Page 24 of Silver Tears

We pull up at the drive-through five minutes later and order food, before he drives us to a small car park by the sea. For a few minutes, we sit with the radio on eating our food. I get some ketchup on my finger. Seb stuns me to silence when he grabs it and sucks it into his mouth. I shake some sense into my befuddled brain and snatch it away, scowling.

“You can’t touch me like that,” I snap, wiping my finger on a serviette to hammer home the point.

He leans his head on his seat as he sits side on and watches me with a lazy calmness. “Better get used to it, precious, because I’ll be doing a lot more than sucking your finger into my mouth soon.”

My cheeks burn hot and my heart hammers in my chest. Why do his words have this effect on me? I don’t even like him as a person.

“Okay, let’s get one thing straight with this whole fake dating arrangement. I accept that we’ll have to kiss and touch, but that’s all Seb. There’ll be no other kind of physical touch.”

He chews on his bottom lips with a brow arched. “We’ll see.”

“No.” I waggle my finger at him. “We won’t see. This is strictly an arrangement, nothing more. And while we’re on the subject of this whole torturous situation, we need to get our story straight.”

He nods his head, agreeing. He takes my empty wrapper off me; opening his car window, he throws the paper bag into the rubbish bin. “Well, we met at the engagement party. I gave you a lift home one night, and we got talking and found we had a lot in common.”

I snigger, and this earns me a glare. “We have nothing in common.”

He bobs his head from side to side. “We both like to eat. Let’s say my wicked sense of humour and boyish good looks charmed you.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “Let’s say my beautiful eyes and sarcasm charmed you.”

"Your arse actually won me over," he says, licking his bottom lip and giving me a look that should be declared illegal.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?” He asks me coyly.

I wave my finger in the air. “That whole, lip-licking, sultry look thing you just did. It might work on all the other girls, but not with me.”

He grins in amusement. “You think I look at you sultry?” He leans into my space, his eyes looking down at my lips as he bites his, “Precious, if I was looking at you like I wanted to devour you. Trust me, you’d know. This is just me being me.”

“How many dates have we been on?” I ask him, trying to keep the conversation on track. I need to get out of being in this tiny space with him. It’s making me think things I should not be thinking about when around Seb fucking Collings.

“Three and after that, I asked you to go exclusive. We kept it quiet, as we wanted time to get to know each other.”

“Talk me through the dates,” I say, sipping on my milkshake. “Do you even know what a date is and what it entails?”

He pulls out his tongue at me in a playful gesture. “I haven’t ever been on a date, but trust me, precious, I know how to romance. Oh, first date we went to the roller rink over in Brentfall. You were crap and kept falling over and I held you by the waist and taught you how to stay on your feet.”

“Wrong. Anyone who knows me knows I can skate. Can you skate?”

He scoffs, as if I am asking him a ludicrous question. “There’s nothing I can’t do. Everything I do, I excel at. It’s in my genes.”

“Okay, date number two.”

He sucks on his straw and taps at the steering wheel as he thinks. “Date two, I took you to a bird of prey centre because I know you love your animals. You held a kestrel.”

I frown. How does he know I love animals? “Fail. If we’d done that, we’d have photos.”

“True. Okay, how about this? Date two, I took you for a picnic up to the viewpoint. We had your favourite cake, which is—”

“Carrot.”

He shakes his head and grimaces. “Yuck. Everyone knows chocolate cake is the only option. Okay, so we had carrot cake, and I made us a flask of hot chocolate.”

I bob my head, impressed. “How do you know I like animals?”

“Oh that. I was driving through town the other day and I saw you walking, head down, a woman on a mission. I thought, where is the little minx going so early in the morning? You weren't in your work uniform, and I got curious, so I watched you. I saw you enter the dog shelter and not leave.”

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