Night Whispers - Leslie Kelly [51]
“Let me pose you, all right?” the photographer asked. Kelsey didn’t protest as he grasped her shoulder and turned her to face Mitch, pushing her tight against him. Mitch’s eyes opened wider and he looked at her for an explanation, but Kelsey was as confused as he appeared to be.
“Here,” Dan said to Mitch, “grab her leg.”
Kelsey gasped as Dan pulled her right knee up and placed Mitch’s hand high up on the back of her thigh. Their bodies were pressed intimately together, with her leg almost resting on his hip. Before she could say a word, Dan had placed Mitch’s arm around her waist and gently pushed Kelsey’s shoulders back so Mitch’s arm was almost completely supporting her. Then he lifted Kelsey’s hand and placed it against Mitch’s bare chest. She couldn’t resist digging her fingers slightly into the skin next to the soft cotton shirt.
“What are you doing?” Kelsey asked softly, suddenly worried about the extreme seductiveness of the pose.
“Ah, ah,” The man held up his hand. “Just let me be creative. Kelsey, toss back that hair, purse those lips of yours. Come on, get into it, you two.”
Mitch stared down at Kelsey and caught her eyes with his own. Her lips were parted, her breath coming in short gasps, and Mitch felt another rush of desire for her. Standing in the middle of a crowd of people, all he could think was that if he bent forward a few inches, he could press a hot kiss in the hollow of her throat.
“Yes, yes, that’s it,” Dan said as he backed away and began focusing his camera.
One of the other deejays approached the microphone and cleared his throat for attention. “Ladies and gentlemen, appearing in public for the first time, WAJO’s own princess of the night, Lady Love.”
Mitch noticed a perceptible drop in conversation, at least in the tables closest to the booth. The deejay’s announcement over the microphone probably didn’t reach the far recesses of the huge ballroom, but everyone within at least thirty feet stopped their conversations and turned to watch.
“Look enraptured!” Dan whispered loudly as he began snapping pictures.
A small spotlight came up, illuminating them from head to toe, and Mitch did as Dan ordered, not because of the photographer’s request, but because he could do nothing else. He stared down at Kelsey with every ounce of pent-up desire he felt for her. He would have sworn that anyone within five feet could have felt the heat coming from them.
Someone whistled, someone else cheered, and then a loud thunder of applause washed over them. Mitch barely noticed. He studied Kelsey’s face, with her full pouty lips and her half-lowered eyelids. She looked like she wanted to be ravished. And he felt more than ready for the job. Suddenly, for some reason, the pose, the costume, her hair, everything…started to look familiar.
“Kelsey,” Mitch said as the applause continued, and flashbulbs popped, “am I standing under what I think I’m standing under?”
Kelsey, who had realized at about the same instant that her innocent words to her boss had been misconstrued and used to design this “stage,” nodded weakly.
“Oh, my God. We’re a romance novel cover, aren’t we?”
She nodded again. Watching as Mitch gritted his teeth, she wondered if he would let go of her waist and let her fall to the floor. She wouldn’t really blame him if he did. He probably wanted to strangle her!
After the applause began to die down and the photographer gave Kelsey a thumbs-up, she relaxed a little and tried to pull away from her pirate. He would have none of it.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said. “If I’m going to stand here doing this, I’m sure as hell going to make it worth my time!”
Mitch grabbed Kelsey’s hip with one hand, allowing the chain to dangle between them. Thrusting his other hand into her thick curls, he wound his fingers close to her scalp, caressing her slightly before gently tugging her head farther back. Her eyes widened, almost as much as his narrowed, and he jerked her body tighter against his from the waist down.