AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Lunch?’
‘Yes, the thing normal people eat around midday.’
‘As opposed to the packet of biscuits I usually just about get time to grab?’ She tried laughing to conceal her shock.
If she hadn’t known Sol better, it might have sounded like an actual date.
‘Hence why I want to buy you lunch.’
The temptation to accept was shockingly strong.
‘Why?’ she demanded instead.
He didn’t even blink.
‘I thought that, perhaps after the other night, it might be nice to get to know each other a little better. That is to say, with our clothes on.’
‘Shush,’ Anouk hissed, spinning wildly around before bustling him into an empty side room. ‘Someone might hear you.’
‘They didn’t. So, lunchtime?’
‘Like...a date?’ she demanded stiffly. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
His mouth crooked upwards.
‘Don’t panic, it’s just lunch. No date.’
‘It isn’t just anything. It’s about the optics.’
‘No one cares.’
She rolled her eyes at him.
‘Lots of people care. And even if they didn’t, I care.’
‘That you’re seen on a lunch date at work? Or that you’re seen with me?’
‘Both. And I thought you said it wouldn’t be a date?’
His grin ramped up until it made her stomach tighten. And other things tighten, too.
‘I lied.’ He winked at her, making her tingle now, too.
She was pretty sure he knew exactly what he was doing. That he could read every embarrassing effect on her hot face.
‘You’re irredeemable,’ she snapped.
‘Thanks.’
‘It wasn’t a compliment.’
‘Too late. I took it as one.’ He rocked back and leant on the doorjamb, folding his arms over his chest in a way that he must surely know made him look all the more hewn and powerful. All male.
She cursed her faithless heart and the tattoo it was currently beating throughout every vein and nerve-ending in her body. His dark eyes—as glossy and mesmerising as a master chocolatier’s darkest mirror glaze—rippled with something she couldn’t read but traitorously wished she could.
She ought to back up and put a little distance between the two of them. Or, better yet, leave. Instead, she stayed exactly where she was. Within arm’s reach of Sol. A silent invitation even as she pretended it wasn’t.
The lazy, insouciant way he watched her warned her that he knew it was pretence. His eyes raked over her body and left it as tingling and aware as she’d been that night. Craving more. She couldn’t tear her gaze from that mouth, wicked and expert all at once. The things it had done to her should be illegal.
