A Little Bit Sinful by Robyn DeHart

for, would you not agree? What if I prefer you speak your mind? Prefer that you’re honest? Prefer you to simply be yourself?”
    She looked up at him a moment and he was struck by how perfectly beautiful she was, with her sparkling blue eyes and lips that he knew were far softer and more pliable than he had a right to know.
    “Do you prefer that from everyone?” she asked.
    “I’m not speaking of anyone but you, but I suppose yes, I think people should be honest.” His eyes met hers. “And I do know other things about you. You need not pretend about anything around me.”
    She nodded. “You have done quite well tonight.”
    “What does that mean?” he asked. She was much shorter than him; he couldn’t help noticing, so very feminine. He rather enjoyed having her in his arms in the midst of the people around them, having an acceptable excuse to put his hands at the curve of her waist, be close enough to catch the lovely lemon scent of her hair.
    “Merely that you do very well blending in with everyone here.”
    Blending because he didn’t belong—is what she meant? Clarissa didn’t mean it poorly. It was the way she’d been raised, the way they’d all been raised—these people surrounding him tonight. How could she apologize in one breath and in the next insult him again? Then he realized she didn’t mean it as an insult. More than likely she thought she paid him a compliment. Still her words stung.
    He knew he didn’t belong here. He’d known that his entire life. And some people felt the need to remind him of that. But he also knew that regardless of what people thought of him, he’d been invited and he’d come and he would do his damnedest to blend in as much as possible because that made people uncomfortable.
    That didn’t really explain why he was truly there. He did feel indebted to the Kincaid family since they’d always been so welcoming of him. But he knew his recent jaunt into Society had more to do with a certain Kincaid than out of gratitude to the entire brood.
    “Chrissy, you look beautiful tonight,” he said, knowing fully that the compliment would make her uncomfortable.
    “Why do you call me that?” she asked.
    She looked up at him and the startling shade of blue in her eyes met his. “Because it irritates you. And when you’re irritated, you get feisty. I like it when you’re feisty, when I can see the fire burn behind your eyes. It makes you more interesting.”
    She took a deep breath and swallowed, then schooled her features so that she was once again pretty Clarissa Kincaid, not his spirited Chrissy.
    “I imagine you know all manner of secrets about many of the families in this room,” she said. She looked around at the couples dancing near them. “I suspect you also make many of them quite nervous simply by being here.”
    Justin glanced around. “You are right on both accounts. You are obviously uneasy about dancing with me.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “You insist on talking.”
    “It is what we’re supposed to do whilst we dance,” she said. “Why, what do you think dancing is about?”
    “Holding a beautiful woman close in your arms. The music, the swell of the strings, the way our bodies move as one. The heated pink stain in your cheeks, the catch of your breath, the way your back feels against my hand. The fact that in just the right angles I get a tantalizing view down your bodice.”
    Her mouth had fallen open, but she came to her senses and closed it.
    “ That is what dancing is about to me.”
    “Well,” she said as she tilted her chin up, “perhaps that is what it is to some. But for proper society, it is about witty conversation.”
    “We can talk if it will put you more at ease.”
    She grinned, satisfied with his acquiesce. “Will you tell me some of them?”
    “Some of what?” he asked.
    “The secrets? The gambling details?” she asked.
    “Chrissy, shame on you,” he said with a grin of his own. “I am discreet, you know that.