Even the sound of his voice right behind her ear sent shivers traveling through her body. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d envisioned just a minute before. But Elena wasn’t a quitter. Never had been, and never would be. This was a battle she would most certainly win.
“Are you speaking to me?” She turned around slowly, her eyelids lowered just the slightest bit, her lips in a perfect pout.
A femme fatale was so not like her. But anyone could learn if they tried hard enough.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked.
“I don’t know you so isn’t it quite bold of you to ask?” she quickly responded before licking her bottom lip so his eyes were drawn there.
“We’ll get to know each other while we dance,” he said, holding out his hand.
“I don’t think so,” she said, leaning back against the high table next to her.
His eyes narrowed and something almost predatory leapt into them before he next spoke. “I don’t play games.” With that said, he moved forward, invading her personal space. She wanted to take a step back — all she could do now was breathe his scent — but a seductress would never do that, so she thrust her chin out and moved an inch closer to him.
“Neither do I,” she practically purred, hating herself just the tiniest bit for doing it.
“Good. Because I would like to dance with you,” he said before grinning. “And then I’d like to take you home.”
Elena was too stunned for a moment to respond. She’d expected boldness from him after her last encounter, but she hadn’t expected him to be this upfront. What she wanted to do was slap him across his smug face. She barely restrained herself from doing just that.
“Well, that was forward,” she said with a tinkling laugh. “And what makes you think for even a moment that I’m the type of girl who would take you up on an offer like that?”
“We made a connection, even in a room full of other people. Don’t tell me that you didn’t feel it.”
“Oh, believe me, I felt it,” she said, lifting her hand and tracing a perfectly manicured fingernail down his arm. “But I have some standards, sad to say. Here’s one of them — I don’t go home with strangers in the night, particularly ones I meet in a bar.”
“And I told you that I don’t play games,” he said, moving yet another inch closer. Her breasts were brushing against his impressively hard chest.
A shudder rushed through her and she knew she was out of her league. She thought for a moment of crying mercy and bailing out on this impromptu mission, but then he lifted his eyebrow just the way he had the last time he’d rejected her, and she knew she wasn’t going anywhere. But she knew something about gamesmanship. In fact, she had a degree in it.
“Fine. Walk away, then,” she told him with a careless shrug.
She turned back to the table and lifted her drink. If he called her bluff and left, then good riddance, but everything inside her was saying that he wasn’t going anywhere.
When he brushed up against her back, his hands closing over her shoulders, she knew she had him, hook, line, and sinker. She’d never felt anything quite like this. The power of knowing she had him.
“You’re making me break my rules,” he said, his breath whispering across her ear before he turned her around to face him again. “Tell me your name.” At least he’d asked her name this time. That was an improvement.
“Do you always talk as if you’re commanding people?”
“I can be laid back. But not quite yet. And when I want something, I go for it. Tell me your name.”
She smiled, this time a real smile, and his eyes dilated, making the flutters in her stomach take flight. “You tell me your name first,” she said, her voice just a little too breathless, and she didn’t need any acting skills to achieve that effect just now.
“Tyler.” He didn’t add anything. He just waited.
“Elena,” she finally said. There was no recognition in his eyes. Of course, he’d always called her Lanie when they were younger. But why would she think for even a moment that he would remember her? She was just one more castoff in his life, one of a long line of castoffs.
“Got a last name, Elena?” he said after a few moments of silence.
“My last name has to be earned,” she told him.
It took a moment, but then his face was transformed. His lips turned up first in a wide smile, and then he laughed. A deep-in-the-gut happy laughter that had her own lips turning up.
“I think I could like you, Elena. Let me buy you a drink,” he said. Without waiting for a yes or a no, he held up a hand, and a waitress came over.
“I guarantee that you’ll like me, Tyler.”
“I guess I’m going to have to break another one of my rules, then,” he said as he boxed her in even further.
She waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “And what rule is that, Tyler?”
The smoldering look he sent her had her entire body responding to the man, fully against her will. Then he leaned forward as if he were about to impart a great secret.
“Let the games begin.”
He said no more, and Elena could almost hear the dinging of a bell as round one got underway.
“I thought you said that you didn’t play games.”
“As I said, I’m breaking one of my rules. And all in your honor.”
Ah. So he was telling her he was more than ready to play with her.
“Yes, Tyler, let the games begin.”
Chapter Five