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Walking around the table, I kneel down and cradle her face in my hands. I lean up and kiss her softly on the cheek, tasting the warmth of her skin, her sweat, her.
“Sophia,” I say. “I don’t want you for some idealized version of what you think you need to be. I want you. You burped. It’s not the end of the world.”
She sighs, moving her hands to my shoulders. She seems to love grabbing my shoulders more than anything, and I savor the feeling of her fingernails gripping me through my suit jacket, the way she claws on as though she never wants to let go.
“Maybe I need to stop waiting for this to all blow up in my face,” she murmurs.
I chuckle, leaning close and kissing the edge of her mouth.
“You think?” I smirk.
I claim her lips fully, opening my mouth to taste her passion, feeling her tongue quiver and dance against mine. She moans through the kiss, leaning close and sliding her hands from my shoulders up my neck and through my hair.
I break it off when I feel my seed reaching boiling point, roaring, demanding that I take my woman right here, right now.
“I’m sorry,” she moans.
“No more sorrys, Sophia,” I growl. “You’re too damn sexy and vivacious and curvy for me to just kiss and not go any further.”
She stares at me with a thousand unsaid things trembling in her expression, and then a sassy smile touches her lips, lighting up my insides like a Christmas tree.
“So what you’re really saying – sir – is that I can burp as much as I like.”
I chuckle.
“You can burp the whole alphabet if you want,” I growl. “Just never doubt how badly I want you, how badly I need you. You’re a human being, not some airbrushed billboard. I want all of you. Everything that makes you who you are, warts and all …”
“Burps and all,” she murmurs, grinning.
“Exactly,” I say. “So be a good virgin and do what you’re told.”
She sits up straighter, snapping off a melodramatic salute.
“No more apologies, sir.”
I laugh and she giggles, and then I stand and return to my chair.
Kneeling down next to her like that sends my mind to the future, to the way I’ll kneel down one day when I change both of our lives forever.
“Do you think we should look at the menu sometime this evening?” she says, still with that sassy tone beneath her words.
I stare hard at her. “I’m already looking at what I want to eat, my little dreamer.”
Her cheeks flush a deeper shade of red, the blush spreading tantalizingly down over her chest and to her cleavage.
Fuck, the top of her cleavage is getting red, as though her flesh is needy and wants to be grabbed and bitten and kissed and used in all the steamy ways I can dream up.
“I meant the food,” she says. “There’s so much to choose from. I don’t know what to get.”
“I’m getting a steak, nice and bloody—”
“Like the animal you are,” she finishes for me, giggling.
“Damn, Sophia. You took the words right out of my mouth. I must be getting predictable in my old age.”
“Old age?” she laughs, shaking her head. “In what world are you old, Solomon? You’re stronger, fitter, manlier than any silly immature boy my age. You make them look like toddlers. I’d rather have you over any of them.”
“Good,” I say passionately. “Otherwise, I’d have to kick their ass.”
“And you could, too,” she says. “All those jerks in high school who thought they were tough, they’d get a rude awakening if they ever came face to face with you.”
“What jerks?” I ask, unable to hide the rage bubbling up in my voice.
Her tone wavered when she mentioned jerks, as though she had somebody specific in mind.
My whole body goes tight just thinking about somebody talking down to my woman like that, making her feel small, inferior.
“Just jerks,” she sighs. “Nobody in particular. Honestly, my time in high school wasn’t that bad. I have Caitlin to thank for that. She never let anybody give me too much crap.”
She stops abruptly as if just realizing she’s dropped Caitlin’s name, as though this is going to tear a hole in our dinner and ruin it for the rest of the evening.
“You can talk about how much Caitlin means to you,” I tell her. “She means a lot to me, too. It’s okay.”
“I know,” she sighs. “It’s just … What are we doing, Solomon?”
“What does it look like?” I smirk, turning to my menu. “We’re ordering dinner.”
I can’t let us stray into the tangled mess that is Caitlin and telling her, not tonight, not when everything is going so well.
I just pray that doesn’t make me a bad father.
Chapter Eleven
Sophia
I feel a multi-pronged rumbling in my stomach as the waiter carries our plates toward the tables.
