Page 79 of Boss of the Year

“Some of it was,” Lucas continued. “I was sent to tell you where he’d gone. But he didn’t ask you to dance, Marie. And he didn’t ask me to kiss you, either.”

His meaning washed through me like a wave. “Lucas?—”

We had stopped moving, though the music carried on around us. Couples swept past us in elegant lines, laughter and diplomacy floating just beneath the tunes. But Lucas didn’t let go.

His gaze fixed me in place as securely as his hands had held me this morning, quiet and consuming, as if the noise and silk and glitter around us didn’t exist. As if this were a moment he intended to memorize and undo in the same breath.

Maybe it was the wine or the whiskey being imbibed freely throughout the crowd, though neither of us had had a drop.Maybe it was the music that seemed to have infected the whole place with romance. But no one seemed to care as Lucas pulled me too close for polite company, close enough that I could feel the hard lines of his body through my taffeta and the long line of his thigh pressing through my skirt.

The hand at my back was bookended us together while his other slipped between us so he could brush his thumb over my bottom lip, then the top, tracing their shapes all the way around.

“So beautiful,” he murmured. “So very sweet.”

I sucked in a breath. His eyes dilated when I tucked my bottom lip between my teeth.

“That’s dangerous,” he warned with a slight growl.

Immediately, I released my lip with a light pop. It only made him growl a little louder.

“I’d like another taste,” he rumbled as he leaned down. “If you’re willing.”

I think I nodded. Maybe. Honestly, I wasn’t sure.

All I knew was that his head dipped, and the world narrowed to the space between his mouth and mine. His breath seared my lips.

I wasn’t breathing at all.

The song ended, and my phone buzzed in the clutch hanging from my wrist, interrupting the spell. We broke apart like teenagers caught behind the bleachers, not mature adults dancing in the middle of a party.

“Lucas—” I started.

“You should check that.” His voice was hoarse as he pulled at his collar.

With shaking hands, I fumbled for my phone to see Daniel’s name.

Regret flashed across Lucas’s face before he assumed the stoic expression I was coming to learn was a mask. People saidLucas Lyons didn’t have a heart. But I suspected he felt more deeply than most.

“Take it. I have to talk to some people anyway.”

“But I thought you said you wouldn’t leave?—”

I didn’t get to finish my sentence before he was weaving through the crowd.

I sighed and stepped away from the dance floor before I answered the call. “Daniel?”

“Marie!” Daniel’s voice was warm and big, filled with everything I hadn’t seen in Lucas’s eyes. “How’s it going, honey? Is my brother working you to the bone?”

“It’s…no, of course he’s not.” I glanced around the opulent party, seeing that Lucas had just asked another woman to dance. She was a very attractive woman with hair the color of gold rippling down her back.

I turned on my heel and walked out of the tent. My face burned, and for some reason, my chest felt like it was about to explode.

None of this made sense. None of it.

“What are you doing tonight?” I asked Daniel. “Where are you?”

“Oh, you know. Out with some friends.” Music and conversation collided in the background, the sounds of a bar or club. “Having a few drinks, playing some pool. Just missing my girl.”

Instinctively, I frowned. A few weeks ago, being referred to as “his girl” would have made my heart skip a beat. Now it just made me suspicious.