how many have you had?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He decided not to push it when it was clear that she couldn’t quite muddle her way through the conversation. “Entirely too many, as far as I can tell. Come on, let’s find a quiet spot to sit you down.”

“I’m not tired. I want to dance.”

“You can barely stand,” he pointed out patiently. It wasn’t like her to get drunk. She was a lightweight when it came to alcohol and tended to restrict her alcoholic intake to no more than two glasses when she was in company.

“I can stand.” She looked offended by his words and wriggled her shoulders out from beneath his hands to prove it to him. She swayed only a little without his support. “Come on, let’s dance.” She pushed past him and walked confidently toward the dance floor. When she got there and turned around to find him still standing where she had left him, she spread her hands in a
what gives
gesture.

He groaned to himself before making his way to her side. It would be best just to dance with her and get it over with. Arguing with her in her current state would cause a scene. He was being jostled by the crowd and felt a bit harried when he eventually reached her. She smiled up at him before latching her arms around his waist, resting her head on his chest, and snuggling up against him like a contented cat. Floored, he stood with his arms outspread—not quite sure what to do with them—staring down at the top of her silky head.

He hesitantly closed his arms around her slight frame while trying to maneuver away from her and force some distance between their bodies, but she’d latched on so tightly they wouldn’t have been able to squeeze a sheet of paper between them. He sighed and moved his hands down to either side of her waist and was surprised to discover that it was curvier than he’d anticipated. There was a definite, defined, nipped-in waist that curved out into gently flared hips. His hands spanned the entire length of her waist, with his thumbs brushing the underside of the slight swell of her breasts and his pinkie fingers resting on the flare of her hips. Before this very moment he had thought—when he’d given any consideration to the matter at all—that Bobbi was straight up and down. He never would have guessed at this perfectly proportioned, petite, hourglass figure.

Curious, he allowed his hands to explore further, moving one to her back and spreading his fingers so that it covered her entire narrow expanse. He angled his hand until the tips of his fingers just brushed at the swell of her butt and then was immediately besieged with guilt, as he comprehended that he was
actually
trying to cop a feel off
Bobbi
! What the hell was wrong with him?

He tried to move away again, but she moved closer, and he tilted his head to see her face. She was
nuzzling
at his chest, her breath hot against the naked flesh just above his unbuttoned shirt. Strange, he didn’t quite remember unbuttoning that third button or the second for that matter! He had only loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar.

“Hey, hold up there, sweetheart.” He could feel her fingers busily working on the fourth button. “What the hell are you doing, Bobbi?”

“Dancing.” Her lips brushed against his flesh as she spoke, sending hot darts of pleasure racing from the point of contact all the way down to parts he’d best not be thinking about right now.

“Okay. Enough, Bobbi. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but it’s gone far enough.” He moved his arms back up to her shoulders and moved her away from him, using gentle force.

She kept her face angled down, and he used a thumb and forefinger to slant her chin up and meet her eyes. She possessed enough of her faculties to look embarrassed; a flush stained her delicate cheekbones and made her look somewhat feverish.

“What’s up, Runt?” She winced at the nickname, and he immediately regretted using it. Not the best timing—not when something was clearly eating at her.

“I’m such a fool.” Her voice was so low that he had to bend his head a few inches to catch the words.

“No, you’re not. Why would you say that? Did somebody say something to upset you?”

She raised a slender, slightly calloused hand to his cheek and stroked the flesh softly. He found the combination of soft and hard on his skin disturbing and unthinkingly dragged his face away from her gentle touch, leaving her small hand hovering in midair. Her eyes immediately filled with pain, and he felt like a complete ass for putting that look on her face. He didn’t know what was going on with her tonight, but he had no doubt that the amount of alcohol she had consumed would have her regretting her actions in the morning.

She dropped her hand down to her side, and he reached up to cradle her delicate face between both of his hands.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he murmured, and watched with a perplexed frown as her eyes filled with tears. Bobbi hardly ever cried; in fact he could count on one hand the number of times he had seen her cry over the last twenty years. He didn’t know how to respond to this. He watched as a single tear slid down her smooth cheek, until it collided with one of his thumbs and formed a tiny pool beneath the digit.

“I’m a fool,” she repeated, her tone numb.

“Bobbi, I . . .” Every thought fled from his mind when she went up onto her toes and firmly planted her soft, sweet lips on his mouth, catching him in midsentence. The next breath he inhaled was hers. It filled his lungs and he held it in for one long, possessive moment until he had no choice but to relinquish it back to her.

Oh my God!
It was the only coherent thought he had as he found himself taking control of the kiss that she had initiated, sweeping his tongue into the sweet, hot depths of her mouth, relishing the taste of her, the smell, the feel . . . God, she felt good—a small, perfect armful that he couldn’t seem to get close enough to. He moved one hand down to the small of her back, anchoring her to him, bending her backward in an attempt to get even closer.

Oh my God!

Every delectable inch of her was plastered to him from chest to thighs, and he wanted her even closer. Some distant part of his mind was making faintly alarmed noises, but most of his higher brain functions had short-circuited the moment her soft lips had touched his. Sure they’d exchanged kisses before, perfunctory pecks that were
nothing
like this. Where the hell had
this
come from?

She tasted like champagne—sweet and tart—and her kiss effervesced through his system, sending his nerve endings tingling with ebullient messages that were hard to ignore.

He lifted his mouth from her intoxicating lips for a second, needing air, but all he inhaled was Bobbi . . . the heady scent of vanilla and freesias. Why had he never known how good she smelled before now? he wondered absently before angling his mouth to take hers again.

She murmured his name, and despite the music and noise swirling around them, the fractured sound registered just as he reclaimed her lips, and it was as effective as being doused in ice water. He jerked his head back and shook it to clear his befuddled brain.

What the hell am I doing?

He stepped away from her a second after that thought rang through his mind, putting some desperately needed distance between his aroused body and hers. He was still too close to her for his liking—her every gasping breath threatening to bring her chest within touching distance of his ribcage—but the crowd made it difficult to move farther away from her.

She had her face tilted up toward his, her heavy-lidded eyes were liquid with longing, her every breath emerged on a hitched sob, and her skin had a flushed, dewy look that immediately betrayed her arousal. It was all he could do to prevent himself from reaching for her again. She was drunk, he reminded himself. He was the one who had to maintain control; he couldn’t take advantage of her. It was unthinkable—this was
Bobbi
! That thought immediately dampened his arousal and brought his body firmly back under his control.

He clung to that: Bobbi. It put things into jarring perspective. He didn’t know what the hell had just happened, but it had to have been a temporary aberration.

This was Bobbi.

He pushed memories of her as a small girl with a gap-toothed grin and pigtails into his brain, and then as an awkward preadolescent, a gawky teenager, and lastly a permanently disheveled young woman in overalls, with grease smeared on her face, and he immediately felt . . .
less
. Just less.

He forced one of his hands to reach for her elbow and ignored the residual tingling in his fingertips as he latched onto her silky skin. He dragged her to the side of the dance floor and looked around until he found an empty chair in a relatively quiet spot. He led her to it and urged her to sit down. She still looked a bit dazed and thankfully sat down without protest. He sank onto his haunches in front of her.

“Wait here,” he ordered, and she blinked up at him, looking totally out of it. “Bobbi, do you hear me? Do not move from this spot! I’ll be right back.”

She nodded. He got up and headed for a refreshment table on the opposite side of the room, intending to get her some water. He glanced back and nearly stumbled when she brought one of her hands to her mouth and traced the outline of her lips.

Could she still taste him?
He
could still taste
her.

He felt like his structured, well-organized world was on an express train to hell, and he needed to find the emergency brake immediately or his life would descend into absolute chaos.

Bobbi!
He reminded himself sternly before turning and continuing his progress to the refreshment table.

Gabe had kissed her!

Okay, she was just sober enough to remember that she had kissed him first, but he had kissed her back! He had definitely kissed her back. That hadn’t been her imagination. Had it? She could still feel the pressure of his warm, smooth lips on hers, the scrape of his just emerging stubble against her cheek. And she could taste the whiskey-tinged flavor of his tongue in her mouth.

But why had he left her here?

She accepted another glass—
flute
—of champagne from a handsome waiter and contemplated that question. He had left absolute ages ago. She stood up and swayed before moving in the direction she was sure he had gone. Maybe he was with that woman again. Rosalie. Was he kissing
her
now?

She stumbled and bumped into someone.

“Roberta?” She didn’t need to see the owner of that dark, accented voice to know to whom it belonged. She grinned up at him.

“Aaah, the birthday boy!”

“Are you okay?” Alessandro De Lucci asked in concern, and she squinted up at him. He was a handsome man, but his two noses made him look kind of freakish.

“You should have that seen to.” She waved her gl— flute at him and he frowned.

“What? You’re not making sense,
piccola
.”

“That second nose . . . where did it come from?”

“Aaah. Too much champagne for you, I think.” He grinned, snatching her half-full gla— flu—
whatever
, and latching an arm around her waist when the unexpected move unbalanced her. “Okay, I’ve got you,
piccola mia
. Let’s find my wife and get you put to bed.” Theresa and Sandro had offered rooms to some of their guests who lived farther away, hoping to eliminate any incidences of drunk driving.

“Okay. I
am
rather sleepy,” she told him.

“I’m sure you are,” he agreed.

“You’re much nicer than you used to be,” she informed him drowsily, and he chuckled.

“So I’ve been told.”