Page 20 of Forbidden Hearts

Like a bad hangover, guilt floods my head and washes over my body. Alonzo is a dangerous criminal and a killer. He’s not some TV bad boy. He’s a real-life killer. I shouldn’t get carried away by his good looks.

The electric feeling between my legs falls secondary to the pit of guilt forming in my lower stomach, guilt that I’m actually enjoying Alonzo’s gaze.

With guilt overtaking my body, I fall into a robotic rhythm of stiff dance moves I memorized when I first started dancing at the club. It took me a long time to get comfortable moving my body in front of a crowd of men.

Now I’m back to those stiff dance moves.

I study Alonzo’s eyes to see if he noticed the change in my movements. Even though I’m trying to detach my emotions from the dance, I still have to make himwantme.

His eyes are crawling the length of my body, leaving warm trails on my skin until they land on mine. He looks at me with a dark stare, but his eyes don’t look like the eyes of a killer. His stare is the same stare my mom gives me when her MS acts up—his eyes are the eyes of a man in pain.

What if Jacob is wrong about him?I wonder.

Without realizing it, my body relaxes and the robotic dance movements melt away. I’m intrigued by the man staring at me. I want to dig deeper into his psyche and find out where that pain is coming from. I want to know therealAlonzo.

Keep it together. You’re supposed to seduce him, not the other way around.

I almost chuckle at my own thoughts. Alonzo isn’t seducing me. He’s just sitting on the chair and staring at me. I’m the one overplaying the situation in my head and falling for his gaze.

I spin around to hide the amusement on my face, but my heels refuse the command. They glue themselves to the ground as the rest of my body twirls in the air, causing me to loose balance and land on Alonzo’s lap. His arms wrap around me as my head lands on his shoulder, mere inches from his face.

My fingertips tingle, and my heart is pounding my chest so hard it hurts. At first, I thought it was because I was scared that a dangerous killer had his arms around me.

But when I feel butterflies in my belly, I realize the warmth of his arms around my body is what’s causing me to short-circuit.

I’m so close to his neck that I smell his cologne, a dark-sweet sandalwood. I inhale involuntarily to consume his smell. In my mind, it’s only been a few seconds since I fell on his lap, but it must already be longer than that because Alonzo’s lips are twitching. He’s probably annoyed I fell on him like a clumsy idiot.

“How long have you been working here?” he asks.

My face reddens again. There it is. He thinks I’m an idiot. He thinks I suck at this.

I push myself off him and cross my arms, looking at the wall behind him to avoid his heavy stare.

“I—”

I what?

Something about this man causes my body and brain to short-circuit. It’s not fear. It’s something else. Something I’m too afraid to admit to myself.

“Thank you for the dance,” he says, rising to his feet. He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a small brown leather bag. He places it on the chair and says, “That’s for you. All of it.”

“What is it?”

“Your payment.”

Any excitement that lingers in my body disappears. I feel like a piece of meat he is buying at the market. It’s a dirty feeling, but not the good kind.

“No,” I refuse.

I turn to walk out the door, but Alonzo grips my arm and twists me around before I can reach the doorknob. My face ends up so close to his chest that I can smell his cologne again.

“Take the money,” he says.

I look up at him. His eyes are already on mine.

“Why? What’s the catch?” I ask.

I don’t understand why he is giving me money. Does he pity my situation? I desperately need the money, but not if there are unknown strings attached. I don’t want to owe him a thing.