“Mae, you work at a cell phone store,” her friend declared, coming out of a stall while still trying to pull her jumper back into place.

“Still,” Mae said, shrugging. “He was looking at you like he’s been wondering what you taste like. If you know what I mean.”

“She knows what you mean,” her friend said, done adjusting her clothes and washing her hands. “Sorry, she gets chatty as hell when she’s on E.”

With that, Mae’s sober friend wrapped an arm around Mae and led her back out into the club.

Not wanting to be gone too long, I did another quick swipe of my overheated skin with the wet towel, tossed it, and made my way back out of the bathroom.

Only to damn near knock over Soren.

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you.”

“That’s not weird at all.”

“Figured I could act as crowd control. Someone grabbed you on your way over here.”

He’d grabbed my hip so he could yell in my ear. But the technicalities didn’t really matter.

“I may not look like it, but I can take care of myself.”

He nodded at that. But he was already there, so he held out a hand toward the crowd we’d have to walk through to get back to the VIP section.

I charged forward. Expecting—I don’t know—for people to just move out of my way.

It wasn’t long, though, before bodies were knocking into me from all sides, sending me slamming back into Soren’s wide chest.

His arm went around me automatically, draping low around my hips. So, so close to where I swear I could feel the music throbbing in time with my pulsing desire.

A pained sound escaped me, and I was thankful for the ear-splitting level of the music, because it meant that there was no way Soren could have heard it.

“You alright?” Soren asked, so close that his lips touched my ear.

The shiver that moved through me was one of those full-body ones. There was no way he hadn’t felt it.

One song melted into another, the slow, steady bass beat a sensuous sound that had everyone else on the dance floor moving close, hands roaming, bodies grinding.

I couldn’t tell you who moved first, or if it was some strange, mutual decision at once. But the next thing I knew, I was leaning back into Soren, my hips swaying in time with the beat—and his.

His arm slid all the way around me, pulling me closer, then holding me against him.

I didn’t really know what the hell was happening.

I wasn’t even a dancer.

And nothing about Soren said he was either.

Yet there we were, smack dab in the middle of a dance floor, bodies melded together, swaying with the music.