I hadn't danced in a while. When the boss asked me to join one of his shindigs, usually I was just to stay on the sidelines, though he didn’t give me any limits to what I was supposed to do. But I’d learned to dance long before, and it was like riding a bike for me; I hadn’t forgotten, no matter how long it had been.

Elda was impressed, I could tell. When I first pulled her to the dance floor, she had that mutinous look on her face, as if she would try to run away if she got the chance. I thought it was funny. But I didn’t allow her the opportunity, and we were dancing, her eyes not meeting mine, even though she must have felt the force of my stare. But then her eyes turned up to mine, opened a little wider, her lips parted, like before when I surprised her, getting to her before she could find some other dance partner.

I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn't laugh at how surprised she was, arranging my expression into one of mock hurt.

"Why, Elda," I murmured, teasing. "Why do you look so surprised? You're hurting my feelings."

She blinked, and a light flush painted her cheeks. "Well, can I help it? You don’t seem like the type to sit for hours in a dancing class. To be honest, I suffered through them in my younger years but only because I was forced to."

She was entirely serious. I couldn’t help laughing. "It's not that bad. Though I will admit, I was bribed into taking lessons."

She looked cautiously interested. "What could possibly make you do anything you don’t want to do? I can't think its money."

There were a lot of things, one of those things was even the reason why I worked for Greco. Once upon a time I used to be respectable—if not quite a respectable citizen—before I turned into a mafia boss's pet. It wasn’t exactly my dream job; I didn’t think it could be anyone's unless they were born a psycho.

I didn’t let her see any of that or the turmoil my emotions had suddenly been rolled into, keeping a teasing smile on my face.

"I was told it was a good way to get girls," I told her honestly, shrugging. "Not that I ever needed help in that department, but it was something I could use to impress women. What guy could resist that?"

"A smart one?"

I laughed, having to work to keep it quiet. "Elda, I am insulted! Are you implying I'm not smart?" My smirk sharpened despite my teasing tone. I didn't want her to misunderstand.

By the way, she pursed her lips, her eyes narrowing on me, I didn’t think that would be a problem.

"I think you're smart, Luke. Very smart in fact, too much so for both your good and mine."

Her tone matched mine, but my own eyes narrowed at the words. I held her tighter in my arms. She let out a soft gasp as our chests met and pressed a little closer, but I didn’t let it distract me.

"Enough about me. I'm just as curious about you, if not more so, Elda."

Caution crossed her face, and she settled her expression into a calm smile, her eyes giving nothing away.

"There really isn’t anything interesting about me, Luke. I'm nothing but an average girl."

I snorted. "Average girls don’t look like you do, or appear at these kinds of parties. Try another one."

"I don’t know what you're talking about," she said breezily.

I tightened my arm for a moment before relaxing again, but it was still tight. We practically had matching faces by this point, pleasant with just a hint of a smile. To anyone looking, we were just dancing and having a boring conversation while trying to look like we were paying attention to the other.

"How about we start on why you're here when I know you're not on the guest list."

She let her eyes widen. "There was a guest list? But I didn’t see anything at the door."

"Not at the door here, no. But you see, Elda, this is an island. A very private, very heavily secured island, no matter how lax the security looks with all these guests here. To get here, you must pass by the port, the only place where you'll find a boat to get you across. You don’t even get that unless you were vetted beforehand."

I paused, waiting for her to add something. She just watched me with that fake pleasant face. I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or annoyed.

"It's not exactly an easy party to crash. I don’t know why you would go to such trouble, but I would really like to know why, please."

"But Luke, I don’t know of this guest list you speak of. I got news about this party from a friend, who also happens to be a friend of the family, and I decided to attend. I got on a boat at the port just like everyone else, I had absolutely no problem. And we were led up from where we docked to the entrance, and we all just walked inside."

"There's a guest list, Elda. I saw it."

Technically, I'd only perused it because I wasn’t stationed at the door. No one was, really, but for a couple of men to guard the open doors into the foyer, look over the people going inside and close them once the last of the boats had been brought in.

But my memory was impeccable, and there weren’t so many names on the list that I would forget one. Certainly, not a name as unique as Elda Abba—it wasn’t exactly an everyday name, many would consider it old-fashioned, if not just odd, not even in a pretentious crowd like the one I found myself in.

"Fine, I'm not on the guest list," she admitted. "By the time I heard about the party, there wasn’t time to get an invitation. But it was such a good opportunity and I was free…"

"So, you were in the neighborhood and you dropped by?" I didn’t hold back on the skepticism, or the suspicion.

"Really, Luke, you make it sound like a crime. A friend asked me to this party and I said yes. I didn’t realize until afterward that I needed an invite, and by then it was too late to get one."

"It kind of is a crime," I pointed out. "It's not quite breaking and entering, but being here without permission is the same as trespassing."

Not that the boss would ever go to the cops for something like that. It would be kind of hilarious if he did. I didn’t think there was a precinct in the US that didn’t have someone aware of who he was. His activities weren’t exactly hidden, there was just enough never proof to get him locked up.

Her smile sharpened, just a little, but I was looking for something, and I caught it. I waited for her to say something, whatever other excuse she could come up. But she said nothing.

"Elda," I began, making my tone serious. "Why are you on this island?"

"I don’t know what you're talking about."

"Don’t play dumb." I changed tactics. "What's the name of the friend that invited you along?"

"I hardly think it's any of your business. They didn’t make it, anyway, and because they already had an invitation… something came up and my friend was unable to make it, so I borrowed it."

"Is this friend a woman?"

"Why is that important?"

"I can imagine you walking in here under some woman's name easier than a man."

The smiled widened. "Don’t you know? It's not so uncommon to find a woman with a name predominantly considered masculine. It's all the rage nowadays, or so I hear. Pity, my mom didn’t get behind the trend."

"Your name is pretty," I said honestly, and added, "and very unique. I can count on one hand exactly how many Eldas I've heard of, and I would have four fingers left. If your name was on the guest list, I would have seen it. But it wasn’t," I said pointedly.

She looked amused. "Do you realize you have an accent?"

I rolled my eyes, spoke dismissively, "So do you."

It was distinctly Italian, hard to miss, but then I'd found myself around it a lot in the past few years.

She ignored me. "I didn’t notice it before because I was… distracted. But hearing you talk so much, this close, I think I can hear it."

I gave her an indulgent look. I worked hard to get rid of my accent, long before I left home and got recruited into the army. Though I didn’t properly refine it until later. After I left, I learned a lot of different accents because I moved around a lot before I thought it was okay to settle.

"Your accent, is it Irish?"

I knew it was a distraction tactic, but it worked, my face going blank with surprise and caution. She, of course, took it as my confirmation, her lips curving up in a smirk.

"So, I did read you right. It's incredibly faint, but I seem to be paying you extra special attention tonight, Luke Bable."

I clenched my jaw, feeling a little disturbed. The surname Bable wasn’t exactly common, but it wasn’t quite so obscure someone wouldn’t have come across it, no matter how slim the chance. She could have made a guess and had the possibility of getting it right. If she'd taken the cue from my name, though, she would just have said British. Singling out that my accent, no matter how faint, as Irish was a little too specific for my taste.

Still, she could have been taking a shot in the dark, in which case, I'd essentially shot myself in my own foot by reacting to it. But no one had associated me with the country since I left it, and I was ashamed at how shaken it left me. And she'd said it with such confidence, I'd had no reason to assume she was bluffing.

With how I reacted, I might as well have shouted the answer in her face.

It was entirely possible the accent was still with me, but I never let it out. I was entirely too relaxed and not on my guard around this woman, or as she'd said earlier of me, she was just too sharp for both her good and mine.

I lost my composure, and with it, my patience.

"What are you doing crashing a wedding and looking like you belong here?" I asked, bluntly.

If it were just a normal party, she could have bluffed her way out of it, but she was certainly not invited as only family and friends of the family were in attendance. Which meant she must have sneaked in somehow.

The kind of people that did that sort of thing, were people like me. People with something to do—that was not legal—in a place that they were not invited. That would, potentially, leave something lost or someone harmed.

I narrowed my eyes, holding her tighter again, and I congratulated myself for not letting her body distract me. Instead, I felt the firmness of it against my own, remembered what her legs felt like under my palms beyond the soft skin. Her body was toned and though that wasn’t so suspicious, a lot of women exercised, it got me to thinking.

And that was when she ruined whatever serious atmosphere I'd been building, leaning her body fully into mine until I held most of her weight, her face coming too close to mine. I was too easily distracted by her, her scent alone shorting out my brain functions and reminding me of the position I'd literally had her in not an hour ago. A position I wanted to have her in again—any position would do for me, really.

"Come one, Luke. Aren’t you getting to be just a little too curious?"

"Curious about what," I muttered, trying to talk myself into arranging my thoughts into something appropriate.

She got even closer, though it seemed impossible at this point; I didn’t think there was even room for air to pass between us. Her hands moved from my shoulder blade, her arms wrapping around my neck as her lips moved to my throat.

"Ask me, Luke," she whispered softly against my skin, making me shiver.

"Ask what?"

I could feel her lips curve into a smile against my neck. Her arms blocking her movements from the other dancers, because she parted her lips against my skin, lightly sucking at my throat. I jumped a little, almost breaking us out of rhythm and bumping us into another couple, but I saved it with another spin. I only had the barest attention to our surroundings; she was taking over all my senses.

"You want to know what I'm doing at the wedding, right?"

Her arms readjusted as she moved her mouth higher, her lips wrapping around my earlobe, nipping a little with her teeth and licking away the light sting. My body shivered.

"I could show you if you wanted."

I must have been more distracted than I thought, it took me way too long to realize that she was, essentially, flirting with me.

It was working.