Page 52 of Beneath Your Beautiful
Eden reached for my hand and I clasped her smaller hand in mine, our palms pressed together. I’d never been a hand-holder before. When I used to take a woman to my hotel room after a fight, I always walked two paces ahead, like an arrogant asshole, and they’d have to jog a little to keep up. I didn’t know what it was about Eden, or why everything was so different with her. It felt like I’d been living in the dark for too long and she’d turned on all the lights inside me. Like the world wasn’t such a fucked-up place if she was in it.
The restaurant was French with vintage posters on the walls, hardwood floors, and low lighting. The kind of restaurant where you brought a date for a romantic dinner. Not overly fancy, but quaint I guess. After I turned down the first table they tried to give us—right in front, on top of everyone else, and not where I wanted to be—they led us to a candle-lit table in the back corner of the patio garden enclosed by ivy-covered walls.
I ordered steak and salad. She ordered chicken. I ordered a bottle of red wine, after asking her if she liked it. She said she did, but she’d need to wear her napkin as a bib. Which made me laugh.
Over dinner, she talked about art and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, and how he grew up in Brooklyn and dropped out of school. How Basquiat started as a graffiti artist before he moved on to painting. Then he died young, from a heroin overdose. As usual, every word out of her mouth fascinated me, even though I knew all about Basquiat already. He was one of Connor’s favorite artists. Unfortunately, Connor had more in common with Basquiat than just art.
“You want to be a graffiti artist?” I asked her.
She had that same look on her face as she did when she considered getting a tattoo. I knew she’d say yes, even before the words came out of her mouth. “Yeah, I do. If I got arrested, would you bail me out of jail?” she asked, with a mischievous smile like the idea thrilled her rather than scared her.
“I won’t let you get arrested. I’ll be your lookout and your getaway driver.” Hell, if I’d let her do that on her own. Bushwick was the best place to throw something on the wall. Connor used to do it back in high school. But graffiti needs to be done late at night, and no way was that safe for Eden.
“You’d do that for me?” she asked, her eyes lighting up. Her whole face lit up when she was happy.
She had no idea how much I’d be willing to do for her. Making her happy had become my new purpose in life. Maybe I didn’t deserve her, but neither did Luke or Adam. I liked who she was—talented, beautiful, strong, argumentative. She’d suffered her share of loss and heartbreak, but she wasn’t jaded or bitter. I liked it that she pushed back and questioned me about everything. I couldn’t think of anything I didn’t like about her. “Yeah, I’d do that for you.”
“We’ll be like Bonnie and Clyde,” she said. “Without the guns and the bank robberies.”
“So, nothing like Bonnie and Clyde.”
She burst out laughing. “Guess not.”
The waiter cleared our plates and handed us dessert menus. I didn’t even look at mine, but Eden studied hers like it held the secrets of the universe. When the waiter came back to take our order, she was still pouring over the menu.
“Need some help there, Sunshine?”
She lowered the menu and smiled at me. “That’s exactly what I need. Thanks for the offer.” Eden turned to the waiter and ordered two desserts.
“I got the molten lava chocolate cake and the apple tart,” she told me, with a smug smile. “So, you’ll need to help me.”
Help consisted of her force-feeding me bites of each. “You like it, right?” she asked, after feeding me a bite of chocolate cake.
I closed my eyes and moaned like I was having an orgasm. “Mm. Best thing I ever tasted. I need more.”
Her face flushed pink, and I smirked at her.
She held a forkful of apple tart in front of my mouth. “Tart?”
“And here I thought you were sweet and innocent.”
She laughed. “Open up.”
“Oh. It keeps getting better. What will you have me do next?”
“The night is still young,” she said, with a wicked gleam in her eyes.
I opened my mouth, and she fed me. Eight years of a dessert-free, refined sugar-free diet, shot to hell by the temptress across the table. She watched my mouth as I chewed, and her gaze dropped down to my throat as I swallowed. Back to my mouth as I licked my lips, her eyes following the progress of my tongue. She lifted her gaze and her green eyes locked onto mine. “You made that innocent tart look downright sinful,” she said.
“I’ll feed you the chocolate cake, and you can return the favor.”
Eyes still locked on mine, she handed me her fork and pushed the cake in front of me. Challenge accepted. Chocolate cake had never looked so sinful. I reached across the table and slowly dragged my thumb across her lower lip, feeling the tremor go through her. “You missed some.”
She wrapped her hand around my wrist and guided my thumb into her mouth. Holy fuck. Her lips wrapped around my thumb and she sucked on it, her cheeks hollowed, her tongue circling, her teeth grazing my skin. I reached down and adjusted myself under the table. I had every intention of dropping her off with a goodnight kiss and nothing more. For the first time in my life, I wanted to take this slow and do it right. But she was blowing all my good intentions out of the water. All I could think about were those lips wrapped around my cock.
Eden released my thumb, her eyelids at half-mast. “You taste good.”
Chapter Twenty
