“Yeah.”
“Stop the lights.”
“What?”
I laugh. “I get allIrishwhen I’m just about anything. And it’s probably worse for whoever’s nearby. I say words you recognise, but somehow they don’t mean anything.”
“What doesstop the lightsmean?”
“Jesus-fecking-Christ. Or thereabouts. Basically, you speaking French like that is sexy as hell.”
Sab’s faint grin amps up a notch. “Really? My ex said it was annoying.”
“Your ex is wrong.”
A statement of pure fact. One Sab doesn’t seem to know what to do with. His knockout smile remains a split second longer. Then it fades, replaced by the nerves he walked in with. The same fear I feel bleeding through every message we’ve exchanged. “What did you want to ask me?”
I glance around. For a Friday night, the pub’s not that busy, most folk staying home before the festive madness really gets going. But it’s still our local—hisandmine—and what I want to ask is likely something he doesn’t want anyone to overhear.
He’s sitting opposite me.
I’m in a booth kind of seat and there’s plenty of room if he doesn’t mind getting a little closer.
I incline my head to the empty space. “Sit with me?”
At best, I’m braced for his hesitation. The worst I can imagine is he’ll refuse and I won’t know what to do with it.
But he does neither.
Just stands and slips around the table as the pub’s sound system blares to life above us.
Sab folds his body into the booth seat to some Mariah Carey abomination. Seems to notice whatever my face is doing. “Music too loud?”
“No, I just hate it.”
“All music?”
“Just this shite.” And honestly, with Sab this close and gifting me a second dose of his pinewood and vanilla scent, it’s hard to hate anything. Still, though. These cheesy songs. They loom over my good mood like the Grinch, and I don’t want him to think I’m just that miserable.
So I tell him the most modern version of truth. “Used to be over someone I’m too old to give a shite about now. These days it’s mostly because I got hurt at work a few years ago. Spent an entire Christmas in hospital with nothing but Rudolph FM for company. Then I got pneumonia the year after. Put me off a bit.”
A frown flickers in Sab’s dark eyes and for a moment, I regret being too open. Then I realise he’s not flinching at the unearned familiarity. He’s nodding like he understands. “My brother used to be a metal head. Then he had a bike crash that ruined it for him. He turns it off every time it comes on now.”
“Really?”
“Ouais. Don’t think he realises half the time.”
Like Sab and his French, maybe. I relax, my arm sliding along the back of the seat as if it belongs there, lurking behind Sab’s broad shoulders while I study his killer lashes, something I don’t usually notice on men.
And Christ, he really does smell good.
Like coming in from the cold.
I want to inch closer to him, narrow that distance to nothing and press my face into his neck. Steal the deep breaths I’m more than capable of now and bask in a different vibe to thinking about a man’s cock.
An unfamiliar feeling that makes the questions brewing in my chest matter so much more. “It says bi-curious on your profile.” I speak quietly, so he doesn’t have anything new to worry about. “Is that something you need to hide?”
Sab’s gaze has fallen to my wrist. He keeps it there as his face does something complicated. “Not on purpose. I just…I don’t know. I got in my head about it, and now it’s a big mess.”
