Noah shifted forward. The chair creaked ominously, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Did you really wanna talk?”
“Yes?”
He stared intently at her. “Look at me and say it.”
She tried, but the minute she met his gaze, heat flared in her middle. She buried her face in her wine. “I can’t. But I do want to talk.”
“Nikki, it’s okay to be uncomfortable being alone with me.”
She shouldn’t have liked the nickname, but she did. She liked the nickname and she liked the reassurance that came with it. “I’m not uncomfortable, I just don’t know what to do.”
“Do you need to know?”
It was a strange question, like a riddle. Did she need to know what to do? “Yes. Otherwise how would I make decisions about what comes next?”
Noah didn’t say anything, but she could feel him thinking about the answer. She could ask what it was, but she had a feeling she didn’t want to know. Instead, she sipped her wine until she emptied the glass.
“More?”
“Do you want me to be drunk?”
“I want you to be comfortable. Do you want to be drunk?”
“A little bit,” she admitted. “I think I need to be for things to progress. Not heaps drunk, just…tipsy.”
A small smile. “So get tipsy.”
“Isn’t that going to be annoying for you? Waiting for me to get drunk enough to say things?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I’ve got nowhere to be.”
So, he refilled her glass and she drank. She drank and studied the ocean painting above him and thought about sex and love. Noah watched her, refilling her glass when she came close to the bottom. When she’d had almost three, her brain was buzzing as well as other, less savory places.
His eyes, she thought.They’re like jade in the afternoon sun. And he lets me be quiet. He doesn’t fill up the silences because that’s easier. He just lets it all be. That’s so attractive. He’s so attractive.
It was the first time she let herself admit it without a guilt chaser. She smiled at Noah and he smiled back. Then he reached out and brushed his hand against hers. Electricity zapped through her. She let it thrum for a second and then pulled away. “I don’t know why I want you. It doesn’t make sense.”
He nodded, but something in the composition of his face changed.
Nicole could have slapped herself. “I mean, you’re not my usual type. You’re attractive, obviously.”
Noah’s brows shot up.
“I mean, you must know that. Heaps of women are into you.”
He said nothing.
“Seriously,” she said, feeling like an idiot. “You’re huge, and you’re stoic which falls into that whole, you know, alpha thing. And you’re covered in tattoos and most of them are nice even though they’re old—which isn’t a diss, sleeves just all used to be horrible. Oh, and your eyes are pretty. Or handsome, or whatever it is you say when a man has pretty eyes.”
The silence that followed this word-vomit was deafening. Nicole pressed her fingers to her face and when she had the courage to peer through them, Noah smiled a pirate smile at her. “Alpha?”
“Shut up!”
“And huge?”
She swatted his arm. “Stop it!”
“Pretty eyes?”