Ajay leaned in and, with immense satisfaction, saw desire in her eyes. “If you want me, then you’re going to have to work for it.”

She looked down at Ajay’s arm and then met his gaze before she let him lead her to the center of the dance floor.

There was barely an inch between them, and Ajay couldn’t help thinking they fit so incredibly well together. The heat from her hands as they curled over his shoulder and around his palm was deliciously warm. Her hair hung in loose waves to the small of her back, and it brushed over his knuckles. She smelled like honey and spice, and he’d bet if he leaned in to press his lips to the curve of her neck, she’d taste just as delicious.

She tilted her chin up at him as if to ask what he was thinking. Their eyes met as they slowly swayed to the deep timbre of a voice singing a Punjabi love song.

“I wasn’t going to do this, you know,” he said. “Dance with you. Flirt with you. Be with you. You’re now a potential investment.”

Her husky laugh was like smooth bourbon sliding through his system. “Darling, no one is asking you to be a gentleman. I often find that when Punjabis act chivalrous, they’re lions wearing sheep’s clothing. Other than your father when he was defending you, I haven’t met any other who has proven me wrong.”

“We’ve come a long way since your childhood in the motherland,” Ajay said in Punjabi.

She looked up at him, surprise in her expression.

He spun her in a circle and brought her closer. “Oh yes. I know how to look into someone’s bio, too. You haven’t gone back since you were eighteen and have very little connection with the Indian community here.”

“I can still spot a lion when I see one.”

“Soni,” he said, knowing that the Punjabi word for beautiful fit her more perfectly than any English endearment could. “Lion or not, I don’t let people play me. I thought we’d established that.”

He skimmed his fingertips up to touch the exposed skin between her shoulder blades before sliding his hand down again to rest at the small of her back.

“Ajay, if you’re going to lead, then don’t hesitate in business, either. Stop letting people like Frankie get away with making comments like that in public. If you don’t, he will continue to undermine your authority and other people will start doing the same thing.”

He hummed in agreement and felt her falter in his arms for a moment.

“What?”

“You’re not going to brush me off? Tell me that you don’t need advice from a woman?”