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I snorted. “It’s just he takes his work very seriously, and I think I might’ve undermined that by deliberately trying to disrupt his focus.”
“Holland,” Mia groaned skyward. “Can you stop being mature about all this and just let me be petty like I want to be?” she asked before going into an only half-joking assertion that men and their penises deserved a little torment sometimes.
And then we talked about her most recent, apparently lackluster date till Lana came back.
“Mia.” She reappeared abruptly at service bar, already tapping her foot. “Can you stop talking to your unemployed friend and make the Manhattans for my table eight, please?”
I had to laugh at the quip.
“For the record, I do have a day job, Lana. At Minx. This was my weekend gig.”
“Mm-hm.” She wore an overly sweet, deliberately fake smile as she skewered the cherries for her drinks. “Whatever you say, honeybunch,” she said in her most condescending singsong. “Considering your other ludicrous claims, I’ve already learned to take anything that comes out of your mouth with a grain of–”
Her sentence dropped off a cliff as her eyes shifted suddenly behind me, and before I could even process what was happening, I felt a chill shudder up my spine.
I paused, my brain already trying to talk me down from what—or who I thought Lana could be staring at. But judging from the pure vindictive joy in Mia’s giant smile as she too stared wide-eyed behind me, my instincts were right.
And when I turned in my seat, I confirmed it.
Iain.
He was a striking force as he strode through the doors, his steely eyes already pinned on me as he loosened his tie. His suit jacket was draped over his arm and the sleeves of his shirt were pushed up, everything in his body language screaming it was a long day at work while everything in his gaze screamed I’m about to bend you the fuck over.
“Holy hell, Mr. Ass indeed,” Mia murmured in an audible daze.
Because it was that palpable.
All his pent-up aggression from the past few days of being taunted and teased. All his deep irritation for the fact that he wasn’t in Cincinnati right now, like he was supposed to be.
I could feel it in the air. See it in his clenched jaw. His predatory stare.
And there goes another pair, I thought, writhing in my seat as I felt myself get astonishingly wet.
Heat flooded between my legs as Iain made his way to me, forcing me to bite my lip in a way I would prefer not to do in public because it so clearly screamed take me. But I couldn’t help it, because I’d seen this man look like he wanted to fuck me before.
But I’d never seen him look like he needed it.
And right now, he did.
Badly.
And if I had any doubt whatsoever, I could hear it in the gravel of his voice when he reached me at the bar, holding his burning stare on me as he slid my backpack off the back of my chair and said, “Ready to go?”
It wasn’t so much a question but a demand, and the fact that it skipped right over the part where I was right about how I could get him to come home made me want to be smug with him. To hit him with a “ha” and a “told you so.”
But we were in public and I could literally actually see how wound up that body of his was under that shirt. His shoulders, his chest—everything about him looked hard as concrete, so instead of being a brat, I simply nodded and said, “Mm-hm.”
Taking my bag, I turned around, shoving my magazines inside, tossing back the rest of my champagne and exchanging omigod eyes with Mia before grabbing my notebook and pen.
“Just, um—let me go to the bathroom real quick and I’ll be ready to go,” I said hastily to Iain, giving him no chance to reply before I rushed off with perhaps a foolish mission, but I needed to do this.
I was normally strict about this ritual, and I had to catch up on it before the week’s memories were drowned out by new ones, because with Iain, I knew another tidal wave was coming.
So as soon as I got into the bathroom, I set my notebook onto the marble surface next to the sink, hunched over as I scribbled everything I could think of onto the pages—in far less detail than I usually did, but this was all I had time for right now, and I couldn’t even care about the weird look I got from the nosy lady washing her hands next to me. Although I did use my right hand like a shield to cover what I was quickly scribbling down till she dried her hands and left.
Sweet potato fries
When he kissed me back
