Because her stomach rumbled a reminder, she continued, pausing only to sip orange juice.
Her head lifted as his comment from a moment ago sank in. “Why do you want to lie to me?”
“I don’t. It’s the truth I worry might be difficult for you to deal with.”
Penelope tossed that around in her head, focusing on the fruit. Glowing eyes, strange emotions, ridiculous chemistry. Perhaps mind reading. Yeah, she could see where he was coming from because there was definitely something he was hiding.
Once she had finished off most of the grapes and the melon, the butler cleared away the dishes before bringing more. He took his time setting everything out, situating it perfectly.
“All right.” She turned her attention to Obsidian. “Time to address the elephant on the patio.”
His level stare remained on her.
“Your accent. It’s light, but I can hear it every now and again. Where’s it from?”
The relief on his face was tremendous. “I honestly didn’t think I had an accent.”
Not an answer, but okay.
“Everyone says that, don’t they?” she mused. “I guess you can’t hear your own as much as you can detect others’. But I heard you on the phone the other night. At my apartment. You were speaking in another language.”
The butler placed a scone in front of each of them, along with a cup of coffee.
“It’s an ancient dialect,” he said softly.
Of course he made no effort to elaborate.
While she hoped he could continue, Penelope doctored her coffee with cream and sugar, then snagged a piece of the scone.
“I’m starting to feel weird,” she told Obsidian when he didn’t make a move for the food. “Being that I’m the only one eating.”
“I much prefer the main course,” he said simply, his bright eyes glittering from the lights around them.
“As do I.” She pushed the scone away, then sipped her coffee.
Obsidian nodded at the man. He quickly discarded the dishes before bringing out steak and eggs, situated on the plate with an artful flair, a side of hash browns alongside them.
“Now we’re talking,” she mumbled, her stomach giving an approving rumble. “This looks divine.”
The smirk that pulled at Obsidian’s lips was perhaps the most attractive feature of his. It was the wickedness in that look, the promise of making her deepest, darkest desires come to life. Her body warmed in his presence, her attraction to him on a constant simmer. It was a different type of hunger that she was growing more aware of by the second.
They ate without speaking, the horns and traffic from the street drifting upward on the breeze. There was a comfortable silence between them, as though they’d been together for ages, not such a short amount of time.
Her thoughts drifted back to earlier, to the way that lonely coldness had disappeared the moment she set eyes on Obsidian once again.
“It’s because we were apart, isn’t it?” she questioned, putting down her fork in favor of her orange juice. “That empty feeling?”
His head slowly lifted. He blinked once, twice, clearly considering his response. “Because you thought I left, yes.”
“And the moment I saw you were here, it went away. Just like that.”
“Yes.”
“Did you feel it, too? That hollow sensation, as though you’d lost a part of yourself forever?”
“I felt your suffering,” he said softly. “It’s why I came to you, so you’d know I was there.”
It took a moment for her to form words. “What? You felt… Why…Howcould you feel mine?”
