[Dark Saint Alaick]

She should shrug off his glib compliments, forget those flashing eyes and head home.

But as she willed her legs to move, tried to wrench her gaze away from his, she knew it was a lie. All of it.

She could downplay their connection all she liked but there was something between them. She could feel it. Invisible. Intangible. A tenuous binding, an underlying buzz, a type of connection she’d never experienced with a man before.

Passion on the big screen was bold, fierce, ardent. And while she wasn’t foolish enough to imagine anything so intense happening with this attractive stranger, she couldn’t walk away.

Every cell in her body tingled, the same way they had when she’d been a naive seven-year-old dancing in a thunderstorm beneath a palm tree that had been struck by lightning. She’d only suffered a mild shock but she had that same, scary feeling now. Her body hummed, static electricity zapped her skin and every sense quivered on heightened awareness.

The danger of that storm had passed but the longer she stood here, the more she knew that the lightning jolt would have nothing on the potential threat this man posed.

“I have to go.”