Oh don't you dare look back

Just keep your eyes on me

I said you're holding back

She said shut up and dance with me

This woman is my destiny

She said oh oh oh

Shut up and dance with me

"Shut Up and Dance" by Walk the Moon

Cassian walks her out to the dance floor and wraps her into his arms. Her face is pressed into his chest. Mahogany and pine and sky fill her nose with hints of sweat and adrenaline. It's a soothing scent that calms her racing heart. Calms her until she can bury the panic; hide behind the shields of her fiery temper and back to her sisters.

It's not long though before Nesta struggles to breathe. She doesn't need the comfort. Doesn't need him, she wants to tell him, but Nesta realizes as her trembling subsides and it's his fists that are shaking against her back that he's not doing it for her. He's doing it for himself, so that he doesn't march back over there and deck Tomas in the face.

"Cassian," she mumbles against his chest, the sound reverberating through his chest. "Cassian, let me go."

His face is buried in the crook of her neck, hair tickling his cheek. He catches himself, and lifts his head.

"Sorry," he apologizes, voice gruff with pent up emotion. He doesn't know what he's apologizing for. For his callousness earlier; for not getting to her sooner; for being too close to her now. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hit a nerve or step on your toes. I…"

The stumbling words, the earnestness in his eyes. Nesta studies his face for deception and finds none. He clears his throat and looks away, suddenly feeling awkward.

Cassian towers over her, close enough to share air, but his focus is somewhere else. Hazel eyes search the crowded room, looking for what she doesn't know until they lock onto the bar again. His brow furrows and Nesta makes a noise of inquiry.

"He's still looking," Cassian tells her. His eyes flick back to hers and when Nesta attempts to look back, Cassian shakes his head. "Don't give him the satisfaction of looking back. Just keep your eyes on me."

Nesta counts her breaths and holds his gaze, willing him not to see too far, too deep. See the parts of her that haven't finished panicking. Better to keep him distracted, so she places a brazen hand on his chest. Sculpted muscle lays beneath the tight leather jacket, the warmth of him leaking into her palm. Fire— he reminds her of fire made flesh. She pushes gently on his chest, her hand somehow seeming smaller against the broadness of his torso. Her free hand reaches to his and places it on her hip, it's mate coming to rest on the opposite side.

Cassian only straightens as she dares a step closer, forced to do so merely because if he hadn't, her mouth and his would have found themselves with no distance between them at all. Nesta brushes her body against his, barely more than a whisper of a touch, but it still makes him stiffen. Still makes his pupils expand to nearly devour those hazel irises. Unconsciously he rubs his thumb across the fabric of her shirt.

"Just shut up and dance with me, prick," she croons and he raises a brow at her. Her hips sway to the beat of the bass, and Cassian mirrors the movement. "If he doesn't see us dancing he might come over."

Cassian can't bring himself to step back from the line that is so clearly drawn between them. One moment, he wants to throttle her, then he'd seen the terror on her face, the fear and panic in front of that bastard, and the drive to protect her that's so strong that for one blinding moment he questions where it came from, and now this seductress. And in those blue-grey eyes, he could see the thoughts swirling in her as if they were smoke under glass. The cunning mind at work behind that face.

So he just… moves.

Cassian leans toward her, pulling her body flush with his. The beat of the music is intoxicating but none so much as the woman in front of him. It's how he would have danced with her had she said yes earlier in the night. How he's wanted to dance with her all night. Her breasts pressed against his chest and that thing inside him is purring again.

Mother and cauldron damn him both.

This woman.

Nesta.

She writhes against him, turning in his arms, never fully leaving his grip. Nesta is swept away in the moment. The alcohol and the beat of the drums and the sea of bodies around them and Cassian and her guard are demolished. Everywhere he touches is on fire, and she lets his hands roam where they will. Her stomach. Her thighs. She grinds her ass into his hips and she smirks when she hears him hiss. When he leans down, Nesta finds herself tipping her head back, exposing her neck, granting him utter access as he grazes his nose against her throat.

Every instinct in his body comes roaring to the surface, so violent he has to choke them with a brutal grip or else he'll find himself on his knees, begging for a touch, for anything.

But then he leans in, and grazes the tip of his nose along the side of her neck. Cassian breathes in the smell of her into his lungs, stirring his cock as it latches onto some intrinsic part of him and sinks its talons deep.

Nesta Nesta Nesta

Her eyes drift closed and a small breathless sound comes out of her. One that he wouldn't catch if he wasn't so close. Cassian brushes his lips over where his nose has touched, Following the same path his nose took moments ago. His knees nearly buckle as her slender hand reaches back and digs into his hair. He tries not to think of what that hand would feel like on other parts of him. Gripping him; stroking him.

More more more, his body sings.

He angles his head and kisses another spot, closer to her jaw.

Her frantic heartbeat is like hummingbird wings, though her body remains tight and loose in all the right places, a flush spreading across this gorgeous breast of hers. Big enough to fill his hands, to nuzzle until she's begging him—

Her pulse hammers right beneath his mouth. This tongue brushes it.

It's that touch that has her jolting forward.

Nesta slams into a nearby reveler hard enough that he reaches out for her. But she's wide-eyed and, livid, as she puts a hand to her throat. Too far, she thinks, she let this go too far. The show she'd put on has gotten away from her and now she needs to get away from it.

So she flees.

Again.