“You want to change the subject.” Zoey shudders as the night breeze licks around her bare arms. “I understand.”
Dinner comes and goes, and neither one of us puts a dent in our plates. I think both of our appetites have dwindled to nothing. So much for showing her what a true gentleman is like. I’m all but staring her down. She must think I’m giving her the finger for thrusting me into that hellhole—but in reality I’m thankful.
I hold my hand out to her. “Let’s dance.”
“Here?” She wrinkles her nose at the idea.
“Yes, right here. We’ve already proven we’re good at it. We should do it.” I lift her out of her seat and navigate us as close to the railing that overlooks the inky black lake. The waves lap over the shore in the distance an incandescent shade of baby blue, and it gives the night the magical feel of a fantasy. My arms fold over her waist as I draw her in. Zoey smiles up at me with those glowing teeth, her eyes backlit like celadon beacons.
“You’re just crazy enough for me to like you,” she whispers while grazing her teeth over her bottom lip. Zoey is a perpetual tease, her beauty her sharpest weapon. But she’s smart, cuttingly so, and that’s the part of her that’s stunned me tonight.
“Like I said, we’re frighteningly alike.”
She frowns at the idea a moment. “Thank you for this.” Her eyes flit to the table. “For showing me what a date with a true gentleman can and should be.”
“You’re welcome.” My stomach pinches in fear it might be over. “But I’m planning a few more outings. You know, to make sure I drive home the point.” There. The smitten schoolboy in me can relax. I’m not cutting Zoey loose into the wild just yet.
“If you truly want to drive the point home, you’ll end this date like a true gentleman would—with a proper kiss.” She bats those thick lashes up at me, trying to convince me of her innocent intentions, and I hold back a laugh.
“A proper kiss from a true gentleman. It sounds like a dare.”
“Are you biting?” Her brows hike as if awaiting an answer for themselves.
“Nope, a true gentleman doesn’t bite on the first date.” Instead, I lean in, allowing my lids to grow heavy. Zoey’s mouth parts for me. Her face looks both shocked and delighted, and that alone is worth the price of admission. My lips touch over hers, soft as a feather. Zoey’s well-glossed juicy lips have been calling me, begging me to take just one taste ever since the moment I laid eyes on her a few weeks back.
Soft. So fucking soft. A moan escapes me without meaning to, and she strums with a giggle as she feeds me her laughter. But my mouth lingers, harder, faster, with far more intensity any true gentleman might be willing to offer. Then, like a thief, I break in with my hungry tongue and roam freely in that hot, luscious mouth of hers, my hard-on already at the ready. This is not where this night was supposed to lead. Hell, it’s exactly where this night was supposed to lead.
As much as I’d like to believe I’m in control, it’s Zoey who is running the show. She’s holding the mirror up and making me take a look at the dark shadow of my mind, the dysfunctional rusted inner workings of some old decrepit clock that technology has long since left behind. Zoey is the true woman showing me how a man should be treated. Her hungry, soulful kiss, the comingling of our tongues, of our unwitting souls has left me breathless and wanting far more from this woman than I could and should ever imagine.
It’s a hard day when you discover you are not the potter. You are the clay.
Zoey is molding me into her own creation, and there’s not a lot I can do to stop her. Little does she know my past cannot be contained, reshaped, or molded into anything that resembles normalcy, beauty. It’s far too hideous.
I would never let her put her hands to it.
And I’ll make sure she doesn’t.
