I tipped my chin down. "Now, that's surprising. I figured you'd gone everywhere worth going."
Shaking his head, he said, "South and Central America, sure. Western Europe, yes. Portions of Africa, mostly northern. As far as Asia and much of North America, I have a lot of ground to cover. I don't know much outside the Southwest."
I pointed my fork at him. It was rude but I found myself wanting to be rude with him, just a bit. "You don't have an accent."
He pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek. "Neither do you."
"I'm American. I grew up here." I waved at the table. "Not California, but South Carolina."
"Doesn't South Carolina saddle its progeny with a loose-tongued twang?"
I thought back to my pre-college self. Before Stanford, the Bay Area, and Silicon Valley stripped the South from me. Not that I missed it. South Carolina was the place my parents lived but it wasn't fundamental to my identity the way some of my peers held California or Colorado or Texas fundamental to their identities.
"Some. Doesn't Brazil do something of the same?"
"No twang with the Portuguese,fofinho." He chuckled, drew his index finger over my knuckles. "Whichever accent I had, I lost at boarding school."
I watched as he dragged a bit of naan through the remains of several dishes, blurring all sauces and spices into one savory scoop. "Tell me, Mr. Guillmand." I grinned as the name bristled over him. "How are you finding California?"
He seesawed his hand. "I gothere, didn't I? I can handle a map."
"That's not what I meant, you unbearable man."
He shrugged and held up his palms while he nested his leg between both of mine. His jeans were rough against my unadorned skin, almost overwhelming, but I kept that reaction off my face. He eyed the gulab jamun on my tray, pointed. "What's that? They smell like flowers."
"Rosewater. It's not typical but it's my favorite." I tore one in half and offered it to him. He accepted, but not without curling his fingers around my wrist and eating from my hand. "It's similar to a doughnut hole, but for dessert."
He sucked the sweetness right off my fingers and he did it while the VCs gaped at us. More than one Slack channel was blowing up this evening. "Delicious," he murmured, seemingly immune to our audience. Not that I cared much for them either.
"Mmhmm." I gulped back a groan. "If they weren't boiling hot from the fryer, I'd eat them before anything else."
Gus tilted his head to the side, brought my thumb to his lips. "I'd eat you before anything else, Miz Malik."
Chapter Four
Gus
Alla Prima:the act of creating a painting in a single sitting, often without any preparation or underpainting.
She'd flitted awaylike a sandpiper on the shore. It happened faster than the blink of an eye, but she'd jerked her hand from my grasp, jolted out of her seat, and offered some boilerplate bullshit about enjoying the meal we'd shared and seeing me around the campus but needing to excuse herself right fucking now.
All while the taste of her skin lingered on my tongue.
And then she'd left.
The nonstop crowds prevented me from tracking her movement through the restaurant, but even if I'd wanted to follow her, I couldn't pry myself from this chair. If the heaviness in my cock wasn't enough to keep me seated, the weight of the world as it shifted on my shoulders was.
I wasn't one to process thoughts or emotions with words and I didn't have them now. But Miz Malik's departure left me with the definite sense I'd met my match.
I'd met her and she was delicious.
Slumped back, I folded my arms over my chest and scanned the crowd again. I'd missed the colorful art on the walls when I'd first arrived. I'd been busy gazing at the raven-haired beauty who'd appeared like an out-of-reach apparition intended to punish me for my basest desires.
Then she'd all but purred under my touch and I couldn't stop. Couldn't separate myself from her skin, even as that punishment closed in, loomed large. I'd scraped my teeth over her thumb and asked for it, damn near whispered, "Give me your worst."
I hadn't noticed signs for the adjoining spice market either. I'd noticed nothing but her dark, luminous skin and the way my palms pulsed with the boundless desire to touch her until I knew every secret her body would share. And I still wanted it. I wanted it all.
As if drawn by my true north, I jolted out of my seat and picked my way through the eatery until the crowd fell away and the orderly rows of a small grocery opened before me.
