I was the first one to look away, because the tension had become too much. I felt a flush on my neck that I knew tinted my skin all the way up to my cheeks. It’d been so long since I’d been available, and I couldn’t remember how to be single. How to play it cool when my knees would buckle if I tried to stand up. I was devoid of confidence and not reallysure why he stared at me like that, so I needed a moment of freedom from the suffocating power of his stare to think.
I could walk over there, but then what?
What the fuck would I say to a man who looked like that?
I’d had my share of handsome men, but this man ... was something else. He had to be at least six foot four. Had to have at least a hundred pounds of muscles stacked on his arms, core, and legs. I bet he could crush a watermelon with his bare hands.
Light-years out of my league.
There was a pause in the music when the song finished. That was when I heard the group of girls from their table.
“Girl, go for it, or I’ll go for it. Someone at this table is getting that dick tonight.”
“He’s probably married or has a girl,” another one said.
My eyes were down on my drink as I listened to them, but I swore I could still feel his stare. I knew there was only one man in the bar they could possibly be talking about, and it was the same man I wanted for myself.
I couldn’t remember what the women had looked like when they’d passed. I just knew they were well dressed and in heels. Probably attractive if they were confident enough to talk that way.
“Men like that don’t have wives or girlfriends. They play the field until they hit forty, and then they marry a twenty-five-year-old,” one of the girls said. “So I’m going for it unless someone objects?”
The heart palpitations in my chest were instantaneous. The man was a stranger, but I was suddenly under duress at the thought of losing him—when he wasn’t even mine. My eyes flicked back up to his table.
He was still staring at me.
The next song came on, but I heard the distinct scratch of a chair against the hardwood floor as one of the girls stood up.
That meant I needed to haul ass if I wanted to beat her. If I wanted to stake a claim on this painfully gorgeous man.
Just when I was about to go for it, I was knocked over by a wave that no one else could see. Knocked on my ass by the painful reminder of the way I’d been neglected, forgotten, and then dumped. And the man across the bar was a million times better than Enzo ever was, so he’d probably be just as disappointed. Even if it was just a night in his hotel room, I was sure I wouldn’t meet his standards, and it would end in sheer awkwardness.
I looked back at my drink and let her have him.
My eyes searched for the waiter who’d brought me my drink, and I made a quick gesture to signal for the check. To get out of there because I didn’t want to watch him go to his room with someone else. Watch him buy her a drink, share a laugh, connect. I’d pay the fee for the second cocktail and just not drink it in order to get out of here faster.
I would go back to my hotel and find something to watch until I fell asleep.
It took a couple minutes for the waiter to walk over with my bill in a small leather folder. I kept myself occupied by using my phone, searching for emails that I knew wouldn’t be there, looking at social media to see what my friends were doing. I hadn’t posted any pictures of my trip, despite all the photos I’d taken the other day.
I placed my card in the folder and waited for the waiter to take it, desperate to get out of there, to walk home down one of the beautiful side streets and let myself breathe in the crisp air and the smell of dinner from the restaurants that I passed.
To try to forget the man who seared my skin with just his stare.
The waiter returned, and instead of taking the credit card I’d left in the folder, he pulled out the other chair and took a seat.
Then I realized it wasn’t the waiter ... but him.
My chin lifted, and I stared into the same eyes I’d studied across the bar and through a window from a patio. I’d never been this close to him, and the magnetic pull of his commanding air was even more potent at this proximity.
The fire-breathing dragons in my stomach started to burn everything inside me. The flush that had crept down my neck reverted with increased ferocity. I didn’t know what had happened with the woman who’d visited his table because I hadn’t watched and the music had drowned out their conversation, but I could only assume one thing.
That he chose me.
Chapter 3
Aurelia
With the same intensity in his stare that he showed across the room, he blanketed me in his ironclad focus. With quiet confidence, a command that rivaled the Roman emperors, he had an aura so distinct that I felt like I was in the presence of a president or a royal family member, someone of great importance.
