Things grew quiet, and she shifted in her chair and glanced down at her empty plate. “Dinner was wonderful. Thank you.”
“I’m glad you liked it.” He stood and picked up his dish. When she moved to do the same, he held out a hand to stop her before gathering her plate and utensils, too. “You stay right here. I’m just going to set these in the dishwasher and put away the leftovers. You ready for dessert? It’s something decadent and chocolate.”
She laughed and glanced up into his darkened green eyes, trying not to drown in their seductive depths. “You should know that I’m shameless when it comes to any kind of dessert. And if it’s chocolate, then I’ll be in heaven.”
He grinned and winked at her. “One trip to heaven, coming up.”
He went back into the kitchen, and she heard him at the sink as he cleaned up the dishes, then the sound of cupboard doors opening and closing, until he finally returned with two smaller plates.
She nearly moaned at the rich, indulgent dessert he set in front of her. “Did you make this?” she asked incredulously.
He laughed, the sound low and sexy as he sat across from her with his own slice of chocolate mousse cake. “No. My cooking skills don’t extend to desserts. I bought it. But don’t tell that to my sister-in-law, Samantha, who is a phenomenal pastry chef at one of those upscale bakeries downtown.”
Sarah doubted she’d ever meet the woman. “My lips are sealed,” she said, and took a bite of the melt-in-your-mouth cake, and this time, she did moan at the luscious texture and taste on her tongue.
Levi’s heavy-lidded gaze zeroed in on her mouth from across the table, and even with the distance between them, it still felt like a physical caress. “That’s the same sound you made when I kissed you,” he pointed out huskily. “It’s so fucking hot.”
Her face flushed and sh
e managed to swallow the bite in her mouth. “That’s what happens when you feed me chocolate.”
“I like it,” he murmured, a bad-boy glint in his eyes. “So if I kissed you while you were eating chocolate, do you think it would be an orgasmic experience for you?”
Yes, and her body agreed. Especially those neglected girly parts between her legs that pulsed and tingled at the thought of his mouth on hers again. Or on any part of her.
She tried to shake off the sensation, and because she really wanted to finish her dessert, she changed the subject for now. “You said your parents were gone,” she said, touching on a topic he’d avoided earlier. “What happened?”
He arched a brow at her, seemingly disappointed that she hadn’t taken him up on his orgasmic offer. “Tit for tat?”
She shrugged, and yeah, maybe she was taking advantage of the fact that she’d just spilled her past to him. “Fair is fair.”
He didn’t answer right away. Finally, he shook his head and scrubbed a hand along his jaw, that guarded look behind his eyes fading away. “Jesus, I don’t even know where to start.”
The raw, honest emotion written all over his face already made her heart constrict, because she suspected his story was just as painful as hers had been. “Let’s start with your mother,” she prompted gently. “How did she pass away?”
Again, he hesitated, just long enough for her to think he’d changed his mind about sharing, but then he spoke. “My mother was a prostitute and a junkie,” he said, shocking her with his uncensored words. “For her, it was all about getting her next fix, so to pay for the drugs, she whored herself out. She didn’t give a shit about any of her kids, and when I was around eight, she was arrested for drug possession and solicitation. It was her fifth offense on various charges, and she was sentenced to prison for eighteen months. She died of a stroke while she was incarcerated.”
Sarah was so stunned she could only stare at him while she processed everything he’d just said. “Did your father raise you?” she asked since it was the most logical assumption.
His mouth twisted in a spiteful smile, even as he took a bite of his dessert. “The thing is, none of us boys knew who our fathers were since my mother got pregnant when she was with three different johns. We had a lot of abusive pricks who came through our lives because of my mother’s addictions, but we never had a father figure.”
So, he’d suffered as a child, just as she had, and it made her feel oddly connected to him. “Did the three of you end up in foster care?” She hated to ask but wanted to know what had happened to them.
He shook his head. “No. If it weren’t for Clay, we would have definitely been split up. Somehow, someway, he was able to keep us together. He was sixteen at the time, and for the two years after that, he managed to keep all of us under the radar of social services while he worked odd jobs to support us. Like I said earlier, I ate a lot of macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
Sarah couldn’t stop the emotional lump that formed in her throat. On one hand, she could totally relate to Levi’s past and childhood, and on another, she knew that he and his brothers had gone through a whole different kind of hell. “I can’t even imagine how difficult that was for all three of you.”
“Clay obviously took the brunt of it all since he was the oldest. Mason, well, he was a goddamn hell-raiser who was a constant challenge for Clay. And me . . .” He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter.
But what he’d endured did matter to her. And in a very short time, she’d already learned so much about Levi that she was able to finish his sentence for him. “You were the quiet, internal one, weren’t you?”
Surprise flickered in his gaze that she’d pegged him so easily. “When you’re constantly being threatened with ‘be good or you’ll be taken away,’ it tends to scare the shit out of a kid. I was so afraid of never seeing my brothers again, and the only way I could deal with the chaos of everything going on around me was to keep my fears and emotions compartmentalized so they didn’t completely overwhelm me.”
She realized that even as a man, Levi still needed to maintain that control; he’d admitted as much earlier when she’d asked him about drinking alcohol and he’d said, that lack of control is totally not my thing. It all made sense and lined up with his in-charge personality. She was sure that being in the military had only intensified and solidified those traits.
“You mentioned you were in the service?” She figured he could use a break from the intensity of his story and hoped this part of his life had gone easier.
“Yeah. I was in the Army, as a military police officer.” He casually leaned back in his chair, seemingly grateful to leave the childhood discussion behind. “Once I was discharged, it was a natural and easy transition to being a cop.”