Leann wanted to host a fundraiser. Jambalaya sale, $12 a plate and a car wash with the students doing all the dirty work. Just a little something that would bring in sales and help fund her recital budge. Carl had scheduled me for a double shift that I couldn’t get out of so it was late, very late when I got back to my apartment. The fundraiser had long since finished but Leann was still there, barking orders at Tristian and Ransom as they returned tables back to the storage room next to my front door.

“Sorry, Aly,” Tristian had apologized, when he and Ransom blocked the path to my door with a long card table. “I’ll get Mom. Somebody put all the chairs in the way and we can’t get the table in. Let me go see what she wants us to do.”

“I can wait.” I’d been tired, hungry and to be honest, didn’t mind that Tristian ran off, leaving Ransom inside that tiny storage room holding one end of the table. “I can help you,” I’d told him, moving my head over the top of the table.

“I got it.”

Same tone that he’d been using since that horrible accident on the lake. It was deep and impassive, as though he’d been taken over by an android who’d offer the blandest, most evasive communication possible. That sound broke my heart.

Stuck with that large table and larger boy blocking my door, I sat on the steps with my purse swinging from my fingers, and looked up at the sky, unaccountably self-conscious with him so close to me.

But, I couldn’t take the silence or the feel of indifference that radiated from him. When someone is hurt, it’s human nature to want to help. And that night, Ransom’s silence had seemed like an unbearable wound.

The sky was dark and peppered around the few spindly clouds were four stars brighter than the rest, twinkling in a square.

“Pegasus,” I said, to fill up the silence.

A quick glance to see if he heard me and Ransom followed my nod to stare up at the sky. He didn’t say a thing.

“My grann told me once that Pegasus brought renewal wherever he ran. He was a mammoth, guarding the skies, giving the earth a new start, something to look forward to.”

When I didn’t hear even a low grunt of acknowledgement, I glanced over my shoulder to find Ransom watching me.

“Pegasus is charging above us,” I said, looking back up at the constellation.

It seemed like a minute, maybe two, before Ransom said anything. “Hydra is bigger, fiercer. Pegasus isn’t charging. He’s fleeing.”

Ransom Riley-Hale had swagger. It wasn’t something I noticed very often because, being honest here, nobody really gets the definition of “swagger” quite right. It wasn’t the way he carried himself or how the dip of his chin made me think no one could pull off flirting like Ransom. It wasn’t even how those black eyes of his sometimes looked right through you, like he saw people deeper, could claim to know the filthiest secrets you tried to keep from the world. It wasn’t any of those individual things that had my attention focused directly on him. It was everything—the skill it took to make the world think he was perfectly himself. The strength in his body, the power in a single look that could make any woman desperate to know everything about him and too cowardly to make the attempt.

His swagger was this undefinable way he had to take the challenges set in front of him and overcome them like the effort was nothing. But behind that boldness, the cool, confident man the world saw, there was someone else. Something darker. I’d seen a hint of it that night he’d barged into the studio calling me a liar. His anger had been real, a stinging bite that had shoved back any composure my introverted mind told me to put on display. He’d pissed me off with his shouting and put me into a rage when he called me a liar. No one, not even Ransom, could quell my temper when it had been stoked.

So that night, it was my anger, my irritation with myself at not perfecting the dance and his attitude that kept me from shying away from him. At his parents’ lake house, the first time we’d sung together, I didn’t have my anger pushing me to lash out. I went in utterly unprotected.

Keira was amazing, a determined woman who, in my mind, could tackle anything and usually overcome it. She was fierce, but then she’d have to be to endure a life on her own, raising a son when she’d barely been more than a kid herself.

She and Kona welcomed me, trusted me to look over their son, take care of their home and I felt humbled by their determination to make me comfortable. The woman even helped me with my voice lesson, gave me advice on stage presence and pitch and everything seemed normal to me then, easy. I liked Keira and Kona, respected how much they’d endured together and instantly fell in love with Koa when I first met him. The day should have been relaxed, being there, getting first rate advice from a Grammy winner. And then, he walked through the door, larger than life, engulfing the empty space between me behind that piano, and the path he blocked for an escape. There would be no running, not with him watching me the way he did. So, I shot for subtle, casual, hoping I could make myself small enough that he’d continue on not realizing I existed. But my wrong-note singing had caught Ransom’s eye.

It made him want to help me.

He’d played that guitar like it was a lover he’d forgotten he could touch. With every note, Ransom poured whatever he kept to himself, all the things he would not say to the world into each strum. He played with confidence, and with joy. I’d been powerless, scared, sure, but entirely powerless to keep from watching him. The deflection was there, but when he touched me, put his hands on my stomach, that mask began to crumble. He taught and I listened, with the eager need just to hear him play, for him to keep his hands on me.

I’d been so caught up in him, the way he sounded when he hummed that melody, the way his gaze focused on me, me of all people, like no one in the world could hear him but me, that I imagined he stared too long, his gaze lingering on my mouth.

He’d looked hungry, predatory, and I’d wanted to offer my entire body to fill him up. I’d settled for the voice lesson and the soft brush of his fingers against my arm while he played.

That almost kiss after the fundraiser? Yeah, that wasn’t a figment of my imagination. He’d brushed my lips, made me think impossible, desperate things. Make wishes I was convinced would never come true. Not with Ransom.

My fear, my awkward bumbling that I’d tried to hide from him since the day I met him, had sort of disappeared the more time we spent together. Usually, on the weekends, he came to visit his family and though it was my day off and I’d assured her I was completely fine, Keira insisted that I have Sunday lunch with them.

“Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches isn’t a meal, Aly,” Keira had told me when I feigned having a pantry full of groceries. “Besides,” she’d said, “Ransom can help you with your audition song.”

The woman wasn’t as slick as she thought she was, but she’d begun to feel more run down than normal, the preeclampsia diagnosis bothering her more than she let on and though I didn’t know if it was having a possible nap that made Keira insistent, I’d found myself spending Sundays at the lake house with Koa on my lap, telling his brah that I was his girlfriend and Ransom strumming his guitar, not telling me how badly my singing voice sucked.

I kinda fell in love with all of them.

Well. Maybe not Ransom. Not yet.

Sunday afternoons we’d practice for my upcoming audition and Leann had managed to sweet talk Ransom into three nights a week at the studio helping me work on the Kizomba number. Tommy would be back in a couple of weeks and when he returned, there would be a smooth transition from one partner to another.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

That thought brought me back to my Skype chat with Tommy, the night that Ransom had been a no-show.

My ex’s stupid flirting had only put me in foul mood and that mood stayed put the more he tried flexing in his webcam.

Tommy Diez was a tall, beautiful man I’d somehow entangled myself with at seventeen when Leann held a mini-camp and Tommy picked me out of a crowd of eager, flirty girls to help him demonstrate routines. He was a professional, spending summers touring with pop stars and falls teaching a few classes at CPU for the freshman dance students. He was a nice guy, funny, very talented. He’d been a horrible boyfriend.

I hadn’t bought his weak attempts at flirting, had even laughed at those attempts because they were so weak. Tommy’s charm had worn thin with me by the time I turned eighteen, but still I allowed him to distract me from my silent stalking of Ransom.

“You still pining over that linebacker?” he’d asked, sitting back in his chair with a half empty bottle of Corona in his hand.

“You still chasing everything that wiggles right?”

“Touché.”

That obnoxious jerk got under my skin, and then Ransom flaked out on me and didn’t explain where he’d been until two days later when Keira watched us as he sang in front of the piano.

“I got caught up,” Ransom had lamely explained and I’d caught the distant attitude from him immediately.

“Too caught up to let me know?”

Ransom had snapped his gaze to mine, frowning like he wanted to yell at me, but then Koa climbed onto my lap and that attitude disappeared. “I’m sorry, Aly. I won’t miss another one.” And he hadn’t, not for a couple of weeks, but there was something missing from him now. He didn’t smile quite like he had that day he walked me to the Armada from the locker room and there had been no blissfully close calls of him touching me, looking at me like he had the night of the booster fundraiser. Seriously, that shit had me reeling for a week afterward.

There were fleeting moments, yeah, but not nearly enough for me. Still, the sparse moments when Ransom played the guitar or piano kept me feeling that maybe there was more to this than my own one-sided infatuation.

A touch of his arm against mine when he played, his fingers pushing up my chin while I sang so my “vocal chords would stretch,” that one I doubted was real. Even the strength of Ransom’s partnering as we practiced the Kizomba late into the night when the studio was dark and empty. All those small moments collected in my mind, adding into something that I wasn’t sure how to define. Ransom was a good person, very sweet, if not a little sad and when he looked at you, well. You damn well knew it.

I guess that was the problem. With him, with this new distance, I didn’t know what to make of the looks he gave me.

Like tonight, the way he’d been watching me as I danced—I’d catch him in the mirror, gaze on my neck when I bent into a dip, on my cleavage when I put my cheek against his chest, and it had seemed like something Ransom did unconsciously.

Of course, that was probably wishful thinking. I’d managed to keep distant, to not put too much thought into the way he watched me and rely on the detached attitude that had kept me protected from the world my whole life.

Now, with the music pulsing from the triple timed beats and Ransom using that natural swagger to amble toward me, I didn’t think my distance would be useful. There had been no argument to make me forget to keep him at arm’s length. There was no safeguard of me singing to distract from his touch or those long, focused looks I imagined him giving me.

There was only the music, that sultry beat of the drums and the buzz of us moving together as we practiced Kizomba. For an hour we’d moved around each other, touching, breaths hot and fanning against each other, fine tuning even the smallest movements, the sultriest touches, until my heartbeat was frantic and the distraction of stance or form could not lessen the feel of Ransom’s large arms around me or what that did to my body.

“That slide, one more time?” he asked and I answered with a nod, between deep gulps of water. Ransom clicked the stereo remote and that same music started again. He sauntered toward me with that easy swagger. His dark jeans hung low on his hips and his white t-shirt stuck to his wide chest where dots of sweat had formed. Before he took my hand or held me tight against his chest, Ransom flung his Kahuku Red Raiders ball cap across the room and his hair fell against his forehead.

My fingers itched to push that hair back.

We started again, slower than we had before and Ransom half stepped to the right, a small dip of his knee, setting up the step as I kicked my left foot behind me, putting all my weight on the ball of my right foot and my chest against Ransom’s while he moved us in a circle. My gaze lifted in small, deliberate glances until they stopped at his cheek, then slipped up once more to meet his focused stare. I wanted to know what he thought, wondered if what I felt humming between us was something my brain and lonesome libido invented.

On the downbeat, we straightened and began the work of our hips, rolling, him leaning into me so close, the outline of his jeans button dug into my stomach. This song was faster, the beat still seductive, still a temptation, and our bodies moved in synch, in perfect formation that only a few notes from Leann had elicited before she left us on our own. We were synchronicity, at least with the dance.

“Ready?” he asked but the way the word came out, that soft, almost whisper of his husky voice had me thinking if perhaps the question held a hidden meaning behind it. Ready for him? Not remotely. Ready to try that dip? Sure. And with my nod, Ransom continued the lead.

I extended one leg, moving it flush against his thigh. This had been our third attempt and by now I should have been used to how those thick muscles felt against my bare leg. I wasn’t. But I closed myself off, resting my center right on his thigh and bent my other leg with the front of my foot resting against his knee as Ransom moved his leg out to the side, taking the weight of my body with him. Third time was the charm and it worked, the full rotation of the slide happened quickly, easy, his effortless control like that of a professional. He moved us like I weighed nothing at all, like he knew my body and how to move it.

The step completed, I shot my attention to his gaze, letting a quick smile slip and Ransom stopped moving.

When he stayed perfectly still, I tilted my head, wondering what had put a damper on our small accomplishment. “What? I thought that was good.”

“It was.” That stare was steady, focused and I wasn’t sure what I’d done to make him lose his concentration.

“Ransom.” He still had my hand, kept his palm flat against my back and I pulled in closer, worried that something I’d done had pissed him off. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head, barely a movement at all, and the corner of his mouth curved. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile.”

Warmth rose up my neck and I knew I was blushing, likely looking like an idiot as I stood there mumbling with his arms still around me. “Oh.” I didn’t try to pull away from him. “Modi, I…I’m sorry.” As habit, I glanced down, a little embarrassed by his attention, but then pulled my gaze away from our clutched fingers to look back up at him. “I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“It’s pretty,” he said, sounding astounded.

“What is?”

“That smile.” I held my breath when Ransom reached out and ran his thumb under my bottom lip. “You should show it off more.”

I could be completely wrong, but I think that was Ransom Riley-Hale flirting with me.

I was wrong, right?

Beautiful men didn’t typically hit on me. Certainly not the ones I wanted. Certainly, not this one and so I exhaled, stepping out of his arms to grab the stereo remote. The tiny controller fit in the palm of my hand and I had to shift through the tracks to get to the song I wanted. The entire time he watched me. I felt the heaviness of his stare on the back of my ankles, moving up my calves, my thighs, lingering on my ass and when that sensation did not go away, I glanced at Ransom in the mirror, surprised when it took him a second to return my gaze. He stared at me unashamed, like he didn’t have an excuse for openly gawking at me.

“Um, one more time? Last one?”

His only response was the drop of his chin, so subtle I wasn’t sure if he’d moved it at all. This time when he held me, his grip was tighter, felt more intimate and, God help me, that stare was intense, like he couldn’t focus on anything but my eyes.

The mirrors bounced beats and thumps around the room and I matched his stare, my body curling against his, matching the rhythm of the music and the steadily speeding of my pulse.

Bump, bump, bump of the song and on each beat, our centers came together, touching, flirts of our hips meeting, the ridges of his stomach when his shirt lifted, touching against my midriff, the soft, thick hair above his waistband scratching against my skin. We hadn’t moved our eyes and he came closer, leaned in tighter so that his forehead met mine and his hand lowered on my back, stopping just below my waist to guide me.

The air felt heavy, thick, like walking through a club with too many dancers on the floor and dry ice clotting the air you try to breathe. I should have backed away. I knew that this had moved beyond something I could explain as being caught by the music or the seduction of the dance. But his breath smelled sweet, like something delicious I hadn’t tasted in a long time and the weight of his arms, the liquid heat pouring from his skin onto mine, kept me frozen, made me answer his body with each brush of our hips meeting over and over again.

He gripped my hips and moved them harder, matching the movement with a roll that was more than a graze, sweeter than a grind. And those fingers that had touched me so surely at Summerland’s, those wide knuckles that had already brought me to orgasm once before, gripped down, more than control, then, eager, like insistence.

I closed my eyes, slowing my movements when I felt the familiar outline of his dick, hard and heavy against my stomach. The first time that had happened, my surprise, then flippant excuse to myself about Ransom being a guy and things like that happened to guys when they try a dance like this, had caught me off guard. Now the surprise felt more like some affirmation I knew I didn’t really need.

He hadn’t stopped dancing, still controlled both our movements, and I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to fight back the buzz tickling my clit and the sweet, aching brush of my hardened nipples against his damp shirt.

“Aly.”

My name from that low whispered voice was a warning. I knew it without having to open my eyes. But I was a stubborn woman and sometimes I didn’t listen to warnings even when I recognized them. Just then, I knew that when I opened my eyes and returned that intense stare, I’d be accepting an invitation I’d coveted but had always been too afraid to accept.

One inhale and I blinked, given no time to refuse before Ransom took my face in his hands and brushed his mouth over mine. And then…we lost our minds.

I don’t remember opening my mouth. I don’t remember my fingers threading in his hair. I don’t remember making that satisfied, small noise that was all triumph. I only know that Ransom’s mouth was wider than mine, that his tongue was warm and tasted like something that was either very sinful or obnoxiously fattening.

He made music with his body, demanding that I surrender. His kissed me like someone who always reached for something to hold onto and only ever got something that made him spin further out of control.

It was Ransom that pulled me against the mirrored wall. Ransom who moved his hips into mine so that my thigh squeaked against the glass. It was Ransom that gripped my ass and moved his hand up my ribs to cup my breast under his greedy, desperate hand.

“Aly,” he breathed again, the word winded and frantic before he went in for more, moving my face with his fingers, guiding my chin.

I wanted all of this. I wanted him and the taste of his tongue, the call of his moans louder than the music that continued to play, unheeded. I’d wanted it for a very long time, and yet, and yet…. I couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t all there. He was pretending again, at least some part of him, like he had one night at his parents’ home when we sat around the table eating Chinese take-out. His smile hadn’t seemed authentic to me then. His reassurances to his folks that he felt wonderful, that his classes were great and practice was exhausting but kept him energized, came out flat and forced.

I waited tables at a diner in the city that stayed open twenty-four hours. I saw people at their most honest. Sometimes I’d see them at breakfast, preparing for their day and then again when their nights have led them somewhere they’d never admit to going. I knew what it was to pretend that your world isn’t crumbling all while you dust the bits of grime from your shoulders. Ransom had been like that on that night, with his parents and now, though he went after my mouth like he wanted to own it, I felt that small measure of hesitation from his touch. He wasn’t giving me everything he had. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, someone else held a piece of him that she wouldn’t let go of.

But I’d gladly take what I could get.

The squeak of my skin against the glass got louder when Ransom lifted me up and I arched against his mouth as he moved his lips down my neck. He took a breath, one that I jumped on and returned the same attention he’d just given me, letting my teeth scrape against his ear, my tongue in hollow of his throat.

“Stop…shit, Aly…wait.”

This time his voice wasn’t awed or whispered. His words came out clear, more desperate than the way he’d kissed me, and when I saw Ransom’s eyes squeezed shut, I couldn’t keep my hands from touching his face, wanting to wipe that pained frown off his face.

“Ransom. Souple. Silans now. It’s fine.”

But he shook his head and pulled my hand away from his face, squeezing it once before he set my feet back on the floor.

For a minute, I thought he’d laugh, tease us both for acting like horny teenagers. But Ransom only breathed as though he needed to regulate his pulse and he rested his sweaty forehead against mine. “I’m sorry,” he said, head still down and his thumb rubbing along my cheek. “God, I’m sorry, Aly. I shouldn’t have touched you.”

I couldn’t stop him, didn’t have a chance to tell him I’d wanted his kiss, I’d wanted him for far longer than he’d known who I was. Before I had a chance to say anything, Ransom left the studio in a rush, pulling back on the door so hard that it bounced against the wall. He was in his car and squealing out of the parking lot before I made it to the front entrance.

And it wasn’t until I saw his taillights disappear down the empty street that I thought about calling him, about dismissing what had happened as nothing more than getting carried away by the moment.

“Aly?” Leann called from the back of the studio, and I started at the sound of her voice, barely glancing over my shoulder when she joined me by the door. “What’s going on?”

I growled, kicking my foot against the molding. “I have no idea, Leann. I have no idea.”