I’d finally felt like I had found my feet as I darted forward, parting my lips slowly, a movement he followed with intense focus before he belatedly offered me the piece of meat again.
Did I flick my tongue across the chunk? To collect the dripping sauce, of course, something I hadn’t been entirely successful at. When a drip fell down my chin, his finger had been there, catching it before I could. He’d sucked the tip clean thoughtfully, his eyes burning silver as he watched me chew. He’d looked away only for a second to spy something else to offer me, when I reached across and snagged another fork.
“I take it you like everything here?” I’d asked.
“More than you could possibly know,” he’d rumbled.
I’d chuckled as I speared some pickled vegetables on the end of my fork and offered it to him. When he darted forward to take it from me, impulsively, I’d jerked my fork back. Perfect white teeth had appeared as he grinned, the expression made darker by the sound of a low growl.
“Be careful, little beta.”
His voice hadn’t made me want to be careful. It had made me want to throw caution to the wind and do crazy things, so when his hand landed on my thigh under the long white tablecloth, I stayed where I was.
“This is your first time with an alpha?” I’d nodded furiously. “We’re a bit different to the beta boys you’re used to playing with.” He’d used his hand to secure mine, plucking the vegetables from the end of the fork with his teeth and chewing them thoughtfully, staring into my eyes the whole time. “If you run, we can’t help but chase.” His head tilted to one side slightly. “It’s in our blood, and mine is running hot around you.” He’d frowned slightly, then moved in closer, his hand sliding up my thigh as his nose grazed down my neck, stopping at my pulse point. “Your scent… There’s something there…something…”
“So you want me to tease you, or you don’t?” I’d asked, my words bold, but my voice was all breathy. Bugger the shapewear, my heart was beating a mile a minute, my lungs incapable of properly inflating.
“I want…” His hand had slid higher, far higher than was polite in a public place, hidden by the tablecloth, his skin burning against mine. “I want…” His teeth had closed over my pulse, just for a second, there and gone again. “I want the juicy little pussy I can smell, dripping all over my face. So let’s eat some of this delicious food before I get my dessert.”
Which broughtme back to here. My hands grasped the sink in the bathroom, and I stared at my reflection, trying to take myself in, to really see the me now and the one Lucien wanted to see—one who surrendered to him, gave myself entirely over to whatever pleasure he might be able to wring from me, even if it was just for one night.
“Just one night…” I breathed the words out, the other diners’ voices a muffled rumble in the background. “I can do this for just one night.”
The trouble was that Lucien was either as good as he said or he wasn’t. If he wasn’t, I’d walk away disappointed, again, feeling like I’d been sold something that didn’t live up to the hype. I’d experienced that plenty of times before, so I knew how to cope with that.
But if he was…
I smoothed my hands down my sides, feeling the curves of my body rather than seeing them, imagining his hands doing the same. Would that hunger still burn in his eyes when I divested myself of the many different tricks and techniques to make me look my best? Would he really spread me out on his bed and…?
“Only one way to find out,” I said, pushing myself away from the sink and swinging out the bathroom door.
“I’ve paid for dinner,” Lucien told me when I met him by the door, his eyes never resting in one spot. He seemed to study me, take me apart, one piece of clothing at a time, before we even reached his car. “Shall we?”
There was an air of challenge about his words, a question within a question. Nik was right—I had to know if he was everything I’d ever dreamed of. I put my hand in his, feeling his massive palm surrounding mine as he drew me closer.
“We shall.”
4
“So we didn’t talk enough about how this is going to go,” Lucien said as he put the car into gear. It was a big, black, shining beast of a car, and I could feel the revs all the way through me as he eased us out into traffic.
“Really?” I asked, clasping my bag to my chest. I felt like I needed a little barrier there, the expansive interior of the car suddenly feeling too small. “I feel like we talked in detail about…things.”
“That’s all on the table still.” He chanced a sidelong look over at me, his eyes sliding down the line of my body, then lingering on where my hands were wrapped around my bag. “We can keep things vanilla if you like.” His tongue flicked out, coating his lips before his focus switched back to the road. “As long as I get to taste you, I’ll count myself a lucky man.”
He chuckled when I squirmed in my seat, a sudden clench in my nether regions having me feeling things I shouldn’t be in a car.
“Or?” I asked, shaking my head. The air felt too close in here, like it was too thick to take a proper breath of.
“Or we could play a little game.”
He wasn’t talking Monopoly or a hand of strip poker. No, he purred the words as he stared at me with eyes of pure silver.
I knew academically that when an alpha’s wolf was close to the surface, it would turn his eyes from their natural colour to silver. It didn’t mean I was in danger or anything, just that strong emotions were at play, like anger, fear, need… My mind snagged on that last one, wondering right now if my own eyes were changing, because I felt that clearly.
“What kind of game?” I was trying to be cool, calm, like I was a beta used to tangling with alphas, up and ready for anything.
Fake it til you make it, right?