“Thank you,” I tell said waiter, and try not to pull down the skirt of my dress as he pours water into our glasses. I don’t touch my hem until he’s turned his back and no one can see me squirm… except for Madox. Like always, I’m not quite dressed for the occasion.
It feels like our first date all over again. Where he knows all the tricks and holds all the cards, and I’m barely gripping on to anything.
“Dark blue is your color.” Madox’s words make my heart do that stuttering thing. I can feel heat flood up my chest and to my cheeks. With a soft smirk kicking up the corners of his lips he adds, “Blushing looks good on you too.”
Slipping a lock of hair behind my ear, I tell him, “Thank you. You look handsome too… you always do.”
The fluttering in my chest matches the way my stomach feels, and I search around the stark white tabletop for a menu of any kind. For anything at all to distract me from the sincerity of Madox’s gaze. But there’s nothing save polished silverware and lit candles.
“I like it when you do that,” he says lowly, in a tone that hits straight to my core. I have to lift my eyes to his, barely able to breathe at seeing the look in his eyes.
“Do what?”
“Compliment me.”
“I’m sure you have lots of people do that.” Even as I speak without conscious consent, I can’t help but to look over every bit of his features and feel a pinch in my brow.
“They’re not you.”
“That’s very sweet of you.”
“It’s also true. I’m glad you agreed to come out tonight.”
“You’re different, Madox,” I barely whisper and wish I had a menu or something to hold in my hands. Instead, I shove them into my lap and wring my fingers around one another as Madox, with a look of slight vulnerability on his handsome face, asks me how. He stays perfectly still though, never showing anything more than a glimpse that he may be less than in control.
“It’s just …” I bite down on my bottom lip and try to put it into words. “When I remember us, you didn’t talk much about,” I pause as I struggle to come up with an explanation. “About anything, really. I never knew what you were thinking about back then.”
“Trish told me you prefer words of affirmation,” Madox tells me as he takes the beautifully folded napkin in front of him and lays it on his lap. “She told me we need to learn each other’s forms of communication, and I’m trying. I think she may have insight I lacked when we were together.”
Madox’s features could be carved of marble. They’re flawless and classically handsome; perfectly poised. My own feel like they’re crumbling at what he just told me. It’s a pain, but a good one. Like when you’ve given yourself to someone for the first time, and the powerful mix of emotions surges inside of you, looking for a way out—until they kiss you, hold you close. That’s the kind of pain I feel right now. Along with the panic of being too vulnerable.
“You’re too far away from me,” Madox tells me, cutting off my thoughts.
I have to grin at his statement. We’re alone in the room and I can only imagine what he’d do to me if we were closer. The very thought makes me squirm, and I can tell from the look in his eyes he would do whatever the hell he wanted with me back here.
“Do you remember when I ate you out under the table at … what was that place?” he asks me and my core heats immediately, remembering how he didn’t give me any notice, he simply ducked down under the table in the middle of the restaurant and slipped his hands up my skirt. All while I stared fixedly at the wall, trying not to scream in pleasure.
“Blue Hill.”
“Yes,” he says and nods, picking up his drink then adds, “you loved that place. How could I forget?” My heart flutters in a way that wishes I were closer to him right now. As close as I could be, but instead I stare down at the silverware, which makes my smile come back.
I was sure someone was looking at me when my silverware hit the plate of the chocolate lava cake with a loud clatter that night he crawled under the table at Blue Hill.
“My hand shook when I tried to drink my water, you know? It was hard to play it off.”
He flashes a wolfish grin back at me. “It was the day before your birthday, I remember that.”
“Is that why you did it? An early birthday present?”
He shakes his head once, a short and deliberate no. “I did it because I wanted to taste you right then and there.” My nipples pebble and my pussy clenches, instantly remembering how his tongue dove into me, how his fingers gripped my hips.