Miri arched an eyebrow when Lily returned to claim her drink. “That was fast.”

“Yeah, I’ll say.” Lily filled her in on the overheard conversation, then chugged the last of her mojito.

Miri rolled her eyes. “What a tool. Good thing you heard before you tossed yourself at him.”

“Right?” Lily set her glass on the bar, considered whether she wanted another drink. “I wouldn’t want to bore him to death. I’d rather dance with that grabby old bastard at Club Domino. At least he didn’t think he was too good for me.”

“And he wasn’t—” Miri’s eyes narrowed, then widened in something resembling horror as her gaze shifted over Lily’s shoulder.

Lily opened her mouth to say something, but cut herself off as she heard a man loudly and deliberately clearing his throat directly behind her.

Oh, no, she thought, and turned to find—no surprise—Superman-Handsome himself, standing there.

Mortified again, she felt an almost overpowering urge to look away, at the floor, at the dancers—anywhere—but she’d be damned if she was going to cower like a mouse in front of this guy, no matter how much of a hottie he was, or how much he might have overheard.

He smiled, and it gave her actual goosebumps. She could feel the skin on her arms tingling. What he lacked in personality, he more than made up for in sex appeal and dimples.

“Want to dance?” he asked.

She barely heard him over the music and the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. He really was unbelievably good-looking. Up close, his eyes were a brilliant sapphire blue, an intense color she would have assumed was Photoshopped if she’d seen it in the eyes of a magazine model. Maybe they were contacts? The stubble on his chin was the exact right length to rasp along the sensitive skin of a woman’s neck and his even, white smile made her wonder what it would feel like to have those teeth nibbling along the same area.

Oh, my God, she thought. Stop thinking about him nibbling you!

His shoulders were every bit as impressive as she’d thought on first glance—broad and strong-looking and tapered to a trim waist. His T-shirt was skin tight; she could easily tell there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him, which made her a little too aware of her own not-trim waist. She tugged at the hem of her blouse, self-conscious, ready to say yes simply because no guy who looked like that had ever asked her to dance before.

Thinking about that pissed her off all over again. “No, thank you,” she said. “I don’t want to dance with you.”

Oh my God, she thought. Rude. But true. Story of my life.

Her therapist, Dr. Nussbaum, called it a neurosis. Miri called it a quirk. Whatever one called it, it amounted to the same thing: like George Washington with the cherry tree, Lily could not tell a lie. It made her sweaty and queasy and miserable, and the truth always came tripping off her tongue anyway, so these days she didn’t even bother to try. She could avoid a question—and poor Miri had long since learned never to ask directly how her ass looked in a dress unless she wanted an honest answer—but Lily simply could not tell a lie.

Superman-Handsome cocked his head at her and gave her a mild look of surprise, as though she’d turned him down politely instead of sticking her foot in her stupid truth-telling mouth. “I thought maybe that was why you came over to my side of the bar,” he said, pointing vaguely back in the direction he’d come.

She felt a little vindicated that he looked as off-balance as she felt. “I changed my mind.”

“Come on.” He reached out and took her hand. “One dance?”

It was the oddest thing … the second he touched her, every intention she’d had of repeating her refusal just drained away. She turned to look at Miri and opened her mouth, but no words came out. Miri shrugged, then smiled and nudged her towards the dance floor.

Superman-Handsome shifted his hand to her upper arm and drew her onto the dance floor, where they were quickly lost in a sea of dancing bodies.

For a moment, Lily felt awkward about her own limited dancing abilities—even if Miri was right that she was being too self-deprecating, the fact remained she wasn’t much of a dancer. But then he moved in close and slid his arm around her, placing his hand firmly on the small of her back and pulling her just close enough to smell him and feel the heat of his body, but not quite close enough to be indecent.

Then he started to move … and it was so far beyond indecent Lily didn’t have a word for it. She didn’t really have any words for anything, because all the blood drained out of her head and rushed to answer the summons his body was sending out. He had some serious moves; she forgot to be self-conscious and let him fit her along the length of his body and move her however he wanted, losing herself in the music and the heat and the vibe that rolled off him like pure power. Somehow, her normal approach to dancing—just try not to move too much, and don’t show off—fell completely away as she followed his lead.

Turns out I don’t do half-bad … with the right partner, she thought distractedly.

He tilted his head down and put his mouth entirely too close to her ear. “What’s your name?” he asked, his lips brushing against her.

She shivered, then shook it off. “Lily.”

“Nice.” His lips touched her again, this time just in front of her ear, where she was incredibly sensitive. “I’m Gabriel.”

She had been sort of amused thinking of him as Superman-handsome, but Gabriel was nice, too.

“Do you like the club?” he asked, moving against her in a way that had her brain fuzzing over and her nerves sizzling.

This guy was some kind of whack-job. Women bored him—until he met one who told him no, then he went after her with guns blazing.

No, wait, she thought. That’s not a whack-job. That’s pretty typical.

And the worst part was, if she kept dancing with him, he was going to get what he wanted. Because every time his lips brushed along her ear, it roused something primal in her and she felt ready to rub herself against him like a cat in heat. What was going on? This wasn’t like her. She didn’t grind herself on perfect strangers—even if they were, literally, perfect.

“It’s nice,” she said. “Loud, but I like it.”

“I like it loud, too.” He was smiling again, and her stomach did a little somersault when she saw the look in his eye.

Is that an innuendo? she thought, and smiled nervously. “Do you?”

“The louder the better.” That hand on her back pulled her in closer, fit her hips against his like puzzle pieces. Her nerve endings sat up and sang the Hallelujah Chorus.

What the hell is wrong with me? She shook her head, trying to clear it. It felt like her brain was full of cotton, and every molecule of her yearned to wrap around him.

It was confusing and disorienting, but more than that, it was pissing her off. That must have been one hell of a mojito.

The tempo of the music changed. It wasn’t much of a change—dance music was dance music was dance music, in her experience—but enough that she felt she’d fulfilled any obligation she had to dance. Time for a graceful exit.

She took a deliberate step back, out of his arms. “Well, you’re in luck,” she said, raising her voice to be heard despite the distance between them, “because it’s awfully loud in here. I actually think I’m going to head home; I’m getting a bit of a headache.”

He looked at her with the same look as before, like she was speaking a foreign language. “You’re … leaving?” he asked, moving a step closer.

“I believe I am, yes,” she said, moving a matching step back, nearly tripping over another dancer. He leaned forward to help her, but she practically jumped to get away from him. Better to keep her nerve endings to herself, all things considered. She turned and hurried back to the bar, and Miri, though she could sense him following her.

“Hey—” Miri began, but Lily cut her off.

“I’m going home,” she said shortly.

Miri raised an eyebrow, but she said nothing.

Gabriel spoke from behind Lily. “Let me get you a cab,” he said.

“I can get my own cab,” Lily said, not looking back at him as she practically shoved Miri off her barstool.

“Come back another night,” he said, stepping closer. “I want to see you again.”

“Maybe,” Lily said noncommittally as she pushed Miri in front of her, towards the door.

He reached out and stopped her with a hand on her arm; with his other hand, he grasped her by the chin, tilted her head up so she had no choice but to look directly into those improbably blue eyes. “Tell me you will,” he said.

She nodded, struck suddenly dumb. He leaned down as though he were going to kiss her—Lord, how she wanted him to kiss her!—and brushed his lips along her jawline. Her whole body shuddered, and she felt him smile. It was an odd, grim little smile.

Then he turned and headed away through the crowd; within moments, he was gone.

Miri stared at Lily with her mouth open. “What was that?”

“I have no idea,” Lily said. “Let’s get out of here.”