Page 71 of The Playboy

And as I gazed at him from across the table, I was breaking another.

I was thinking about what it would feel like if he leaned across the space between us and put his lips on me.

How they would make me forget.

How they would send tingles through my whole body that would be even stronger than the ones that were already fluttering.

“Are you hungry?”

His voice pulled me away from the piles of regret I had been sorting through.

As he stared at me from over his menu, the light in here so bright and morning-like, I could even see the pores in his skin. All it did was magnify how hot he was. The deepness of his emerald eyes. The thickness of his soft red lips. The darkness of his coarse, coffee-colored beard. The squareness of his jaw, the broadness of his neck, the way his shirt hugged his chest and shoulders, showing off the ripped muscles beneath.

Brooklyn, you need to stop.

You need to look away.

I swallowed, reminding myself that he’d asked a question, and quickly responded, “No. I’m not really hungry.”

“Perfect. That means the best eating is about to go down.”

While he licked across his lips, dragging my attention there, I forced myself to look at the menu. “What do you mean?”

I hadn’t even bothered to scan the menu when the hostess placed it in front of me. I had no intention of ordering anything, and I still didn’t as I took in the photos and descriptions, waiting for my stomach to react to something other than him.

“Haven’t you noticed that when you go out to eat when you’re not hungry, you order the most random things?”

Go out to eat when you’re not hungry?

I didn’t do that. What would even be the point? That sounded like a lot of wasted money.

“Who goes out to eat when they’re not hungry?” I huffed.

“Come on. I know you’ve done it.” He waited for me to respond, and when I didn’t, he continued, “How about when you join a friend at a restaurant, but you accidentally ate an hour before? Or out of boredom? Or when you’ve got to fill yourself up after a long workout, but still have the shakes, and you’re not necessarily ready to eat?”

I finally looked up, instantly wishing I hadn’t because my eyes met his beautiful smile. “Sure, I’ve snacked out of boredom, but the others, I can’t say I’ve experienced those.”

“Then, you’ll see what I mean in a few minutes.” The grin on his face changed. He’d had it since we sat down. But now, it was larger, wider, deeper even.

All it did was make me mad.

Mad that I wasn’t mentally ready to take this on.

Mad that I was so attracted to him.

It was that feeling that made me say, “Our differences are adding up so fast that I’ve lost count of all the check marks.”

“That’s a good thing.”

“Why?”

His smile dimmed halfway, but the corner of his lip lifted, showing his perfectly straight white teeth. “I don’t want to hang out with a woman who’s just like me. What would I learn from her? What would we talk about? All we’d do was agree, and there’s no fun in that. I don’t want to spend hours upon hours trading yeses. That’s a waste of my time.”

I folded my hands together to stop them from fidgeting. “You’d rather argue?”

“I’d rather have a conversation that had meaningful points so I could see a side I hadn’t thought of.”

Macon didn’t seem like he would be an easy person to argue with. Although he was sweet with me, I saw an extremely dominant side. Like when it came to work, I sensed it would be his way or no way.

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