Page 76 of The Stranger

All of the above. The impact of his scrutiny warms me in places it shouldn’t.

“As it happens, I do want.” God, the aching tenor of his voice.

The cake falls from my fork as I turn to face him, my nipples tightening under my pajama shirt because I want too. Just not cake anymore. One beat. Two. I realize he’s giving me a moment. To process. To haul ass. To leave.

“I’d like to ask my question now.”

I give my head a shake thinking I somehow misheard him.

“A question for a question. Was that not the deal?” Something flickers in his expression. Humor, I think. “Not that, at dinner, you asked what I assumed you would.”

“What did you think I’d ask?”

“Are we making it two questions each?” His tone is temptation itself.

“I think that sounds like a dangerous game.” Especially when I have at least a dozen more things I want to know. Like what was he doing at that party? Is it a regular thing—is it his thing? His kink. Did he really enjoy going down on me, because he sounded like me when I eat cake?

But mostly I want to know, what I’m a little frightened to discover is why he pushed me out the door that night in Paris.

His chest expands and his hand folds around his glass. “I would like to know⁠—”

“I already told you,” I say quickly. Quietly. “It was a mistake.” I force myself not to squirm as my discomfort reaches escape-my-skin levels. I’m a fraudster—I don’t know my orgies from my lifestyle clubs—and the whole time I was there, I expected someone to point a finger and yell C’est imposteur! Kick her out!

“Pardon?”

“You kept Emmy that night, so I went out with my sister’s friend.” My gaze dips to my feet, the pink paint chipped from my big toenail. I press one foot over the other to conceal the offending toenail. “She told me we were going to a party, not a…”

My heart seems to have grown to the size of a football and lodged itself in my throat. But when I sense him move, it swoops, landing somewhere south of my waistline where it beats rapidly. I can’t look at him—not because I’m ashamed but because the sound of his footsteps fills my chest with something I hardly recognise.

I think it’s excitement. Perhaps a little fear.

His shadow falls over me, and his finger crooks my chin, those dark eyes seeming to search every inch of my face. “That was not my question.”

“Oh.” I bite back more idiocy by grazing my teeth against the inside of my mouth.

“I want to know.” He pauses, eyes tracking to my mouth where his thumb wipes the corner, coming away with a smudge of chocolate. His gaze holds mine captive as he leisurely sucks on the tip of his thumb.

Whoa.

“I would like to know who made you believe sex is not for you.”

“I’m…”

“What did he do to hurt you?”

“Who said it was a man?” Singular, I mean.

A frown bisects his brow, like he’s testing the hypothesis in his head. “You could be into women.”

“And that could be none of your business.” Boy, he has me all wrong. I’m no sexual dilettante. But I don’t hate that he might’ve pegged me so.

“True.” His voice is velvet and midnight as his still damp thumb drifts to my collarbone. I shiver as it draws across the wing—shiver as much from the sight of his bent head as I do from his touch. His lashes are so thick and dark, and the light catches the touch of silver at his temples.

“You don’t have to tell me, of course.” His touch slides over my shoulder and down my arm, the pads of his fingers stroking my bicep, farther to the inside of my elbow. Then my wrist. “You may like girls. But you also liked me.”

Liked, past tense. He means that night.

His thumb slides over my rapid pulse, back and forth, blood in my veins rising to the surface, my nipples hardening, aching for touch, as his attention lifts.