Page 39 of Sensual Games

Stop that.I had my shit together. I wasn’t some country bumpkin, even if I had been raised pouring water into what was left in the shampoo bottle rather than buying more right away. I needed to get out of my own way and stop self-sabotaging.

“Would you like some wine?” he asked. When I nodded, Lucian ordered a bottle and then smiled at me from across the table. “Thank you for coming tonight. You look exquisite.”

“You’re going to give me a big ego,” I joked, but he was adamant.

“If anyone ever deserved a big ego, it’s you,” he insisted.

When I kept waiting for the punchline, it never came. What had gotten into him? I couldn’t put my finger on it. Sure, he was laying the charm on thick, but it didn’t feel inauthentic. I might have been ready to swoon over how wonderful everything already was, but I could still think straight.

I knew what it sounded like when a man was throwing out pre-rehearsed lines so he could get laid later in the evening. It didn’t feel that way now. I could hear the sincerity in his voice.

“I should’ve asked if you like Italian food,” he murmured as we accepted our menus.

“Who doesn’t like Italian food?” I asked with a soft giggle. “If there was only one country whose food I could eat for the rest of my life, this would be it.”

“Same here.” We shared a smile, and I was the first to look away before turning our attention to our choices. Everything looked so good. I finally had to force myself into a decision, so I chose braised short ribs over gnocchi, and Lucian went with seafood risotto.

“And we would like to start with a plate of antipasto,” he added, lifting an eyebrow my way. That sounded good to me, though I would have said yes to just about anything. He was so freaking handsome, so charming. Would I ever have a night like this again?

“Do you come here a lot?” I asked over a rich cabernet sauvignon.

“I get around,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, grinning. “This is one of my favorite spots, but I don’t typically go out to dinner by myself. Normally, I’m with family.”

Did he know he tended to smile when he mentioned his family? “This is going to sound funny, but that’s what I envy the most about you,” I admitted. “Your family. You were an only child, but you still have your cousins, your aunts, and uncles.”

“I’m lucky, I know.” For once, there was no humor behind his words. No joking. Only sincerity rang out in his voice, and it threatened to make me throw myself across the table and kiss his face off. This was some potent wine.

We dug into the antipasto when it arrived and while we ate, we talked about everything and nothing all at once. He liked jazz but also appreciated a range of genres. “Between you and me, I’ve been known to listen to show tunes from time to time,” he admitted, wincing. “My mom dragged me to more shows than I can count when I was growing up. I developed an appreciation for it.”

“You’re so lucky,” I mused, tearing at a piece of prosciutto. “But I know what you mean. My mom loves old movies. Growing up, I couldn’t understand how kids my age didn’t know about the movies from the thirties and forties. I guess I was kind of the weird kid when it came to that.”

“Some would say weird, others cultured.” He lifted his glass to me. “Here’s to our parents, forcing us to be cultured.” I could drink to that and laughed as I did. Nobody would believe it if I told them how much fun spending time with him could be. How normal he seemed, so far away from the imperious young prince I first met before that welcome session.

Then again, that wasn’t the first time we met, was it? I wouldn’t have slept with him after the wedding if he’d given me that attitude right off the bat. Somewhere inside, I had known there was more to him.

“Tell me the truth, Poison.” He set down his wine glass between courses and looked at me head-on. “Do you ever want to tell people to leave you alone when they drop by your desk a hundred times a day with their piddling problems?”

I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “Those problems aren’t piddling to the people who have them,” I reminded him. “Like Molly Kramer. She wants to go back to school, but she’s a single mom who’s already spread too thin. I sort of nudged her into taking online courses. I want her to succeed. I want them all to succeed.”

And now I’d said too much. His expression softened as he leaned back in his chair. “Wow. I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing for me to say.”

I wouldn’t disagree. There were still things he had to learn. “I don’t have a family besides Mom, so I guess, in a way, they’re my family. I want to take care of them. I want them to be safe in their jobs.”

“They will be,” he promised with a firm nod, and my heart soared. I believed him.

The restaurant was all but empty by the time we finished our cappuccinos after dessert. It didn’t seem right. I would’ve sworn we’d only been there twenty minutes, tops. “Is it really this late?” I asked, looking around, feeling a little guilty when I noticed a cluster of servers hanging around the hostess stand, trying not to glare at us. “I’m sure these people want to go home.”

Lucian lifted a hand to signal for the check and, to my surprise, gave our server his credit card without looking at the total. “You might be the most thoughtful person I’ve ever met, and I’m not just saying that,” he offered with a wry grin. “I would’ve left a tip and told myself they’re only doing their job.”

“At least you tip. Some people don’t,” I pointed out. “I waited tables in college, so I guess I’m sensitive to things like that.”

There was nothing to do but shiver when his hand touched my back once I stood. We shared a brief, secret smile full of the sort of intimacy that made my heart skip a beat. “You have this way of opening me up to things I never considered before, Poison,” he murmured while his deep, dark eyes traveled over my face. “How do you do that?”

I didn’t have the chance to reply, not that I knew what to say, as he accepted his card from the server and scrawled a tip on the receipt, handing it back over. “Thank you very much. And sorry if we held you up by sitting around for so long.”

When he caught me smirking at him, he shrugged. “At least we didn’t walk in five minutes before closing and demand to be served.”

We were both laughing as we left. It had to be the wine I drank with dinner that made my head spin, making me lean against him just for the sake of feeling his body.

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